Right Wing Nut House

Never underestimate the intelligence of the American people:

All eight members up for re-election to the Pennsylvania school board that had been sued for introducing the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in biology class were swept out of office yesterday by a slate of challengers who campaigned against the intelligent design policy.

Among the losing incumbents on the Dover, Pa., board were two members who testified in favor of the intelligent design policy at a recently concluded federal trial on the Dover policy: the chairwoman, Sheila Harkins, and Alan Bonsell.

The election results were a repudiation of the first school district in the nation to order the introduction of intelligent design in a science class curriculum. The policy was the subject of a trial in Federal District Court that ended last Friday. A verdict by Judge John E. Jones III is expected by early January.

The debate between ID and evolution involves emotion, religion, politics, and a touch of madness. The one thing missing has been science. Every time the proponents of Intelligent Design enter into a debate on the science of their theories, they lose. The reason has nothing to do with faith in evolution but rather the empirical evidence that has been presented for more than 100 years which show that animals do indeed evolve from lower forms of life, that they do not spring up out of nothingness.

The vagaries and capriciousness of mutations that contribute to evolutionary development of the various life forms on this planet has existed for more than 3.5 billion years. While we don’t have all the answers, that doesn’t invalidate the theory of evolution. Science is a process for finding facts, not truth. If it is truth you seek, read the bible not Darwin.

As for ID, I have no doubt that it would make an excellent field of study in religion class. But to try and substitute it for teaching evolution in biology class would be disastrous.

What a difference a year makes, eh Mary Mapes?

Just think…a year ago you were a big shot producer at the “Tiffany Network” of CBS. You had gofers at your beck and call. A nice, fat, expense account. A couple of awards under your belt. The fawning admiration of your colleagues. Dan Rather even said hello to you in the CBS cafeteria.

Now, you’re a wreck:

I was extremely battered,” she said in an interview yesterday. “I’d had months and months of having my head kicked around a soccer stadium by much of the Western world. I needed some time to regroup.”

Just goes to show that the more elevated your own opinion of yourself, the farther you fall when you blow it. And Mary, let’s face it; you screwed the pooch big time.

But don’t worry. It appears you are landing on your feet, as your ilk usually does. And what better parachute to hang on to than a chatty, tell-all book in which everyone is accused of being against you, or undermining you, or trying to destroy you. It makes for great copy if not very accurate story telling. But hey! At this point, who’s keeping track?

“I’m a human being; I do things wrong from the first breath I take in the morning,” Mapes said. “I don’t in any way feel I am without responsibility in this. . . . I probably shouldn’t have been as pliable or as malleable as I was” when her bosses were finalizing the story. “This is a huge shortcoming. I didn’t know how to say no. . . . I was trying very hard to please them.”

There, there, little one. You also seem to have trouble saying “no” to partisanship. Remember that call to Kerry campaign mouthpiece Joe Lockhart offering to put serial liar and mentally disturbed Bill Burkett in touch with the Kerry campaign? Of course, that was just in furtherance of the story, right? It had nothing to do with trying to get the opposition party to help you smear the President of the United States in a time of war. After all, you’re just a victim of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.

“Truth and Duty” unloads on Rove, the White House senior adviser, calling him “the mastermind of the Republican attack against the story.” Asked about this, Mapes said Rove was “an inspirational figure” for the critics. “I’m not saying I had any proof at all” of his involvement.

I am continually fascinated with the left’s fear of Karl Rove. It reminds me of the way the Union Army looked upon Robert E. Lee during the civil war. Prior to the Battle of the Wilderness in 1864, Union Generals were fretting that Lee would slip around their flank as he had on numerous occasions. The usually phlegmatic Ulysses S. Grant exploded upon hearing this saying “Some of you always seem to think he is suddenly going to turn a double somersault and land in our rear and on both of our flanks at the same time.” This is the way the left sees Rove - as some kind of magic man who can not only cast a spell to bewitch the American people but also call upon his minions to do his evil bidding. I wonder if Captain Ed, the Powerline boys, Charles Johnson, and Michelle Malkin - the biggest conservative bloggers - laugh out loud when they read that they’re in Rove’s pocket and can be activated whenever The Evil One feels the need.

It takes a special kind of stupidity to believe that you are right when everyone else on the planet says you’re wrong:

She is disdainful of Moonves, the CBS president who ordered the outside investigation. “He doesn’t know journalism from dirt farming,” Mapes said. In the book, noting that Moonves courted and then married “Early Show” anchor Julie Chen, she writes: “I used to say everything Les knows about journalism had been sexually transmitted. Now I know even that hasn’t taught him much.”

She says Viacom, CBS’s corporate parent, threw her overboard because Chief Executive Sumner Redstone feared regulatory retaliation by the Bush administration.

There’s a clinical term for that kind of fantasy; paranoid delusion. There is not one shred of evidence that the Bush White House has ever even contemplated using the FCC to “intimidate” networks. In order to posit that notion, you’ve got to make it up out of whole cloth; something Mary Mapes is an expert at doing.

She’s also an expert at the put down:

Mapes is dismissive of Marian Carr Knox, the 86-year-old former secretary to Bush’s late squadron commander, who told Rather she believed the memos were fake but the substance of the documents was true. Mapes called her “maddening” and “a quite self-righteous typist.”

Being an expert in “self-righteous,” I can see where Mary Mapes would recognize that personality trait - especially in an 86-year old woman who by all reports knew a helluva lot more about the authenticity of those memos than you did.

But that still doesn’t answer the question of “why?” Why go after a story that’s 30 years old?

“Bush didn’t keep his promise to the country,” Mapes writes. “He swore he would fly military jets until May 1974 . . . .”

No Mary, he swore to serve the country until May of 1974 , something he did honorably which is more than can be said about you . The last time I looked, the oath taken upon entering military service does not specify anything like “I will faithfully drive a tank” or “I will gladly work as a PR flack” or even “I will command a swift boat for a couple of months and then carry on with traitorous anti-war activities while still in uniform.”

And what about us, your favorite people, the bloggers?

Perhaps her greatest fury is reserved for the “vicious” bloggers who pounced on the “60 Minutes II” report within hours — and who she believes provided the map that major news organizations, including The Washington Post, essentially followed.

“I was attacked, Dan was attacked, CBS was attacked 24 hours a day by people who hid behind screen names,” Mapes said. “I may be a flawed journalist, but I put my name on things.” Some of the key bloggers, however, posted criticism under their own names.

Okay, let me get this straight. The “map” supplied by bloggers to newspapers like the Washington Post contained information vetted by thousands of individuals with more expertise than any of the “experts” you retained to authenticate those memos (whose judgment you ignored anyway) and you have the unmitigated gall to say that bloggers were “attacking” you? Could it be because you were standing by a bogus story that you had cooked up for partisan political purposes?

