Dangerous Dan

Here's what I thought as I watched the State of the Union (transcript here):

Not trying to westernize the mideast. Democracy will look different, but everybody deserves freedom.

The Dem Response (transcript here):

MM notes this New York Sun story about Saddam Hussein's former second in command of the air force. He's claiming that Hussein smuggled WMDs into Syria aboard modified passenger planes.

It wouldn't surprise me if what he says is true. We haven't found any WMDs in Iraq, this is true. My concern, though, has always been that we know Saddam had the things, but we don't know what happened to them. Many anti-war folks talk about the lack of WMDs in Iraq as if they never existed, but that's just not the case. We found them after the Persian Gulf War, we found more we didn't know about when Saddam's son-in-law snitched on him, we're certain he had more when he threw out the inspectors in the late 90′s, and nearly all the world's intelligence agencies think he was producing them while he wasn't being monitored. So they existed. But in the time since the Iraq invasion, I've seen nothing that tells us what happened to them. We have no evidence Saddam destroyed them, which would have been the best outcome. So if they weren't destroyed and weren't found in conventional warehouses or storage facilities, that leaves two other options: either they're unconventionally stored or they were shipped out of the country prior to our heavily advertised invasion. For the former, they could be buried out in the desert somewhere. The Iraqis buried entire jet fighters in the desert, so it wouldn't have been difficult to do the same for much smaller munitions or barrels. And for the latter, they could have been transferred to Syria for safekeeping until Saddam repelled the Yanks. This is the worst-case scenario because it means the WMDs still exist and they belong to a bad regime.

So until we have solid evidence that the WMDs were destroyed or are buried somewhere, it's best to assume the worst. We've got to figure out what happened to them and if we think they're in Syria, then we should step up the pressure on the Assads.

Also read this post by Rick Moran who has similar concerns to mine and who notes other reports that are collectively worrisome.

HuffPo has a regular contributor named Hooman Majd, who's a real interesting guy because he's taken up the challenge of consistently defending Iran in all its crazy glory. In one post, he argues for Iran developing a nuclear program because it will run out of oil in 30 years. He admits that it could build a bomb and that would be bad, but then he happily dances around the issue without ever really addressing it.

In his latest post, he chides the U.S. government for rebuffing Iran's friendly overtures, such as this one:

Today, in what has to be another effort to reach out to the U.S., Iran revealed that a proposal has been sent to the Civil Aviation Authority suggesting a direct air-link between the U.S. and Iran (and even allowing U.S. airlines to fly the route). So far, there has been no response from our side, or from Delta and United. The timing of such an overture is no accident. It indicates that despite all the rhetoric, the Iranians still want better relations with America.

Feel free to take a moment to wipe that incredulous look off your face. Hmmm… yes, it is curious that we wouldn't allow Iranian airliners to fly over American cities. It's not like we've ever had bad experiences with airplanes and Muslim extremists or anything. I'm sure our reluctance also couldn't be because an anti-American country with nuclear ambitions could obviate the need for ICBM's when they can just deliver a weapon in the cargo hold of an Airbus.

The spit takes don't stop there. Check out this one:

The Iraq war, it should be remembered, started in 2003, and it's anyone's guess how that adventure might have turned out if the Iranians weren't sitting back, gleeful that Saddam was gone, but hoping for a quagmire that would exhaust the U.S.. Given the Iranians' pathological hatred of Saddam Hussein, it is not inconceivable that Iran might have joined the "coalition of the willing," had relations improved sufficiently.
…
Why our government persists in rejecting every Iranian overture is baffling, considering that we could use Iran's help in Iraq and its help in fighting Al Qaeda terrorism.

This is the same Iran sending insurgents into Iraq and which is supplying them with sophisticated mines and explosives. Iran has no interest in fighting terrorism or in stabilizing Iraq. Its interests are actually the exact opposite. It desires a weaker U.S. and for America to have problems in Iraq. The more problems we have there, the less likely it is to be attacked since it weakens Bush's political position and preoccupies our military. Iran would also dearly love to turn Iraq into an extension of itself. Conquering Iraq would probably be going too far, but if Iran can make it go towards being an Shiite-dominated Islamic republic, then it will essentially turn it into an Iranian client state.

