Right Wing Nut House

The Terri Schiavo autopsy report that was made public yesterday has many in the shadow media gloating and some, like myself and a few other secular social conservatives, reflecting on what the fight meant then and what it will mean for the future.

Who was right? Who was wrong?

First, the particulars of the autopsy show that Terri was indeed probably in a persistent vegetative state. While this is something that can’t be determined for certain after death, given the state of her brain (not liquified) and the “loss of neurons”, it seems more than likely that Terri didn’t have either the capacity or potential for rational thought. It appears also that the vision cortex was totally disabled making her blind. And her ability to swallow was extremely limited, thus ruling out the possibility that any food or water could have been administered sans feeding tube.

In addition, the report showed no evidence of abuse by Michael Schiavo. However, it also found no evidence of any eating disorder that would have explained her initial collapse. Nor did the autopsy address the strange deterioration of Terri’s brain over a 3 day period in March of 1990 where she went from being in a coma with near normal brain function to her being in a persistent vegetative state. This is the basis on which Michael Schiavo received his settlement from the doctors, the hospital, and the ambulance service and the autopsy could not determine how her deterioration occurred.

These facts show that hope for any improvement in Terri’s condition was misplaced and that her husband Michael did not abuse her while she was in the hospice. She died of dehydration.

Do I still believe that Terri Schiavo died needlessly? The answer is a qualified yes. I also believe that this debate over what to do about people like Terri is just getting started and I hope we’ve all learned some valuable lessons. I hope we’ve learned how easy it is for this kind of ethical debate to be hijacked by those on both sides of the issue with personal agendas. I hope we’ve learned that if we’re ever going to come to a consensus that we must somehow learn to talk to each other rather than past each other. And I hope we’ve learned that whatever side of this issue you came down on, the person on the other side was not wearing horns and sprouting a tail or trying to enslave all humanity in some kind of theocratic nightmare of a world that would take away your access to internet porn or ban your Girls Gone Wild videos.

It was a remarkable experience re-reading the dozen or so posts I wrote on the Schiavo matter. I was surprised at the depth of feeling, the emotional temperature of the articles. I remember some of them were extremely easy to write because the feelings the Schiavo matter engendered made the words flow from a place I had never written from - the heart. For a someone who considers himself something of a rationalist, this is unsettling. I found that I cared about “big things” - things that poets and novelists spend a lifetime trying to capture and put on paper. For instance, here I tried to distill 2000 years of western civilization’s thinking on life into a couple of paragraphs:

The rules that societies set up nearly two thousand years ago to take the decision to end life out of the hands of humans and place it in the hands of the almighty were a radical departure from classical societies in the past. Both the Greeks and Romans routinely murdered the weak, the lame, even the sickly. Female children have been the target of post natal murders for thousands of years with the Chinese government going so far as feeling it had to issue an edict against the practice within the last two years.

But the radical values of Christianity that posited the notion that God was in every human being not just up on a mountain or in the sky started to mitigate against the wanton slaughter of the helpless ones. When nation states formed in the late middle ages, the strictures against these kinds of killings were put into law.

But the real answer has to do with what’s unfortunately come to be known as “secular humanism” or more accurately, ” human centrism.” This idea that we are the supreme arbiters of the universe (or at least this insignificant little corner of it) took hold at the turn of the 20th century as progressives fervently believed that both science and government, if used properly, could make this planet a secular Eden.

I can say with certainty that I’d never written anything like that before, although I must have had those thoughts for years. In a similar vein, I wrote this:

Human beings are the only creatures on this planet who are capable of contemplating their own death. This quirk of evolution has allowed us to create a grand mystique around a perfectly natural biological process that otherwise would remain, as it does in the rest of the animal kingdom, an instinctual matter. The problem is, no one wants to either contemplate it very much or talk about it. Most of us take the attitude that “we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Well, we better start thinking about it. As it stands now, the advocates for throwing away human beings as if they were nothing more than garbage bags full of rancid water and smelly old bones are winning. And the reason they’re winning is simple; very few people are paying attention.

My point then and now is simple: A dramatic change has occurred over the last 25 years that has radically altered the very definition of life. I wrote about here:

As monstrous as the rationale given by the granddaughter sounds, the outrage being committed here and elsewhere in the United States is not by confused, grieving, or even inconvenienced or greedy relatives; the crime against human dignity here is being committed by a medical community who has decided that their ever narrowing definition of what “life” is has gone beyond the simple mechanics of how the human body works and entered a metaphysical realm that used to be reserved for priests, shamans, rabbis, and philosophers.

In short, they see themselves as a new strata of healers, a class of medical High Priests whose knowledge and experience regarding human health are now augmented by insight into the mysteries of consciousness itself. They are aided and abetted by ethicists that justify their actions, scientists who support their conclusions, lawyers who keep the legal ground from turning into quicksand beneath their feet, and a certain segment of the population that puts their faith in the ability of humans to glean eternal truth from empirical observation

This last was written when an Alabama woman was dumped into a hospice by her granddaughter despite a treatable condition. The woman, Mae Magourik, died a couple of months later. This fact doesn’t obviate the need to search our hearts on these matters and try to come to a consensus as a society about some very fundamental issues. What is life? Do we ration life giving care? Who is worth saving? Who makes that decision? Should we embrace euthanasia?

As I reread what I wrote about the Schiavo matter, I realize that, in a purely selfish way, the debate allowed me to know myself a little better. But was I right?

Clearly those who believed that Michael was the devil incarnate and that Terri had a chance for some kind of recovery were wrong. However, I find the gloating on that score this morning despciable and only confirms my belief that there were many who saw this issue as a way to bash the Christian right. That said, I can see where my initial unease with getting the Congress involved (though I supported it at the time as necessary) was well justified. I should have realized what would have happened when politics was added to this mix. Nitroglycerine added to gasoline is never a good idea especially when there were so many standing by with lit matches. I believed prior to Congressional interference (and still believe) that given the initial circumstances, I was right to join this fight.

Jody, who blogs at Steal the Bandwagon and is of one mind with Beth at My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy echoes that thought:

I don’t want to name names but some people hijacked a wonderful purposed group and created a screaming parade of psychotic idiots who were emotional and crazed and blind to the law. And honestly, I was one of them. I backed off when someone asked me, what do you want them to do, storm the nursing home and kidnap her like they did Elian Gonzalez…oh…and something sunk in my heart because I knew I was losing a battle.

Please don’t take this as a criticism toward Blogs for Terri as a blog or even as a group, I just feel that it got a bit “crazy” toward the end. Sometimes when someone believes something so much they become zealous and blind to anything but their end goal, usually when that happens, they fail to change minds because people just turn off. Are you surprised to hear me say this? Maybe.