The story of Mary Mapes is classic tragedy. There are two elements that mark the difference between tragedy and melodrama. The first is the main character’s “tragic flaw” which is usually one of the seven deadly sins. In Mapes case, you can take your pick; pride, envy, or anger will do. But it is the second element in tragedy that is the most difficult to achieve for both the playwright and the actor playing the tragic character. And that is the character’s cluelessness regarding why they are suffering this downfall. Look at the great tragic characters in literature and you will see that they go to their deaths without any idea of why their world collapsed around them. In that respect, their sin is always the sin of overweening pride and ambition.

Reaching for the brass ring carries with it the danger that eventually, you’ll fall of the horse. Mape’s fall may have been written in the stars long ago when she ceased being any kind of an impartial journalist and decided to become an advocate. It may have been emotionally satisfying for her to see herself on top of the battlements waving a bloody shirt. But in the end, her belief in her own moral superiority was her achilles heel. How can anyone so good she might have asked herself, be wrong?

The fault, dear Mary, lies not in our stars but in ourselves.

Italian TV station RAI News 24 will broadcast an “expose” tonight of the use of phosphorus shells as a weapon when US forces attacked and took the rebel stronghold of Fallujah in Iraq. From A Kos diarist who didn’t bother to link to any original story in English. Here’s a link to an English language news video via Americablog. And this is a story in The Independent giving the one side of the story that is currently out there:

Powerful new evidence emerged yesterday that the United States dropped massive quantities of white phosphorus on the Iraqi city of Fallujah during the attack on the city in November 2004, killing insurgents and civilians with the appalling burns that are the signature of this weapon.

Ever since the assault, which went unreported by any Western journalists, rumours have swirled that the Americans used chemical weapons on the city.

On 10 November last year, the Islam Online website wrote: “US troops are reportedly using chemical weapons and poisonous gas in its large-scale offensive on the Iraqi resistance bastion of Fallujah, a grim reminder of Saddam Hussein’s alleged gassing of the Kurds in 1988.”

The website quoted insurgent sources as saying: “The US occupation troops are gassing resistance fighters and confronting them with internationally banned chemical weapons.”

“Ever since the assault, which went unreported by any Western journalists,…”

You know what? He’s right. There wasn’t a single reporter covering this story. Not one.

Uh huh.

Be that as it may, the government acknowledged using white phosphorus shells for illumination only:

“Some news accounts have claimed that US forces have used ‘outlawed’ phosphorus shells in Fallujah,” the USinfo website said. “Phosphorus shells are not outlawed. US forces have used them very sparingly in Fallujah, for illumination purposes.

“They were fired into the air to illuminate enemy positions at night, not at enemy fighters.”

A “former American soldier” is quoted as saying:

“I heard the order to pay attention because they were going to use white phosphorus on Fallujah. In military jargon it’s known as Willy Pete.

That particular quote doesn’t confirm anything except what the military was saying; that they were going to use white phosphorus on Fallujah. Any more proof? The soldier is identified as ex-Marine Jeff Eglehart. Eglehart identifies himself in the video on the RAI 24 website as “former US military.” While he may in fact be everything he says he is, I can’t recall an ex-Marine identifying himself as anything but a Marine - “ex” or otherwise. The pride those people take in belonging to the Corps lasts a lifetime.

That said, the 2 1/2 minute snippet on RAI’s site shows Mr. Eglehart as the only American military eyewitness. There may be others quoted in the full program.

Also in the video are some shocking scenes of dead bodies so be forewarned: VIDEO CONTAINS GRAPHIC DEPICTIONS OF DEAD BODIES.

Provided by the Studies Centre of Human Rights in Fallujah, dozens of high-quality, colour close-ups show bodies of Fallujah residents, some still in their beds, whose clothes remain largely intact but whose skin has been dissolved or caramelised or turned the consistency of leather by the shells.

A biologist in Fallujah, Mohamad Tareq, interviewed for the film, says: “A rain of fire fell on the city, the people struck by this multi-coloured substance started to burn, we found people dead with strange wounds, the bodies burned but the clothes intact.”

Would a biologist be an expert or even know anything about wounds made by white phosphorus shells? I don’t know about you but that struck me as odd. I mean, couldn’t RAI 24 find a military expert who could have confirmed from the pictures whether or not the wounds were caused by battlefield weapons?

There is also night video of the phosphorus shells exploding a couple of hundred feet off the ground and what appears to be some kind of anti-personnel effect as shards of the shell fall by the dozens, burning even after they hit the ground. I can see where some would conclude that these shards were in fact designed to kill people on the ground. But I can also see where low level explosions of these shells would be desirable in an urban setting. The closer to the ground the illumination, the shorter the shadows caused by buildings on the street. This would make sense for night fighting. What doesn’t make sense is the fact that our troops fighting at night should be equipped with night vision goggles. Any illumination from a white phosphorus shell would temporarily blind them.

Many questions and I’m afraid my expertise is very limited when trying to write about the tactical use of 40mm white phosphorus shells.

There is also a charge that the Marines used a napalm-type shell:

The documentary, entitled Fallujah: the Hidden Massacre, also provides what it claims is clinching evidence that incendiary bombs known as Mark 77, a new, improved form of napalm, was used in the attack on Fallujah, in breach of the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons of 1980, which only allows its use against military targets.

Could a house full of people shooting at you be described as a “military target?”

So far, only lefty bloggers are writing about this with predictable glee. I would hope that some military fellows will post on this today. Watch for updates as the day goes on and I will link to whatever I find.

UPDATE

James Joyner gives some details about the use of WP, linking to the SF Chronicle article:

Some artillery guns fired white phosphorous rounds that create a screen of fire that cannot be extinguished with water. Insurgents reported being attacked with a substance that melted their skin, a reaction consistent with white phosphorous burns. Kamal Hadeethi, a physician at a regional hospital, said, “The corpses of the mujahedeen which we received were burned, and some corpses were melted.”

Joyner also has links to information on the legality of WP. It is, in fact, legal but not against civilians. The fact that civilians were hit was a tragedy. But who was the target? Only those predisposed to believe the worst about the military could believe they would “target” civilians. That would be a waste of munitions to begin with not to mention morally wrong.

One thing is clear; the WP was used for more than “illumination.”

John Cole agrees with me I about the anti-personnel nature of the rounds. He also disabuses those so inclined of the notion that the weapon is “chemical” in nature. It is considered a conventional round.

UPDATE II

Here’s an email I got from chris@lenape.com:

I’m a Marine with combat service from the 1st Persian Gulf War. I was an 1833 AAV (Amtrack) operator in 1st Marine Div. batallion 3/9 who has some direct knowledge of the weapons and tactics described above.

