TOBY PETZOLD

Bill Kristol, among others, thinks that Bill Clinton’s ridiculous outburst at Chris Wallace this weekend was a contrived performance intended to strengthen the Democrats’ image as that of passionate patriots, concerned about national security (emphases mine):

In this interview, Clinton rallied Democrats. He reminded them of their talking points on Bush’s alleged passivity in his first eight months in office (remember Richard Clarke!), and on the alleged distraction posed by Iraq from the more worthwhile war in Afghanistan. He nicely laid the predicate for the leaked portions of the National Intelligence Estimate that appeared in the press the next day. If the Bush-Rove war-on-terror offensive stalls out this week (and much of the media is committed to making this happen), and Democrats do well in November, Bill Clinton can take credit, at a crucial moment, for discrediting the terror issue as a mere political ploy, and showing Democrats how “to fight back” and how “to stand up to the right-wing propaganda machine” (in the words of Howard Dean).

Maybe this is so. But I happen to subscribe to the far more narcissistic explanation that Kristol proceeds to next:

Clinton wants to make it incorrect, or at least impolite, to criticize his record on terror. Chris Wallace stood up to him. Will others? Will his next interviewer raise the same set of questions? Will they be willing to take the criticism of being “conservative hit men” or part of the vast, Fox-centered right-wing conspiracy? Bullying and intimidation sometimes work. Clinton has used both effectively in the past. Now he wants to put out of bounds certain perfectly legitimate and straight-forward questions.

That, to me, is the bottom line —and it’s all of a piece with the Clintonistas’ recent attempts at bullying and censoring ABC over that Path to 9/11 miniseries. Bill Clinton knows that his response to Osama was feckless, impotent, and scapegoated —and he hates the idea that there might be people in this country who know it.

When Osama bin-Laden formally declared war against the United States on 23 August 1996, this is what he had to say about the Americans killed in Somalia in 1993 (my emphases):

Few days ago the news agencies had reported that the Defence Secretary of the Crusading Americans had said that ” the explosion at Riyadh and AlKhobar had taught him one lesson: that is not to withdraw when attacked by coward terrorists.”

We say to the Defence Secretary that his talk can induce a grieving mother to laughter! and shows the fears that had enshrined you all. Where was this false courage of yours when the explosion in Beirut took place on 1983 CE (1403 A.H). You were turned into scattered pits and pieces at that time 241 mainly marines solders were killed. And where was this courage of yours when two explosions made you to leave Aden in less than twenty four hours! 

But your most disgraceful case was in Somalia whereafter vigorous propaganda about the power of the USA and its post cold war leadership of the new world order you moved tens of thousands of international force, including twenty eight thousands American solders into Somalia. However, when tens of your solders were killed in minor battles and one American Pilot was dragged in the streets of Mogadishu you left the area carrying disappointment, humiliation, defeat and your dead with you. Clinton appeared in front of the whole world threatening and promising revenge, but these threats were merely a preparation for withdrawal. You have been disgraced by Allah and you withdrew the extent of your impotence and weaknesses became very clear. It was a pleasure for the ” heart” of every Muslim and a remedy to the ” chests” of believing nations to see you defeated in the three Islamic cities of Beirut, Aden and Mogadishu.  

 

Right there, in the summer of 1996, Osama bin Laden declared war on us. And what did Clinton and Janet Reno and all the other nauseating losers do? They referred it to the grand jury.

This country cannot afford to allow the Democratic Party to ever again control our national security.

The Washington Post is reporting on the latest National Intelligence Estimate in which the National Intelligence Council has concluded that the War for Iraq has served only to radicalize and make more Muslim terrorists (emphases mine):

The war in Iraq has become a primary recruitment vehicle for violent Islamic extremists, motivating a new generation of potential terrorists around the world whose numbers may be increasing faster than the United States and its allies can reduce the threat, U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded.

A 30-page National Intelligence Estimate completed in April cites the “centrality” of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and the insurgency that has followed, as the leading inspiration for new Islamic extremist networks and cells that are united by little more than an anti-Western agenda. It concludes that, rather than contributing to eventual victory in the global counterterrorism struggle, the situation in Iraq has worsened the U.S. position, according to officials familiar with the classified document.

Yep. It’s another one of those stories that just happens to depend on the leaking of a classified document. But don’t let that worry you: this is one of those good leaks.

The report continues:

Although intelligence officials agree that the United States has seriously damaged the leadership of al-Qaeda and disrupted its ability to plan and direct major operations, radical Islamic networks have spread and decentralized.

Many of the new cells, the NIE concludes, have no connection to any central structure and arose independently. The members of the cells communicate only among themselves and derive their inspiration, ideology and tactics from the more than 5,000 radical Islamic Web sites. They spread the message that the Iraq war is a Western attempt to conquer Islam by first occupying Iraq and establishing a permanent presence in the Middle East.

