Due to some internet connectivity issues (the fault of Comcast), I am not going to post anything original today.

I would like some comments on whether or not you think we should close the Guantanamo Detention Center in light of both the UN report and the recent National Journal cover story on who is really being held there.

Probably Monday, I’ll let everyone know what I think – if you haven’t guessed already.

Meanwhile, enjoy some oldies but goodies from the archives:

Al Gore in Sweden

Your own Personal Disaster Relief Associate

What does a snowstorm in Chicago have to do with Katrina?

“Race, Class, and Baloney in the Big Easy”

Star Trek’s “Scotty’s” death on the anniversary of the moon landing

Most of us who have an abiding interest in politics can point to an event, or an issue, or even a person that galvanized our souls and turned us on to both the entertaining theatrics and passionate, heartfelt by-play that makes the inner workings of our democracy such a marvelous spectator sport.

For me, it may surprise you to learn that it was not a Republican or a conservative that first piqued my interest in politics but rather a liberal Democrat. Hubert H. Humphrey was a smallish man but his energy, humor, quick wit, and sunny disposition made him seem larger than life.

The 1964 Democratic Convention was my first real introduction to politics as I came to know and love it. At the age of 10, I was already reading the great political columnist Mike Royko whose hilarious insights into the less than honest workings of Mayor Richard J. Daley’s Chicago political machine was the stuff of legend. But the convention that year would be my first lesson in politics as theater, a drama played out on a national stage with heroes, villains, and colorful personalities galore. Without a doubt, the most outsized personality on display during the convention was that of the Senator from Minnesota and putative Vice Presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey.

There was tremendous drama at that convention. Not in who was going to be the nominee but on the convention floor. Mississippi’s all-white delegation was having their credentials to be seated challenged by a rival delegation made up of both blacks and whites. It was the Old Guard against the New South and the issue of Mississippi’s credentials was roiling the entire convention. In American politics, there are times when it is too painful or divisive to talk about an issue directly. Instead, we surround the problem and obscure its true nature by dealing with the atmospherics of it in such a way that we can debate the issue without tearing ourselves apart.

Such was the situation with the Mississippi Democratic Freedom Party as the insurgents called themselves. The overarching issue was voting rights for African Americans. But the convention chose to address it by debating which delegation had a right to sit on the floor.

In the end, a compromise was reached allowing for representatives from several rival Mississippi delegations to be seated. And in a historic decision that was to have unseen consequences, the national Democratic party committed itself to requiring all delegations be integrated for future party gatherings. The left would take this decision and in later years, make the Democratic party a vessel for identity politics by requiring specific percentages of not just African Americans, but women, homosexuals, and every other minority group who could wangle seats from the party’s leadership.

All that lay in the future. In 1964, with the death of President Kennedy still fresh in everyone’s mind and Viet Nam a barely discernible blip on the nation’s radar, the question to be answered following the credentials fight was who would President Johnson name as his running mate? Humphrey was the front runner but there were rumblings from the delegates who thought that either Bobby Kennedy or Sargent Shriver, Kennedy’s brother-in-law, should get the second spot.

Johnson, who could be cruel and vindictive, had decided on Humphrey weeks before the convention but left the Minnesota Senator dangling uncomfortably all week. He then called Humphrey into his presence and grilled the Senator unmercifully about his private life. Humphrey emerged from the meeting shaking with anger at the treatment Johnson had meted out but within hours was his old, sunny self backslapping his way from delegation to delegation and treating people to his own special brand of oratory.

Humphrey had earned the sobriquet “The Happy Warrior” thanks to one of the more principled and decent stands ever taken by an American politician. At the 1948 Democratic Convention, Humphrey, at that time the Mayor of Minneapolis, was instrumental in ramming through a civil rights plank in the party platform that caused Lester Maddux, Strom Thurmond, and other southerners to walk out of the convention. The “Dixiecrats” would run Thurmond for President that year but it is Humphrey who is remembered and honored. His speech in support of the plank, considered one of the greatest political speeches ever, was a clarion call for fairness and decency:

To those who say that this civil rights program is an infringement on states’ rights, I say this, that the time has arrived in America for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadows of states’ rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.”