1st White phosphorous or Willy Peet (WP) is a marker used to direct artilery, mortar or tank fire. Trust me you don’t want to be in the area when stuff is employed.

2nd If you are unlucky enough to be in the way of WP it will burn your close and anything else for that matter. It doesn’t carmelize anything it burns the crap out of whatever it touches.

3rd Consider the above. We don’t use WP when our troops are any where near its intended impact zone. Unless we’ve adopted some new tactics, killing our own people, since I got out in 1992.

4th The USMC does not use poison gas. Not only is it a violation of international law but it is a major pain in the ass. Once you’ve dooshed an area with gas you can’t send in troops because even Marines protected by NBC gear would need to decontaminated. Any Marine or Soldier who has any experience with decon knows what a major tedious slow down that is.

5th Marines rely on fire power and close air support to overwhelm the enemy. These two tools best fit the strategy of closing with and destroying the enemy. As stated earlier gas slows you down. Marines move quick they have no time for gas or similar bull s**t.

The RAI piece sounds like a load of bull. Perhaps they should learn a little bit about USMC tactics before they run their cake holes on something they obviously know nothing about.

Semper Fi!

I have watched during the last week as bloggers and the MSM have finally started to focus on the real story in the case involving the leaking of Valerie Plame’s name; the fact that there is a rogue faction at the CIA who opposed the policies of the President of the United States and tried to defeat those policies by selectively leaking classified information to friendly reporters.

Last summer as I began a series of posts on this subject, there was literally no one focusing on this aspect of the Plame controversy outside of Tom McGuire at Just One Minute. On July 13, I wrote:

This is the dirty business of government being exposed to the light of day. On the one hand, you have the White House with a President duly elected that has made the tough decision to go to war. On the other side, you have a political faction at the CIA who can justify their opposition to the Administration by chalking it up as differences in policy. The amazing number of selective leaks prior to the election that constantly put the administration on the defensive with regards to what they knew about WMD before the war was another manifestation of the partisanship of this faction. Given the mountains of intelligence analyses prior to the Iraq war on WMD, to cherry pick opposing views and then leak them to the press was an outrageously partisan attempt to discredit the President.

On July 21st:

If Joe Wilson could sit by a pool sipping mint tea and talk with a few officials, why couldn’t such an inquiry be handled by agency personnel already in country? Why a “special mission?”

The answer is that the CIA wanted to make sure they got the right answers from the “investigation.” So they send glory boy Wilson on a made up errand to insure that the intelligence is “fixed” to absolve the Niger government of colluding with the Iraqis in what two separate inquiries have concluded was a real attempt to circumvent sanctions to purchase uranium. And to obscure that fact, Wilson has to make it appear that his talent and contacts alone were the reason he was sent to Niger not that his wife was part of a faction out to discredit the Administration’s WMD claims prior to going to war with Iraq.

This may in fact be the real cover-up. What started as a policy dispute between WMD experts at CIA and the “Neocons” in the Bush Administration may have escalated to include the CIA selective leaking of classified information in order to swing an election. And right in the middle of this cover up may be the Wilson-Plame connection regarding the Niger mission.

On August 2nd, I covered more selective leaking from the CIA for The American Thinker. This time it was a National Intelligence Estimate with regards to Iran’s nuclear ambitions:

The point is that regardless of recent steps to reform our intelligence capability, it appears that we’re still working with a dysfunctional system where agency personnel feel perfectly comfortable with leaking classified information in a bid to influence both Administration policy and the political process. No one expects everybody to agree on everything. But the American people have a right to expect that the unelected bureaucrats who work at the CIA allow policy making to reside with those we have entrusted for the task – the elected representatives of the people.

Now we have a host of bloggers and mainstream media columnists calling for an investigation of the CIA. Victoria Toensing:

“The CIA conduct in this matter is either a brilliant covert action against the White House or inept intelligence tradecraft. It is up to Congress to decide which.”

Deborah Orin:

Having Wilson go public was very useful to the CIA, especially the division where his wife worked — because it served to shift blame for failed “slam dunk” intelligence claims away from the agency. To say that Bush “twisted” intelligence was to presume — falsely — that the CIA had gotten it right.

When the White House ineptly tried to counter Wilson’s tall tales by revealing that he wasn’t an expert and his wife set up the trip, the CIA demanded a criminal probe — and then itself broke the law by leaking that news

Investors.Com:

We believe that someone needs to answer the questions raised recently by Joseph F. DiGenova, a former federal prosecutor and independent counsel:

These aren’t the musings of the tinfoil-hat brigade. A sober-minded case can be made that at least some people in the CIA may have acted inappropriately to discredit the administration as a way of salvaging their own reputations after the intelligence debacles of 9-11 and Iraqi WMD.

Newsmax:

But the Agency’s double-dealing on evidence of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction begs another question: Was the CIA an honest broker of information that seemed, early on, to link Iraq to the 9/11 attacks?

Then there are bloggers like Michael Barone, Mark Noonan, and Scott Johnson who are calling for an investigation of the CIA. While I wholeheartedly endorse such a probe, the question is how focused could such an investigation get?

The wide range of malfeasance on the part of the CIA has been breathtaking. Their leaking of classified information has encompassed so many aspects of American policy all over the world that it must be the work of some very senior intelligence officials. Only top level officials would be in a position to gather and collate such wide ranging intel to be put in regular briefings for policy makers or be the ones giving the briefings themselves. The latter is less likely but not out of the realm of possibility. In short, we aren’t just looking at the kind of leaking done by low-level analysts who may be disgruntled with the way the Administration used a specific bit of intelligence. We are talking about people at the highest levels of the Agency who are in a position to decide what intelligence is passed on to policy makers and what intelligence is withheld.

And no investigation would be complete without hauling before the Committee members of VIPS - the so-called “Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity” whose membership includes some of the most radical left wing Democratic party partisans working today. Did members of this group act as conduits between their friends still working at the Agency and national security columnists like Walter Pincus and Nick Kristoff? Inquiring minds want to know, indeed.

The last major Congressional investigation of CIA activities was the Church Committee. Most inside observers at the Agency claim that the revelations and subsequent fall out from the Committee’s hearings nearly destroyed the CIA. Morale hit rock bottom when Admiral Stansfield Turner became the DCIA under President Carter. Turner dismantled our human intelligence capability (HUMINT) and stressed the gathering of intel by so-called “National Technical Means.” We found out to our detriment on 9/11 how vitally important HUMINT is to the overall picture intelligence analysts try to draw for policy makers.

The satellites and other technical means we have at our disposal to gather and analyze intelligence are the most closely guarded secrets in America. By leaking some of the classified intelligence about Saddam’s capabilities and intentions prior to the war, the leakers have given our enemies hints as to what we can see, what we can hear, and what we can read from nations and individuals that try and hide these things from prying eyes. In short, leaking by Agency partisans did far more damage to national security than the “outing” of an Agency staffer whose husband apparently bragged about her CIA employment to anyone and everyone who he met.