I’m not surprised that someone like Beth, whose initial advocacy for Terri is what got me involved in the first place, would reach this conlcusion. The Randall Terry’s of this world were the ones that made me realize how much of a circus the battle had become. And when self-aggrandizing charlatans like Terry (or some of the self-important, Christian bashing strutting peacocks who came down on the opposite side of this issue) push themselves to the forefront of a debate like this, all hell can break loose. And it did.

Some bloggers have been fairly mild in their criticism this morning. Bill Ardolino:

This doesn’t critically undermine many of the ethical arguments on either side of the issue, but it certainly kills much of the over-the-top hyperbole and inaccuracy surrounding her condition.

Surprisingly understated and well said. I wish John Cole had been as circumspect:

Terri Schiavo had to be kept alive because of THEIR moral beliefs, not hers and her husbands. And because we didn’t allow or accept a political (and had they had their way, a judicial) assault on the most personal aspect of someone’s existence, their mortality and how to handle their end-of-life decisions, we are to be shamed. Because we didn’t have the necessary arrogance to tell Terri and Michael Schiavo to live by someone elses definition of life, we are villains. Because we felt that personal decisions should remain personal (to the extent that the Florida legal system allowed them to remain personal), we support a culture of death. It is nonsense, it is offensive, and it can’t go unchallenged.

And that is all I am going to say about Terri Schiavo, absent some egregious silliness popping up. It is over. Let the women and her husband and her family rest in peace. I am sure you all will find someone else to use to your political ends in little or no time, but, for now, it is time to let Terri Schiavo be

I think that John is using a broad sword here when he should be using a scalpel. First and foremost, government does indeed have an interest in insuring that viable life is protected. In the case of protecting life, there is no such thing as personal. I believe that government should protect any life that’s viable outside of the womb. I also believe that government has a right to protect people at the end of life who may be afflicted with a variety of ailments, but are nevertheless capable of feeling love and giving affection in return. The elderly who are summarily dumped in hospices and left to die because they suffer from dementia or Alzheimer’s disease are being, in my opinion, murdered. There is no ethical rationale for this practice. And it’s only going to get worse.

That said, I think Mr. Cole is correct in saying that politics should be kept out of these decisions. The problem, of course, is that’s extraordinarily naive. Living in a free society, the confluence of government and politics assures that these issues will take on a political character. Should individual cases be splattered all over the news? There I agree with John and hope from here on in the debate on these matters can be kept in the realm of the general rather than the specific.

Perhaps what surprised me most about the Schiavo matter was the depth of feeling it aroused on both sides. Yes there was a lof of ignorant Christain bashing as there was some unconscionable name calling and moral posturing on the right. But by and large, this was the result of strongly held personal beliefs reflecting the cultural, religious, and political realities of the individual. And if, like me, it made us think about these issues and learn something about ourselves, an enormous amount of good came of it.

UPDATE

There were a couple of other reactions I wanted to get. First, the Captain:

What we have left are the issues that started the debate in the first place. Unlike today’s New York Times editorial’s assertion on the subject, this was not a “right to die” case. Terri had never requested to die, not with any transparency or formality. All we had for witnesses on her state of mind was a husband who waited until after he had won a substantial lawsuit to recall a conversation in which Terri made an offhand comment about not wanting to live on a respirator, and two of his relatives who corroborated him. The husband had a conflict of interest in the matter, having started a new relationship with another woman and fathering two children. On the other side, Terri’s parents and siblings were willing to take over her medical care and the responsibility for its costs.

Amd most of all, as the coroner affirmed yesterday, Terri was not dying.

Despite all of this, Florida decided that it would deliberately kill Terri on the basis of her husband’s wishes, without any living will or formal indication of her state of mind. As Rick Santorum said yesterday, such a ruling should have been allowed to receive a de novo hearing in federal court for a review, just as any death-penalty case would get. Without that, essentially Terri’s fate rested on two men, Michael Schiavo and Judge George Greer, who refused to release the case to another court at any point in order to get a new hearing on the merits in front of another judge. And when the state decides to kill someone who isn’t dying on their own — as opposed to stopping artificial breathing/cardiac support for those who lack any ability to survive without it — it should have more substantial oversight before doing so, and it should have more to rely on than an estranged husband’s belated recollection of a superficial, general conversation as its basis.

I agree with the Captain for the most part. The problem of judicial oversight of such cases is that it’s impossible to prove conflict of interest. In the Schiavo matter, Michael also had the diagnosis of recognized medical experts (who turned out to be for all intents and purposes, correct) on his side.

I agree that it should have come down to the fact that Terri’s family was willing to assume the burdens outlined by Mr. Morrisey. Why Michael did not take this easy and obvious avenue of escape will remain for me the biggest mystery.

LawShawn Barber:

For me, the whole tragedy surrounding Terri and the people who wanted her dead didn’t hinge on how severely brain-damaged she was. She was alive and wasn’t on life support, and her husband’s credibility was extremely low, too low to trust his assertion that Terri wanted to die if ever severely brain-damaged. Forget about what you’d want if you were ever in the same condition. Take yourselves out of the equation.

The way they killed her was appalling, and I was angry for a long time afterward. I’m giving you a heads-up. Don’t be alarmed or disgusted by the liberal media and liberal bloggers (and some conservatives, too) declaring that Terri’s wayward husband is somehow “vindicated” by the autopsy report. The doctor-induced starvation was immoral.

I agree. Michael was in no way “vindicated” by the autopsy report. If you believe he was incorrect in seeking Terri’s death in the first place, there’s no vindication or justification for that matter possible.

Michelle Malkin has done a thorough examination of the autopsy report:

Michael Schiavo and his supporters and doctors have long maintained that Terri suffered from an eating disorder. In interviews with Larry King, in countless newspaper articles over the past 15 years, and during his successful malpractice trial against Terri’s primary care physician, Michael Schiavo stressed his wife’s bulimia-related low potassium level as the cause of her initial collapse. Schiavo won $1 million in damages on the grounds that Schiavo’s obstetrician had failed to diagnose bulimia.

Unquestioning journalists ran dozens of stories echoing the claim: “Eating disorder is real issue in Schiavo case,” “Terri’s life a lesson in dangers of bulimia,” “The lost lesson of Schiavo case: the dangers of eating disorders,” etc.

The autopsy report spends three-and-a-half pages debunking Schiavo’s claim, as well as the related claim that she had a heart attack (or, more medically precise, myocardial infarction). But if mentioned at all, the news reports I have seen have downplayed and buried these astonishing revelations (revelations which bear directly on Schiavo’s credibility regarding his claim that Terri would have wanted to die).

Viewing the issues in light of Michael’s misstatements about Terri’s “eating disorder,” I agree with Michelle that it calls into question other statements made by Michael. But as other commenters have pointed out, Michael’s claim that Terri wanted to die was buttressed by her best friend - Michael’s sister - and must be taken at face value.

