Right Wing Nut House

Still unable to come to grips with differences over who should run the security establishment, the Iraqi government has failed again to reach an agreement on ministers for interior, security and defense thus prolonging a government crisis that has gone on too long and only serves to add to the chaos in the streets:

Although a new Iraqi cabinet under the secular Shia Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki took office last month after months of negotiation and deal making, three critical ministries have not yet been filled, Interior, Security, and Defense. On June 1st, al-Maliki announced that he would name candidates for the three posts this coming Sunday, June 4th. Naturally, that didn’t happen, and rumors have been flying for some time as to who will get what, as well as the religious and ethnic profiles of the possible candidates.
For minister of defense, currently held ad interim by Salam al-Zouba’i, the rumor mills have focused on several possible candidates:

@ Maj. Gen. Nabil Khalil al-Said, a native of Mosul, who currently runs a bureau in the Ministry of Defense.

@ Nuri al-Dulemi, a former general currently living in the UAE

@ Baraa Najeeb al-Rubaie, a former brigadier general who had been a critic of Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, and suffered the consequences of being right. In 1991 he fled Iraq and joined Iyad Allawi’s anti-Saddam organization.

@ General Abdul Qader, currently commander of Iraq’s ground forces..

@ Thamer Sultan al-Tikriti, a retired general who was imprisoned under the old regime and whose brother was executed by Saddam Hussein.

All of the candidates have apparently had interviews with President Jalal Talabani, the Prime Minister, and other senior officials, including, apparently, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad. Most of their military careers were spent serving in Saddam Hussein’s army, but all appear to have been sufficiently professional and apolitical enough to satisfy the demands of deBaathification. In keeping with the need to provide religious and ethnic balance, all of them are secular Sunni Moslems, and al-Tikriti has the added advantage of coming from Saddam Hussein’s home province.

For Minister of the Interior, the rumors have been focused on Nasser Daham Fahad Al Amri, a retired Shi’ite Army officer, apparently regarded in American circles as the best bet, as well as Mowaffak al-Rubaie, who had been national security adviser, and Tawfeeq al-Yassir, a former brigadier general during the Saddam Hussein era who served in the transitional government’s security.

It is apparent that the basic concept of democratic give and take is requiring a learning curve that the Iraqi government can’t afford at this point. By failing to agree on these vital ministry appointments, militias continue to work outside the police and army while rag-tag gangs of thugs carry out atrocities on a daily basis:

GUNMEN have dragged 24 people, mostly teenage students, from their vehicles and shot them dead in the latest wave of violence in Iraq.

As Iraqi leaders appeared deadlocked overnight on naming new interior and defence ministers seen as critical to restoring stability, the relentless killings continued.
Police said gunmen manning a makeshift checkpoint near Udhaim, 120km north of Baghdad, stopped cars approaching the small town and killed the passengers.

The victims included youths of around 15 and 16 years old, who were on their way to the bigger regional town of Baquba for end of term exams, and also elderly men, they said.

“(The attackers) dragged them one by one from their cars and executed them,” said a police official

No one wants us to succeed in Iraq more than I do. But for some of us to continue saying “All is Well” while atrocities like this take place all over the Sunni triangle, while Kurds in the north are being pressed by Shias to give up control of oil rich areas, and while Shia’s in the south are carving out their own areas of influence independent of Baghdad, it’s time to start applying the screws to the Iraqi government regardless of any backlash that might arise as a result of our meddling and start knocking some heads together.

We have 130,000 troops in Iraq. If the government of Iraq is not serious about resolving its problems - and taking their time naming vital ministers is a pretty good indication that they are not serious enough - then we should make it clear to Prime Minister al Maliki that one of our options is to wave goodbye and not let the door hit us in the behind when we leave. Despite their overheated rhetoric, neither the Shias or the Sunnis can afford to have the United States leave at this point. They know it. We know it. And al Maliki knows his chances of surviving a month after the Americans leave are pretty close to zero.