Majd's arguments are so weak and fallacious, it's stunning. What's even more disturbing are the number of commenters who agree with him.

The Middle East Peace Process (TM) has certainly been put in an interesting spot with Hamas taking control of the Palestinian government. Hamas's avowed goal is the destruction of Israel and it's recognized as a terrorist organization by the U.S., the EU, and others.

At the moment, Israel has said it will not speak to or negotiate with the new government. This is understandable since Hamas has that whole "destroy Israel" platform and the Israelis are likely a little upset at the numerous civilians killed by Hamas rocket attacks and suicide bombings.

The states that prop up the Palestinian government with foreign aid have also been put in a pickle. They have until now blamed the regional problems on Israeli aggression and have also excused the terrorist tendencies of previous Palestinian governments by saying that at least those in charge were not as violent as those who could be in charge, i.e. the less crazy people were running the asylum and so they were reasonable when compared to the nutjobs in the padded rooms. That won't work so well anymore. As Bluto points out here, it will be illegal for the U.S. to give aid to the Palestinians while Hamas is in charge. The Euros, the primary enablers, will have trouble justifying giving material aid to a terrorist group.

So what to do? Many countries are saying that for Hamas to be a good member of the world community (and to ensure their continued support), it will have to recognize Israel and its right to exist, support the Oslo Accords, renounce violence, work for peace, etc., etc. Essentially, it will have to do all the things it now and in the past has made a point of explicitly rejecting. Past parties in charge of the Palestinian government, e.g. the PLO and Fatah, weren't high on those things either. They, however, were successful in paying lip service to the world's demands for rhetorical obeisance while still privately supporting terrorism. Thus, they were wolves in sheep's clothing. Hamas, on the other hand, so proudly parades its status as the baddest wolf around that sheepskin will be a poor fit indeed. Any claims it makes about supporting peace with Israel will strain credulity to the point that not even the Euros will be able to find excuses to believe them.

So as it is, Hamas can either choose to be an open wolf or a disguised one. Considering it has built its reputation and popularity on its lycanthropic image and that attempting to present a wooly visage is too dubious for plausible belief, it will probably choose to continue being what it has always been: a terrorist organization bent on destroying Israel by any means necessary. It might as well be what everyone knows it is.

This is bad for the Middle East Peace Process (TM), so called, but probably better for Middle East peace. As Emanuele Ottolenghi argues here, the mask is now off. A wolf has always led the Palestinians, but at least now its obvious and foreign governments can now no longer point to a wool exterior in excusing their own behavior or aid. Real progress can be better made in the long term when an enemy is open about being an enemy.

What's unfortunate is that the Palestinian people continue electing factions that advocate violence and, accordingly, they wind up working against their goal of having their own autonomous state. My contention has been that the Palestinians could accomplish more in six months than they have in sixty years if they just adopted a policy of civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance, while simultaneously proving they were not a material threat to Israel. Instead, they continue down the same failed path they've traveled the past half-century with the ever-present promise that victory is just over the next hill. Too bad.

Oprah finally did what she should have done two weeks ago on Larry King: she berated James Frey for his lying memoir. She said all the right things – that she was duped, that he had betrayed millions of readers, and she challenged him on numerous points. For his part, Frey kept clinging to the false but accurate defense. He also blamed his extremely exaggerated portrayal of himself as a rough-and-tough bad boy who's angry at the world on his addiction and recovery:

"In order to get through the experience of the addiction, I thought of myself as being tougher than I was and badder than I was, and it helped me cope," Frey said Thursday on Winfrey's show. "And when I was writing the book, instead of being as introspective as I should have been, I clung to that image."