I wanted to get the reaction of a blogger from the left but have been disappointed and outraged at the gloating and recriminatory tone used at the sites I’ve seen. If someone wants to point me to a site that treats this issue with the seriousness it deserves and in a non-political manner, I will gladly link to it.

UPDATE II: THE “ASK AND YE SHALL RECEIVE” EDITION

No sooner did I ask for a sensible post from the other side of this issue than Mona in the comments section of this post answers my prayer:

Mr. Moran, I volunteer in a program that services retarded adults, some of whom have IQs as low as 15. The profoundly retarded are entirely incapable of comprehending the purpose of a feeding tube, or what it would mean if it were removed. The highlights of one individual’s day is seeing his mother visit and he coos at her, and he also enjoys playing with his feces, which the staff seek to prevent his doing. The idea he could comprehend the implications of an order to remove a feeding tube and beg to live is absurd, and he HAS a measurable IQ. Terri had none at all.

Lies were told. Many of them. All buttressing an increasingly rancid attack on the Florida judiciary. Judge Greer had to begin living under armed guard.

Mr. and Mrs. Schindler can be entirely forgiven for deluding themselves that Terri was interacting and responding. But the cretins, legal and otherwise, who surrounded them and nurtured these fantasies and peddled them all over the media, can only be reviled.

I certainly hope that Mona is not advocating euthanasia for her young retarded charge. Are we going to define life now as reserved for those who can comprehend what it means to die? That’s a world I don’t want to live in and will fight to prevent. That said, please read Mona’s entire comment as she makes some excellent legal points.

I should really watch C-Span more often.

Last night during debate on the Energy Bill, my home state Senator Dick Durbin proved that Illinois isn’t only known as the Land of Lincoln. We’re also the Motherland of Moonbats.

Durbin, whose colorlessness as a Senator is something of a running joke here, trained his less than titanic intellect and monotonous speaking skills on the United States Armed Forces, taking them to task for torturing the poor terrorists who have had the horrible misfortune of falling into our boodthirsty hands: (HT: Little Green Footballs)

If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime—Pol Pot or others—that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners.

Good God, Dick! WTF did we do? Did we boil them in oil? Did we put them on the rack and stretch their innocent bodies? Did we…did we…did we piss on the Koran?

When you read some of the graphic descriptions of what has occurred here—I almost hesitate to put them in the RECORD, and yet they have to be added to this debate. Let me read to you what one FBI agent saw. And I quote from his report:

On one occasion, the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold. ….. On another occasion, the [air conditioner] had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his hair out throughout the night. On another occasion, not only was the temperature unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the room, and had been since the day before, with the detainee chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor.

Before we get to Drudging Dick’s rant against our methods, did any one else find his statement “I almost hesitate to put them in the RECORD, and yet they have to be added to this debate.” the kind of melodramatic baloney a prosectutor would use in a murder case? I mean, it’s the kind of language that a lawyer would have used back in Lincoln’s day for God’s sake! Especially since what was “added to the RECORD” was so mild that we might call into question Senator Cornpone’s judgement and common sense. One thing we won’t question, however, is our lovable Senator’s flair for the dramatic.

Acting like a 12 year old drama queen is the Senator’s specialty. When one consider’s what this terrorist had to endure - extreme heat, extreme cold, loud rap music - perhaps Senator Moonbat should take a walk down Lawrence Avenue in Chicago in the middle of the Summer (or Winter). Every year, several hundred Chicagoan’s die as a result of no air conditioning during the Summer or heat during the Winter. And the overbearing presence of loud rap music is part of the “color” of some of those neighborhoods. And yet, we strangely have never heard the Senator get up on the floor of the Senate and lambast his good buddy Mayor Daley for allowing such things to occurr.

It would seem the Senator has more sympathy for people who want to blow us to kingdom come than he has for his own constituents.

Par for the course with this moonbat. One might also wonder what our treatment of terrorists at Guantanamo had to do with the Energy Bill and why my home state Senator felt it necessary to add this fascinating yet irrelevant information to the debate. How dare I ask such a loaded question! After all, any time is a good time to compare the military to Nazis, the KGB, or Pol Pot.

UPDATES (GALORE!)

Dick Durbin hasn’t gotten this much attention from anybody in years. Here are some samples from the Shadow Media:

The Senator made Michelle Malkin’s “Republicans are Hitler” roundup today.

The Peoria Pundit:

Durbin lacks perspective, and it’s a tragic flaw. right now, we are at war with terrorists and insurgents. These people will no doubt try to use Durbin’s rhetoric to recruit more suicide bombers and other fighters. These is such a thing as lending aid and comfort to the enemy during war time, and Durbin comes close to that line and may in fact have crossed it. Durbin and others can claim that it’s not his fault if Osama bin Laden used Durbin’s words to rally the troops. Obviously it is: Durbin’s words carry authority. There are repercussions when someone in his position accuses his very own nation of engaging in genocide.

I’d say that’s spot on.

Conservative Eyes:

I think this is one of the grossest and sickest statements to be made yet. This is beyond hyperbole and rhetoric. I really do not have to explain how brutal and murderous the three organizations Durbin compared our soldiers to. Everyone who reads this blog would know how many deaths they are accountable for.

This strikes at the heart of the “I support the troops, but not the war” mentality of a lot of Democrats. One would hope that Durbin does not speak for a majority of Democrats, but he speaks for many. It really shows his motives and how much affection he has for our troops. Whenever I hear Durbin say that he “Supports the Troops,” I know it will be a bald face lie. How could you support someone who you think are no better than genocidal maniacs?

There have been so many posts from military people about this kind of sophistry on the part of Democrats. “I support the trooops not the war” is baloney, according to them. In order to really support the troops, you must support their mission.

Sorry Dick, it won’t wash.

Clarity and Resolve:

It’s this sort of absurd, pernicious, and grossly disproportionate anti-America leftist rhetoric (under a thin veneer of earnest patriotism for the nonexistent American dystopia of their febrile dreams) that emboldens our enemies, puts our lives and the lives of our soldiers in danger, and alienates the left further from the mainstream. It’s this type of insensate, over-the-rainbow disregard for the reality that America is now faced with—a reality that we did not ask for—that made a lot of people like myself vote Republican for the first time ever this past November.

Amen.

Swanky Conservative:

It’s worth noting that according to Estrada, Sen. Durbin spun out of control while debate was being held on an energy bill… I would ask the honorable Senator what is so damn wrong with treating people who were captured on the field of battle to an air-conditioned room? Or, alternately, to an air temperature of 100 degrees? Ever been to Del Rio, Texas in June? It’s 120-plus! And people live there! You wanna come down here and start pontificating about abuses?

Good point.