The result would be the “Lebanonization” of Iraq:

Iraqis, appalled at the continuing violence by Sunni Arabs, often invoke the memory of Lebanon, which fell into civil war in 1975, and did not emerge from that conflict until 1990. The parallels are striking, and depressing. Like Iraq, Lebanon was cobbled together by a colonial power, in this case France, after the Ottoman Turk empire fell in 1918. France wanted to establish an Arab nation where Arab Christians would be a majority. That was not possible, but Lebanon was about half Christian (the rest being Sunni, Shia, Druze and a few smaller Islamic sects). Alas, the Christians also came in many sects (some Orthodox, some recognized the power of the pope in Rome), some of whom did get along with other Christians. There was also antagonism between the Sunnis, Shia and Druze. However, the Lebanese were a very entrepreneurial and commercial community, and there were many new opportunities with the Turks gone. It all sort of worked, until the appearance of a Palestinian refugee community in the 1950s and 60s. This became a major source of trouble after 1971, when Jordan expelled its radical Palestinians, and drove most of them into Lebanon. Now some Moslem Lebanese insisted that they were the majority (which they probably were) and that the traditional power sharing agreement with Christians should be revised. The Palestinians, who, according to all Lebanese, were a bunch of foreign refugees, wanted to use Lebanon as a base for launching attacks on Israel, took sides, several actually, during the ensuring civil war.

The catalyst for violence are the numerous militias. Some of these militias are clan based. Others owe their loyalty to one religious figure or another like Muqtada al Sadr’s Mehdi Army. Some Sunni militias are little better than criminal gangs, kidnapping middle class Iraqis and holding them for modest ransoms in order to fund their activities. These activities include the wanton slaughter of innocent Shias. And along with similar gangs of Shia thugs, the two sides have been murdering up to 70 civilians a day and caused more than 100,000 people to flee their traditional homes in mixed Sunni-Shia neighborhoods and either leave the country or move to “safe” areas where their co-religionists are in the majority.

This is what the people of Iraq are fearing - a militia dominated society where the government is helpless in the face of so many guns in the hands of irresponsible elements. It would be Lebanon without Syrian and Israeli interference which could make things even bloodier. If the US could play upon this fear by threatening to leave them all to their own devices, the situation could be turned around, especially if the new government could reign in the activities of the major militias like al Sadr’s group and the larger, more aggressive Badr Brigades in the south.

As for the gangs with guns, this is mainly a law enforcement problem and, with some help from the US and the Iraqi Army, the criminal element could be neutralized fairly quickly.

The violence is killing hope in Iraq. And until people feel safe enough to live fairly normal lives, they are not going to plan for the future nor will they have much confidence in the democratic process. It all starts with the Iraqi government. Until they can organize their own house, they are not going to be able to control the country as a whole.

I can’t begin to tell you all how overwhelmed with gratitude I am for the support so many of you have shown by donating to this website.

The response was astounding. I honestly didn’t know what to expect when I asked for donations. The dozens of you who responded so generously have allowed me a little breathing room in the bills department while building up some funds for the redesign of the site that I am planning for later this summer.

I have emailed my thanks to many of you and will try to send out more today. If I miss you somehow, please accept my personal thanks for showing your support.

As we head into this summer of discontent, where our enemies overseas and here at home will be redoubling their efforts to defeat the United States in Iraq and elsewhere, it is going to be up to all of us who care what happens to this country to stand firm and not allow the faint of heart, the misguided, and the “useful idiots” to triumph. To prevent that catastrophe, we must all stand together in solidarity with our troops and the Commander in Chief. I have a feeling he’s going to need our help now more than ever.

In closing, a poem of thanks by one of my favorite poets, Walt Whitman:

Thanks in old age–thanks ere I go,
For health, the midday sun, the impalpable air–for life, mere life,
For precious ever-lingering memories, (of you my mother dear–you, father–you, brothers, sisters, friends,)
For all my days–not those of peace alone–the days of war the same,
For gentle words, caresses, gifts from foreign lands,
For shelter, wine and meat–for sweet appreciation,
(You distant, dim unknown–or young or old–countless, unspecified,
readers belov’d,
We never met, and neer shall meet–and yet our souls embrace, long,
close and long;)
For beings, groups, love, deeds, words, books–for colors, forms,
For all the brave strong men–devoted, hardy men–who’ve forward
sprung in freedom’s help, all years, all lands
For braver, stronger, more devoted men–(a special laurel ere I go,
to life’s war’s chosen ones,
The cannoneers of song and thought–the great artillerists–the
foremost leaders, captains of the soul:)
As soldier from an ended war return’d–As traveler out of myriads,
to the long procession retrospective,
Thanks–joyful thanks!–a soldier’s, traveler’s thanks.