So any investigation of the CIA must be done with considerable care. It cannot be a scattershot fishing expedition. Too much is at stake to cripple the work done by the CIA in this time of war. But an investigation must be done in order to rid the Agency once and for all of people who place partisan or career considerations above the good of the nation.

I don’t pretend to really understand quantum mechanics, the counter-intuitive theory that much of modern physics and chemistry is based. Having read a dozen or so explanations of it, about all I can say is that I can grasp a crude outline of the theory’s basic tenets; a noted example being that the properties of light can be measured as either a wave function or a particle function but not both. This relates to the famous “Schroedinger’s Cat” experiment where the observer has a privileged frame of reference and all depends on what the observer sees.

A vial of acid is placed in a box along with a cat and radioactive material. If an atom decays in the box, the acid will be released and the cat will die. The point of the thought experiment is that 1) physicists don’t like cats very much and 2) in the quantum world, the cat exists as both alive and dead at the same time - only when we open the box do we “collapse” reality and discover whether we have killed the cat.

One interpretation of this is the “Many Worlds Theory” that stipulates once the observer chooses, an infinite number of other universes are created where every other possibility regarding the collapse occurs and reality evolves from that point in a different way than the universe you and I inhabit.One example would be that in the Schroedinger’s Cat experiment, the observer gets what he deserves and is poisoned by the radioactive material and dies a horrible death Another more prosaic scenario would be the example of the British plot to kill Hitler in June of 1944. In our universe, the plot failed. But the “Many Worlds” interpretation takes the attempted assassination and a million other universes are split off so that in some universes Hitler is indeed killed and all reality evolves from that point to today with a dead Hitler.

The “Many Worlds” theory cleans up some of the more troubling inconsistencies in quantum mechanics at the atomic level. It is also a useful model of reality when trying to explain the Democratic party. How else can you describe a party that so stubbornly ignores the facts of this universe we inhabit only to take facts from other universes where black is white, up is down, and pre-war Iraq intelligence regarding the link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda is either “twisted” or deliberately falsified, thus taking this country into war based on lies?

Over the weekend, the Senator from Michigan Carl Levin released a declassified report from the Defense Intelligence agency that discredits one of the key human intelligence assets used to connect Saddam with al Qaeda:

A top member of Al Qaeda in American custody was identified as a likely fabricator months before the Bush administration began to use his statements as the foundation for its claims that Iraq trained Al Qaeda members to use biological and chemical weapons, according to newly declassified portions of a Defense Intelligence Agency document.

The document, an intelligence report from February 2002, said it was probable that the prisoner, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, “was intentionally misleading the debriefers’’ in making claims about Iraqi support for Al Qaeda’s work with illicit weapons.

The document provides the earliest and strongest indication of doubts voiced by American intelligence agencies about Mr. Libi’s credibility. Without mentioning him by name, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state, and other administration officials repeatedly cited Mr. Libi’s information as “credible’’ evidence that Iraq was training Al Qaeda members in the use of explosives and illicit weapons

The problem, as Stephen Hayes points out in this Weekly Standard article, is that the Administration ignored the DIA brief because the CIA was enthusiastically vouching for his authenticity:

Why would Bush make such a claim when a DIA report had raised the possibility that al Libi was lying? One possibility: The CIA was saying that al Libi was credible.

On February 11, 2003–a year after the DIA report–CIA Director George Tenet testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee. He said: “Iraq has in the past provided training in document forgery and bomb-making to al Qaeda. It has also provided training in poisons and gases to two al Qaeda associates. One of these associates characterized the relationship he forged with Iraqi officials as successful.”

Of course, if the only evidence the Administration had of the Iraq-al Qaeda connection was Mr. Libi and his tall tales, the Bush people would in fact be guilty of at the very least, ignoring evidence presented by an important part of the intelligence analysis community. But as we’ve discovered from numerous investigations and commissions, there is a considerable body of incontrovertible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda did have a working relationship prior to 9/11. This is from another Stephen Hayes piece in the Weekly Standard from November, 2003:

Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein had an operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003 that involved training in explosives and weapons of mass destruction, logistical support for terrorist attacks, al Qaeda training camps and safe haven in Iraq, and Iraqi financial support for al Qaeda–perhaps even for Mohamed Atta–according to a top secret U.S. government memorandum obtained by The Weekly Standard.

The memo, dated October 27, 2003, was sent from Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. It was written in response to a request from the committee as part of its investigation into prewar intelligence claims made by the administration. Intelligence reporting included in the 16-page memo comes from a variety of domestic and foreign agencies, including the FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency. Much of the evidence is detailed, conclusive, and corroborated by multiple sources. Some of it is new information obtained in custodial interviews with high-level al Qaeda terrorists and Iraqi officials, and some of it is more than a decade old. The picture that emerges is one of a history of collaboration between two of America’s most determined and dangerous enemies.

According to the memo–which lays out the intelligence in 50 numbered points–Iraq-al Qaeda contacts began in 1990 and continued through mid-March 2003, days before the Iraq War began. Most of the numbered passages contain straight, fact-based intelligence reporting, which some cases includes an evaluation of the credibility of the source. This reporting is often followed by commentary and analysis.

Despite this overwhelming evidence, when the 9/11 Commission released a statement saying there was no evidence of a “collaborative relationship” between Iraq and al Qaeda, the press and the Democrats eagerly deleted the word “collaborative” and accused the Administration of lying about any relationship between Saddam and Bin Laden.

This is not what the Commission said as the report clearly shows. High level contacts between the Iraqi government and al Qaeda were frequent during the lead up to 9/11. The Iraqis even offered Bin Laden a safe haven after he was booted out of Sudan.

But listening to Carl Levin and the Democrats, one would be convinced that they had entered an alternate universe where the 9/11 Commission report never existed. It’s as if the Democrats could not only determine whether or not Schroedinger’s cat was dead or alive, but that they could actually choose which of the “Many Worlds” they wish the rest of us to live in.

The same unhinged reasoning can be found in the now infamous “16 words” of the President’s State of the Union speech where the President said “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” As it turns out, the Brits based that intel on documents we now know were forged by an Italian businessman who claims he did it at bidding of French intelligence. But, as Joe Wilson discovered independently, a high level Iraqi trade delegation did in fact meet with a former Niger Prime Minister in order to “expand trade.” Given that Niger’s meager export economy is overwhelmingly based on the sale of yellow cake uranium, it turns out that the guts of the statement were true. The information did indeed come from the British and Saddam was seeking to reconstitute his nuclear program the minute that the world was looking the other way once sanctions were lifted (something that liberals had been screaming for the United States to do for years).

