Right Wing Nut House

Sorry for the inconvenience. My site was down for about an hour and a half earlier today.

Every time it happens, I begin to wonder why liberals hate me so. Obviously, the down time is the result of a leftist conspiracy. And one of these days, I’m gonna prove it…

First, I’ll have to buy some more Reynolds aluminum. Liberals broke into my house and stole it all.

This article originally appears in The American Thinker

Welcome Rush Limbaugh listeners! Always an honor to have Rush give me a mention on his show. How about a little well deserved UN bashing? John Bolton is on the job and giving Kofi and his crew what for! See the latest here.

The first reaction that most Americans had to news that the Jordanian born terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi was killed in a precision bombing raid by the United States Air Force yesterday was one of elation mixed with a grim satisfaction that a huge obstacle to bringing peace and security to Iraq was permanently removed. It was one of those moments that has occurred so rarely in this war; a triumph of good over evil and a clear cut victory for the United States that all Americans should be thankful for.

Not so fast, say many on the left. Former Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich was one of the first to try and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory

Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich, Ohio Democrat, said Zarqawi was a small part of “a growing anti-American insurgency” and that it’s time to get out.

“We’re there for all the wrong reasons,” Mr. Kucinich said.

Although the initial reaction to the news by the Democratic party leadership was suitably positive- Senate Minority Leader Reid was particularly fulsome in his praise of the military - as the day went on, a curious thing happened; al Zarqawi shrank in size and importance until by about mid-afternoon, many on the left were asking the question “So where’s Osama?” This Reuters headline was echoed a thousand times on liberal websites and left wing talk radio shows: “Zarqawi found, but bin Laden still eludes US.”

That the media began to spin the story every which way from Sunday was no surprise. In any other context, their desperate attempts to deflect attention from the death of Zarqawi and put the emphasis on the unsuccessful hunt for bin Landen could be seen as a pitiful attempt at comedy, so riotously off kilter their killjoy attitude became by day’s end. It makes one wonder what kind of headlines they would have generated during World War II following the death of Hitler: “German Chancellor dead: No Effect on Quagmire in the Pacific Seen.”

In truth, it became de riguer on the left as the day went on to not only try and downplay the death of al Qaeda in Iraq’s most visible and violent terrorist but to actually posit the notion that the bloodthirsty jihadist was an invention of the US government, that he really wasn’t all that important a cog in the insurgency’s machine of death, and that the Bush Administration used him to try and connect Saddam Hussein to al Qaeda. The Huffington Post gave this theme a nice boost:

Well, for one thing, Zarqawi was an invented menace. Before the great “Iraq experiment” in democracy delivered not by necessity but by bullets and bombs (as well as WMD pretexts), Zarqawi was about as popular as Carrot Top. No one knew who he was, kind of like no one knows who else besides Kobe Bryant is on the Los Angeles Lakers. As terrorists go, he was what sportswriters might call a scrub. But once he got in the way of the Bush administration’s crusade on the banks of the Tigris, he quickly became public enemy number one. Or as Iraq’s prime minister Nuri al-Maliki explained, a “godfather” of terrorism.

Also particularly helpful in this effort was The Atlantic Online which published a curiously sympathetic profile of Zarqawi that had been in the works for weeks entitled “The Short, Violent Life of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi” , a typically earnest liberal effort to “humanize” the enemy while downplaying his significance in the insurgency. The 5,000 word article reminded one of similar efforts to “humanize” death row inmates in the United States by touring their hometown, talking to people who knew them when they were growing up, and trying to get at the “root causes” of their violent actions. The problem, of course, as with death row inmates, is that there are no “root causes” to the actions of people like Zarqawi. They are dead inside; empty husks of humanity without a glimmer of conscience or a flicker of compassion. They are sociopathic monsters who deserve the worst that we can do to them.

Generating sympathy for such a bloodthirsty killer was an admittedly daunting task which is why the press and the left then turned their attention to the notion of Zarqawi’s insignificance and the idea that he was a creation of the Bush Administration’s efforts to make al Qaeda seem more dangerous than it really is. In this, they were aided by the father of one of Zarqawi’s victims, Michael Berg whose son Nick was beheaded by the terrorist in 2004.

Mr. Berg, a genuine pacifist and liberal activist didn’t disappoint. He was widely quoted as comparing George Bush to Zarqawi saying “”His death will incite a new wave of revenge. George Bush and al-Zarqawi are two men who believe in revenge.” Berg is running for Congress on the Green Party ticket in Delaware and one could rightly question not his motives, but the motives of the press in seeking out his sure-fire anti-Bush response. I suppose this is what the press refers to as “balanced reporting.”

But in order to have balance, there have to be two sides presented. By the end of the day, there were two sides alright - the side that said that Bush was a monster and the side that presented the President as incompetent liar. The latter theme was helped along by a story circulated by NBC News that prior to the war, the Bush Administration “failed” to attack and kill the terrorist mastermind:

In June 2002, U.S. officials say intelligence had revealed that Zarqawi and members of al-Qaida had set up a weapons lab at Kirma, in northern Iraq, producing deadly ricin and cyanide.

The Pentagon quickly drafted plans to attack the camp with cruise missiles and airstrikes and sent it to the White House, where, according to U.S. government sources, the plan was debated to death in the National Security Council.

“Here we had targets, we had opportunities, we had a country willing to support casualties, or risk casualties after 9/11 and we still didn’t do it,” said Michael O’Hanlon, military analyst with the Brookings Institution.

The story points out that the military had drawn up strike plans 3 different times to take out Zarqawi’s lab but was blocked each time by a White House who believed that any military action would undercut their efforts to build a coalition to take out Saddam’s whole rotten regime.

Still spinning furiously, the left advanced the theory that Bush’s “rush to war” prevented us from killing Zarqawi in 2002. Leaving aside the notion that killing the terrorist at his lab would have been any more successful than President Clinton’s efforts to kill Osama Bin Laden by bombing his training camp in Afghanistan, one notices the flip-flop by the left immediately; if Saddam had no ties to terrorists, how is it possible that we “missed” anyone? And if he did indeed have ties to terrorist groups, doesn’t that justify the invasion and subsequent liberation of Iraq?

If I were you, I wouldn’t say any of that too loudly in the presence of a liberal. His head is likely to explode.

The clear message by day’s end was that the death of Zarqawi didn’t mean a tinker’s damn. Representative Pete Stark led the charge, calling the killing of the jihadist, in effect, a political ploy:

Some Democrats, breaking ranks from their leadership, today said the death of terrorist leader Abu Musab Zarqawi in Iraq was a stunt to divert attention from an unpopular and hopeless war.

“This is just to cover Bush’s [rear] so he doesn’t have to answer” for Iraqi civilians being killed by the U.S. military and his own sagging poll numbers, said Rep. Pete Stark, California Democrat. “Iraq is still a mess — get out.”

Stark and Kucinich evidently didn’t get the memo on how to react to the good news of al Zarqawi’s death. For in the end, the Democrat’s downplaying this victory could cost them dearly at the polls.

Just yesterday, an AP-Ipsos poll was released showing support for the war at an all time low. One wonders what that same poll might be saying now that the news of Zarqawis death has spread far and wide as well as the equally good news that the Iraqis have finally gotten their act together and finished forming a government by naming the Defense, and Interior Ministers as well as the chief National Security adviser. I daresay that the American people are a little more upbeat about our prospects for total victory in Iraq now that these two very important pieces are in place.