**NOTE: THIS POST WILL REMAIN ON TOP UNTIL MONDAY MORNING**

This is the second in a series of humiliating requests that you send me some of your hard earned money.

Just because I’m nominally a Republican, doesn’t mean I’m rich. In fact, Zsu Zsu and I are people of modest means with decidedly unextravagant tastes. However, I crave the encouragement that a huge response to this bleg can bring. I promise to spend it wisely - most likely on a site redesign and some other improvements. Or, I may piss it all away on a wild night of drinking and carousing (except I don’t drink and I consider it a “wild night” in my advancing years if I can manage to stay up past 10:00 PM).

So if you like what you see on this site and wish to show your appreciation for all the thought provoking essays and analysis you find here, please drop a few pennies in the bucket.

I’ve added a PayPal button if you wish to donate using your PayPal account:

Thanking you in advance for your continued kindness and generosity, I remain,

Rick Moran
Proprietor

Well, not literally.

Bush has been blamed for most of the world’s ills over the past five years. He has been blamed for tsunamis, earthquakes, tornadoes, obesity, a rise in global temperatures, and the pimple on Duncan Black’s posterior.

But I never thought I’d see the day when anyone would accuse the President of the United States of facilitating a sexual encounter between a man and a woman (Well, not literally):

The conservative politics of the Bush administration forced me to have an abortion I didn’t want. Well, not literally, but let me explain.

I am a 42-year-old happily married mother of two elementary-schoolers. My husband and I both work, and like many couples, we’re starved for time together. One Thursday evening this past March, we managed to snag some rare couple time and, in a sudden rush of passion, I failed to insert my diaphragm.

It seems when learning about the birds and the bees, none of us were ever told that a woman could also get pregnant simply by listening to “Rush” Limbaugh.

Well, not literally

Thanks to said “rush of passion” - during which time all the higher functions of the human brain cease and our gray matter reverts to the primordial medulla oblongata thus forcing people to think like a crocodile - our correspondent knew she was in trouble.

The next morning, after getting my kids off to school, I called my ob/gyn to get a prescription for Plan B, the emergency contraceptive pill that can prevent a pregnancy — but only if taken within 72 hours of intercourse.

[snip]

The receptionist, however, informed me that my doctor did not prescribe Plan B. No reason given. Neither did my internist. The midwifery practice I had used could prescribe it, but not over the phone, and there were no more open appointments for the day. The weekend — and the end of the 72-hour window — was approaching.

But I needed to meet my kids’ school bus and, as I was pretty much out of options — short of soliciting random Virginia doctors out of the phone book — I figured I’d take my chances and hope for the best. After all, I’m 42. Isn’t it likely my eggs are overripe, anyway? I thought so, especially since my best friend from college has been experiencing agonizing infertility problems at this age.

Weeks later, the two drugstore pregnancy tests I took told a different story. Positive. I couldn’t believe it.

Here is where I actually sympathize with the woman. I’m not exactly sure where I come down on this issue but my gut tells me that if a doctor will not prescribe the needed medication due to his personal moral or religious beliefs, he should do everything in his power to see that his patient has access to that medication through another doctor. And this doctor failed to do that and, in my opinion, failed his patient.

But whatever sympathy I felt for the writer disappeared after reading this:

I felt sick. Although I’ve always been in favor of abortion rights, this was a choice I had hoped never to have to make myself. When I realized the seriousness of my predicament, I became angry. I knew that Plan B, which could have prevented it, was supposed to have been available over the counter by now. But I also remembered hearing that conservative politics have held up its approval.

Actually, one man held up approval of the drug; former FDA chief Lester Crawford, who took over the approval process when he believed that insufficient safeguards were in place to keep children under 17 from purchasing the drug. Talk about politics, it was pro-choice commissioners who were railroading the drug through the process for political reasons, satisfying their constituencies.

Pot, meet kettle. And this is an outright falsehood:

Apparently, one of the concerns is that ready availability of Plan B could lead teenage girls to have premarital sex. Yet this concern — valid or not — wound up penalizing an over-the-hill married woman for having sex with her husband. Talk about the law of unintended consequences.