Right, so that explains it. If only he had been more introspective, he would have realized that he only spent a few hours in a jail instead of three months as he claimed or that he hadn't been beaten by the cops. Only with a lot of soul-searching would he have seen the massive factual errors in his life story.

I know, James, I know. Just this morning, I was reminiscing about my time as President of Uganda. After some deep introspection, however, and after I really explored my psyche did it occur to me that not only have I never been President of Uganda, but I'm only vaguely aware it's somewhere in Africa. I also discovered I have brown hair and that was a shock to me, James, let me tell ya. Introspection is the definitely the way to go for getting basic historical facts right.

This week, the comic strip Fox Trot has been having great fun with the whole Frey debacle. My favorite is the second one which hits on my primary gripe about Frey's deceptions: his is supposed to be an inspirational story of overcoming addiction, hate, anger, and generally being a horrible person. Only he was never the horrible person he makes himself out to be and so his tale of redemption and how he did it are also false and so are not inspirational. It would be like Paris Hilton writing an inspirational memoir of how she escaped her life of grinding poverty while growing up in the ghetto. Anyway, here they are:

If Cindy Sheehan hasn't already jumped the shark, she certainly did with her little jaunt to Venezuela. She's in Caracas this week for the World Social Forum, which is an anti-globalist and anti-American group. She's there talking about how she doesn't like Bush, how the troops should come home, the U.S. shouldn't be meddling in other countries, etc.

It's one thing to do this in the States. That at least has the tone of honest disagreement and using her voice in dissent of the government. Going elsewhere to do this, however, and speaking at a fairly explicit anti-American gathering makes her seem like she is herself anti-American instead of just a concerned American mother, the image she likes to project.

Most Americans seem to have a pretty high tolerance for domestic disagreement, but a curiously low tolerance for bad-mouthing the U.S. on foreign soil. Take the Dixie Chicks, for example. The uproar against them started because they insulted Bush at a concert in the U.K. Had they made the same comment in the U.S., I doubt the retaliation against them would have been as bad. Lefty folks invented the verb of being 'dixie chicked' to describe the phenomenon of popular revolt of red staters against entertainers for speaking their mind. There was also a perception that middle America and especially country folks won't put up with liberal tendencies among country stars.

That's incorrect. Many of the most famous country artists have been anti-establishment and somewhat liberal on many issues: Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson, among others. And let's not forget Willie Nelson who famously smokes pot and who campaigned on behalf of Dennis Kucinich and John Kerry. Nobody threw away his CDs. Part of the problem with the Chicks is that they didn't own up to their views. They made the comment on foreign soil and then made stupid, weak excuses about being misquoted or it being misinterpreted instead of just defending it and chalking it up to political disagreement. The fact that they ran from the comment instead of embracing it made them look like deceitful sunshine patriots who will praise U.S. actions at home, while disparaging them abroad. They came off as dishonest panderers.

Anyway, tangent aside, by speaking at the World Social Forum and buttering up to dictator Hugo Chavez, Sheehan now looks like a useful idiot of foreign anti-American elements. She's the dancing bear people like Chavez trot out to perform for the slogan-chanting faithful.

When writing last November about the Somali pirates who tried taking over a cruise ship, I said, "Of course, if people really wanted to take care of the pirates, they'd ask the U.S. Navy to patrol the coastline and do some housecleaning."

I don't think anybody asked, but they Navy is on the job anyway. The missile destroyer USS Winston S. Churchill captured a suspected pirate ship along with a crew of 26 men just 56 miles off the Somali coast.

The U.S. Navy has virtually eliminated piracy on the high seas. It's still rampant in smaller localities, such as among the numerous islands that make up the Philippines. But that's not our beat.

An old joke is that because of the media's racial angles, if a giant asteroid were headed towards Earth, the headlines would read, "Asteroid to Destroy All Life on Planet! Blacks to be Most Affected."

Well, the joke is coming true. BET has a piece up declaring that "Global Warming Could Spell Disaster for Blacks."