It won’t be a large bump in the President’s numbers, but it will probably be significant. And this, of course, what all the spinning and backtracking was about in the first place. Any rise in the President’s poll numbers will give the lie to the left’s talking points that Bush is finished. And with the Iraqis now ready to finally try and get a handle on the admittedly grim internal security situation, there is a very real chance that by November, significant improvements will be visible thus undercutting the Democratic critique of the war substantially.

What will the American people make of this effort to downplay such a significant victory? One would think that they would reward the Democrats for their loyalty by refusing to give them the responsibility for winning a war whose prospects for victory took such a large step forward yesterday.

Eleanor Roosevelt is turning over in her grave.

Mrs. Roosevelt chaired the first Human Rights Commission for the United Nations and was a strong influence in the writing and adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, one of the UN’s founding documents. Article 19 of that Declaration states:

Article 19.
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

One would think that such a right would be self evident to everyone. Well…almost everyone:

“The prevailing practice of seeking to use the U.N. almost by stealth as a diplomatic tool while failing to stand up for it against its domestic critics is simply not sustainable,” said the deputy, Mark Malloch Brown. “You will lose the U.N. one way or another.”

In a highly unusual instance of a United Nations official singling out an individual country for criticism, Mr. Malloch Brown said that although the United States was constructively engaged with the United Nations in many areas, the American public was shielded from knowledge of that by Washington’s tolerance of what he called “too much unchecked U.N.-bashing and stereotyping.”

“Much of the public discourse that reaches the U.S. heartland has been largely abandoned to its loudest detractors such as Rush Limbaugh and Fox News,” he said.

Richard A. Grenell, the spokesman for John R. Bolton, the United States ambassador, said Mr. Bolton had not had time to read the speech to react to it fully on Tuesday evening. “Mr. Malloch Brown did not extend to us the courtesy of a copy of the speech,” Mr. Grenell said. “We need to read it and will certainly have to respond.”

(HT: Michelle Malkin)

Just how, praytell, would Mr. Brown wish the United States government to “check” what he calls “U.N.-bashing and stereotyping.”

Well, there are those Haliburton built concentration camps out in Utah that were constructed to hold liberal dissenters. Maybe we could round up a few UN bashers and send them to live with the Mormons.

As Godlstein points out, UN Ambassador Bolton’s mustache was twitching furiously at this bit of jaw dropping lunacy:

John Bolton’s straight-talking mustache, “Regis,” reacts to complaints by UN deputy Secretary General Mark Malloch Brown that US criticism of the UN undermines the orgnanization’s mission:

Regis: “Yeah, whatever. Just so long as Brown remembers that when I pinch him on his ass, that means I want him to run and fetch me a sandwich and a Snapple. And none of that peach iced-tea sh*t like last time, either. Some of us still take our masculinity seriously.”

Meanwhile, the mustache’s other half was livid:

In a furious reaction, Bolton called the speech by UN chief Kofi Annnan’s deputy a “very grave mistake.”

“We are in the process of an enormous effort to achieve substantial reform at the United Nations,” he said. “To have the deputy secretary general criticize the United States in such a manner can only do great harm to the United nations.

“Even though the target of the speech was the United States, the victim, I fear, will be the United Nations,” he added. “Even worse was the condescending and patronizing tone about the American people. This was a criticism of the American people not the American government by an international civil servant.”

The US envoy to the UN said the only way “to mitigate the damage to the United Nations” was for Annan to “personally and publicly repudiate this speech at the earliest possible opportunity.”

How dare Mr. Bolton use such…such…UNDIPLOMATIC language! Doesn’t he know that the default position of the United States in these circumstances is bended knee subservience, mumbled apologia, and a promise not to let it happen again?

The UN is a vipers nest of vile anti-Americanism. Much of this has very little to do with our actual policies and more to do with pleasing the folks back home. What little good comes out of the United Nations - third world health issues, refugee assistance - is offset by its continuing irrelevancy in the face of true evil. The list is endless. The Balkans, Somalia, Congo, Darfur, and, its biggest failure in history, Rwanda.

As a supra-national aid agency, the UN functions just about as well as one would expect a gigantic bureaucracy could - just well enough not to allow too many people to die. But as an organization set up to keep the peace, negotiate disputes between member states, act as a watchdog to prevent rogue states from getting weapons that will kill millions - the UN is a total and complete failure, a danger to the continued existence of the United States and by extension, the western world. It should be downgraded considerably while regional security associations take on the task of peacekeeping. And as far as WMD, there has never been a state that sought them that failed to make them. With a record of abject failure like that, one would think that even a liberal would throw up their hands in disgust.

One would think that Brown’s remarks were approved by Kofi Annan. If not, Brown should be tossed from the top story of the UN building without a parachute. Or, failing that, Annan should fire his well-fed posterior and apologize profusely for suggesting that the United States government adopt the tactics of the dictators and thugs that the Secretary General likes to hobnob with on a regular basis.

Bolton has been working like a dog trying to reform some of the more egregious aspects of the UN. And he’s doing it the only way that the bureaucratic lickspittles at the UN can understand; by threatening to cut the purse strings:

The world body faces possible financial gridlock at the end of the month, when a 950-million dollar spending cap on a two-year 3.798 billion-dollar (3.2 billion-euro) UN budget agreed last December expires, if wealthy and developing countries fail to reach agreement on a package of management reforms proposed by Annan.

Washington has threatened to withdraw funding if the reforms are not adopted by then, and EU countries have said they will have to take another look at their contributions.

When even the Europeans might “take another look at their contributions,” you know that Bolton is dead serious about trying to reform the UN. And mostly what Bolton is proposing amounts to injecting a little accountability into the wildly unaccountable secretariat. No one knows how much money the SecGen spends to grease the wheels of diplomacy (and line the pockets of his friends and family). Getting a handle on that aspect of UN corruption would seem to be a good starting point.

The story yesterday from the BBC that reported on a “massacre” of Iraqi civilians in Ishaqi last March - a story that was covered extensively by the AP and the Middle Eastern media at the time - should be an object lesson for the press on what happens when they are used as a propaganda tool of the insurgents. Instead, we should brace ourselves for an avalanche of these recycled stories of “atrocities,” many of which were either embellished or created by the insurgents themselves.

Ishaqi appears to be such a case. The original reports were bloodcurdling. Up to 11 civilians were shot, execution style, by crazed US soldiers, as they landed on the roof of a house (apparently rappelling down from a helicopter), entered the premises, slaughtered the inhabitants including an infant and a 75 year old (or 90 year old depending on which story you’re reading) granny. After sating their bloodlust, the Americans then blew up the house and went back to barracks, probably to plan for the next day’s civilian slaughter and play with their PS2’s.

Except, it didn’t quite happen that way:

The U.S. military maintains there were four dead in the incident, including a guerrilla, two women and a child, and said they died after troops were fired upon from the house as they arrived to arrest an al Qaeda suspect.

[snip]

U.S. officials described a nighttime raid aimed at finding a specific guerrilla, who then fled the building but was later caught. Another guerrilla who fired from the building was killed in the raid, they said.

“When the assault force arrived, they took fire,” said one official. The U.S. troops then pulled back and called in air support from an AC-130 gunship, and U.S. forces then fired on the house, the official said.

