Month: December 2006

I was wrong to say that the American Conservative magazine has only now focused on the Bush torture policy. Here’s a piece on John Yoo from September.

Here’s one prediction I fear might come true and sure hope doesn’t:

I understand that Iraq doesn’t offer many pleasant options right now. ‘Stay the course’ died years ago, we can’t build up troops if we don’t have them and the various ways of mitigating our current nightmare run up against the problem that we are governed by people who cannot or will not do the right thing. We might as well admit that our homebaked plans (for example) are just so much intellectual wankery. The president is emotionally incapable of admitting the depth of our problem and darth veep will veto any plan that can’t be pushed out the rear of a C-130 transport.

In that light I think that we should recognize this idea of actively promoting the ethnic partition of Iraq for what it is ‚Äì a horrible, debatably effective plan (the implementation seems guaranteed to produce tragic screwups on a massive scale) that will never happen. My feeling is that Iraq will play out just like the ‘preparations’ for insurgency did. For political reasons withdrawal will be treated as a naughty word, stifling discussion and heading off planning until it becomes absolutely unavoidable. Then when the light finally goes on we will have a chaotic bugout with huge, avoidable losses of men and materiel.

As far as putting a date on B-day, manpower and equipment shortages won’t let us go on for too many more years. Or we could bomb Iran. In that case B-day would come approximately one week later, with much dynamiting of stuff that can’t be airlifted out. I would love to be proved wrong, but if there is another likely path out of there I just don‚Äôt see it.

A reader writes:

I’m not sure what to make of the overriding sentiment of NRO’s Pinochet symposium. I get the impression that Saddam would have been A-OK by them if only he’d been a free-market champion instead of a socialist Ba’athist.

Tax cuts and torture: the new conservative agenda.

The Republican partisan blogosphere has had a poll of whom they like and dislike in cyberspace. I’m honored as the "most annoying" right-of-center blogger and I’m just beaten out by Kos as "most annoying" left-of-center blogger. Next year, Kos, just wait till next year and we’ll see who can piss off more conservatives, ok? Bonus feature: LGF wins!

The "Left Behind" video game creates some Christmas controversy. Money quote:

In Left Behind, set in perfectly apocalyptic New York City, the Antichrist is personified by fictional Romanian Nicolae Carpathia, secretary-general of the United Nations and a People magazine "Sexiest Man Alive."

Players can choose to join the Antichrist’s team, but of course they can never win on Carpathia’s side. The enemy team includes fictional rock stars and folks with Muslim-sounding names, while the righteous include gospel singers, missionaries, healers and medics. Every character comes with a life story.

When asked about the Arab and Muslim-sounding names, Frichner said the game does not endorse prejudice. But "Muslims are not believers in Jesus Christ" — and thus can’t be on Christ’s side in the game.

"That is so obvious," he said.

The Anti-Christ as "Sexiest Man Alive"? Who needs South Park?

"You know, this is a fight, when you get right down to the root of it, between Sunnis and Shias – it goes back a millennia of time – over who is the rightful successor to the Prophet Mohammed. That is not our fault. That is not our fight. And that’s not something we can fix …

Moreover, if you think we should be going out and fighting them, you have to answer the question whether the insurgency that this has become is worth doing. If you say yes, it is, then you have to adapt your tactics.

What we are doing – and I have seen this in – with my own eyes in Iraq — what we are doing is sending them out from the Green Zone, clearing, and then retreating back to the Green Zone. Now, I got to tell you, that does not make any sense, if you are fighting an insurgency. History will tell you, to fight and win insurgencies, you have to clear, hold, and then build, so you build confidence in the people there, so that they become the foot soldiers, they root out the terrorists, and they ultimately fight for their freedom. It is not our country. It is theirs," – Senator Gordon Smith.

Either we commit the forces to truly clear, hold and build alongside a fledgling Iraqi army, or we should leave as soon as possible. The worst of all worlds is hanging out in Iraq, and slowly becoming coopted by one side of a raging civil war. Then we truly become a target not just for al Qaeda loons but for either all Sunnis or all Shia. If you really want to give al Qaeda a shot in the arm, join with the Shiites. I’m not surprised in a way that Cheney is moving toward that position. On almost every issue in this war, he has been consistently, disastrously wrong. Why should he change now?

Here’s the text of his address to Rick Warren’s mega-church on World AIDS Day. Best to look past the hype and read his words. They impress me. They give me hope. That’s all for now. And it’s enough for now.

This "devil food is turning our kids into homosexuals". Or so says Christianist website, WorldNet Daily. More analysis here. It reduces the size of your peepee too, apparently.

You’d be surprised. A Catholic effort to raise awareness of cruelty to animals in our society and economy is long overdue, as Matthew Scully presciently saw.

Sebastopol, California, 10 am.