And what fisking of a moonbat would be complete without a word from John Hawkins:

May I also add that since we have a United States Senator acting as if making some Al-Qaeda terrorist chilly is the equivalent of torturing the guy to death, that it may lead to our interrogators backing off instead of prodding these terrorists for info. How would you like to find out after some horrific terrorist attack that a terrorist at Gitmo knew what was going to happen, but didn’t say anything because we didn’t push him hard enough? Americans could die by the thousands as a direct result of an incident like that, as a direct result of the sort of comments made by soft-on-terrorism hacks like Dick Durbin.

Don’t worry John…Durbin and his ilk would find some way to blame the Republicans even for that.

Why not tell us what you really think, Paul?

Dick Durbin is ignorant of history, a complete jackass and owes everyone in uniform an apology — then he should resign.

Hit ‘em again, Captain:

In any case, Durbin owes the administration and the American servicemen in Gitmo and elsewhere an apology. Durbin’s idiotic equating of the conditions he described from the e-mail he supposedly received to the genocide of the Jews, Cambodians, and gulag victims cheapens the horrors of those atrocities, and he owes the survivors an apology as well. His hysterical rants have damaged the war effort by providing propaganda for the Islamists with no rational basis whatsoever — and for that, he owes everyone an apology.

Jeez…with so many people asking for an apology from the guy, you’d think the idiot would take the hint and at least concede he may have misspoke. Not our Dicky boy. In fact, like a Missouri Mule, the Senator has dug in his heels and failed to budge: (Via Drudge)

News of the Democrat’s comparison created a buzz around the Internet today, fueled by sound bites of yesterday’s Senate floor speech on radio talk shows. By this afternoon, Illinois Republican Party Chairman Andy McKenna asked Durbin to apologize.

Durbin says the Bush administration should apologize for abandoning the Geneva Conventions.

Wha? Who? WTF? Would someone please tell me why Democrats are so enamoured of these international “apologies?” Do they really believe that having the government say “so sorry, please” actually makes a difference to anyone anywhere? And the idea of apologizing to the world for classifying people who didn’t fall under the Geneva Convention in the first place as “enemy combatants” is loony. What would we apologize for? That an 80 year old treaty couldn’t envision a day where extra-territorial terrorists would be incarcerated for the protection of civilized people everywhere? Are we responsible for the failure of the the signers of the Geneva Protocols to gaze into a crystal ball and write something that would cover this unique, first time in world history situation?

I agree with Paul at Wizbang…this jerk should apologize to the entire country and then resign. The only problem is, in order for him to do that, he would need to possess a modicum of decency and an empathy for others. Since it’s obvious that this embarassment to my state does not possess those qualities or others that would force him to recognize the shame he’s brought our state and his office, one can only hope that the voters of Illinois see fit to retire this galoot when his term is up in 2008.

Okay…just one more update, I promise….

Rusty Shackleford has a brother in Iraq and took Senator Snark’s comments personally:

Right. My brother, just like Adolf Eichmann, once gave me a super-atomic wedgie.

The only thing more morally inept then comparing what is happening at Guantanamo to the tens of millions of people killed in the gulags, is to not back down once you’ve been called on it.

“Morally inept”…Ab.So.Lute.Ly. Perfect.

My hosting company, Blogs About Hosting, is in the process of adding server capacity. Apparently they’ve grown by leaps and bounds since I came on board back in February (I call it the “Ricky factor.”) At any rate, we’ve been experiencing some temporary down time until they get the additional servers up and running.

I apologize for the problems and urge you to come back some other time if we’re down when you visit.

There’s something surreal watching the left’s excitement at the so-called revelations contained in the Downing Street Minutes and their pathetic belief that they finally have the goods on the Bush Administration which will lead to the President’s impeachment.

No less a personality than Representative John Conyers - the man who wanted to hold hearings on the probability that the vote for President in Ohio last fall was rigged - has picked up on the idea that the DSM shows that the Bush Administration should be impeached for…what? The details don’t really matter. It’s enough that once again, the moonbats think they have a political club to beat the Administration over the head. Abu Ghraib? No soap, doc. Koran Abuse? So sorry, please.

Like Bullwinkle’s magician tricks, they keep coming up empty. (”Sorry…wrong hat!”)

Conyers, who more than any other Congressman, panders to the denizens of the leftist fever swamps on the internet, wants to hold hearings on the DSM’s. He also wants office space and pretty much an unlimited budget to do it. For months now, Conyers, who’s Vice Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has taken it upon himself to hold informal hearings or “Forums” on topics the Democrats on the Committee want to highlight - all designed to skewer the Republicans and President Bush of course. Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner played along for a while, but now he’s put his foot down:

Majority spokesman Jeff Lungren said the Republicans have given Democrats three opportunities to make clear that the forums are not official committee business. Nevertheless, Lungren said, in at least one case, members were addressing Conyers as “Mr. Chairman.”

“They were unwilling or unable to make those changes,” Lungren said. “At this point, if they want to hold these forums, they’ll have to find some other place to do it.”

Sean McLaughlin, deputy chief of staff for Sensenbrenner, recently wrote to a minority staffer in more pointed language.

“I’m sitting here watching your `forum’ on C-SPAN,” McLaughlin wrote. “Just to let you know, it was your last. Don’t bother asking [for a room] again.”

Imagine the indignation of the moonbats when they realized that their sideshows have now been sidetracked:

I can’t believe this. The Hill is reporting that James Sensenbrenner will not allow John Conyers to use offices with which to conduct his Downing Street Minutes investigations.

Sensenbrenner may have just handed us the big story that we need, as many of you have noted below. If the MSM was looking for some signal that the Republicans are hiding something here (aside from Bush and Blair presser last week), this should be it.

That tone of pathetic hopefulness is being heard on the left a lot these days. Here’s DU moonbat on NBC “confirming” the authenticity of the DSMs:

NBC News has verified the memos. And they’ve put Andrea Mitchell on the story. This could be the MSM break we’ve been waiting for:

The “confirmation” of the memos would be big news except for one small detail; no one has disputed their authenticity!

What is is it that has engendered so much hope and excitement on the part of the left? It turns out to be a single phrase in these rough minutes of a 2002 meeting between Tony Blair and his defense advisor’s that has set the moonbat hearts racing and blood pumping:

C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime’s record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.

Both Blair and Bush deny any “fixing” of intelligence. And both the Senate Intel Committee and the 9/11 Commission have cleared the Bush Administration of putting political pressure on analysts to shape intelligence about WMD’s in the lead-up to the Iraq war. So what do the inhabitants of the fever swamps think they have?

It’s VITALLY important, NOW, THIS MINUTE, to do something about it, to further this story, to give it water and sunshine and nourishment. Follow this up with a call to your congressman/woman (or SOMEBODY ELSE’S congressman/woman, urging them to get to the bottom of this. We ALL, Democrats AND Republicans alike, deserve ANSWERS, and THE TRUTH about WHY we were dragged to war on false pretenses. WHY WE WERE LIED TO. WHY THE CONGRESSMAN/WOMAN HIM/HERSELF WAS LIED TO. And what is he/she going to do about it? Hint: They can START by signing John Conyers’ letter and getting fully behind him, if they aren’t there already.