Why the discrepancy? Because the Iraqi police didn’t show up until the next day (nor for that matter, did the AP photographer who captured the scene at the morgue in nearby Tikrit where the bodies were brought. Here’s a still from that AP footage:

And the AP report at the time said nothing about gunshot wounds to the civilians (no link):

Associated Press photographs showed the bodies of two men, five children and four other covered figures at the hospital accompanied by grieving relatives. The victims were covered in dust and bits of rubble.

One would think if there were gunshot wounds to the head, the AP reporter would not have hesitated to mention that damning fact.

So we are left with two versions of the story wildly at odds with each other. A couple of the major differences include the number of civilians killed and the kind of wounds suffered. Both the US military and the AP say that the civilians died when the house collapsed after the troops came under fire and called for air support. And I hardly think that our men would have called in an AC-130 gunship for assistance if the only fire coming from the house was from one person. While the civilians killed were innocent, it is pretty clear that the house was being used to shield at least two and probably more insurgents.

Where did the other 7 civilians come from? And what about those gunshot wounds? The military says they weren’t there in the immediate aftermath of the action but Iraqi police, who showed up in the morning, found 11 bullet riddled bodies.

Someone would have had to place those additional bodies in or near the rubble where the Iraq police could find them. Given the evidence and the circumstances, the entire episode smacks of an al Qaeda disinformation campaign that the BBC fell for whole hog.

And this is only the beginning. Biased BBC reports this morning:

About a quarter of the newsworthy events that took place in this troubled world on Friday night/ Saturday morning concerned crimes and alleged crimes by US soldiers in Iraq, according to Ceefax.
For those unfamiliar with Ceefax, the BBC’s teletext system displays about twenty-five pages of news stories each day, starting with the news summary on page 101.

Pages 125 has four sub pages on the alleged massacre at Ishaqi. When you get to the fourth page, if you are still awake, you discover the source of this video - a “hardline Sunni group.” These four pages make no reference to the news on page 107 that says US troops have been cleared of the same massacre. After suffering that annoying news on page 107, the ideal BBC reader can at least cheer himself up on page 108. It bears “new allegations” from a US deserter. Another massacre? No, someone in the army told him that in the event that he killed anyone he ought to put an assault rifle next to their body to cover it up. Page 117 tells us that one of the Abu Ghraib accused is not going to jail but will have to do hard labour at an army camp instead.

Expect their American cousins to follow up with recycled atrocity stories of their own as the media scrambles to fill their pages with Iraq massacre news between now and the time that the Haditha report is released (aside from printing the usual leaks and speculation). And then, there’s just the ordinary bias and usual exaggeration we get everyday from the media, highlighted here by Mudville Gazette:

You’ve likely seen it before, perhaps heard other references to this unprovoked attack business. But regardless of what happened, unless there was no bomb, unless Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas wasn’t really killed, unless Lance Cpl. James Crossan wasn’t really wounded, there was a provocation that the Marines responded too. To the best of my knowledge, no one disputes the IED attack that started this incident, and no one disputes that civilians were killed. It seems indisputable that the attack was indeed provoked - a point that’s actually a substantial factor in answering other questions regarding the ensuing events.

But quite clearly, according to this headline, the investigators say unprovoked.

As Greyhawk points out, the body of the article makes no mention of an “unprovoked” attack but rather quotes an “unjustified” attack which is what actually is being investigated.

There are literally dozens of stories out there waiting to be told, many of them outright fabrications by al Qaeda in Iraq or the insurgents. Would it be too much to ask that our press try their best not to recycle old stories that have either been disproved or for which there is precious little proof save the statements of “civilians” who may very well be spreading disinformation?

Given the mood they’re in, I doubt our media will look very carefully at these old stories. And the hell of it is, they appear to be more willing to accept the statements at face value of people who are either deliberately or unwittingly assisting the enemy while ferociously questioning anything their own country’s military says.

UPDATE

I agree with Michelle Malkin. Recycling old news stories and presenting them as something new is one thing. But this is a deliberate, calculated smear:

Look very carefully at the photo featured in the UK Times’s report from June 1, 2006 titled “Massacre Marines blinded by hate:” (big hat tip - Joe G.)

The terrorists did.

Unbelievable. Using a picture of civilians massacred by terrorists purporting to show the results of the Marine massacre at Haditha?

Michelle suggested we contact the BBC and protest. I say that this kind of thing demands stronger action. I suggest we send emails to Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon or Condi Rice at the State Department and have the government of the United States protest this outrage to the British government. The BBC is a state owned news organization and should be responsible to the British government for this kind of deliberate and base smear of the United States armed forces.

GENERAL JOHN A. LOGAN

This post originally appeared on May 30, 2005

Congressman John Logan was angry. His party, the Democrats, had just lost the election of 1860 to Abe Lincoln and the Republicans. But his opposition to the fire eaters of the South who were agitating for secession had incurred the wrath of men who just recently had called him a “son of the South.” In a speech on the floor of the House, Logan warned his Southern colleagues that if they persisted in their folly, the union would crush them. He returned to his district and gave a speech at Marion, Illinois that today is widely seen as helping keep that vital part of Illinois - “little Egypt” - loyal to the Union.

Resigning from Congress, he was one of a handful of Democratic lawmakers that fought on the Union side during the war. Most of these political officers were a disaster. Benjamin Butler, for instance, was a Massachusetts Democrat whose ineptitude as a soldier was surpassed only by his incompetence as an administrator. While overseeing the military occupation of New Orleans, Butler issued the infamous “General Order #28″ that stipulated that “any female shall, by word, gesture, or movement, insult or show contempt for any officer or soldier of the United States, she shall be regarded and held liable to be treated as a woman of the town plying her avocation.”

Other political generals were equally unfit for command and ended up costing thousands of lives because of their incompetent leadership. But not so John Logan.

Logan organized a regiment of volunteers and was named a Colonel. Immediately distinguishing himself on the field of battle, Logan made it his business to study the art of war. Attached to the Army of the Tennessee, General Grant recognized Logan’s leadership ability and promoted him to General. He played a key role in the victory at Raymond, Mississippi that cleared the way for Grant’s march to Vicksburg and eventual capture of that vital city.

When Grant moved North to take command of the Union armies, Sherman, who had nothing but disdain for political generals, took over the Army of the Tennessee. But after seeing Logan in action during the Battle of Atlanta, Sherman was impressed enough to give Logan command of the entire left wing of his army on its march to the sea. Again, Logan distinguished himself as he fought off whatever resistance the South could throw at Sherman as he devastated the countryside.

Popular with the men under his command, Logan was a rarity - a commander the men could trust. They sensed his concern for their welfare as Logan made it a habit of visiting the company mess to taste the food himself. If he found it inadequate, he’d dress down the company commander and order him to fix the situation. Usually it was something simple like changing cooks or cleaning the cooking pots once and a while. In addition, Logan made sure the men under his command were properly supplied with shoes, blankets, and other necessities that kept the men comfortable during winter months.

Logan’s concern for his men was evident after the war as well. Elected to Congress again in 1866, Logan took part in the first memorial day observance in Illinois. It’s thought that Logan became especially interested in the issue of a decoration day for the nation following a gesture by the women of Columbia, Mississippi who, during a remembrance for the dead, placed flowers on the graves of both Union and Southern soldiers. Logan had fought with Grant at the battle of Columbia and remembered well the hatred of civilians toward the Union Army. Horace Greeley wrote a famous editorial about the Columbian women and Francis Miles Finch wrote a beautiful poem for the Atlantic Monthly entitled “The Blue and the Grey.”