That’s a Planned Parenthood talking point, echoing conservative Christian groups NOT anyone at the FDA. For the writer to include this was pure spin, an attempt to smear Crawford whose concerns overrode the eagerness of the pro choice advocates to push the drug on the market. The matter is now in litigation as a civil suit was filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights against the FDA.

And “penalizing” someone for having sex? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I realize we live in a time when taking responsibility for one’s actions is so…so…bourgeois - so “common” - but one would think that the most personal of all human activities could somehow resist the call of modernity to place the blame for human reproduction on someone or something else.

Sex has consequences. Even an atheist like me knows that. And one of those consequences is that despite all the pills, mechanical devices, jellies, latex, and the #1 safeguard against pregnancy - good intentions - those wriggly little devils will find a way to make it to the egg if at all possible. This is the fact of life, not “rushes of passion” or any other pitiful excuse for resisting what by any stretch of the imagination is the one human endeavor where both parties alone are responsible for the result of their actions.

But our correspondent doesn’t stop there. Not content with blaming “conservative politics” (despite her assurance at the beginning of the article that she wasn’t “literally” doing so) for her predicament, she then brings her dim bulb of a brain to bear on the intersection of religion and politics:

Although I had heard of pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control on religious grounds, I was dumbfounded to find that doctors could do the same thing.

Moreover, they aren’t even required to tell the patient why they won’t provide the drug. Nor do they have to provide a list of alternative sources. I had asked the ob-gyn’s receptionist if politics was the reason the doctor wouldn’t prescribe Plan B for me.

In other words, the religious or moral beliefs of the doctor are simply a matter of “politics.” What isn’t said is that only liberals’ political beliefs can have moral underpinnings. If a conservative follows their moral compass, it can be chalked up to “politics” only and thus delegitmized.

What a crock.

After relating how hard a time she had getting an abortion - something I wish wasn’t so but at the same time, like Bill Clinton, devoutly wish to see abortion a rarity in our society - She then lets loose with this eye popper:

It was a decision I am sorry I had to make. It was awful, painful, sickening. But I feel that this administration gave me practically no choice but to have an unwanted abortion because the way it has politicized religion made it well-nigh impossible for me to get emergency contraception that would have prevented the pregnancy in the first place.

And to think that, all these years after Roe v. Wade became the law of the land, this is what our children have to look forward to as they approach their reproductive years.

All this after saying at the beginning of the article that she was not “literally” blaming George Bush for her predicament.

Having blamed Bush for politicizing religion, perhaps she should read a little American history. Without the politicization of religion, she would be living in a city where African Americans were still riding in the back of the bus. And there’s a chance we would still have a draft and 100,000 troops in Viet Nam. Or perhaps slavery would still be a stain on our constitution.

No one has ever been able to separate religion and politics in America. They are joined at the hip, one leading the other depending on who’s in office. As secular as American society has become over the last 50 years, it has been religion and religiosity that has driven our politics for good or ill. Reverend Martin Luther King’s message was, in its heart and soul, a Christian message of sin and redemption. King changed America because he wanted to forgive us our sins and redeem the constitution and Declaration of Independence by making them living documents.

The Christian conservatives, so vilified (sometimes for good reason), see a culture so at odds with their beliefs that it has driven them out of the pews and into the voting booth in record numbers. They are not under some trance of Karl Rove or George Bush. They are genuinely frightened by the turn our culture has taken and fear for both the lives and the immortal souls of their children. To simply dismiss their concerns as “politics” is ignorant. They feel themselves prevented from living life the way that they see fit because others are imposing their beliefs on them.

Personally, I don’t mind the violence, gratuitous sex, and general mayhem found on TV, video games, and in films. But I can see some people asking that such fare be denied to youngsters as a responsible component of rearing children. This goes for everything from R rated movies to Plan B. And the writer’s complaints are symptomatic of a selfish disregard that liberals have for the sensibilities of those who disagree with an “anything goes” society. I would hate to live in a country where religion dictated what people could watch or wear or eat. But I would be equally uncomfortable living in a place where religion was prevented from impacting the political life of the country.

It’s no accident that this individual grew up in the late 60’s and early 70’s, a time when it was drummed into us that no on was responsible for anything. Criminals were routinely absolved of their crimes, sloth was celebrated as the natural state of man, and people could blame their problems on anything and anybody but themselves.

Well, not literally….