The Powerline boys were on this story the weekend it came out - days before the British elections. Their reasoned analysis (compared to Professor Juan Cole’s hysterical screed) put the kibosh on any idea that the “Bush lied! People died!” bunch would make any headway using the memo as a political club:

It isn’t clear, however, what it was intended to mean. Cole’s implication, and the constant implication of the BUSH LIED! lefties, is that the administration really knew that Saddam didn’t have any WMDs, but fixed the intelligence to make it appear that he did. But we know that isn’t true. The consensus estimate of the U.S. intelligence community has been made public, and it clearly says that, with a high degree of confidence, Iraq possesses chemical and biological weapons. The Senate Intelligence Committee’s report has confirmed that this is what the intelligence community believed and reported to the President, and that there is no evidence that the administration improperly influenced the gathering or reporting of intelligence (”The Committee did not find any evidence that Administration officials attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to change their judgments related to Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction capabilities.”)

And, whatever the British note-taker meant by the sentence quoted by Cole, he obviously didn’t mean that there was any doubt on the part of British intelligence or Blair’s government that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. On the contrary, the notes specifically refer to Iraq’s WMDs, in sections not quoted by Cole:

And that’s the sticking point for the left. No matter how much they try and shake and bake these minutes, they keep coming up empty handed. To believe that the Administration actually knew there were no WMD’s in Iraq before the war, you have to believe that either the President had no interest in being re-elected or that he actually wanted to lose. Why would any politician worth his salt let his political opponents have a potential election winning issue?

If we went into Iraq knowing full well there were no WMD’s there, logic tells us that this also means the Administration knew we wouldn’t find any WMD’s once the war was over! And since the left gives Karl Rove credit for everything from manipulating Osama Bin Laden to causing earthquake-generating Tsunamis, the idea that “The Architect” would not have thought of the political consequence of being called a liar by the Administration’s political opponents is daffy. To believe otherwise is to think that George Bush deliberately took a course of action that had a pretty good chance of costing him the election. Only the fact that, in the end, the American people didn’t trust John Kerry to protect them from terrorists gave Bush his narrow victory.

So this “new” theme by the left that pre-war intelligence was somehow “fixed” is a yawner even for the MSM. And the left’s excitement that the story might be gaining some traction is a case of pathetic wishful thinking rather than a cause for celebration that the President is about to be laid low.

In fact, the subsequent release of additional memos - 7 in all - about that meeting strongly support the President and Prime Minister’s denial of pre-war intelligence manipulation:

Ironically, the same people arguing that the DSM contains some sort of smoking gun against the Bush administration also claim that this memo supports the same argument. However, when taken together, it becomes apparent that British intelligence could not make up its mind what Bush had in mind for Iraq; it prepared two different memos with mutually-exclusive analsyes. Tony Blair told the Times of London (which published both memos) that the only people who knew what Bush planned were George Bush and Tony Blair, and that the DSM had incorrectly analyzed the situation.

This latest revelation should be called the Emily Litella memo: Never mind.

It’s a telling sign that the left has latched onto the DSMs like a drowning man hanging onto a life preserver. Their attacks on the Administration have been reduced to wishful thinking and daydreaming. And what makes this so puzzling is that there are issues revealed in the memos that they could use as a hammer to bash the President. Clearly, there was a dearth of post-war planning for occupied Iraq, an unconscionable failure of leadership that our military is paying dearly for. The reason that the left won’t highlight this failure, however, is because it’s not an impeachable offense. In their quest to bring the President down, they’re missing a good trick when it comes to old fashioned political bashing.

My prediction is that the MSM will indeed pick up this thread and run with it. The DU’ers and Kossaks won’t be happy about it, but it’s the best they’re going to get.

This is sure to receive a lot of play at the Democratic Underground Forums over the next few days:

A former Bush team member during his first administration is now voicing serious doubts about the collapse of the World Trade Center on 9-11. Former chief economist for the Department of Labor during President George W. Bush’s first term Morgan Reynolds comments that the official story about the collapse of the WTC is “bogus” and that it is more likely that a controlled demolition destroyed the Twin Towers and adjacent Building No. 7.

“If demolition destroyed three steel skyscrapers at the World Trade Center on 9/11, then the case for an ‘inside job’ and a government attack on America would be compelling.” Reynolds commented from his Texas A&M office, “It is hard to exaggerate the importance of a scientific debate over the cause of the collapse of the twin towers and building 7. If the official wisdom on the collapses is wrong, as I believe it is, then policy based on such erroneous engineering analysis is not likely to be correct either. The government’s collapse theory is highly vulnerable on its own terms.

There’s only one, teensy tiny problem with this economist’s engineering analysis; it’s contradicted by the most knowledgeable experts in the world:

The authors attribute each tower’s collapse to three separate but related “loading events.” The first event was a Boeing aircraft hitting the building, cutting through the exterior structure and creating a fireball that immediately consumed some of the estimated 10,000 gallons (38 kiloliters) of jet fuel. The highrises’ structural systems were sufficiently redundant, however, that this major damage by itself did not cause the collapse. According to the report, “most of the load supported by the failed columns is believed to have transferred to adjacent perimeter columns through Vierendeel behavior of the exterior wall frame.”

The second event was the continuing fire, fed both by the remaining jet fuel and the office contents of furniture and paper. This fire heated and weakened the structural systems, adding stress to the damaged structure. Meanwhile, the sprinklers were not operating as designed. “Even if these systems had not been compromised by the impacts,” says the report, “they would likely have been ineffective… the initial flash fires of jet fuel would have opened so many sprinkler heads that the systems would have quickly depressurized and been unable to effectively deliver water to the large area of fire involvement.”

The third event was a progressive collapse: “As the large mass of the collapsing floors above accelerated and impacted on the floors below, it caused an immediate progressive series of floor failures, punching each in turn onto the floor below, accelerating as the sequence progressed. Freestanding exterior walls… buckled at the bolted column splice connections and also collapsed.”

The report was compiled primarily by the American Society for Civil Engineers, world renowned experts in the field of structural failure. In order to believe anything other than the official report, one would have to posit a conspiracy theory featuring a cast of thousands.

The report was also vetted by experts before it was released. In other words, other scientists and engineers who checked the work of the report’s authors would also have to be involved in a cover-up.