Just three years prior to that speech, Humphrey had led the effort to unite the old Minnesota Farm-Labor party with the national Democrats to form the Democratic Farm Labor Party (DFL), one of the most active and influential state parties in American history. The impact of both the DFL’s policy positions and its personalities on the American political scene through the 1980’s was astonishing.

They were in the forefront of civil rights issues, the environment, arms control, food stamps, and a host of other social issues long before most national Democrats dared to talk about them. Except Hubert Humphrey who rarely needed an excuse to give a political speech. Humphrey loved the DFL with a passion and to his dying day sought to keep the party vibrantly engaged on issues important to liberal Democrats.

It was his acceptance speech at the 1964 convention that held me mesmerized and inspired my lifelong love of politics. To get an idea of what it was like think of Zell Miller’s speech at the Republican Convention last year and multiply the intensity by a factor of 10. Humphrey absolutely skewered Barry Goldwater. In a sing-song style that was both rousing and entertaining, Humphrey attacked Goldwater by ticking off a list of Great Society programs that moderate Republicans had voted for, always ending with the refrain “but not Senator Barry Goldwater!” After two or three examples, the entire convention picked up the refrain and would scream with one voice on cue “but not Senator Barry Goldwater” and roar with laughter and applause. It was electrifying. And it was great political theater.

But there was no malice in Humphrey’s words. Humphrey respected Goldwater and, in later years, developed a good working relationship with the Arizona Senator – as many old liberal Democrats did when their party kept moving ever leftwards, ever more defeatist on foreign policy issues especially with regards to the Soviet Union and Communism.

Humphrey was a gentleman, a patriot, a dedicated public servant, and great legislator. We may look upon many of his ideas today as wrong headed. But his advocacy for those less fortunate among us was heartfelt and genuine. If he failed to see the consequences of creating a welfare state, a culture of dependency, and other nightmares that have come about as a result of a government grown too large, it was not out of a desire for personal power. He was a humble man who was motivated to do good. If that be a sin, then would that there were 534 transgressors just like him in Congress today.

What would Humphrey think of his creation, the DFL today? Considering the fact that today’s incarnation of the party of Humphrey, Mondale, and Wellstone is asking its members to help deny American veterans of the Iraq war their rights guaranteed under the Constitution to free speech, I daresay that the Happy Warrior is weeping in his grave. Herre’s DFL Chairman Brian Melendez in an email message to members:

I’ve heard from many of you that you are disturbed by the misleading “Midwest Heroes” ads produced by Progress for America Voter Fund that are currently being run by KARE 11 and WCCO. The ads erroneously make a connection between Iraq and the 9/11 terrorists attacks and suggest that the war in Iraq will prevent an attack by Al Queda in America.

[...]

Right now, our state is a testing ground for these ads. If Minnesota speaks out and says no to this ad, the entire country can thank us. What we do here, now, will have an enormous impact on the success or failure of this kind of swiftboating in 06.

The Progress for America ads feature soldiers and their families talking about the war in a personal way, asking Americans to continue to support the mission until it’s completed. The problem, according to Chairman Melendez, is that he and the DFL disagree with the sentiments expressed in the ad:

DFL Party Chairman Brian Melendez called a news conference to call the ad “un-American, untruthful and a lie.”

“Minnesota has a chance to take a stand against this misleading and untruthful propaganda,” he said. Referring to controversial ads that ran during the last presidential race, he said, “Minnesota TV stations should pull this ad and send a message that we will not tolerate this kind of ‘swift-boating’ anymore.”

To call the opinions expressed by soldiers and their families propaganda is ridiculous on its face. If Mr. Melendez can prove that the people featured in the ad aren’t real or are not really expressing their true feelings, then he may have a case. But no one has stepped forward to offer any proof of that nor can they. It is simply a blatant attempt to silence a point of view the DFL doesn’t agree with, something Hubert Humphrey would have squelched before it got out of whatever committee meeting this idiotic idea was hatched.