Logan’s popularity with the men paid off when he was named Commander in Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR). In 1868 he issued his famous general order that designated May 30th as Decoration Day “for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land.”

Because of Logan’s leadership, the GAR grew into the most influential voting bloc in the Republican party. For more than 30 years, no Republican could get the Presidential nomination without the support of the GAR. At it’s peak, more than 400,000 veterans of the civil war were members. Their presence during parades and remembrances of that war became a source of inspiration to an entire generation of American historians and writers.

Logan would go on and be elected Senator and even be nominated on the 1884 Democratic ticket for Vice President. He was a strong advocate of public education and served on the Committee for Military Affairs. When he died in 1886, he lay in state in the Rotunda of the Capitol. Thousands of tearful veterans filed past his coffin to pay their last respects to the man they nicknamed “Blackjack.”

Some historians have taken a less than charitable view of Logan’s motivations for initiating Decoration Day. They point out that Logan probably used the holiday to promote his own political career. His bid for the Senate in 1871 played up his role in boosting the holiday and he never failed to remind audiences of his service in that regard.

However, Logan also wrote a loving tribute to his men in a book that came out after his death entitled The Volunteer Soldier in America which was written partly in response to U.S. Grant’s autobiography that criticized the performance of volunteers during the war.

John Logan didn’t come up with the idea of Memorial Day. But his generous inclusion of Southern dead in his General Order authorizing Decoration Day was a magnanimous gesture that helped heal the wounds of that conflict and bring us together as a nation.

It might not be a bad idea this Memorial Day to take a page from our forefathers and recognize that those on the other side of the debate of the War in Iraq mourn our losses as well. For this one day, let us be united in recognition of the service these brave men performed and the fact that no matter what you believe, they have given that “last full measure of devotion” to a grateful nation.

UPDATE

My special friend Romeocat has a beautiful Memorial Day post filled with pictures of her recent trip to Washington, D.C. Special attention is paid to the World War II Memorial, an emotional place for her since her father served on Wake Island during the war.

A great Memorial Day A/V treat.

Given that my common law relations have been delayed a few hours (sparing yours truly the frightening prospect of having to interact with human beings less than 4 feet tall and of considerably less advanced years than me), here are a few more tidbits from my web journeys this morning.

“THE WORST BOOK OF 2005″

Leave it to R. Emmett Tyrell to do a real, first class deconstruction of Jimmy Carter. Giving him the J. Gordon Coogler Award for the worst book written in 2005, Tyrell slices, dices, and barbecues the ex-President as only he can:

Jimmy has actually published 20 books now. Probably he should have been made Coogler Laureate 20 times. The problem is, so vain is this insufferable huckster and so desperate has he become for notice that, as his presidency attracts ever more flies in history’s dustbin, he is increasingly likely to show up at our Coogler Awards ceremony — whether invited or not. There he would stand, clutching his Coogler to his bosom and sermonizing until the janitors turned out the lights. Worse, he might bring Rosalynn, an author in her own right.

Jimmy was the worst president in American history and, in personal terms, the most repellent. That last statement would have been implausible a year or so after he vacated the White House. Today, however, after a quarter-century of caddish behavior toward his successors, it is perfectly acceptable. His public criticisms of sitting presidents have been insulting and usually dishonest. He has oozed vitriol against America even while he was strutting on foreign soil. Before him no president criticized his government from foreign soil. Jimmy has repeatedly broken that rule.

In fact, no prior president has spoken as rudely and dishonestly of his successors or of his country as has Jimmy. The acerbic Harry Truman came to loathe President Dwight D. Eisenhower. In public, however, Harry minded his tongue.

Jimmy’s presidential achievements were even more modest than those of Bill Clinton and of Gerald Ford, and his blunders on domestic and foreign policy are unsurpassed and possibly unsurpassable. What is more he writes bad books.

Read the entire, hysterical piece.

REMEMBER…

Lori Byrd (blogging from her swanky new digs at Wizbang) is asking for links that highlight what Memorial Day should be all about. I will have a post Monday with some thoughts, but please go to Wizbang and leave a link to a news story or a blog post that you find particularly relevant.

NET NEUTRALITY MAKING PROGRESS

It appears that the bipartisan net neutrality coalition is making an impact.

The broad, nonpartisan movement for Internet freedom notched a major victory today, when a bipartisan majority of the House Judiciary Committee passed the “Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act of 2006″ — a bill that offers meaningful protections for Network Neutrality, “the First Amendment of the Internet.”

20 members of the Committee (6 Republicans and 14 Democrats) voted for the bipartisan Bill, and only 13 against.

This legislation has the support of many conservatives and liberals and is designed to keep large Telecoms from imposing a “two tiered” internet on the rest of us. For information on what this legislation does, go to Save The Internet.Com and read about it.

YES…BUT WHAT DOES FERDY THINK?

Without a doubt, the smartest feline on the internet is Ferdy the Cat. As a guardian of internet behavior, Ferdy celebrates the takedown of hackers and spammers wherever they ply their execrable trade.

This news story is something I would like to see more often. I want to see hackers getting arrested and spending long years in jail. I want to see these jail terms publicly announced over and over again. Every hacker should be seen as a disgusting little felon instead of a romantic warrior against The System.

Thank you for listening to this important message. We will resume our usual light-hearted fare as soon as Bruce finishes trying to get the new web development software at work to operate properly within the guidelines of the lab’s security system.

Sounds like Bruce is going to be busy for a while…

Ferdy will probably be doing a cat dance when he hears of this.

HAYDEN CONFIRMED AS CIA CHIEF

What about the big fight all the netnuts were promising over this nomination?

At his confirmation hearing, Hayden sought to assure lawmakers he would be independent from his military superiors but said he would consider how his uniform affects his relationship with CIA personnel. If it were to get in the way, he said, “I’ll make the right decision.”

Hayden, who headed the National Security Agency for several years, became a lightning rod for the debate about the Bush administration’s domestic eavesdropping program. Some Democrats and civil-liberties advocates argue the monitoring was illegal.

As head of the NSA from 1999 to 2005, Hayden oversaw the program. His defenders say he was relying on the advice of top government lawyers.

Hayden was confirmed by a vote of 78-15. And this points up the utter vacuousness of the left’s critique of all the NSA “surveillance” programs - the Democrats themselves are not saying that the programs are illegal and with very few exceptions, are not calling for these program’s termination.

Having said that, I have my own questions about how these programs have been run and I believe it would be in the interest of civil liberties if a full briefing on how these programs operate be given to the full House and Senate Intelligence Committees. I also am worried about proper oversight.

But to say the programs are, on their face, illegal is just plain stupid. Just another outgrowth of Bush Derangement Syndrome…

THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES

His Highness has been “tagged” and the questions he is forced to answer are revealing the pussycat beneath the warlike exterior:

4. Would you rather sleep with someone else, or alone?

Now, let’s be logical here: If I’m asleep, why would I care? That being said, it’s so much more fun going to bed knowing that there’s somebody you can make utterly miserable with your loud snoring.

13. Who was your first love?

A lovely, sweet little Korean girl that I had the worst crush on in 2nd grade. She must have loved me too. She didn’t slap me, call me a “pervert” or kick me in the groin, not once. Unfortunately, those were only three things on a rather long list of things that she most pointedly didn’t do.