UPDATE

Cassandra and I are on almost the same wavelength as she fisks what little brains the dim wit was born with. Her take on personal responsibility is said much better than my clumsy attempts to come to grips with such out and out idiocy.

UPDATE: 6/5

Kevin Drum appears to be one of the only lefties who don’t think the woman should stop whining and take a personal responsibility pill. He calls Crawford “a liar” and then links to this news story that doesn’t prove Crawford was telling fibs but rather reveals Mr. Drum engaging in a typical blogger tactic of making an outrageous charge while supplying a link ostensibly supporting it but that does no such thing. In fact, here’s the money graf:

An April 2004 e-mail message from Jane Axelrad, associate director for policy at the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said that allowing over-the-counter and prescription sales of Plan B in the same package would be “consistent with precedent” and comply with “applicable statutory and regulatory provisions.”

But that same month, an unidentified FDA deputy division director wrote that McClellan and senior management in Axelrad’s department “do not concur” and “cannot support” such a move. They, in turn, asked the FDA’s Office of Chief Counsel for a final assessment on whether the drug could be sold both with and without prescription for different age groups.

Sounds like Crawford was concerned about safegaurds that would prevent little girls under 17 years of age from buying the drug over the counter.

Drum also points to this post by Digby where an FDA medical officer raised the specter of “sex cults” surrounding the use of Plan B:

In the memo released by the FDA, Dr. Curtis Rosebraugh, an agency medical officer, wrote: “As an example, she [Woodcock] stated that we could not anticipate, or prevent extreme promiscuous behaviors such as the medication taking on an ‘urban legend’ status that would lead adolescents to form sex-based cults centered around the use of Plan B.”

Rosebraugh indicated he found no reason to bar nonprescription sales of Plan B. (Emphasis mine)

So some wacky doctor at FDA makes an idiotic statement about adolescent sex. But I notice that Mr. Drum fails to mention that the same doctor supported over the counter sales of Plan B!

There is much to criticize regarding FDA procedures in this matter without making baseless, misleading charges. Drum should be ashamed of himself.

Whew! That was a close one.

For a moment there, one could have gotten the impression that those poor, misguided youths snatched up in the Canadian terrorist dragnet might have been mistaken for bloodthirsty jihadists. Instead, like a flock of wayward Canadian geese, we can rest easy because we learn from much of the Canadian press that they represent a “broad strata” of Canadian society.

The accused, dressed casually in jeans or jogging pants and t-shirts, sported traditional Muslim male beards. Most were Canadian citizens or residents.

Police described them as coming from a broad “strata” of society. Some are students, some are employed, some are unemployed. The adults range in age from 19 to 43.

You know which “broad strata” they’re talking about, right? It’s the “strata” that features people representing the full panoply of human flotsam and jetsam; drunk with religion, murderous in intent, oblivious to the moral consequences of their planned acts of barbarism, and carrying a deeply flawed and simplistic worldview that justifies all.

Other than that, they’re just plain folks, someone who you might want to invite over for a barbecue if they lived next door.

If we are fortunate enough to survive listening to some of the better angels of our nature that demand obeisance to an ideology of moral relativism, it will be because there will always be enough of us who refuse to play the diversity games so beloved of that segment of our population that sees strength in dividing us. The game has one simple rule; all societies, and by extension, all religions, creeds, races, ethnicities, and cultures are, at bottom, equal. It would be one thing to believe all were equally bad. That, at least, would represent the cynics view of mankind and hence, a realistic appraisal of the capability for evil in our fellow man.

But no. This multi-cultural madness posits the notion that we are all equally good (well, except white, Anglo-Saxon, Christian males), and that evil is a social construct manufactured by the ruling class to keep the black, brown, and yellow man in their place. If allowed to succeed, the people who are teaching this view to our children in schools and creating mass cultural touchstones in film and television that push this concept will create the perfectly diverse society - the multi-cultural Nirvana found in the grave where everyone will be finally and completely equal.

I’m not quite sure what it will take for our intellectual and media elites to be convinced of the folly of their wrongheaded and dangerously myopic view of who and what we are fighting. If 9/11 couldn’t convince them, I hardly think another attack of that size would cause them to alter their perception that denies there are two sides to this conflict - and the ones they should be opposing do not only “[sport] traditional Muslim male beards.” They are radical, Islamic fundamentalists, born into societies where they are taught from birth to hate us, educated in schools and mosques where they are urged to kill us. And nurtured in groups and cells where the means and opportunity to carry out their lifelong quest for revenge and bloodlust are made possible.