John Hinderaker adds this:

So now soldiers who support the war they fought in are “un-American.” Unbelievable. And, by the way, does anyone have any idea what “Swiftboating” is supposed to mean? Is that when a veteran says something that liberals disagree with? Is it when a serviceman publicly describes events that he participated in and witnessed with his own eyes? I’m not sure just what the criteria are, but it seems clear that only veterans and servicemen can be guilty of the dreaded crime of “Swiftboating.”

Read the rest of the Powerline piece as John and the guys work over their favorite target, Nick Coleman, for his outrageous claims about the Progress for America ad.

Although a conservative, I always admired Hubert Humphrey and the DFL. They both represented what is best in American politics; strong, heartfelt principles, decency, and a concern for their communities and the country at large. You could strenuously disagree with their ideas. But you would be hard pressed to criticize their sincerity or their love of country.

Considering what the DFL has turned into in the last 10 years or so – a tired echo of the national Democratic party with little in the way of principle or original ideas – I would think that it would be unrecognizable to Senator Humphrey and the small band of reformers who, in the face of overwhelming opposition, stood up for the equality of the black man so many years ago and pricked the conscience of an entire nation.

UPDATE

Powerline has more today on the PFA ad issue.

And my friend Thomas Lifson at The American Thinker goes me one better on Humphrey – his parents were active in the DFL and they actually knew HHH. Tom gives some wonderful thoughts of his own on a man who I am discovering today inspired a whole helluva lot of conservatives to become interested in politics.

The votes are in from this week’s Watchers Council and the winner in the Council category is AJ Strata’s “2006 Democrat Contract With Al Qaeda.” Finishing second was Shrinkwrapped’s take on Hollywood “The Academy Awards, Pan-Sexuality, Narcissism, & Loneliness.”

Coming out on top in the Non Council catgegory was The Anchoress for “Wellstoning the King Funeral.”

If you’d like to participate in the weekly Watcher’s Council vote, go here and follow instructions.

When I first heard of the existence of the Saddam Tapes, I was mildly interested. After all, from a purely academic point of view, it would be fascinating to listen to the dictator and try and discover how his mind worked. Saddam is surely one of the most destructive leaders that lived during the 20th century. Not quite in the Hitler/Stalin/Mao class but rather more of a second tier thug, easily as evil as Idi Amin or Slobodon Milosivec.

But when John Loftus, the organizer of this weekend’s “Intelligence Summit” came out and said that there was a “smoking gun” in these tapes that proved the existence of WMD in Iraq prior to our invasion, I was skeptical. I remembered from the Duelfer Report that close aides to Saddam had routinely lied to the dictator about his own WMD program so any conversations about WMD on the tapes would have to be listened to bearing that in mind.

And I also had to consider the source himself. Yesterday, I said that Loftus was considered a “gadfly” by the intelligence establishment. As it turns out, I was being too kind by half. Here’s Byron York on Loftus:

I first encountered his name in the fall of 2003, when I was working on a story about Bush hatred. I was looking at the people who claim that the Bush family got its wealth from financing the Nazis, and I discovered that one of the sacred texts of that particular worldview is a book, The Secret War Against the Jews, by the authors Mark Aarons and…John Loftus. In 1995, when the book appeared, Anti-Defamation League director Abraham Foxman, who can reasonably be counted on to speak out against people who financed the Nazis, called it “so exaggerated, so scantily documented, so overwrought and convoluted in its presentation, that Loftus and Aarons render laughable their claim to offer ‘a glimpse of the world as it really is.’”