Well, there may be something to that. Then again, any time that the Western powers come into the Middle East —be they Frenchmen or Englishmen carving up the Ottoman Empire or ARAMCO moving in on Saudi Arabia or Zionists establishing the State of Israel or the Gulf War coalition setting up shop on their holy soil— Muslims always have a problem with the infidels.

Is there a difference this time? Probably. The same old interests (particularly oil) are still in play, but this time, we’re going to hang in there until we are sure that a fully-functioning Iraqi democracy can stand on its own. We’re going to stay there until the situation next door in Iran is resolved, too, because Iran is a major sponsor and exporter of jihadist mass murder —and it doesn’t matter whether they have also been “radicalized” by our presence in Iraq. The Iranians don’t need an excuse to come after us or our allies.

In fact, it’s vitally important that the West not ever turn its back on what’s going on in the Muslim Middle East now because there is every reason to believe that our continued presence there will eventually liberalize the region. It’s very difficult to see that now because of the constant violence we see on the streets of Baghdad, but there is a general trend towards democratic movements in that region that we cannot allow to be reversed.

Remember that global communism, too, was seen as a threat to our way of life —for decades. But it collapsed in a relatively brief period of time. And where it did not collapse outright, it turned into something else that we could do business with. If we can make inroads in the Muslim Middle East and expand our export trade with them (e.g., consumer goods, movies, music, and other advantages of modernity, as well as civil rights and the civil society), I am optimistic that we can help to secularize their populations and marginalize the fundamentalist elements there.

Failing that, we’ll be in a strategic place from which we can manage things in a different manner. 

In their interview aired this morning, Bill Clinton told Chris Wallace:

OK, now let’s look at all the criticisms: Black Hawk down, Somalia. There is not a living soul in the world who thought that Osama bin Laden had anything to do with Black Hawk down or was paying any attention to it or even knew Al Qaida was a growing concern in October of ‘93.

But here’s what Jim Geraghty at NRO has to say:

Not a living soul in the world… except for President Clinton’s own Justice Department. The U.S. Justice Department’s indictment of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda’s military commander, Mohammed Atef, on Nov. 4, 1998, for conspiring to kill Americans:

* …Third, al Qaeda opposed the involvement of the United States armed forces in the Gulf War in 1991 and in Operation Restore Hope in Somalia in 1992 and 1993, which were viewed by al Qaeda as pretextual preparations for an American occupation of Islamic countries….

* …At various times from at least as early as 1989, the defendant USAMA BIN LADEN, and others known and unknown, provided training camps and guesthouses in various areas, including Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Sudan, Somalia and Kenya for the use of al Qaeda and its affiliated groups.

The Fatwah Against American Troops in Somalia
At various times from in or about 1992 until in or about 1993, the defendant USAMA BIN LADEN, working together with members of the fatwah committee of al Qaeda, disseminated fatwahs to other members and associates of al Qaeda that the United States forces stationed in the Horn of Africa, including Somalia, should be attacked;

The Establishment of Training Camps for Somalia
In or about late 1992 and 1993, the defendant MUHAMMAD ATEF traveled to Somalia on several occasions for the purpose of determining how best to cause violence to the United States and United Nations military forces stationed there and reported back to the defendant USAMA BIN LADEN and other al Qaeda members at USAMA BIN LADENS’s facilities located in Khartoum, the Sudan[…]

(All emphases Geraghty’s.)

I’ve been around long enough to have witnessed a few changes in the way that my fellow Americans use and abuse the English language. My [favorite] is the frequent use of the word less instead of fewer. It may be that people have always made this mistake, but I insist that it has become far more pervasive at every level of society. News personalities and print journalists will confuse them as naturally as the person who makes the “Ten Items or Less” sign at the grocery store express lane. Maybe people use less when they mean fewer because it is a linguistic example of English evolutionarily suppressing its inflectedness. I don’t know the term for that phenomenon, but isn’t the choice between less and fewer an example of changing a phoneme to suit the context? (The context being the reference to either amounts and degrees or to a number.) I don’t know. Is that akin to inflection?

But as important as making the distinction between the uses of less and fewer may be, there is a worse example that I think poses an actual problem for clarity: the loss of the comma in written forms of address. That’s the vocative mood? Maybe it’s the imperative. In any event, you simply have to use a comma when you’re addressing someone by name. If you don’t, it’s confusing. Now, I’m no great expert in punctuation. (See, for example, my probably improper use of italics above —and here— when writing the words less and fewer. That’s almost certainly not right. I should probably have written them “less” and “fewer” —or maybe I shouldn’t have used any quotation marks at all. But I have always thought that you should italicize words when you use them as terms! I really have. They’re not appearing in your sentence as what they are substantively, but nominatively —so why not write them down as you would a term you’re borrowing from a foreign language?) Whatever else, you’ve still got to keep it clear. Commas, which I know I use too often, are there for a reason. They’re supposed to break things up by lists and clauses and phrases. But they also go with people’s names. Don’t question why. Just know it.