19. What’s the one thing on your mind?

Avoiding ever reaching the point in my life where I have only one thing on my mind.

MEXICO GETS “VETO POWER” OVER BORDER ENFORCEMENT?

I’m not sure if this is something to worry about or if it’s just common courtesy:

(b) CONSULTATION REQUIREMENT.–Consultations between United States and Mexican authorities at the federal, state, and local levels concerning the construction of additional fencing and related border security structures along the United States-Mexico border shall be undertaken prior to commencing any new construction, in order to solicit the views of affected communities, lessen tensions and foster greater understanding and stronger cooperation on this and other important issues of mutual concern.

If this is indeed “consultation” I don’t think we have anything to worry about. However, given this Administration’s curious rollovers when it comes to pleasing Vicente Fox, I would follow any “consultations” like a hawk.

JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT WAS SAFE TO GO BACK TO BLOGGING…

Former FEC Commissioner Bradley Smith is raising additional warnings about blog regulation:

Now a contributor at RedState, Smith pointed readers to a new article that included what he saw as a foreboding quote from Rep. Tom Allen, D-Maine.

Allen “co-sponsored legislation in March that would bring political Web sites under campaign finance rules if they spend $5,000 or more on their operations,” the paper wrote. “He said he would watch how blogs factor into the 2006 races under the FEC rules before deciding whether to press the issue.”

Smith’s reaction: “We need to understand that these guys are relentlessly hostile to free, unfettered political speech. Every bit of freedom they see as a potential threat, and they are always ready to regulate as soon as they think the have the votes.”

Given John McCain’s recent comments made about bloggers at The New School commencement where he accused us of being little better than ideological hit beasts, I think we should take Mr. Smith’s warnings to heart. Once McCain’s candidacy gets underway, he knows that he will be skewered on a daily basis by conservatives and may seek to forestall criticism by putting some bloggers out of business.

GLOBAL WARMING DEBATE HEATING UP

I find myself in almost total agreement with the Commissar here:

I’m not sure what to make of the global warming debate. With the release of algore’s “Inconvenient Truths,” the discussion is front-and-center again. On the one side the many scientists and politicians who warn that human activities (CO2 emissions, for example) have added to global warming, that it is worsening, and that we must take steps to alleviate it; these are the “advocates.” On the other side — the skeptics, the rebutters.

The complex forecasting models used are beyond my understanding. About the only way for me to make sense of this debate is to look at the competing claims of the different sides, and see which seems more compelling, more objective.

So much of the information we get seems to be agenda driven - by both sides. I read Scientific American a lot because at least they give both sides a fair hearing. But read all of the Commissar’s post for some truly thoughtful analysis.

MISSING IRAQ WMD’S

Frontpage has an interesting colloquy between three “experts” who are convinced that IRAQ’s WMD was spirited off to Syria by Russian Spetznatz troops prior to the invasion:

Just recently, Saddam Hussein’s former southern regional commander, Gen. Al-Tikriti, gave the first videotaped testimony confirming that Iraq had WMDs up to the American invasion in 2003 and that Russia helped removed them prior to the war. His testimony confirms numerous other sources that have pointed to Russia’s secret alliance with Iraq and the co-ordinated moving of WMDs before the American liberation. Today we’ve invited three experts on this subject to discuss the details of Al-Tikriti’s testimony and its larger significance.

Color me unconvinced, although I would love to know what Russia was moving to Syria (and Lebanon) prior to the war. The preponderance of evidence to date suggests that Saddam was fooled into believing he had WMD when he didn’t. Until something a little more substantial emerges to counter that argument, I will remain a reluctant skeptic.

AL QAEDA’S “LONG WAR” SCENARIO

Rusty Shackleford has a superior piece about plans being made by al Qaeda for the long term conflict with the west:

At some point, al Qaeda realizes, it is not enough to simply weaken the will of the enemy. Readers should remember that the goal of terrorists is not to “terrorize”. Terrorism is a method, not a goal. Al Qaeda’s goal is the same goal as the Council on American Islamic Relations or the Muslim American Society–the imposition of Sharia law and the eventual restoration of the global Caliphate. What separates CAIR and MAS from al Qaeda is not the goal, but only the means to achieve it.

Read the whole thing.

Finally, many thanks to John Hawkins at Right Wing News for making The House “Website of the Day” yesterday.

With Zsu-Zsu’s kids and grandkids coming in this weekend, blogging will be intermittent, sparse, and probably incoherent. Or should I say, more so than usual…

Until next time, here are a few items that ordinarily I would have penned 1000 word screed on but don’t have the time to give them the justice they deserve:

ALBINOS RIDING THE IDENTITY POLITICS GRAVY TRAIN

Who says identity politics is ruining America?

It seems that The Da Vinci Code cannot not offend everyone on the planet; this time, it’s the albino community that is angry with the movie for depicting albinos as evil villians. Michael McGowan, the head of the National Organization for Albinism and Hypopigmentation, had asked the movie’s production people not to bleach Silas the albino monk’s hair or make his eyes red, but to no avail.

These guys ought to get in touch the CAIR for instruction in how to browbeat a major media company. And they definitely should take some lessons in how to practice the old grievance and guilt routine. They also need a little instruction in media relations as well as spokesperson identification. The trick is not to sound like you’re whining, just hurt and disappointed.

I have complete confidence that the Albino community will eventually “get it” and will join the ranks of aggrieved and suffering minorities very soon.

BUSH APOLOGIZES FOR SAYING “BRING IT ON”

And we all wondered why Bush never apologized for anything:

The significance of this shouldn’t go unnoticed. Bush has now admitted what the progressive blog community has said all along: Bush’s tough talk was wrongheaded and cost lives.

While contrition may be a media policy that works with our lapdog press (and judging from CNN’s first blush of commentary, it seems to be getting the desired result), America must now ask what this admission means. Does Bush take responsibility for the deaths generated by his admitted mistake? Does he accept the logical conclusion that his bluster resulted in the killing and maiming of hundreds if not thousands of US troops?

Considering that much of the insurgency was planned before Bush even took office, this is an interesting construct. Is the gentleman saying that Bush’s “bluster” killed Americans?

HOORAY! In a similar context, one might posit the opposite as well; THAT THE SIMPERING, DEFEATIST TALK ON THE LEFT ALSO EMBOLDENED THE INSURGENCY AND COST LIVES AS WELL!

In fact, since it seems clear that we are now settling on giving out responsibility for mistakes in Iraq, perhaps it is time for the left TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR PROLONGING THE CONFLICT BY GIVING THE INSURGENTS HOPE THAT THE LEFT’S AGITATION FOR CUTTING AND RUNNING FROM IRAQ WOULD HAND THE SUNNIS A VICTORY!

Somehow, I don’t think that Peter is quite willing to go that far, do you?

GEORGE GALLAWAY…NO WORDS

I think I’ll just let this stand with no comment:

In an interview with GQ magazine, the reporter asked him: “Would the assassination of, say, Tony Blair by a suicide bomber - if there were no other casualties - be justified as revenge for the war on Iraq?”

Mr Galloway replied: “Yes, it would be morally justified. I am not calling for it - but if it happened it would be of a wholly different moral order to the events of 7/7. It would be entirely logical and explicable. And morally equivalent to ordering the deaths of thousands of innocent people in Iraq - as Blair did.”