A curious gent, this Loftus fellow. It seems also that he is absolutely convinced of a connection between the Enron scandal and…(wait for it) 9/11:

In the article, Loftus reports that the now-defunct energy company had a contract with the Taliban to build a pipeline, and that Vice President Dick Cheney, determined to help out Enron, forbade U.S. intelligence sources from investigating the Enron/Taliban/al Qaeda connection in the months leading up to the September 11 terrorist attacks. After outlining this somewhat Fahrenheit 9/11-like theory, Loftus concludes, “The Enron cover-up confirms that 9/11 was not an intelligence failure or a law enforcement failure (at least not entirely). Instead, it was a foreign policy failure of the highest order. If Congress ever combines its Enron investigation with 9/11, Cheney’s whole house of cards will collapse.”

Does his kookiness rule out the possibility that there might be something valuable on the Saddam tapes? Not necessarily, although for the sake of credibility, one needs to look not only at the message, but the messenger as well.

And in this case, the messenger – the person with actual possession of the tapes – was a former weapons inspector, former translator at Gitmo, and a confessed spy named Bill Tierney.

Actually, Tierney was spying for us while working for UNSCOM which is OK by me but probably didn’t sit well with those fairminded, impartial countries like Libya and France. The problem with Mr. Tierney – depending on who you talk to – is that he is either a certifiable wacko or someone who likes to exaggerate things a little. Taking him at his word is hazardous to the truth.

In 2003, in the immediate aftermath of the Iraq invasion he told Sean Hannity:

“In addition, Tierney said that he has told our government where Hussein has hidden an underground uranium plant. “I can drive there with my eyes shut.”

Also in 2003, Tierney appeared on George Noory’s Coast to Coast radio show and made some startling admissions:

Bill Tierney, a former weapons inspector who worked with UNSCOM in Iraq in the late 1990s, was the guest for the first two hours of Friday night’s show. He believes that Iraq has nuclear capability and the intention to use such weapons. Further, Tierney claims that he has pinpointed a hidden location in Iraq (map here) where there is a uranium enriching processing facility. “You can’t put an underground chamber on the back of a truck,” Tierney said, indicating that if an inspection were made in this suggested area, the Iraqis would not be able to haul off the evidence.

Tierney’s methods of ascertaining this location were rather unconventional. “I would ask God and just get a sense if something was valid or not, and then know if I needed to pursue it,” he said. His assessments through prayer were then confirmed to him by a friend’s clairvoyant dream, where he was able to find the location on a map. “Everything she said lined up. This place meets the criteria,” Tierney said of a power generator plant near the Tigris River that he believes is actually a cover for a secret uranium facility.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is not the way one should go about trying to ascertain whether Saddam Hussein had WMD. It may be a good way to divine a well or fortell the future. But when it comes to “smoking guns” about WMD, I’d trust Michael Moore before I trusted this guy.

An indication of just how loony this whole business with the tapes and the “Intelligence Summit” has gotten is that two top intelligence professionals and dedicated public servants – James Woolsey and John Deutch – have resigned from participation in the event. It seems that there are some very shady characters behind the scenes. Mr. York:

Now, the Sun reports that Woolsey and Deutch resigned from Loftus’ group because of their concern over “new information they received regarding one of the summit’s biggest donors, Michael Cherney, an Israeli citizen who has been denied a visa to enter America because of his alleged ties to the Russian mafia.”

Does any of this matter as to the legitimacy of the tapes? Not really, although according to ABC News, the tapes were taken from the FBI where presumably Mr. Tierney was translating them. As for their impact, Lori Byrd has it about right:

If the tapes are authentic, the discussion of efforts to deceive the inspectors and to be ready to quickly resume WMD production is huge news, but it obviously will not be reported that way. As I said yesterday, it is going to take a heck of a lot to convince the media, and those on the left, that Bush didn’t lie about Saddam’s WMD. Scratch that. They already know he didn’t lie about it. It will take a heck of a lot to convince them to admit that Bush didn’t lie about it.

We already knew there were chemical weapon precursors on site with the artillery shells to deliver them. The fact that they weren’t assembled was the reason given for not listing them as “stockpiled” WMD. Be that as it may, Lori has a good point. The tapes confirm once and for all that Saddam was a threat. Given the left’s eagerness toward lifting sanctions on the dictator’s regime in 2000, it would only have been a matter of time before he had his labs of death up and running again.