But in the Many Worlds of the Democrats, not only did the President “twist” this intelligence to fool the American people into going to war with Saddam Hussein, but that Joe Wilson is a saintly, truth telling whistleblower instead of the leaker of classified material and a liar of monumental proportions that he really is.

This particular universe occupied by the Democrats must be a fascinating place to live. Imagine existing where the ordinary laws of gravity are turned on its head and humans can fly. Or a place where you can’t go anywhere without tripping over faeries and leprechauns. This would be a place where bedtime stories are true, where Mother Goose has a loft in Greenwich Village and the Grinch actually does try and steal Christmas. Such a universe might also have the Cubs winning as many World Championships as the Yankees.

This is the only explanation for why Democrats like Carl Levin continue to insist that what is patently false is actually the truth of the matter. By creating their own universe to explain pre-war Iraqi intelligence as a place where the Administration deceitfully “twisted” information to suit their own nefarious designs, they take themselves out of our reality altogether and and try to drag the rest of us with them as they descend into the darkness of conspiracy theory and fantasy.

How about a universe where Democrats are actually heroic supporters of America and American values rather than a collection of deranged, Bush-hating, America trashing lickspittles who are so desperate for electoral victory that they will risk the future of this country by working for the defeat of the armed forces of the United States on the field of battle in Iraq?

That might be one of the “Many Worlds” that just doesn’t exist.

There were a couple of leading candidates for Cluebat of the Week this time around. Some would have been awarded on a collective basis (The French Government for their tepid response to rioting Muslims), some for individual achievement (Harry Reid’s stunt in closing the Senate). I even contemplated giving the first Lifetime Achievement Award to Jimmy Carter whose comments on foreign policy this week were particularly dumb.

In the end, it was really no contest however. Former FEMA Director Michael Brown wins in a walk.

If there was ever any doubt this guy should never have left the horse show business, it has been removed thanks to the most jaw dropping, head shaking series of emails ever dispatched by a government official. Some examples:

* Two days after Katrina hit, Marty Bahamonde, one of the only FEMA employees in New Orleans, wrote to Brown that “the situation is past critical” and listed problems including many people near death and food and water running out at the Superdome. Brown’s entire response was: “Thanks for the update. Anything specific I need to do or tweak?”

* “Can I quit now? Can I come home?” Brown wrote to Cindy Taylor, FEMA’s deputy director of public affairs, the morning of the hurricane.

* In the midst of the worst of the crisis, Brown wrote “Please roll up the sleeves of your shirt, all shirts. Even the president rolled his sleeves to just below the elbow. In this [crisis] and on TV you just need to look more hard-working.”

* On August 29, the day of the storm, Brown exchanged e-mails about his attire with Taylor, Melancon said. She told him, “You look fabulous,” and Brown replied, “I got it at Nordstroms. … Are you proud of me?” An hour later, Brown added: “If you’ll look at my lovely FEMA attire, you’ll really vomit. I am a fashion god.”

I know that there were many who disagreed with my analysis of the job Brown did during Katrina. While the state and local officials were mostly to blame for the out of control situation, I believe the Congressional investigation will show that Brown failed miserably to move the supplies that had been prepositioned prior to the hurricane making landfall. In short, what FEMA did have responsibility for, he dropped the ball.

Couple that with his inability to play well with the Democrats Nagin and Blanco and the trio of clueless clodhoppers ends up mucking up the biggest disaster in a century.

Those emails capture the cluelessness of the man perfectly. The fact that he is still drawing a salary forces me to give honorable mention to the entire Federal Government of the United States for not collectively kicking this guys rear end back to Oklahoma.

Why not peruse this week’s collection of half wits, nitwits, half brains, and no brains. I guarantee a laugh or two as well as a couple of posts that will raise your blood pressure. So sit back, strap it down, and take a trip into the Land of the Clueless.

“Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity.”
(Former Notre Dame Football Coach Frank Leahy)

Hey Frank! It’s a damn shame Jimmy Carter never played for the Irish.
(Me)
*************************************************************************************
Giacomo speculates that Harry Reid’s request that President Bush “apologize” to the American people and that Karl Rove step down may have been written before Fitzgerald released the indictment of Libby and that Senator Roulette Wheel never changed the text. How else do you explain the Cluebat asking Rove to step down for not being indicted?

Mark Coffey returns to the Carnival in grand style as he absolutely skewers Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, AKA Kos, for having “zero political acumen.” Mark is too generous in his analysis of Kos’s political abilities. For a true reflection of that, perhaps he should be graded using Celsius - Zero equals minus 32.

Speaking of long time gone Carnival participants, my old buddy Ogre returns with an excellent rant against North Dakota’s clueless Senator Byron Dorgan who wrote a piece for USA today totally mis-characterizing oil company profits. Leave it to Ogre to set the loon right.

The Maryhunter has a great article on the Democratic Party’s cluelessness when it comes to defending the last bastion of liberalism in America - the courts.

Wonder Woman has a post entitled “Even a sycophantic psychopath has gotta have friends…” If you guessed it was about Hugo Chavez and Iranian Terrorist President Ahmadinejad, you win a cookie.

Beth at My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy has a new skin to her blog but same old Rottweiler attitude as she takes down Jonathan Alter for…well, read it all and then pity the poor soul for having several large bites taken out of his hide. Also, make sure you click the donate button on Beth’s site and give to Project Valour - IT. Read about it here and please be generous to this worthy cause.

Raven has a several breathtaking examples of liberal hypocrisy so profoundly disturbing, you’re going to want to read it twice just to make sure that your eyes weren’t deceiving you. Un. Be. Lievable.

Cao of Cao’s Blog (pronounced “key”) has some uproarious fun with a clueless troll. If you haven’t seen Cao take down a comment troll before, you are in for a real treat!

Uh-oh…Jay at Stop the ACLU is out of town and somehow Kender got the keys to his blog. Who will the Mad Scotsman have in his sights? Why, the ACLU of course!

If you don’t have Van Helsing at Moonbattery as one of your daily reads, you’re missing some of the best, the funniest stuff out there. Check out his post on Prince Charles and do not be drinking anything when you view the photoshop of “Prince Chaz.”

Anna Rose is blogging at The Right Place this week and has the lowdown on Michael Moore’s investment strategy and how it doesn’t quite jibe with his public utterances.

Miriam has a laugh out loud article on the Canadian moonbats virtually canceling Halloween. What’s next, no Christmas?

Carnival Pin-Up Girl Pamela has a post about the Three Stooges of the Senate - Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, and Dick Durbin - and their see no WMD read no WMD attitude. Good Ms. Pamela reminds us of the facts, thank you.

Below the Beltway has it in for Republican Big Spenders as we all should. Read it and write your Congressman and Senators.