On second thought, this really does deserve some kind of response, although for the life of me, I can’t think of anything to say that doesn’t begin with a string of expletives and end with a call for Mr. Gallaway’s being in the dock for treason.

But I better not - too many liberals would take me to task for criticizing the bloke and that “speaking truth to power” like this is protected speech and therefore, perfectly righteous. A touch “over the top” perhaps, but that can be excused because George is…so, well passionate!

In other words, his heart is in the right place…

HOUSE REPUBLICANS PREPARE TO ABANDON THE SINKING SHIP

This news from my Chicago Tribune this morning is not unexpected. The House will engage in a “free flowing debate” on the Iraq War over the coming weeks.

The purpose is not to elicit support for the war. It will be to allow vulnerable Republicans the chance to jump ship:

The decision to hold a public debate on an issue that has sent President Bush’s approval ratings tumbling and put Democrats within striking distance of recapturing the House reflects the growing pressure facing Republicans from bad news about the war. GOP leaders hope the forum will give their endangered incumbents a chance to distance themselves from the war, argue that it is going better than most recognize, or both.

Wars and other military conflicts have long triggered sharp emotions in Congress, imperiling political careers and prompting public despondency as well as enthusiasm. With the winding down of the Vietnam War and revelations about the Watergate scandal, voters swept in a new freshman class with 92 members in 1974, roiling the usually staid House with an influx of largely liberal members.

Iraq is at a critical juncture. The next six months will see the new government trying for the first time to get a grip on the security situation. This is an extraordinarily complex task given the players involved and the stakes.

They must not only rely on the police and the military to fight the insurgency, they must also negotiate with the various sectarian militias who have infiltrated the police (heavily in some parts of the country) and army (not as much). They must also work to rid the corruption and graft from the ministries, establish themselves in the Arab world, and try and build confidence in the people in democratic institutions that will truly unite the country under one, central government.

And the Iraqis must do all of this just as we begin to draw down our forces. It is a challenge that would tax the abilities of even established states and I consider it a less than even chance that the new government will be up to the task without considerable American help.

But that help will not be forthcoming if Congress has any say in the matter. These debates will show the true depth to which Republican incumbents will sink as they try and split hairs about where they stand on the war and what the President must do for their continued support.

It will not be a pretty sight, I assure you.

This article originally appears in The American Thinker

One of the many eye-popping statements made by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in his letter to the President was a curious statement about 9/11 that has largely gone unnoticed by the press:

September eleven was not a simple operation. Could it be planned and executed without coordination with intelligence and security services – or their extensive infiltration? Of course this is just an educated guess. Why have the various
aspects of the attacks been kept secret? Why are we not told who botched their responsibilities? And, why aren’t those responsible and the guilty parties identified and put on trial?

The messianic Iranian President is actually hinting at a conspiracy involving government “intelligence and security services.” Which government he doesn’t say. But judging from statements made all over the world by characters as diverse as a former Bush Administration economist at the Department of Labor as well as a former German Defense Minister, the belief that the US government either had foreknowledge of 9/11 or directly participated in the events of that day.

Indeed, there’s nothing new about conspiracies surrounding the events of September 11, 2001. Within days of the attacks, Arab newspapers were discounting the mounting evidence which showed Osama Bin Laden responsible and were instead pointing darkly to a conspiracy involving the Israeli intelligence service Mossad and the CIA. This theory came complete with the rumor that no Jews died when the towers fell and that, in fact, the Israeli consulate called all the Jews who worked in the towers the night before the attack and told them to stay home from work the following day. A poll taken in Egypt a few months following the attack showed that only 19% believed al Qaeda was involved while 39% blamed Mossad. Other polls done in Arab countries show similar or even increased percentages of people who believe either Israeli or American intelligence (or both) perpetrated the attacks.

Then there is the case of the curious Frenchman Thierry Meyssan who wrote a bestselling book in Europe that posited the notion that 9/11 was some kind of “false-flag operation” - a type of intelligence campaign which, according to the tinfoil hat crowd, involves pulling off a covert action and blaming it on someone else. And what to make of the long running German TV murder mystery show that featured an episode that blamed George Bush and the CIA for the attacks?

In America, the conspiracy ball has been rolling quite nicely, thank you. Pushed along by Hollywood celebrities like Michael Moore and Charlie Sheen as well as a very large, very vocal segment of left wing internet blogs, the theories all seem to have a couple of things in common; that the government knew about the attacks prior to 9/11 and did nothing about them and that the “whole story” of what really happened that day is being withheld from the American people.

And those are the sanest elements contained in those theories. Recently, a movie has been sweeping the internet that includes every cockamamie theory of government involvement in the attacks that have bubbled up from the fever swamps over the last few years. Loose Change would have us believe that the official report compiled by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the American Society of Civil Engineers on why the Towers fell is utterly and completely wrong, that the reason the World Trade Center towers came down was because they were deliberately destroyed by government agents placing explosive charges at strategic points in the buildings and then detonating them in a controlled demolition.

The problem with debunking theories like those advanced in Loose Change as well as the numerous books and articles arguing for a conspiracy involving the US government, the CIA, secret societies, multi-national corporations, or the Bush family is one of time. It takes an enormous amount of time and effort to lay out the facts to refute these theories on a point by point basis.

Popular Mechanics published a piece in March of 2005 debunking many of the theories in Loose Change. And recently a website has been set up to specifically challenge statements and assertions in the film at odds with known facts. Another website “Debunking 9/11 Conspiracy Theories” has links to dozens of reports, articles, and studies that directly answer most of questions raised by conspiracy theorists about the attack.

But this is just a drop in the bucket. A Zogby poll from August, 2004 revealed that nearly 50% of New Yorkers believe that the government had advance knowledge of 9/11 and “consciously failed to act.” Clearly, there is much work to do if the truth about the real conspiracy involving Osama Bin Laden, al Qaeda, and the evil men who deliberately set out to execute a detailed plan to murder nearly 3,000 innocent Americans is to survive another generation.

This is the danger in not slapping down the fantasists, the paranoids, and the swaggering, self-important celebrities who promote 9/11 conspiracy theories for money, for attention, or because it’s the “in” thing to do; future generations will not understand who attacked us on 9/11 and why.

The recent release of the film United 93, which is enjoying modest success at the box office, shows that there is a hunger for the real story of what happened on 9/11 to be become part of our national narrative. Hollywood is uniquely suited to this task as films like U-93 allow us to revisit history without the concomitant shock of experiencing the event for the first time. Not only does folding the story into our history remove the event somewhat from the realm of politics, but it also allows for a kind of reflection and study that isn’t possible as long as the event is considered “news.”

Like other events that have loomed large in our past such as the Battle of the Alamo or the Battle of Little Bighorn, a fair amount of myth making will probably be passed down in the retelling of 9/11 stories. But the problem with 9/11 and all of the conspiracy theories being generated is that there is a real danger that myth will stand in for facts and the true nature of the evil done to America on that day will disappear down the rabbit hole. Will it be more important 50 years from now to remember the courage of the passengers of Flight #93 or will there still be debate about whether an Air Force jet shot her down?