There are still nearly two million documents and tapes that our government, for whatever reason, has refused to look at in any meaningful way. The historical value of those documents alone is astonishing, a priceless glimpse into one of the 20th century’s most organized criminal regimes. While it is doubtful the whole truth of Saddam’s WMD’s will ever come out, those documents and tapes can answer other questions that are just as valuable in aiding our understanding of the organized terror and calculated evil that was Saddam and his regime.

UPDATE 2/17

Add to the list of distinuished Americans who have pulled out of the “Intelligence Summit” Debbie Schlussel who has some additional shocking information about John Loftus.

My House was down for almost 7 hours this morning.

It’s a long boring story about server crashes and transfers here, there, and everywhere. And whole lot of frustration, anger, gnashing of teeth, and throwing things.

I was barely able to save my American Thinker post this morning and had to finish it up on my Notebook.

The hosting company has made arrangements that satisfactorily compensate us for the downtime.

I hope some lefty troll comes by or I see some rot thrown up by a liberal about the Saddam tapes. I’m in a rather combative mood today.

Don’t cross me…

This article originally appears in The American Thinker

There is a new line of attack on Republicans undertaken by the liberal netroots that has the online “Reality Based Community” nodding their heads in agreement and patting themselves on the back for being so very clever.

It’s a variation on the theme that all Bush supporters are unthinking automatons who blindly follow the President no matter where he leads and any opposition to “Dear Leader” is criticized as coming from leftist traitors. The variation being that Bush supporters have no ideology, they’re not conservatives themselves in any real sense, and that it therefore become easy to equate opposition to the President with a kind of apostasy that would be familiar to supporters of the Spanish Inquisition.

Having come under attack several times myself from the right and had my conservative manhood questioned on a host of issues, this theme is one that I feel more than competent in addressing. Because at bottom, this is an argument that reveals one of the major differences between the Republican and Democratic parties; in the intraparty struggles to determine which ideas are ascendant, Republicans are the only ones arguing among themselves.

Conservative critics of the President certainly have a lot to complain about and one could write a book cataloging the Administration’s Crimes against the Right. The litany of deviation by the Administration is as familiar to most conservatives as the Baltimore Catechism was to me and my classmates in my youth. Mortal sins against sound fiscal policy. A slothful prosecution of the War on Terror. An indolent and wasteful reconstruction effort in Iraq. A gluttonous new prescription drug plan. And a prideful approach to judicial nominees, although the President’s last two picks for the Supreme Court have redeemed his efforts somewhat.

But beyond that, criticizing the President is bound to draw considerable fire from the right. A case in point is conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan whose daily writings now appear on the Time Magazine website. Sullivan was at one time one of the most eloquent defenders of our liberation of Iraq. But following the release of the first batch of Abu Ghraib photos (and some would say Bush’s support for the anti-gay marriage amendment) Sullivan turned against the President with a ferocity that was startling in its intensity.

The reaction on the right was predictable. Sullivan was called every name in the book and then some. He has even been tarred with the moniker “liberal” for his echoing Democratic talking points on the war. Some questioned his sanity. And that was before he endorsed John Kerry for President.

Clearly Mr. Sullivan has major disagreements with the Administration. But is Andrew Sullivan still a conservative?

I support almost all of Bush’s tax cuts (I support the estate tax) but also believe in balanced budgets and spending restraint (heretic!); I oppose affirmative action; I oppose hate crime laws; I respect John Kerry’s military service; I believe all abortion is morally wrong and that Roe vs Wade was dreadful constitutional law (but I do favor legal first trimester abortions); I support states’ rights, especially in social policy, such as marriage; I oppose the expansion of the welfare state, as in the Medicare prescription drug plan; I supported John Roberts’ nomination and Sam Alito’s; I believe in a firm separation of religion and politics.

Sullivan’s protestation that he is still a conservative rings true. His major sin then appears to be that he is not a good Republican. Or is he? As far as I know, Mr. Sullivan never claimed to be a “party man.” His principled opposition to the war then is based on an independent view of the President and his policies.