It's fun reading. It also contains this gem: "President Bush enraged environmentalists when he opted out of the Kyoto protocol global warming treaty, saying it would harm the U.S. economy." This is the treaty that was voted down in the Senate (the only entity that can approve treaties) by a vote of 95-0. Yet curiously, Bush always gets all the blame for it.

Hillary Clinton gave a speech in which she criticized Bush's handling of Iran. She doesn't think he's been aggressive enough on the issue and has downplayed the threat of a nuclear Iran. Bush has mainly deferred to the Europeans on Iran and let them do much of the negotiating. Predictably, it's gotten them nowhere as the Iranians are merely stringing them along and stalling for time while the mad mullahs continue their nuclear project. It just goes to show how well constant diplomacy works with aggressors who only understand force. If Bush was more involved, of course, Hillary would likely be complaining that he isn't being multilateral by working with the Euros. If he threatened force, you can imagine the uproar. It's a no-win situation, a political Kobayashi Maru.

Really, she's just triangulating again by running to Bush's right on a particular issue. You can still see the Clinton in her, though. Her preferred approach for Iran?

We cannot and should not — must not — permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons. In order to prevent that from occurring, we must have more support vigorously and publicly expressed by China and Russia, and we must move as quickly as feasible for sanctions in the United Nations.

Ah, sanctions, those things that have worked so well in the past. Why, they're one step up from strongly worded UN letters!

Iran is a far more serious issue than is being portrayed here in the U.S. I’m confident there are contingency plans in effect (whether they’re effective is another question) and we still can’t count out the Israelis. I’m not sure what to expect, but I imagine there will be some important and violent developments in the coming year.

The Washington Post had to close down one of its blogs because the comments had gotten obscene and out of hand.

In her Sunday column, ombudsman Deborah Howell wrote that Abramoff "had made substantial campaign contributions to both major parties," prompting a wave of nasty reader postings on post.blog.

There were so many personal attacks that the newspaper's staff could not "keep the board clean, there was some pretty filthy stuff," and so the Post shut down comments on the blog, or Web log, said Jim Brady, executive editor of washingtonpost.com.

She's written an addendum here in which she says that a better phrasing would be that Abramoff "directed" money to both parties in that he advised his clients to do so. She then backs it up with some data.

This goes to show the level of discourse, however, in the leftie blogosphere. Yes, there are obscene troll comments that come out of the conservative side, but it's a greater problem for the liberal side. I think a contributing factor is that on many of the prominent liberal blogs, you will see straight-out profanity-laced vitriol. If you go to DailyKos, right at the top of the main page is an ad that says, "Money is f**king up the democratic party…" Related to Post blog, a post farther down says, "And when readers challenge her to, I don't know, do her f**king job, how does the Washington Post respond?" You'll see even more if you delve further into the site. If this is what the prominent blogs do, then no wonder that its readers do the same thing. If the comments were a physical forum, they'd be the same folks shouting down Howell or perhaps throwing pies at her.

I don’t expect politeness in political discourse… it would be nice, but far too optimistic. I do, however, expect some minimal level of civility. Tell me when you find it.

What? It's a proper term. Ted Kennedy may have an illegitimate son. This is speculative for now, of course, since the news is being reported by The National Enquirer, which isn't the most reliable news source, but does occasionally dig up real dirt.

According to this bit in the Boston Herald, Teddy urged the mother to get an abortion and for the most self-serving reasons: he was worried about his political career.

“Caroline announced to the family that she was two months pregnant around May 1984,” blabbed a Bilodeau confidante. “Ted was not happy about the news. He already had three kids with Joan and knew a baby out of wedlock could hurt him politically.”

According to the Enquirer, the scandal-scarred senator begged Bilodeau to have an abortion, but she refused.

“He told her he couldn’t undergo another scandal — not after Chappaquiddick, not so close to his divorce from Joan” said the source. “He was very angry when she defied him and had the child.”