I can’t believe that Dr Pepper is using “Turning Japanese” by The Vapours in its latest TV ad. Is it so old a song that, not only is it new again, but is exempt from the charge of both vulgarity and racism?

I think that’s a good thing —and am sorry that there would be a reason why I should ever have thought otherwise.

I saw Arianna Huffington on Hannity & Colmes earlier tonight —and I have absolutely no idea what she said. In fact, I’m not even sure if she actually spoke. But what do I care? She was absolutely right. 

Gracious!

It’s come up before, but let me propose it again.

There is no reason for the United States military to waterboard Islamofascist murderers —or to play them bad 80s hair band music (at 11) or threaten their families or their family jewels or anything like that to get information out of them.

I suggest, instead, that our military intelligence personnel spike these terrorists’ morning coffee with lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). Give ‘em a major dose of acid and work on them until they don’t know the difference between thought and speech —or between weasels and clouds.

It’s said that the CIA once plotted to slip Fidel a major dose of LSD —although I don’t know if they had any plan in mind for how to manage the situation afterwards. But with isolated terrorist suspects and detainees, the administration of LSD —accompanied by a comprehensive program of psychological insinuation, deprogramming, and mind-fucking— is a safe and humane way of getting information out of them without leaving any visible scars whatsoever.

Go check out this post by soccerdad at The Left Coaster —as well as my response in the comments there, reproduced below, to the following passage:

The fact that there is a civil war going on and that many middle and upper class Iraqis have left or are trying to leave the country works to the neocons favor. Look at Gaza and Lebanon. There is a pattern here, produce physically destroyed, failed states that they feel will be easier to control.

I’m not understanding you.

For one thing, Iraq is lousy with rich people. Kurdistan is full of very happy big-time businessmen and owners, as are many parts of the major cities in the center and south, including Baghdad. You just don’t hear about them because Nic Robertson doesn’t tell you.

Second, what is the real common controlling factor in those three states? Is it really the neocons —by which you actually mean Jews— who control Iraq? Do the Jews also run Lebanon? If the Jews really did run Gaza, one suspects that the situation there would have been resolved a long time ago —and to the absolute and indubitable advantage of the state of Israel.

No, the real common factor in those three places is lunatic Muslim behavior. That is what is producing “physically destroyed, failed states.” In a few weeks’ time, Hizballah —that great savior of Lebanon— managed to utterly undo and embarrass the whole idea of a Cedar Revolution. They did it of their own accord and without provocation. They have completely fucked their own country because they cannot be done with their Jew-hatred. They cannot be done with their dreams of making themselves an Iranian proxy state on the coast of the Mediterranean. And Gaza? If there has ever been an enemy of the Arabs in Gaza, it has been the entire rest of the Arab Middle East, which has sold those bastards out for generations now —just to leave a festering abcess in the midst of Zion. If the Saudis or the Egyptians or the Jordanians themselves actually ever cared about the plight of those people, they would have done something substantial about it a long time ago. They would have funded infrastructure and commerce there instead of funding madrassas and mosques where their Jew-hating garbage could be stirred about. They would have made it possible to better integrate Palestinian society into Israeli society by recognizing the right of Israel to even exist before they were made to.

And in Iraq? Well, that’s Muslims attacking Muslims. That’s not ecumenism at its best, you know. Lutheran anarchists stopped smashing up the papists’ pretties centuries ago. But these people? They’ve been split in half since the first generation after Mohammad! And violently so. At least the Pauline Christians were smart enough to bury the Gnostics —and did so peaceably, by political will, not tribal warfare as Mohammad’s followers did.

Read this AP story —and just feel the love seep out of all the moonbats’ balloons:

Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff plans to take the stand at his upcoming trial to tell jurors that he never lied to investigators in the CIA leak case, defense attorneys said Friday.

I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby is charged with perjury, obstruction and lying to the FBI about his conversations in 2003 with reporters regarding Valerie Plame’s CIA job.

Prosecutors say Libby is trying to torpedo the criminal case by demanding the use of classified information that is too sensitive to be released at trial. It’s a tactic known as “graymail” and the goal is to get a case dismissed.

Ha, ha. Are we supposed to believe that Father Fitzmas —the great hero of the Frog Marchers’ Brigade— is averse to compounding the folly of this prosecution by causing such a disclosure? 

It’s time to drop this nonsense and for Fitzgerald to explain why he’s such a sorry craphound.