His many and vociferous critics are not all hero worshipping Bush minions. Many are harsh critics of the President themselves. To say that Sullivan’s substantive critics have no ideology is absurd and reflects a superficiality and shallowness of thought that seems endemic on the left these days. The broad brush strokes used to paint those who criticize Bush critics as simpletons does not reflect the spirited debate going on in conservative circles about both the nature of conservatism and how its tenets can be applied to governing a 21st century industrialized democracy at war.

Those arguments have no parallel on the left. Their debates deal with tactics, not ideology. The left took care of its rebels a long time ago, consigning them to the outer reaches and making it clear that orthodoxy was more important than ideas.

Of course, there is a certain amount of party discipline that needs to be enforced when talking about the fate of Bush critics. With a fanatical opposition that hates the very name of the President coupled with a rabidly hostile press corps, any major deviation from the party line is likely to result in wails of betrayal by the party faithful. My own experience with going against the grain has taught me that for the most part, these criticisms can be ignored simply because they are the product of emotionalism. There are far more conservatives who respect and appreciate other points of view – even if they disagree vehemently – than there are blind partisans. For instance, no one that I know would ever accuse Pat Buchanan of being a liberal even though he is one of the Administration’s harshest critics. Buchanan and the so-called paleo-conservatives have been marginalized not because they are Bush critics but because they are out of step with the rest of the conservative movement.

Then there is the case of former Reagan Administration domestic policy aid Bruce Bartlett whose forthcoming book on the Bush Administration entitled Impostor: Why George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy.” is sure to be a big hit on the liberal cocktail circuit. Bartlett was once senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, a research group based in Dallas. In an interview with Elizabeth Bumiller of the New York Times, Bartlett avers that he was fired from the Institute because his outspoken criticism of Bush made it difficult for the think tank to raise money from Republican donors.

Bartlett insists he’s still a Republican despite calling Mr. Bush a “pretend conservative” among other things. He believes that like Richard Nixon, Bush uses the right to pursue a decidedly unconservative agenda. There are some conservatives who would agree with that assessment although no one doubts the President’s heartfelt devotion to social issues that are near and dear to the hearts of many conservatives.

That said, Bartlett is complaining because no conservative think tank will hire him. Is this an example of slavish Bush supporters marching in lockstep to deny an Administration critic a livelihood simply because he criticized “Dear Leader?”

Posh! Bartlett refers to himself as “radioactive” since he began to voice his criticisms of Bush. There is a difference between criticizing Bartlett’s ideas and not doling out one’s hard earned cash to anyone who would employ him. I’m sure Mr. Bartlett is still a good Republican and conservative. But for anyone who would hire him, he would certainly poison the well as far as contributors were concerned. In the marketplace of ideas, Bartlett is running into the reality that his thoughts aren’t very popular among conservatives. Why this should be a surprise to him is puzzling.

When all is said and done, the Republican critics of the President come in all shapes and sizes with some attacking him from the right and others, like Senator Chuck Hagel, coming at Bush from the left. To try and argue that these critics aren’t for the most part still Republicans or have changed their conservative beliefs is wrong. For myself, as someone who voted for Ronald Reagan three times, carefully writing in his name in 1976, to call me anything but a loyal Republican and true blue conservative would be laughable.

Which is what most liberal critiques of Republicans end up as anyway.

This week’s Carnival of the Clueless has been cancelled.

I realize what a disappointment this is to many of you, especially the bloggers who so generously contribute their posts. However, after working on this week’s Carnival for more than 2 hours, clicking on “Save,” and then watching as all that work disappeared into the ether when my site went down for the second time today was just a little too much to bear.

The Carnival of the Clueless will reappear at its regularly scheduled time next week. That is to say, it might appear Monday, more likely Tuesday, and maybe even Wednesday.