Classy.

The big news today, of course, is that a new audiotape from Osama bin Laden has been released. And the news is good. While blustering that his forces are winning in Iraq and Afghanistan and that there are operations ready to go in America, he's also pleading for peace between al Qaeda and the U.S. Wanting a truce belies his chest-thumping. If you have the upper-hand in a conflict, you don't ask for a cease-fire, you continue pressing your advantage until you win. Only when you're losing do you ask for a temporary peace, usually for the purposes of self-preservation or strategy. So when OBL says he wants a truce, it is because things are not going his way and he wants a break from American forces kicking his rear so that he can regroup and launch fresh, more potent attacks.

What's especially funny is that OBL is his own worst enemy in that he parrots the talking points of the anti-war left – the only people who can win the conflict for him:

But what triggered my desire to talk to you is the continuous deliberate misinformation given by your President [George] Bush, when it comes to polls made in your home country which reveal that the majority of your people are willing to withdraw US forces from Iraq.

We know that the majority of your people want this war to end and opinion polls show the Americans do not want to fight the Muslims on Muslim land, nor do they want Muslims to fight them on their [US] land.

But Bush does not want this and claims that it is better to fight his enemies on their land rather than on American land.

Bush tried to ignore the polls that demanded that he end the war in Iraq.

OBL fully realizes that he cannot win the war militarily, he can only hope that Bush's domestic opposition can force a withdrawal, a la Vietnam. By using their talking points, however, OBL discredits them since he makes them sound like the bad guy and therefore erodes their support. He'd be better off sounding like a maniacal Bond villain that everybody can boo and hiss at, while leaving the anti-war folks their arguments.

Note also that he calls this a 'truce.' Now, I don't know if this is the best translation from Arabic or what the connotations are of the word he used, but in the English world, a truce is merely a cease-fire – it's a negotiated respite between battles. In fact, MEMRI says that 'truce' is a poor translation, and 'cease-fire' is closer to the truth. He clearly just wants a break from us and not a long term peace.

Truce or cease-fire, though, the promise is hallow. The same deal was extended to Spain if it withdrew its troops from Iraq. That's exactly what they did and it got them nowhere as there have been several successful and attempted terrorist attacks in Spain since then. Agreeing to a truce is nothing but a sign of weakness to al Qaeda – it's blood in the water. They see that their attacks succeeded in attaining their goals and so they will execute more attacks for further success. It's only suicidal to agree to their demands.

One last point… is it just me or is OBL channeling Howard Hughes. We don't actually see him anymore, we only get audiotapes of him, letting us know that rumors of his death are greatly exaggerated. I suspect he's in a cave in Pakistan somewhere with Kleenex boxes on his feet.

Update: If you want fun reading on this topic, check out the comments on this HuffPo post. HuffPo is quickly becoming DU-Lite and I expect them to soon set up a merchant site that sells only the very best tinfoil hats with Arianna's picture branded on them. Many think OBL's statement is an indicator that we're in trouble. Others (at HuffPo and at DU) tuned in signals telling them that this is a scam by Bush & Co. to help his poll numbers, nevermind that the current timing isn't very helpful (these are the same folks who think raising the terror alert level at election time is a Bush ploy, ignoring the fact that it would be a likely time for terrorism and that al Qaeda actually did the Spain train bombings three days before national elections).

Related to how OBL damages his own cause, it seems Chris Matthews thought the same thing:

On Hardball today, Chris Matthews compared Michael Moore to Osama Bin Laden while discussing the newly released tape with Joe Biden.

Matthews: I mean he sounds like an over the top Michael Moore here, if not a Michael Moore. You think that sells…

There's a lot of sound and fury in the HuffPo comments over the association, but this is exactly the problem I mentioned. By using the anti-war left's talking points, he makes those people sound like him – the bad guy – and that's not helpful to his cause.

Update2: Dread Pundit Bluto has a nice roundup of comparison quotes between the new tape and the anti-war left.