The only comparable event to in recent history was the Kennedy assassination, an event almost as traumatic as 9/11 and one that has generated a $2 billion conspiracy industry of books, films, tapes, DVD’s, not to mention numerous seminars, forums, and a conspiracy museum where for $10 a head you can take a tour through some truly bizarre postulates concerning the assassination. The event itself, fading from memory, has been memorialized by Hollywood in one of the strangest, most intellectually dishonest films ever made; Oliver Stone’s JFK.

Stone’s skills as a film maker were used to combine a half dozen different conspiracy theories into one gigantic tissue of lies, half truths, misrepresentations of known facts, and a calumnious attack on President Johnson who was dead and hence, unable to defend himself. Stone’s main character was New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, whose out of control investigation and trial of New Orleans businessman Clay Shaw for the Kennedy assassination is one of the most bizarre chapters in the history of American jurisprudence. Garrison’s successor Harry Connick, Sr. called the Shaw probe “one of the grossest, most extreme miscarriages of justice in the annals of American judicial history.” The fact that Connick told this to Mr. Stone did not deter him from making his film. In fact, Garrison himself played Chief Justice Earl Warren in the film, a truly macabre touch by the filmmaker.

The damage done by Stone and the other conspiracy muckrakers is that they make little or no effort to give any context to their theories. Hence, they can portray history any way they wish. If they want to show that Kennedy was killed because he was going to bring American troops home from Southeast Asia or because he was going to cut the defense budget, they can get away with it because few people today have the critical thinking skills or historical knowledge necessary to question those base suppositions.

And the truly alarming fact that 70% of Americans under 30 years old believe that JFK gives a true representation of the facts surrounding the assassination points up the danger that conspiracy mongers like Stone can have on people’s attitudes toward history. What do these younger Americans think when they read something that contradicts Stone’s fantasy? It would be interesting to interview someone who takes Stone’s movie as gospel after having them read William Manchester’s masterpiece Death of the President.

One could envision similar problems with the generations born after 9/11. The horror and tragedy of that day could end up being subsumed by questions about whether or not the buildings were sabotaged, or whether the Pentagon was damaged by a truck bomb, or if the entire incident was one gigantic government conspiracy to ensure the re-election of George Bush.

We cannot let that happen. Considering that the War on Terror will probably be a generational conflict, we owe it to our children and grandchildren to keep what really happened on 9/11 from sliding away into the muck of conspiracy and fantasy. Otherwise, we run the risk of forgetting why we fight and why we must win this war.

UPDATE

Douglas Hanson follows up at AT with a slightly different angle on Ahmadinejad’s words and how there is a real threat from state-sponsored attacks on America.

After I wrote my review of the film United 93 this morning, I was pretty drained emotionally. In fact, I didn’t think there would be anything that would be able to pique my interest and motivate me to write about for the rest of the day.

Good thing I happened to run across Slate’s Dana Steven’s review of the same film. There’s nothing like reading full blown, to the max idiocy to get the blood pumping to my brain and get my fingers itching to do a little keyboard solo on someone who exhibits as much jaw-dropping cluelessness as Stevens.

If you are one of those who saw United 93 and are keenly disappointed that Director Greengrass failed to turn his project into a 90 minute brief to prove the incompetence and evil of the Bush Administration, you would think Ms Stevens a genius rather than the pouting philistine that she appears to be. In truth, Stevens review is illustrative of a view quite prevalent on the left that, in essence, boils down to this: Things would have been different if you know who had been President.

The convoluted reasoning behind this notion rests with the hypotheses that 1) 9/11 was Bush’s fault; 2) the situation was made worse by the incompetence of the President; and 3) the government worked much better the previous 8 years and the gaffes, goofs, confusion, and panic were solely the result of the government going to hell and a handbasket during the 8 months of the Bush Administration.

Oversimplification?

I hope I don’t sound like a cynic with a heart of lead when I say that United 93, as grueling as it was to sit through, left me feeling curiously unmoved and even slightly resentful. At some point, Greengrass’ exquisite delicacy and tact toward all sides—the surviving families, the baffled air-traffic controllers, even the hijackers themselves—began to smack of political pussyfooting. What is Greengrass actually trying to say about 9/11? That it was a terrible day on which innocent people suffered and died? That the chaos and shock of that morning’s events (skillfully evoked via hand-held camera and real-time pacing) kept anyone, even the air-traffic controllers who watched the hijackings unfold, from understanding what was going on until it was too late?

First of all, yes Dana you “sound like a cynic with a heart of lead” since you asked. And that “political pussyfooting” (nice touch including the hijackers although one gets the impression you have more sympathy for them than you do the controllers) which we take to mean the director’s reluctance to assign “blame” was, of course, the entire rationale for the film. Sorry you missed it.

As politicized as the 9/11 Commission eventually became in its public sessions, the final report had much to say about why the entire United States government froze up into one massive ball of ice. Much of it was institutional. Some of it, like FAA protocols for dealing with hijackings were hopelessly inadequate to deal with what happened on 9/11. From the report:

“In sum, the protocols in place on 9/11 for the FAA and NORAD to respond to a hijacking presumed that:

* the hijacked aircraft would be readily identifiable and would not attempt to disappear;
* there would be time to address the problem through the appropriate FAA and NORAD chains of command; and
* hijacking would take the traditional form: that is, it would not be a suicide hijacking designed to convert the aircraft into a guided missile.

On the morning of 9/11, the existing protocol was unsuited in every respect for what was about to happen.” (emphasis mine)

“In every respect” would seem to take in the alternative history scenario of Bill Clinton to the rescue although people like Stevens never seem to let such mundane details like, you know, actual facts get in the way of a good anti-Bush rant.

One might ask why government was so unprepared for the disaster but this would bring up some royally uncomfortable verities about the way the United States snoozed its way through the entire 1990’s (George Bush #41 included), something Stevens and her ilk have no stomach for doing. It is much easier to simply blame it all on Bush with any alternate telling of the myth akin to breaking a commandment (that is, if lefties believed in such things).

Stevens’ complaints don’t end there:

United 93 is no Schindler’s List, relying on characterization and storytelling to draw viewers into identifying with an otherwise unimaginable horror. If anything, Greengrass’ agenda is an anti-identificatory one. If the Spielberg of Schindler’s List is a wheedling seducer, Greengrass is a chillingly precise archivist. He never cuts away to the families of the Flight 93 passengers, arriving home to listen to their heart-rending voicemail messages. He never visits the inside of the three planes that did crash into buildings that day; we’re aware of their fate only through the words of the air-traffic controllers, some clips of CNN news coverage, and one terrifying stock shot of the plane hitting the second tower. He barely even names the passengers—an hour into the movie, I still hadn’t figured out which one was Todd Beamer—and makes a point of stressing their utter unspecialness, their glazed stares and dull in-flight chatter. The suspense, such as it is, is purely negative—we know in advance what will happen to Flight 93, so the maddeningly slow burn of the film’s first hour (Businessmen heft suitcases! Flight attendants chat about condiments!) serves only to torment us with the anxiety of the inevitable.

Note to Dana: MAKE YOUR OWN GODDAMN MOVIE ABOUT FLIGHT #93 IF THAT’S THE WAY YOU FEEL ABOUT IT!

There is nothing more annoying than a “woulda, shoulda, coulda” critic who doesn’t possess an ounce of talent to actually make a film themselves but who is more than willing to tell a director how he should have made his. The movie Stevens is proposing Greengrass make is so far removed from the director’s vision that it makes her pouty, foot stomping tirade about what’s missing from U-93 sound like someone running their fingernails across a blackboard. Absolutely hopeless.