What truly makes this bizarre is that an investigation carried out under the auspices of an independent trade association (ASCE) and verified by the most respected scientists and engineers in the field is being questioned by an economist! Far be it from me to pooh-pooh someone’s abilities in a field that they didn’t have any formal schooling. But the people who investigated the causes for the collapse of the twin towers didn’t just have degrees in civil engineering. Many of them had more than 20 years of experience investigating structural failures around the world. That kind of expertise trumps anything someone like moonbat Reynolds could ever hope to come up with on his own from simply reading books on the subject.

The MSM is ignoring this story, as they should (although UPI evidently had it on their wires). I became aware of the story via Drudge. I say “For Shame” to Drudge for giving this story any play at all.

I would love to see a follow-up story on this moonbat Morgan Reynolds. It would be interesting to hear him try to rebut some of the smartest people on the planet and a report that’s been accepted by scientists all over the world.

UPDATE

Surprisingly, it’s been the right side of the sphere that has picked up on this story. So far, even the DU moonbats and Klueless Kossaks are ignoring it.

Little Green Footballs:

None of the chuckleheads who propose theories like this ever seem to consider that professional demolition on such a scale would have been a gigantic task, would have taken a lot of time to set up, and would have been very visible to the tens of thousands of people who worked in the Trade Center every single day.

Not if they were invisible, Charles. You forget the Rovian Cloak of Invisibility. And don’t forget the Cone of Silence.

Yippee-Ki-Yay:

Don’t ask an engineer, ask an economist.

Precisely. And if I want to know what the inflation rate is going to be next year, I’ll ask my barber.

Stones Cry Out:

Wait! All of this academia lunacy can be explained rather simply. George Soros and MoveOn are putting lead in the water at major universities! Makes perfect sense!

Maybe not lead. More likely a delicious cocktail of Psylicibin soup with a delicate seasoning containing a dash of LSD and a pinch of mescaline.

The World Wide Rant has the moonbat’s email address. Do ya think he’s going to get some weird mail?

We don’t need a follow-up interview with the moonbat. Here’s a piece on paleo-conservative Lew Rockwell’s site by the nutty professor: (HT: The Corner Via Memorandum)

Knowing the personnel of the Commission, its abysmal Report is no surprise. It did its best for the White House, not the nation. Michael C. Ruppert is one of the more radical 9/11 researcher-critics around. Let’s follow his logic for a bit. He says, put aside the acrimonious debate over the physical evidence about what really caused the twin towers, WTC building 7, and the west wall of the Pentagon to collapse; put aside obstructionism by FBI headquarters, the mysterious U.S. military lay down on 9/11, the nonchalant behavior of Bush and the Secret Service on 9/11, the exploded airliner over Pennsylvania, Saudi flights out of the country, the skullduggery of the Pakistani secret service and the Israeli Mossad and a thousand other gaps in the official theory.

Instead, focus on the suspects. If it can be demonstrated via incriminating, irrefutable evidence that the suspects had means, motive and opportunity, then we’re on our way to criminals convicted in the court of truth. Ruppert says that the pivotal evidence that opens up the case and exposes the government conspirators is the secretive yet undisputed air war games that were going on the morning of 9/11. These games, conducted to protect against hijacked airliners as well as a Russian attack, included Vigilant Guardian, Northern Guardian, Vigilant Warrior, and Tripod II. All were reported on by major press organizations relying on quotes from participating military personnel, as well as NORAD press releases.

Now prepare yourself a jolt: “Ruppert’s new book will name Vice President Richard Cheney as the prime suspect in the mass murders of 9/11 and will establish that, not only was he a planner in the attacks, but also that on the day of the attacks he was running a completely separate Command, Control and Communications system which was superseding any orders being issued by the FAA, the Pentagon, or the White House Situation Room.”

Can this be right? Preposterous? Traitorous? Is Ruppert just another wild-eyed crackpot? I don’t know, but at least he’s not “mobbed up.” That’s more than the Commissioners can say. By its incredible behavior before, during and after 9/11, the government brought this spreading disbelief on itself.

And Kevin at Wizbang sums up the professor’s idiocy regarding “the full range of facts” very nicely:

Only if “the full range of facts” excludes those pesky airplanes that billions of people world-wide witnessed on video tape flying into both towers of the World Trade Center…

“The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it. ”
Friedrich Nietzsche

“Only someone who made a living out of being irrational can say that with a straight face.”
Me

Cluelessness is more than just a state of mind. After all, most of us at one time or another in our lives have experienced moments of being clueless. How many times have you been in a car and not had the foggiest idea of where you were? Or been at a loss for words when your spouse asks what you were doing out until 4:00 AM? At a strip bar? With the phone number of someone named “Peaches” written in lipstick on your palm?

Now that’s clueless!

Stupidity is an equal opportunity disease. It can strike people of any race, any sex, any nationality, and any political persuasion. Of course, it seems to be funnier when one’s political opponent proves themselves to be clueless. But why limit ourselves here? There’s plenty of ammunition for all sides of the political spectrum. Liberal, conservative, libertarian, anarchist - the possibilities are endless, limited only by good taste and a dutiful sense of noblesse oblige.

Thankfully, the Shadow Media rarely lets good taste stand in the way of thwacking the truly clueless. Hence, the idea for this Carnival. Some of the most interesting and inventive writing can be found when we point our fingers in mirth at the moonbats, loonbats, charlatans, fakes and fakirs of politics and culture.

So sit back and enjoy! And make sure you bookmark this site and return every Tuesday for some rollicking good writing and good times!

Van Helsing of Moonbattery makes his living feasting off the idiocy of others. In this post, find out what happens when our Customs and Border Patrol proves that we have a little work to do when it comes to defense of the homeland.

A likely candidate for Cluebat of the Year would have to go to Irene Kahn of Amnesty International. Here’s Mark of Decision “08 and his take on The Great Gitmo Gulag Gaff of 2005.

Pamela of Atlas Shrugs takes Hillary Clinton to task for her selective memory on China. Why do I get the feeling Hillary is going to be a Carnival regular?

Minh-Duc of State of Flux fisks Kevin Drum’s choice of books he considers among the 10 most harmful written during the 19th and 20th centuries. A response to the Human Events piece, Drum jumps the shark…and then some with his selections.

Josh Cohen of Multiple Mentality has a beef with the Supreme Court’s medical marijuana decision. So do most of us, I imagine.

A.J. of The Strata-Sphere wonders about Congressional spending on a report stating the obvious.

Nickie Goomba is mad at the ACLU for complaining about “cruel and unusual plumbing” at Gitmo. “Military guards have been heard complaining that it takes over 400 plunges of the toilet handle to flush a standard Koran. A Torah can take almost a week to flush.” I agree. We need to work on the technology of waste disposal if we want to get truly efficient with our desecrations.

Diamond, AKA “Zombie” is a photographer. Peruse this page of photograph links and get a true sense of the marvelously clueless moonbattery on display at demonstrations against…well just about everything.