UPDATE:

Just received a long email from my hosting company apologizing for the down time today. They’re moving me to another server because they say the problem is due to “a suspected bug discovered in the current build of MYSQL that is running on our dual processor servers.”

Yadayadayada…Fat lot of good that does me. This is the third time I’ve lost a post. I guess I gotta start learning to “Save” my stuff more often.

From Thomas Lifson at The American Thinker, we hear the news that the “Saddam Tapes” which were scheduled to be unveiled at the Intelligence Summit this weekend will instead air tonight on ABC’s Nightline.

The tapes, which have been verified by the House Intelligence Committee, are said to contain conversations between Sadaam and his top aides well into the year 2000 talking about hiding WMD, attacking Washington, and other topics of interest. Drudge just broke the story and we have this that just popped up on the CNS News Service website:

(CNSNews.com) – Secret audiotapes of Saddam Hussein discussing ways to attack America with weapons of mass destruction will be the subject of an ABC “Nightline” program Wednesday night, a former federal prosecutor told Cybercast News Service.

The tapes are being called the “smoking gun” of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq. The New York Sun reported that the tapes have been authenticated and currently are being reviewed by the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

The panel’s chairman, Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), declined to give the Sun details of the content or context of the recordings, saying only that they were provided to his committee by former federal prosecutor John Loftus.

Loftus has been tight-lipped about the tapes, telling the Sun only that he received them from a “former American military intelligence analyst.” However, on Wednesday he told Cybercast News Service, “Saddam’s tapes confirm he had active CW [chemical weapons] and BW [biological weapons] programs that were hidden from the UN.”

First of all, a word of caution is in order.

The Duelfer report made clear that interviews with dozens of Saddam loyalists revealed that his top aides routinely lied to the dictator about having WMD. However, this could be a cover story by the aides who could have worked one up prior to the invasion. Or, it could be the truth. It could very well be that Saddam was talking about WMD he didn’t have.

That said, the program should give us a fascinating glimpse into the mind of one of the most brutal dictators in history.

Another aspect of this story that should give us pause is that the tapes come to us via a man named John Loftus. Loftus is known as something of a gadfly in intelligence circles and his book about the Nazi connection to the Vatican and American intelligence has been criticized for sloppy research. That said, Loftus really has nothing to gain from trying to perpetrate a fraud and the House Intelligence Committee felt them important enough to verify and examine.

Will the tapes change any minds? Not very likely. They may cause a flurry of “I told you so’s” on the right and “it doesn’t matter’s” on the left. But beyond that, the MSM could be sitting on a 155mm binary nerve gas shell and still insist it needed more proof of Iraq WMD.

UPDATE

Hah!

Lori Byrd beats the rush so to speak and issues a statement proclaiming her belief that there were WMD in Iraq all along. She’s got the links to prove it, too!

UPDATE II

Mr. Lifson is on a roll today:

Slowly, very slowly, we are beginning to discover what happened to the WMDs of Saddam. The left and the antique media have made it an article of faith that there never were any WMDs, and that “Bush lied.” So deep is their investment in a political position premised on this conclusion that they will pay no attention to contrary evidence.

Via Peter Glover’s website Wires from the bunker, we learn of an interview between Ali Ibrahim al-Tikriti, a southern regional commander for Saddam Hussein’s Fedayeen militia in the late 1980s and a personal friend of the dictator and Ryan Mauro of Worldthreats.com.

Only two weeks ago, General Sada, formerly Sadaam’s no 2 Air Force Commander, told the New York Sun that Sadaam’s WMD was moved to Syria just six weeks before the US-led invasion. Now Ali Ibrahim confirms this and explains the underlying strategy of Saddam.

Read the whole thing for a pretty plausible explanation. The important thing is, Mr. Ibrahim confirms what Mr. Sada said 3 weeks ago about WMD being flown out of the country to Syria.

So what does all this mean?

As I said in the post, this is not likely to change many minds about whether or not the Iraq war was worth it. And failing Syria coming out and admitting that Saddam shipped his WMD’s prior to the invasion to Damascus, it’s not likely that the “WMD to Syria” story will get much play in the MSM.