Josh Cohen has one of those “Only in the Entertainment Industry” articles about Harry Potter’s new movie and a clueless musical group named the “Wyrd Sisters.” A real head-shaker.

Check out Pat Curley’s picture of high school students at a University of Texas football game…or is it a “peace” rally? Looks like the youngsters need a little instruction in proper protest signage.

The lovely Mensa Barbie sent me this post on Houdini who made everyone look clueless as they marveled at his magic. Great links about the greatest magician of all time.

Is there any publication more clueless than the New York Times? Iris blog doesn’t think so as they got a lot of play in the sphere this week for exposing some jaw dropping anti-Israeli bias at the paper. Great job!

AJ at the Strata-Sphere has a great piece on Joe Wilson and the gigantic ego the poor guy is forced to carry around with him. What an arrogant POS.

Must read satire this week from the usual suspects: The Peace Moonbeam blog on “Our Mother Of Perpetual Peace And Publicity” Cindy Sheehan and Carnival regular The Nose on Your Face with Al Franken attacking a fan at a book signing who wanted the book signed for his cousin “Reagan F. Hannity Limbaugh III.”

Those pithy pachyderms at Elephants in Academia are taking on former Colin Powell aide Lawrence Wilkerson who sees cabals over at DoD. Maybe he really meant cables?

Remember Mary Mapes? Hoodlumman at File it Under does and has some additional queries that Mapes might have outside of her contention that the TANG memos were not forgeries. Elvis just wants his privacy, right Mary?

Adam of Adam’s Blog has some interesting insight into a local political catfight between two rivals who sling the mud as good as anyone. Good reporting on local issues in Boise, ID.

Philomatheon has a clueless professor whose published wishful thinking in the Wall Street Journal about what he thinks Iran wants nukes for makes me shudder that this kind of thinking could get most of us killed. Read it all and then remember that if Iran thinks for one moment that it could get away with allowing terrorists access to a nuke, they will do it in a heartbeat.

Orac Knows has the raised blood pressure post of the Carnival as he highlights the cluelessness of the parents of a 13 year old cancer patient who want to take the stricken child to Kansas for “Vitamin C Therapy.”

Jimmie K and I are on the same wavelength when it comes to the utter cluelessness of the French and their timid reaction to the riots.

Finally, here’s my take on Harry Reid and the damage he’s done to his party recently.

For more than 2,000 years the city of Paris has captivated people from all over the western world, beckoning lovers with a combination of mystery and romantic fantasy. Even when the city was a simple collection of mud huts plunked down in the middle of an island on the Seine river, one could imagine city boosters sending out word that their swampy little slice of paradise was a grand place to go if you were young, in love, and didn’t mind the stink.

“Fluctuat nec mergitur” is the city’s motto, Latin for “she is buffeted by the waves but she does not sink.” Judging by what’s been going on the last eight gruesome nights, Parisians are experiencing a lot of “fluctuat” and are certainly in danger of “mergitur”-ing. Rioting by “youths” as British media is calling the gangs of mini-Osamas and Arafat wannabees who are methodically cutting a path of destruction through the suburbs of the City of Lights, threatens to cause the cynical Parisians to actually raise an eyebrow in surprise. Unless something drastic is done and soon, the French may wake up one day with their smug little world of cradle-to-grave benefits and fantasies about being a world power again destroyed by their own haughty arrogance.

It’s too easy to blame the riots on poverty or living conditions, or lack economic opportunity for the unassimilated Muslim children who have discovered a way to tweak the nose of their tormentors. Ignored, shuffled off into the corners of society with little prospect to rise above their assigned place in the rigidly sterile social hierarchy of their adopted country, this generation of Muslims has apparently had enough and is in the process of demonstrating that “tolerance” and “understanding” are words empty of meaning if the word “freedom” isn’t included.

I don’t think that the rioters are out to establish Sha’ria law in France. But the term “intifada” which is being bandied about to describes their actions may be pretty close to the truth. They don’t see the French as occupiers. But they definitely see them as oppressors. What that must do to the high falutin self image of the French I can only guess. It must be hard to realize simply having good intentions and mouthing platitudinous nonsense about tolerance means jack to people who are reminded every day by every gesture and facial expression that you don’t belong. That you are different. And that there is no chance you will ever really measure up because you’re not part of the tribe.

Before those in this country are tempted to compare the plight of Muslims in France with African Americans here please don’t show your ignorance by doing so. The situation for Muslims in the last 40 years in France has remained static, basically unchanged. Only the most committed racialists in this country would say the same about the status of African Americans here.

Watching as French officials wring their hands while threatening dire consequences if the rioting continues only emboldens the rioters. I suspect that eventually, the army will have to be called in to deal with the unrest. And France will be fortunate indeed if the rioting isn’t nationwide in 72 hours. Will all of Europe explode if the riots continue and cause Muslim minorities to emulate their cousins in France? At the very least, it will cause all of Europe to pause and take stock which will probably not lead to substantive change but may start a dialog of sorts with Muslim communities.

I’m not ashamed to say that in a perverse sort of way, I am getting enormous satisfaction watching the rioters make the French out to be the hypocritical bastards they always accuse America of being. During the riots in Los Angeles following the Rodney King verdict, French pundits boasted that it could never happen in a country as tolerant and enlightened as France. I wonder what they’re saying now? After all, this is the country where in 1961, police murdered from 70-200 Algerian protesters and unceremoniously dumped their bodies in the Seine. And for all their talk of being freedom lovers, the French government suppressed that story for almost 30 years, censoring media that published anything about it.

I do sincerely hope that the authorities can get a grip and start to break the back of the intifada. For all the damage being done, the fact that they only arrested 80 people last night is a surprise. With thousands taking part in the disturbances, perhaps a firmer hand would be in order. Taking people off the streets and throwing them wholesale in jail may seem draconian but it might just break the momentum of the riots and allow the situation to sputter out.

I doubt France will wake up when this is over and place the blame where it belongs - on their own overarching hubris. They’ve been so busy looking down their Gallic noses at the rest of us that they’ve failed to see the wolf standing right in front of them. And now that wolf is through the door and is running wild in the house.

Time for the French to take a reality check before it’s too late.

There are times when writing is a sheer joy, an uplifting combination of out of body experience and sexual arousal where all the tumblers click into place as if God ordered the mysteries of the universe to be revealed in a breathtaking cyclorama and one can almost taste colors and smell beauty.

Then there are times when writing really, really sucks.

It’s at those times that, like an addict stealing money from a roommate to feed their insatiable desire for a fix, I must confess to occasionally stealing ideas for articles from others in order to feed this demon of a blog whose screaming desire for CONTENT! CONTENT! is both ceaseless and wearying.