No Carnival would be complete without Howard Dean. The Powerline guys says he’s a gift that keeps on giving,” kind of like a Norelco Electric Razor but without the Fathers Day wrapping paper. Raven at And Rightly So simply calls him an idiot. C’mon girl! Tell us what you really think!

Our lone lefty entry this week is from Jack Cluth at the People’s Republic of Seabrook. His subject is James Sensenbrenner. You remember Representative Senseless? He wanted to criminalize “indecency.” Actually, it may have been worth it just to see Oprah do the perp walk. This time, Sensenbrenner is taken to task for walking out of the hearing on re-upping the Patriot Act. Mannerless? Yes. Warranted? Depends if you like political theater or not. The two act comedy put on prior to Sensenbrenner’s exit could qualify for an Academy Award Short nomination.

Kender of Kender’s Musings trains several well aimed barbs at Socialism (capital “S”). I almost penalized my blog bud for picking too easy a target. But then I remembered…Don’t get on Kender’s bad side. I’m still pulling the stingers out of my hide from the last time I crossed him.

I’ve just got one question for The Maryhunter of TMH Bacon Bits: Who is Squidward and where in God’s name is “Bikini Bottom?”

Cao (pronounced “Key” for those of you not familiar with the Celtic idiom) of Cao’s Blog plays with one of her more clueless trolls. Now Cao, how many times have I told you not to feed the trolls? Feeding them only helps them procreate and make many where before there was only one. In this case though - an Islamist loon - we can make an exception.

Barry Ready, the Palmetto Pundit, takes on the idiocy of Charles Rangel. Rep. Rangels hyperbole regarding the holocaust and the Iraq war is typical of a man who introduced a measure last year to re-institute the draft and then got mad when Republicans brought it up for a vote. Charlie must be a lousy poker player. It was a no brainer calling his bluff when he wasn’t even holding a pair of deuces.

Bill Teach over at Pirates Cove has an exclusive picture of one of John Kerry’s advisors. Now, where have I seen that face before?

My own entry this week knocks Frank Rich for not staying on as the New York Times Drama Critic.

That’s it for this week. I hope a few more of you liberals out there will join us next week. I promise to include your entry regardless of subject matter.

If you’d like to enter next week’s Carnival, send me an email with your post’s URL or, go and visit Ferdinand T. Cat and use his handy Carnival Entry Form.

Several Republican lawmakers recently have come out and in direct opposition to the view of the White House are saying that it’s time to set a timetable to get out of Iraq.

Congressmen are a lot like teenagers; someone sets a style and the rest of them follow. Here’s Representative Walter Jones (R-N):

“I voted for the resolution to commit the troops, and I feel that we’ve done about as much as we can do,” said Jones, who coined the phrase “freedom fries” to lash out at the French for opposing the Iraq invasion.

Jones, a member of the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, said “primarily the neoconservatives” in the administration were to blame for flawed war planning.

Senator Lindsey Graham, who only recently saved the Republic by being out front on the judicial compromise, has now also decided to abandon the leader of his party, his President, and I would guess a majority of his constituents:

“The insurgency is alive and well. We underestimated the viability of the insurgency,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said on CBS’ Face the Nation. He said the administration has “been slow to adjust when it comes to troop strength and supporting our troops.”

Graham said the Army is contending with a serious shortfall in recruiting “because this war is going sour in terms of word of mouth from parents and grandparents.” He said “if we don’t adjust, public opinion is going to keep slipping away.”

I can smell the panic from here.

Unlike Viet Nam, this country is so wired with wall to wall cable and internet news that this type of Congressional insurgency won’t take years or months to ripen, but rather days. The President has to nip this in the bud now or risk losing Congressional support for the Iraq war.

Notice how Mr. Jones blames the “neocons.” Perhaps he can enlighten us with a few names? Or would that have horned in on his face time on TV?

And did someone ever explain to Lindsey Graham the delicate balance that has to be maintained between a sufficient number of troops to do the job and an overbearing, overwhelming presence that would have complicated matters enormously?

Someone should also tell Graham that the President ran better in South Carolina than his very conservative Senate colleague Jim DeMint. Although the Senator is not up for reelection until 2008, my guess would be conservatives in the Palmetto State have very long memories.

I have absolutely no doubt that post-war planning in Iraq was all wrong, that we should have anticipated some kind of insurgency aided and abetted by foreign powers and that the disbanding or “De-Baathification” of the Iraqi army was a gigantic mistake.

All that being said, these are exactly the kind of things that happen in wars. And I would say to Republican Congressmen “Deal with it.” We’re barely two years into an occupation that appeared to be a 5 year mission the day after Baghdad fell. This is hardly the time to start running away from the President and into the arms of the far left. But that’s what Messrs. Graham and Jones are doing.

Jeff Goldstein has been running his “Overheard in an Insurgent Bunker” series for more than a year. What do you think the insurgents are saying to each other today? I’ll bet you a dollar to navy beans that their “hope” factor just shot up several notches.

My post earlier today equating the Time article on the detention log of one of the Gitmo prisoners with the Monty Python “Spainish Inquisition” skit was done with the hope that finally the rest of the world had come to its senses and put the brouhaha at the detention facility into some kind of context.

I didn’t bank on conservatives and Republicans adopting the themes and memes of leftist apologists and supporting a shut down of the most important interrogation center that we have.

This is nuts. As several commenters around the Shadow Media have pointed out this morning, the techniques as described in the detention log are less severe than the rigmarole that fraternity pledges go through. How far are we prepared to go to satisfy those who will never, ever, ever, be satisfied?

It’s time to face facts: The only thing that will satisfy our war critics is the complete and total withdrawal of American forces and an abject apology on the part of President Bush with an admission that the war was illegal . Even then, they would push for the President’s impeachment.

Such a course of action would not satisfy our critics in the Muslim world. Nothing less than a total withdrawal of all American troops from the middle east and an apology for the last 1000 years of western atrocities would settle the score.

And now some prominent conservatives like Bill Kristol and Senator Chuck Hagel have called for the closing of the camp at Guantanamo ostensibly to boost our image abroad. The reasoning is that keeping the facility open causes us more harm internationally than any return we’re getting in intelligence.

First of all, I wonder how they could possibly know something like that. Secondly, if you don’t know the whole picture of what we’re getting from detainees - what little bits and pieces are fitting into a larger puzzle - how can you make any kind of a guesstimate that it’s not worth the bad press?

Because that’s what we’re talking about here. This is a story that has been massaged, manipulated, fondled, and embraced by people who could give a good goddamn about the prisoners health, or America’s image, or America’s values, or anything else except their out of control, unreasoning hatred of George W. Bush and their desire to lay him low.