Is it asking too much that regardless of our domestic political differences that we at least recognize and agree on who the enemy is?

After reading some of the coverage of the terrorist arrests in Canada, I would have to reluctantly conclude the answer is yes.

UPDATE

Thanks to Michelle Malkin for giving us the “Euphemism of the Day.”

Watching an all-world striker like Brazil’s Ronaldo or the French superstar Thierry Henry, you begin to truly appreciate the fine art involved in putting the ball in the back of the net on a consistent basis. Creativity, guile, a mystical ability to will the ball to beat the keeper along with the instincts of an assassin makes the true striker such a rarity. These qualities are what separates the great goal scorers from the merely gifted and is a factor that will determine which teams advance and which will watch succeeding rounds of the Cup on television.

For Team USA, there is enormous talent and potential but to date, none of our strikers have stepped forward and proven that they belong in that elite class of “finishers” whose mere presence on the field strikes terror into the hearts of defenders. And in order for the US team to advance, we must find a “goto” guy, someone who can put the game on his foot and take the team to the next level.

To be sure, the team has talent galore. At 33, striker Brian McBride has plenty of international experience, this being his third run at the Cup for the US national team. He is an accomplished scorer for Fulham of the English Premier League and is the second leading scorer in US national team history behind Eric Wynalda.

He is considered the best American player ever in the air. At 6′0, McBride’s leaping ability and an uncanny sense of timing allows him to make contact with the ball at the height of his jump, flicking the ball expertly toward the goal with a nod of his head. It is an ability the US team will need during their Cup run because many if not most goals will be scored off set piece plays like free kicks and corners. Having a player with McBride’s ability will come in handy once the tournament starts.

But McBride has not shown that he has that extra level of ability that allows him to maneuver in the extraordinarily tight spaces inside the box in order to beat that last defender and send the ball past the keeper. Of course, few players have it which is why the genuine striker is such a huge weapon. For that kind of other-worldly ability, the US must turn to a babe in the woods with all the talent in the world but whose consistency and experience is lacking.

Eddie Johnson is the future of US soccer. He has shown jaw dropping potential, scoring 7 goals in his first 7 international matches in 2004-05. Then, the injury bug bit and the 22 year old youngster seemed to lose confidence - both his own and that of coach Bruce Arena. Recently, he has shown flashes of his former brilliance and there’s a good chance that Arena will gamble and start him against the Czechs.

Johnson’s speed and athleticism places him talent wise in the rarefied upper atmosphere of world class strikers. But as in any sport, potential doesn’t mean much unless you produce. And while it may be unfair to place such a burden on the young man, it is clear that for the US to advance, Eddie must grow up in a hurry and become a goal scoring machine for the US side. The likelihood of a nil-nil result against either the Czechs or Italians is very remote. Both of those European powerhouses can score goals in bunches and for the US to have a chance, they must be able to put the ball in the net.

Other Team USA strikers who will see action are also gifted athletes but unproven finishers as well. Brian Ching has some experience and, like McBride, is very good in the air. And Josh Wolff is another experienced hand who may get the call to provide some offensive spark if the team finds itself down in the second half to either the Czechs or Italians.

Overall, they’re the best that the US has ever had at the position. But all the talent in the world won’t help if you haven’t demonstrated the knack of putting the ball past the keeper. And if there is a weakness to be found on the US side, it is up front.

What the US lacks in bona fide strikers, it makes up for with several high-powered offensive midfielders whose speed and passing ability will go a long way toward giving our forwards chances to score.

Team USA Captain Claudio Reyna is an established international star, having played with the famed Glasgow Rangers of the Scottish Premier League and currently with Manchester United. Considered the best American field player ever, Reyna has been hobbled by injury and is just now getting back to match fitness. In the 2002 Cup where the Americans made it to the quarters, his brilliant, composed play helped the US side to withstand the tremendous defensive pressure of both Mexico, a second round win, and Germany, a close loss of 1-0 where some observers believed that the US played well enough to win. His crisp, accurate passes will allow the US to maneuver through the midfield, where the marking will be very tight and his long balls, feeding the American’s speedy wingers will open the field to some decent scoring chances.