In the end, the more evidence that emerges that Bush wasn’t lying about WMD, the more the media and the Democrats will play down the story. A sad commentary on the times.

UPDATE III

Goldstein weighs in with his usual perspicacity:

What will be most interesting to watch is the amount of the coverage this receives. I suspect the next stage of legacy media denial will come in the form of, “because ‘intel agencies’ and other unnamed sources have expressed no clear consensus about what these tapes signify, we are simply being circumspect about our reporting.”
Of course, had somebody suspected Dick Cheney of keeping a flask of whiskey in his hunting vest, that would be a different story entirely…*

Yep.

And Jeff also has a blurb from the Newsweek Disaster Tag Team of Isikoff and Hosenball who inform us that 1) this is old news. 2) it’s not really important. 3) intelligence professionals aren’t impressed.

I find that last assertion laughable. There is no group in the United States of America with more of a vested, vital interest in our not being able to find any Iraq WMD’s than our so-called intelligence professionals.

Entire careers are at stake here. To believe anything about Iraq WMD’s coming from that crew is loony.

UPDATE IV

I just heard excerpts of the tapes. Nothing conclusive. Nothing earth shattering. Saddam was a thug who wanted WMD. We knew that. Did he have any at the time we invaded? Yes. Massive stockpiles? Probably not. Enough that he would have moved them to Syria? Unknown.

Does it matter anymore in a political sense? Not to me. Taking out Saddam was the logical next step in the War on Terror.

Representative Hoekstra of the House Intelligence Committee reminds us there are still nearly two million pages of documents from this thug’s regime. If history is any experience, it’s best we get to reading that stuff.

The West German Goverment requested we return all the documents that fell into our hands at the end of World War II in 1953. How long before the new Iraq government does the same?

The site was down for about an hour due to unknown server issues.

Since many of the blogs that use my hosting company are conservative political blogs who have published the Mohammed cartoons, I certainly hope that the server was not subjected to some kind of denial of service attack.

Then again, I may be paranoid and will start to see 6 foot tall rabbits who wear bowler hats and are dressed in tuxedos.

I’ll let you know…

I swore I wasn’t going to publish any of the Mohammed cartoons on this website, mostly out of respect for the religion itself but also because I didn’t really see the need.

If one were to examine every word I’ve written about the Cartoon Jihad, they would find an uncompromising support for freedom of speech. I never criticized anyone’s right to publish them. And where I originally believed that as a matter of empathizing with people who experienced pain at the thought of the prophet being mocked, I have since been enlightened as the so-called moderates shamelessly began to use the controversy for their own ends by using publicity surrounding the violence as a way to draw attention to their own concerns.

But I still had no intention of publishing these cartoons. Until today.

There is a group of Muslim hackers who have declared war on websites that have dared show the offending cartoons. They have attacked more than 1800 Danish websites alone, defacing them with their barely literate scrawl.

And now…they’re coming after us.

One of the on-line leaders in the movement to show solidarity with the Danes and other newspapers around the world who have dared to show the cartoons has been Michelle Malkin. Last Tuesday Mrs. Malkin was subjected to a foreign based denial of service attack. And last night, her hosting company passed along some disturbing news:

Last night, my hosting service notified me that it is receiving ongoing threats from individuals vowing to take down this site—and others along with it—which will presumably continue until I take down the cartoons. For now, we are on guard and continuing with business as usual. But you should know there’s something much wider and deeper going on.

Go to Michelle’s site and read up on the effort of these cyber jihadists and ask yourself; Can I afford to sit on the sidelines any longer? There is a time and a place for everything. This is a time for outright defiance. It is a time for solidarity not just with Malkin but with every blogger, right or left, and every website that publishes these cartoons. This has gone way beyond any kind of cultural sensitivity issue or respect for the belief of others. It is now our beliefs that are under attack and we simply must defend them.

So I proudly join those who feature these cartoons on their websites. A little late to the party perhaps. But I promise not to be a wallflower.