Michelle Malkin:

The new GOP anti-Gitmo squad’s position amounts to a cut-and-run strategy–panicking in the face of ill-informed, hysterical attacks from our military’s enemies at home and abroad. Even if, as Kristol claims, unnamed JAGs and senior NSC staffers and State Department officials have problems with how Gitmo has been run, there is no question from the mountains of documents the Pentagon has released to the ACLU and others that the military tracks and investigates alleged abuses, and has taken corrective action when they are warranted. I don’t know who Kristol’s anonymous sources are, but I’ll take Gen. Myers’ word over theirs sight unseen.

Amen, sister. It seems that since the election victory, Republicans have massively retreated on the very principals and ideas that got them elected in the first place! This does the party no good. It does the President no good. All it does is garner a little publicity in the MSM for the likes of McCain, Hagel, Voinovich, and others who have found the quickest way to get a sound bite on the nets or quoted in the New York Times is agree with our leftist opponents. The consequences are there for all to see:

1. Failure to get an up or down vote on all the President’s judicial nominees.
2. Failure to break Democratic delaying tactics on UN Ambassador-designate John Bolton
3. Failure to move social security reform along, including the abandonment of private accounts

A visitor from another planet reading the newspaper today might wonder who won the election in 2004?

Guard: Now, Mr. Terrorist — you have one last chance. Confess the heinous sin of heresy, reject the works of the ungodly — *two* last chances. And you shall be free — *three* last chances. You have three last chances, the nature of which I have divulged in my previous utterance.

Terrorist: I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Guard: Right! If that’s the way you want it — Guard! Poke him with the soft cushions!

[2nd Guard carries out this rather pathetic torture]

Guard: Confess! Confess! Confess!

2nd Guard: It doesn’t seem to be hurting him, Captain.

Guard: Have you got all the stuffing up one end?

2nd Guard: Yes, Captain

Guard [angrily hurling away the cushions]: Hm! He is made of harder stuff! Guardl Corporal! Fetch…THE COMFY CHAIR!

[JARRING CHORD]

[Zoom into the Corporals' horrified face]

Corporal[terrified]: The…Comfy Chair?

[2nd Guard pushes in a comfy chair -- a really plush one]

Guard: So you think you are strong because you can survive the soft cushions. Well, we shall see. Guard! Put him in the Comfy Chair!

[They roughly push him into the Comfy Chair]

Guard [with a cruel leer]: Now — you will stay in the Comfy Chair until lunch time, with only a cup of coffee at eleven. [aside, to 2nd Guard] Is that really all it is?

2nd Guard: Yes, Captain.

Guard: I see. I suppose we make it worse by shouting a lot, do we? Confess, man. Confess! Confess!

Confess! Confess

2nd Guard: I confess!

Guard: Not you!

**Not really overheard at Gitmo. I’ve taken some liberties with the classic Monty Python skit.

For what really goes on at Gitmo, see this Time Magazine piece on the interrogation logs of the 20th hijacker. As the Captain points out:

The Time report includes mention of the terrible, inhumane methods often alleged by the righteous at Amnesty International and other self-appointed watchdogs of the American military. Readers will be excited to learn of these horror-provoking techniques that Time reveals in its exclusive:

Worst of all, the one method on which Human Rights Watch could nail the US military, is the playing of music by Christina Aguilera as a punishment for non-cooperation. Other than Michael Bolton, which I believe would be an explicit Geneva Convention violation, it’s hard to imagine a crueler torture.

The things they do in our name.

UPDATE

Bill Ardolino brings a welcome change to internet punditry. Instead of overly long, verbose essays that whine, rant, and rage against ideology or issue, Mr. Bill has spared all of us by using what he calls “Minimilist Punditry” to describe his take on the “Comfy Chair” interrogation techniques outlined in the Time article.

I won’t spoil his brilliant analysis by saying anything further, but after reading his to the point screed, return here and go below the fold for an additonal thought.
(more…)

The second to last round of Lebanon’s parliamentary elections proved out the old adage that politics makes strange bedfellows.

Michel Aoun, a former Prime Minister, former head of Lebanon’s armed forces, and until recently an exile with an arrest warrant out for him, swept to victory in Mount Lebanon and the Bekaa districts completing a political comeback tinged with irony. The candidate lists headed up by Aoun featured largely pro-Syrian parties. Aoun, a Maronite Christian, made his political bones fighting Syrian forces in 1990 in an aborted attempt to hang on to the post of Prime Minister in the face of Syrian interference.

Aoun’s lists were also victorious in the largely Christian enclaves of Kesrouan-Jbeil and Metn and Zahle. Aoun may well have beaten rival Maronite and key opposition figures, Nassib Lahoud and Fares Soueid.

As it stands now, anti-Syrian opposition candidates have won nearly 50% of seats in the 128 seat Lebanese parliament. Aoun is positioning himself quite nicely to be a major player when the parties meet after the elections and get to the business of forming a government. While its unlikely Aoun himself could capture the Presidency (the post under current election law reserved for Christians) it’s almost certain that an ally of his will be named.

Aoun was forced to align himself with pro-Syrian elements when negotiations prior to the elections with members of the Qornet Shehwan Gathering failed to bring him any alliances with the opposition. Today, former Druze warlord and opposition leader Walid Jumblatt called Aoun a “small Syrian tool.” That may be too harsh as Aoun is certainly as anti-Syrian a candidate as they come. More than his alliance with any pro-Syrian candidates however, Aoun’s stand against political corruption is what apparently attracted the most support for his lists.

Meanwhile, more headaches for the United States and the international community as the Hizbullah electoral list took the majority of votes in Baalbek-Hermel, which saw a total voter turnout of 50 percent. Three electoral lists competed in the Bekaa first district with a sweeping victory for Hizbullah and its allies, including the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, the Baath Party, the Amal movement and the Phalange Party.

This result virtually guarantees that Hizbullah will improve on its current 12 seat representation in parliament. It also guarantees that the most difficult and immediate issue that will face the new government will be either the disbanding of Hizbullah’s armed militias or their integration into the Lebanese armed forces. Either course of action will have Israel watching very closely. The militias are armed to the teeth and have sworn death to Israel. Their continued independence would be a signal to the Jewish state that Lebanon will remain a threat and make any peace negotiations problematic. Israel still holds territory claimed by Lebanon and negotiations to return it would be difficult with Hizbullah’s 12,000 rockets aimed at settlements along the border.

The final round of voting takes place next Sunday. Then the difficult work of forming a government will start. While it’s clear that the opposition candidates will probably be in the drivers seat, in order to form a stable government some cabinet posts will have to go to pro-Syrian sympathizers. And in addition to the issue of Hizbullah militas, one of the first orders of business for the new government will be to come up with a new election law, one that will hopefully based on proportional representation in larger districts. The current set-up allows for too many smaller parties to have a disproportionate impact in elections.

Further Reading:

Daily Star. Also here, and here. And Washington Post article here.

Here’s a short bio of Michel Aoun.