A notable example of my shameless plagiarism of ideas was a post I did a few months ago entitled “Moonbat Blog Taxonomy” where I stole the idea of doing a post on some of the top lefty blogs from a liberal writer (and shall remain nameless here given the nauseating racism and sexism exhibited in the article by the author) who did a hit piece on top righty sites.

This morning, after sitting in front of the monitor for two hours with a blanker stare than usual, my mouth hanging open, settling in its accustomed place to allow for the full intake of oxygen (I am, in fact, a mouth breathing right wing conservative) I happened to click a link on John Hawkins site that led me to this post by Jon Henke at Q & O Blog which reviewed conservative blog sites.

It took a couple of seconds for those tumblers to click into place but eventually I slapped my hand to my head saying “That’s it!” (Note to self: Next time put the coffee cup down before slapping your head, ninny). And since Henke shamelessly stole my idea during the last go-around with liberal sites, perhaps turnabout is fair play in this case and Jon will vouchsafe my theft of his excellent idea.

Mr. Henke approached his subjects from his viewpoint as a libertarian…or is it neo-libertarian…as opposed to a paleo-neo-libertarian like me. At any rate, since Jon was kicked out of the Conservative Book Club a long time ago for being an apostate and mortal sinner, he felt no compunction about criticizing many of the conservative blogs for their shortcomings both real and perceived.

Now Jon is a respected blogger, widely read and justifiably so for the excellent commentary he and his compatriots publish on their site. I however, am not very respected and little known outside of a small circle of people whose computers have mysteriously malfunctioned and permanently frozen on my webpage. The fact that most of them are from foreign countries where English is not usually spoken gives me the confidence to write whatever I please without fear that anyone of any note would ever take offense to anything I said about them since the odds of them seeing what I wrote approach those being laid in Vegas for a Cubs World Series championship next year.

That said, here is my review of some conservative sites that I visit everyday.

INSTAPUNDIT

Glenn Reynolds is a fascinating combination of lawyer, teacher, sage, and geek. Anyone who can start an internet wide discussion on the relative merits of various shaving blades (or lawnmowers, or cameras) deserves serious consideration as a true Renaissance man. One gets the impression at times that Mr. Reynolds is permanently plugged in to the internet with his brain downloading and processing information even as he sleeps. I also believe he is dismissive at times of the religious right and of moral arguments in general as well as being occasionally condescending to those with which he disagrees. Not a deep thinker but appears to have a clear, well ordered mind which manifests itself in his excellent writing ability.

MICHELLE MALKIN.COM

Malkin’s site has actually surpassed Instapundit as the top blog in the ecosystem according to linkage. The reason is that there is no one who has better round-ups of blog and media reaction to The Big Story. Within minutes of breaking news, Malkin has a dozen links to posts that give both information and opinion. It is not empty flattery to say that she is a blogger’s blogger, someone who provides quotable perspective and great links for one’s own blog posts. I’ve never been able to figure out what drives the left to attack her in such despicably viscous ways. Her book In Defense of Internment is one of the most provocative and from my point of view, wrongheaded books I’ve ever read. But the arguments made were I thought, reasonable and well researched. Why the left can’t see past their own myopia and judge the book on its merits instead of their using some of the most vile, personal invective imaginable is beyond my understanding. That said, there are few who wield a sharper pen than Malkin when it comes to exposing the hypocrisy of liberals. Maybe that is what’s got them in a constant lather about her.

POWERLINE

If you’ve read Jon Henke’s review of Powerline, you can see where he doesn’t much care for the trio of attorneys who write for it. I actually thought Mr. Henke was unfair in this case as he criticized specifically their “corrections policy, their interest in criticism, and consistency.” I have seen many corrections on that site as well as responses to criticisms, most recently a thoughtful response to E.J. Dionne. As for consistency, the post Jon linked to trying to equate Clinton and Scooter Libby is a false analogy - at this point. Did Scooter Libby not remember certain conversations or did he deliberately lie to the Grand Jury? There’s no such question about Mr. Clinton’s guilt in that regard.

As for the blog itself, I must confess to being more of a skimmer recently than a reader. Powerline is still the “goto” place for analysis on a Supreme Court decision or other legal issues. And their forays into music and the arts are always fascinating reads. But I now go for politics elsewhere.

LITTLE GREEN FOOTBALLS

If there is something going on in the Middle East that affects America, LGF has the link to the story. Jon Henke rightly says it’s “all anti-Islamism all the time.” I consider the site a valuable public resource that gives a perspective on radical Islam that is missing from media coverage in general. That said, I wish the proprietor of the site Charles Johnson would interject his views more often and in greater detail. And while the vast majority of his commenters (”Lizardoids”) add valuable insights and information to the discussions (many of them scholars in their own right) the level of discourse can be lowered considerably by the occasional knucklehead who spouts bigoted claptrap. To their credit, other commenters usually slap the offender down, something not usually mentioned when liberals write about the LGF community.

HUGH HEWITT.COM

Jon calls Hewitt “the distilled essence of the Party Man.” I suppose he means that as a criticism. The question is, does Hewitt try to hide his party loyalty? If not, what’s the big deal? If Hewitt was trying to pass himself off as a disinterested observer, I can see where such criticism would be in order. Seeing that Mr. Hewitt has on more than one occasion taken both the President and the Republican party to task for a variety of transgressions, Jon’s criticism - if that’s what it is - would be unwarranted. I would say there is a huge difference between Ken Mehlman and Hugh Hewitt.

Hewitt is sometimes called the “Father” of the blogosphere and I generally read him to find out what other bloggers are writing about. Content wise, I have to say that his postings since the election have appeared to be rather desultory rather than inspired. That said, I listen to his radio show where he seems much more animated and interesting. Perhaps that’s where his energies are being directed these days.

Why stop here? First of all, this post is getting tiresome and not very interesting to write which probably means if you’ve come this far with me, you are either really a fan or in some kind of drug induced stupor.

Secondly, if I don’t get this published in the next 10 minutes, I’m going to be late for an appointment. Why not leave a comment about your favorite blog with a short paragraph saying why you like it? I might even put it in an update to this post I’m doing later this afternoon.

Get busy…

This really is a horrible time to be a Democrat. Flummoxed at every turn by both the dumb good luck of George Bush and the powerful forces of history at work in the Middle East, the Democrats have been reduced to sitting around trying to think up ways to get attention:

A Senate Minority Leadership staffer says this plan to shut down the Senate was hatched last night, as staff and Democratic Senators looked over the wreckage of what they believed was going to be their finest few days in a long time: an indictment of a White House official, a struggling President, a conservative judicial nominee, a splintering conservative base.

“Alito’s nomination and the press that followed just devastated them,” says the leadership source. “They couldn’t get their message out. They felt that things had pivoted on them, and that with the President presenting his plan for avian flu, with the Alito nomination going apparently well, with the tax panel recommendations, they were going to get ploughed under. This was a stunt. But it worked.”