It’s fair game to criticize a director for an unfulfilled vision or a lazy vision, or even for having no vision at all. But to actually posit the notion that a critic’s judgement on what vision the director should have had as legitimate criticism smacks of pure politics to me.

And if that doesn’t convince you of the political motivations of Steven’s disguised critique of U-93, try this:

In the last five years, “9/11″ has become a generic brand name for terrorism, its sky-high recognition quotient useful for ginning up support for any and all manner of belligerent causes. The closest this film ever comes to a political statement—and possibly the only laugh line in the movie—is the snappish question of a beleaguered official: “Do we have any communication with the president at all?” Greenglass may not want to come right out and say it, but the audience’s weary chuckle made it clear: As we slog into the fourth year of the war being waged in 9/11’s wake (and, at least in part, in its name), there’s still no satisfactory answer to that question.

Yes, “9/11″ (the quote marks are a nice touch - as if only a few deluded souls care about it in any context at all) is very useful for “ginning up support” for “belligerent causes” - kinda like war except you and the other misanthropes on the left don’t really believe in that kind of nonsense. To you and your ideological brethren, what happened that day was more about skewering Bush than anything untoward that happened to the United States. It’s sickening.

As far as the “joke” about communications with the President, here’s more from the 9/11 Commission:

The NMCC learned of United 93’s hijacking at about 10:03.At this time the FAA had no contact with the military at the level of national command. The NMCC learned about United 93 from the White House. It, in turn, was informed by the Secret Service’s contacts with the FAA.225

NORAD had no information either. At 10:07, its representative on the air threat conference call stated that NORAD had “no indication of a hijack heading to DC at this time.”226

Repeatedly between 10:14 and 10:19, a lieutenant colonel at the White House relayed to the NMCC that the Vice President had confirmed fighters were cleared to engage inbound aircraft if they could verify that the aircraft was hijacked.227

The commander of NORAD, General Ralph Eberhart, was en route to the NORAD operations center in Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, when the shootdown order was communicated on the air threat conference call. He told us that by the time he arrived, the order had already been passed down NORAD’s chain of command.228

It is not clear how the shootdown order was communicated within NORAD. But we know that at 10:31, General Larry Arnold instructed his staff to broadcast the following over a NORAD instant messaging system: “10:31 Vice president has cleared to us to intercept tracks of interest and shoot them down if they do not respond per [General Arnold].”229

More inconvenient facts regarding what was happening in the government that day. The answer to the question “Do we have any communication with the President at all?” was a resounding yes. The coordination between NORAD and the FAA was, as shown earlier, entirely inadequate to deal with the situation. The audience chuckling is much more indicative of the success that Stevens and others have had in perpetrating the myth of Bush incompetence that day than what really happened, something that Greengrass wasn’t interested in portraying anyway.

Yes we should be upset with our government for the way 9/11 was handled. It was incompetent. It was negligent. It was without question a disaster. But the exact same thing would have happened regardless of who was President. To say otherwise isn’t speculative, it’s a deliberate falsification of what we know from history.

If Stevens didn’t like U-93 that is her right. But to turn a movie review into a diatribe against the Bush Administration only makes her look like an idiot who doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

While the film United 93 has opened to generally good reviews, there appears to be some pouting among many critics that there was no “cathartic moment” of release and that the film offers viewers little more than a “thrill ride” with little in the way of context or judgement.

It is the nature of criticism to find fault although some critics fall so in love with the sound of their own cynical, scratchy voice that their critiques are little more than lame attempts at being contrary. Critics by and large are also a notoriously jaded lot and films that purport to show something as emotionally charged as September 11 almost by definition fail to live up to their expectations.

That said, here are a scattering of reviews from several different sources.

BRIAN LOWRY IN VARIETY

Taut, visceral and predictably gut-wrenching, “United 93,” Paul GreengrassPaul Greengrass’ already much-debated look at Sept. 11, trades in some emotional impact for authenticity, capturing the overwhelming sense of chaos surrounding that day’s harrowing events. The result is a tense, documentary-style drama that methodically builds a sense of dread despite the preordained outcome. While media attention has focused on reaction to the movie’s trailer, strong ratings for earlier Flight 93 TV projects suggest there will be considerable curiosity, morbid or otherwise, about “United 93″ that should translate into robust box office.

KIRK HONEYCUTT,< em> HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

In years to come, United 93 may enter our mythology in ways unimaginable. But for now, we have a starting point. “United 93″ is a sincere attempt to pull together the known facts and guesses at the emotional truths as best anyone can. Then, in the movie’s final moments, the impact of the heroism aboard United 93 becomes startlingly clear.

MANOHLA DARGIS, NEW YORK TIMES

In its vivid details and especially its narrative pacing, the account of the United 93 hijacking in the 9/11 report reads like a nail-biter, something cooked up by Sebastian Junger. Drawing on different sources, including the report and family members, Mr. Greengrass follows the same trajectory as the report, with most of the screen time devoted to the period between takeoff and the excruciating moments before the plane crashed. The film carries the standard caution that it is “a creative work based on fact,” yet Mr. Greengrass’s use of nonfiction tropes, like the jagged camerawork and the rushed, overlapping shards of naturalistic dialogue, invests his storytelling with a visceral, combat-zone verisimilitude. And yet at the same time, beat for beat, the whole thing plays out very much according to the Hollywood playbook.

LISA SCHWARZBAUM, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

Movies are the perfect medium for this exercise in gratitude — they always have been, with the screen so big and the audience so huddled together. And the world has never felt more precarious, or the distinctions between the lucky and the unlucky more tenuous, than they did on the day the World Trade Center fell, the Pentagon was attacked, and one Boeing 757 crashed near Shanksville, Pa., diverted by doomed passengers who died yanking control away from their captors’ hands.

DAVID ANSEN, NEWSWEEK

“United 93″ is a memorial built of shattering, indelible images. This is first-rate, visceral filmmaking, no question: taut, watchful, free of false histrionics, as observant of the fear in the young terrorists’ eyes as the hysteria in the passenger cabin, and smart enough to know this material doesn’t need to be sensationalized or sentimentalized. Wisely, Greengrass has avoided casting recognizable faces, and many of the flight controllers are played by the people who were actually on the job that day, including FAA national operations officer Ben Sliney. Though you know the outcome, you can’t help hoping (as you would at any thriller) that things will turn out differently, that the military will intervene, that the president will be found, that someone will define the rules of engagement.

ANN HORNADAY, WASHINGTON POST

Ambivalence seems to be a painfully inadequate, mewling response to the courage of United 93’s passengers who, according to Hemingway’s definition of the term, acted not in fearlessness but despite their fear. This is a film that demands a different vocabulary, one that conveys both misgivings about our need for these fetishistic cinematic rituals, and admiration for the discipline and dignity with which an artist has brought the incomprehensible into lucid and uncompromising focus.

“United 93″ is a great movie, and I hated every minute of it.

RON ROSENBAUM, SLATE.COM

But is the fable of Flight 93 the recompense that it’s been built up to be? Does what happened on Flight 93 represent a triumph of the human spirit, a microcosmic model and portent of the ultimate victory of enlightenment civilization over theocratic savagery, as the prerelease publicity about the new film insists? Or is the story of United Flight 93 a different kind of portent, not “the DNA of our times,” but rather the RIP?