The Dish

Here’s an email from a soldier who worked in Iraq on the NYT coverage, specifically Dexter Filkins’:

I read your post about the story written by Dexter Filkins. Dexter was embedded with my unit in the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom and I can tell you from first hand experience that he is one of the best reporters on the Iraq War. After I got home from the start of the war in June 2003, I read many of the articles he wrote about what he saw as we pushed north to Baghdad. Every one of them was spot on and gave an excellent description of events on the ground. Not bad for a reporter working for the New York Times. Over the past few years I have read anything I see of his and I believe that he as a better idea of what is happening in Iraq than almost anyone else.

Ah, yes, The evil MSM. Just dedicated to helping the terrorists, aren’t they?

This brief tour of post-modernity even has a YouTube interview between leftist philosophical luminaries, Michel Foucault and Noam Chomsky. Poor Foucault. Even Chomsky looks reasonable in contrast. The damage Foucault did to gay equality is only now being healed – but students in many universities are still being subjected to his mediocre regurgitation of Nietzsche.

No actual legal story. Just one example of how an attempt to avoid embarrassment actually ensured it. Pretty sad that Rush is somehow ashamed of a wayward willy. A better psychiatrist would surely deal with this insecurity rather than enabling it.

Even the BBC is skeptical about some of the more extreme claims of global warming. The radio version of this piece is better than the posted one.

A reader writes:

I’ve been living in South Korea for the past 4 1/2 years (not military … my wife’s Korean). At any rate, I wanted to comment on the ‘Nodong’ or ‘Rodong’ missile post. The confusion between the names is arising because of the conflicting translations between Korean Hangul writing and Romanization into English. It’s the same reason that the president of South Korea is sometimes referred to in print as ‘Roh’, and other times as ‘Noh’. Since no one can seem to agree on which of the two romanization systems to use, we get messes like this (it has to do with the Chinese characters for the name). Long story short, both names refer to the same missile (which is basically just a Scud, as far as I know). And pronunciation-wise, ‘Nodong’ is correct. (long ‘O’ on both syllables). And I agree, they should have thought a bit more before they named it.

In case you’re wondering about the situation here, the people seem to be rather angry at the government. Noh’s administration has been downplaying the threat of a missile test, even going so far as to say it was most likely going to be a satellite launch, not a test of the long-range Taepodong-2. Well, they’ve got egg on their faces now. I’m really hoping that this will end the huge amounts of money that the South has been pouring into the North through projects like the Kaesong Industrial Complex, which has yielded diddly-squat for the South (except for cheap, exploited labor). Unfortunately, I’m not holding my breath with the current government. It is somewhat reassuring to see that even the leftist newspapers here seem to be condemning the tests, so perhaps Noh will have to do something substantial for a change.

The great thing about maniacal despots and religious crazies: they’re often self-destructive. Bin Laden’s big strategic mistake (in my view) was 9/11. Kim Jong-Il may have just committed his own geostrategic version of premature ejaculation with a drooping Nodong.

(Photo: Reuters.)

By Ramesh "Pundit of Death" Ponnuru no less. From James Bennet’s Atlantic blog:

Venues aside, it was striking how much the conservatives disagreed with each other on where their movement should go, while the liberals agreed, over and over, that their movement had lost its way. The conservatives were driving ahead, bickering, quite possibly rushing in the wrong direction; the liberals were pulled over to the side of the road, hunting for that map they were sure Harry Truman had stuffed in the glove compartment a few years back; or was it in the trunk? …

Not, mind you, that the conservatives were terribly coherent. They appeared to agree on only two points: That conservatives are passionate tree-huggers; and that Andrew Sullivan, who was not present, is not a conservative. "There are no conservatives I know of who consider Andrew Sullivan a conservative," said Ramesh Ponnuru, of National Review. (Andrew Sullivan’s apostasy, by the lights of some panelists, had been to argue that practicing torture is not consistent with conservatism.)

Ah, yes. Conservatism as the philosophy of legal torture. You’ve come a long way from Burke, baby.

Here’s one detail about Don Rumsfeld’s summer home that a historian found poignant: it was once a renowmed center for torturing slaves. Frederick Douglass was assaulted there – and escaped. Of course, those slaves weren’t actually tortured, as Alberto Gonzales would argue. They were merely subject to "coercive disciplinary techniques".

What the president really cares about.

Murray Waas seems to have connected another dot. it’s useful to remember, in the current hysteria over leaks, that the president, according to Waas, told the special prosecutor in the Plame case that he

had directed Cheney, as part of that broader effort, to disclose highly classified intelligence information that would not only defend his administration but also discredit Wilson.

The president discloses classified information; others merely leak it.

Bob Samuelson, as so often, puts what I have been trying inelegantly to express much more directly:

From 2003 to 2050, the world’s population is projected to grow from 6.4 billion people to 9.1 billion, a 42 percent increase. If energy use per person and technology remain the same, total energy use and greenhouse gas emissions (mainly, carbon dioxide) will be 42 percent higher in 2050. But that’s too low, because societies that grow richer use more energy. Unless we condemn the world’s poor to their present poverty — and freeze everyone else’s living standards — we need economic growth. With modest growth, energy use and greenhouse emissions more than double by 2050.

Even the most drastic measures from Western nations will not make much more than a dent in this. Only an energy technological breakthrough can. I’d ratchet up gas taxes to see what the market will throw up in innovation (and for national security reasons). But then I’d channel resources into adjusting to global warming, rather than trying to prevent it. If the technology comes through and we can really do something to heal the planet in time, I’m all for it. Until then, a lot of this debate is, as Samuelson says, posturing. Or have I and Samuelson missed something?