(HT: Betsy Newmark)

The stink of desperation on the Democratic side of the aisle is almost palpable. Instead of the avalanche of indictments emanating from the Special Prosecutors 2 year investigation of L’Affaire d’Plame which could have included The Evil One Karl Rove and perhaps (in their wettest of wet dreams) Vice President Cheney, all they got for Fitzmas was Scooter Libby and two front teeth, knocked out by the Special Prosecutor who chastised them thusly for trying to make the entire prosecution about their flights of fancy regarding intelligence before the war:

“This indictment is not about the war. This indictment’s not about the propriety of the war. And people who believe fervently in the war effort, people who oppose it, people who have mixed feelings about it should not look to this indictment for any resolution of how they feel or any vindication of how they feel…”

Since no one on the pro-war side could possibly see any vindication regarding their position on the lead up to the conflict even if no one had been indicted, Fitzgerald’s caustic comments could only be directed toward the Democrats and their steadfast adherence to conspiracy theories about how and why we went to war.

Imagine the effort by the Democrats that went into planning the media campaign which would have followed the Special Prosecutors parade of wrongdoers being frog-marched in handcuffs to the hoosegow. Speeches, talking points, photo-ops, surrogates being booked on all the cable shows, not to mention the activation of the rabid, frothing-at-the-mouth base that would have been in the streets demanding the resignation of Bush, Cheney, and Rove et. al. It must have taken hundreds of man hours to plan and coordinate such an operation.

Alas, it was not to be. And to top it off, George Bush goes and names a conservative judge whose credentials are so impeccable that even some liberal lawyers are praising the choice. The right is sated and united once again and Bush, although considerably weakened by the Miers fiasco, gives a wink and a nod in the direction of the Special Prosecutor and goes about planning his trip to Latin America next week.

So what was supposed to be the story of the year, one that should have dominated the headlines and cable shows for weeks, instead ends up being a two day wonder that no amount of flogging by partisans can resurrect. But never let it be said that Majority Leader Harry Reid didn’t try. I can just see the lot of them, the Democratic leadership, sitting around glumly when all of a sudden, Harry Reid jumps to his feet and suggests that maybe they should go ahead with the media campaign as if Fitzgerald did in fact indict Rove, Cheney, the President’s dog and the White House chef. They could pretend that all their dreams had come true. Call on Rove to resign! Ask the President to “apologize to the American people!” And best of all, pretend for the umpteenth time that we are unaware of the fact that pre-war intel on Saddam’s WMD was not “twisted.”

And item number one on the to do list was to invoke Rule 21 and place the Senate in closed session. Whenever Democrats pull stunts like this, they remind me of 12 year old drama queens. In fact, there is much in the Democratic party that could be compared to a clique of little girls; they’re always jabbering about nothing, they value form over substance, and they don’t realize they should grow up and start acting like adults.

It appears that this tactic did in fact, not “work” quite as well as the Democratic staffer so wishfully uttered above. In fact, as the Powerline boys point out, if they want a debate about pre-war intel on the Iraq war, bring it on:

There is a great deal to be said on this subject, and most of it is already in the public domain. The fact is that the intelligence agencies’ official consensus estimate expressed a high level of confidence that Saddam possessed both chemical and biological weapons. The U.N. didn’t disagree, contrary to popular assumptions and Hans Blix’s revisionist history. As we have noted here before, the U.N.’s UNMOVIC reports emphasized the large quantities of banned materials for which Iraq had failed to account.

This is a big topic, as is the subject of Iraq’s many connections with al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. In my opinion, we should take up the Democrats’ challenge: most Americans know all too little about the threats posed by Saddam’s Iraq. Let’s talk about those threats from now until November 2006.

And as Max Boot pointed out in his LA Times piece yesterday, such a debate would unmask the real liar in the Plamegate matter - Joseph Wilson:

Making the best of a weak hand, Democrats argued that the case was not about petty-ante perjury but, as Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid put it, “about how the Bush White House manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to bolster its case for the war in Iraq and to discredit anyone who dared to challenge the president.” The problem here is that the one undisputed liar in this whole sordid affair doesn’t work for the administration. In his attempts to turn his wife into an antiwar martyr, Joseph C. Wilson IV has retailed more whoppers than Burger King.

Even Administration critics like former aide to Secretary of State Powell Lawrence Wilkerson acknowledge that the pre-war intel was wrong but not “twisted”:

…I can’t tell you why the French, the Germans, the Brits and us thought that most of the material, if not all of it, that we presented at the U.N. on 5 February 2003 was the truth. I can’t. I’ve wrestled with it. I don’t know – and people say, well, INR dissented. That’s a bunch of bull. INR (the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research) dissented that the nuclear program was up and running. That’s all INR dissented on. They were right there with the chems and the bios….

A losing strategy on the indictments. A losing strategy on scapegoating the Bush Administration on pre war intel. An apparent losing strategy on the Alito nomination as some of the more moderate Democrats like Ben Nelson are jumping ship and are refusing to back a Moveon-mandated filibuster.

Harry Reid is responsible for all of this. He has proven himself even dumber than his counterpart in the House Nancy Pelosi who also suffers from hoof in mouth disease but at least has the good fortune to have been born with breasts which immunizes her from most criticism in the party.

No such luck for Harry. The problem the Democrats have is that when you scan the list of potential replacements for Reid, you get the depressing feeling that you may be better off opening to any page in the DC Metro phone book, closing your eyes, and stabbing the page with your finger in order to choose the next Minority Leader. With the Democrats luck, they’d probably hit on one of the 2 dozen or so Republicans listed.

So the Democrats are stuck with Harry Reid for the foreseeablee future. I suspect after another electoral disaster in 2006, that the party will give Harry a gold watch, a pat on the back for a job well done, and send him off into the sunset. Who they’ll get to replace him is anyone’s guess. There’s always that phone book…

Calling all bloggers!

You have until tonight at 11:00 PM to get your entres in for this week’s Carnival of the Clueless.

Last week’s Carnival was the best yet with 24 entries from both the right and left side of the political spectrum hammering those individuals and groups among us who are truly clueless.

Here’s what we’re looking for:

Each week, I’ll be calling for posts that highlight the total stupidity of a public figure or organization – either left or right – that demonstrates that special kind of cluelessness that only someone’s mother could defend…and maybe not even their mothers!

Everyone knows what I’m talking about. Whether it’s the latest from Bill Maher or the Reverend Dobson, it doesn’t matter. I will post ALL ENTRIES REGARDLESS OF WHETHER I AGREE WITH THE SENTIMENTS EXPRESSED OR NOT..

You can enter by emailing me, leaving a link in the comments section, or by using the handy, easy to use form at Conservative Cat.