But the heart of the midfield belongs to 24 year old Landon Donovan. Possessing the best offensive skills on the club, Donovan will be relied upon to make that final, crucial pass that can send the forward alone in on goal. Much depends on where Coach Arena decides to play the youngster. He may decide to pair him off with McBride at forward. Or, he could use the speedy Donavon as a right winger, exploiting what some observers see as a weakness on the part of the Czechs. The kid’s versatility notwithstanding, what Arena wants out of Donavon is to create scoring chances no matter where he plays. In that, Donavon will probably not disappoint.

Next time, I will deal with Coach Arena’s huge dilemma on what kind of formation to use against the Czechs and how that will affect Team USA’s starting lineup.

UPDATE

Paul Mirengoff has a decidedly more sober and realistic look at Team USA than my rather amatuerish and enthusiastic take. He’s making a good case for a more conservative lineup against the Czechs playing what sounds more like a 4-5-1; a formation that Arena used against Mexico in Mexico City and which generated virtually no offense whatsoever.

That said, the US side didn’t have Reyna or O’Brien for that match which led to enormous difficulties in our offense trying to get through midfield with any kind of momentum. Coach Arena walked into that venue - one of the toughest in the world - hoping for the result. What he got was Mexico swarming all over the US for 90 minutes and a 2-0 loss.

Paul also points out that the Czechs are getting a little long in the tooth (especially in the back) and that the Italians sometimes have trouble in the big tourneys due to enormously high expecations. He still doesn’t give the US much chance getting out of Group E and reluctantly, I am forced to agree with him.

NOTE: Actually, Paul appears to be advocating a more traditional 4-4-2 with Donovan paired up front with McBride and Mastroeni playing on the shoulder of the back line rather than a true winger position. That may help slow down Rosicky a bit and give some support to Eddie Lewis who has the speed and toughness but not much experience at left half.

And by the way, for all of you who think that soccer is a wussy Euro-weenie sport…The motto of Team USA is “DON”T TREAD ON ME.”

Sound familiar?

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.

What the heck is the matter with the BBC?

This story on another “massacre” by US troops in Ishaqi was covered extensively by both the AP and the Middle Eastern press back in March. Here’s the story as it appeared in the Lebanon Daily Star (archived):

Eleven members of an Iraqi family, including five children, were killed in a U.S. raid on Wednesday, police and witnesses said. The U.S. military said two women and a child died during the bid to seize an Al-Qaeda militant from a house. A senior Iraqi police officer said autopsies on the bodies showed each had been shot in the head.

[...]

Associated Press photographs showed the bodies of two men, five children and four other covered figures arriving at Tikrit General Hospital accompanied by grief-stricken relatives.

The U.S. military said in a statement its troops had attacked a house in Ishaqi, the town 100 kilometers north of Baghdad, to capture a “foreign fighter facilitator for the Al-Qaeda in Iraq network.”

“There was one enemy killed. Two women and one child were also killed in the firefight. The building … [was] destroyed,” the military said, adding the Al-Qaeda suspect had been captured and was being questioned.

Major Ali Ahmad of the Iraqi police said U.S. forces had landed on the roof of the house in the early hours and shot the 11 occupants, including the five children. “After they left the house they blew it up,” he said.

I covered it on this site back on March 15, asking if the incident at Ishaqi could be the Iraq War’s My Lai:

The incident does sound like a tragic repeat of other actions where insurgents or terrorists take cover in houses either sympathetic to them or where they simply barge in and use for shelter, guns being a fairly persuasive argument that they should be invited to stay. And as we’ve also seen in urban warfare, when someone is shooting at you, it becomes an impossibility to be very selective about targets.

The fact that the military evidently got the terrorist and are questioning him lends a little more credence to the story being told by CENCOM. Let us now see how big a deal this becomes on the left over the next 24 hours.

In fact, the AP report was wildly different from what the Daily Star was reporting (no link):

Police Capt. Laith Mohammed, in nearby Samarra, said American warplanes and armor flattened the house and killed the 11 people inside.

An AP reporter in the area said the roof collapsed. Eleven bodies, wrapped in blankets, were taken to the Tikrit General Hospital, relatives said.

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.

Note that the AP was not reporting that the civilians were “shot in the back of the head.”

A few days later, the entire story began to fall apart:

The soldiers’ version differs somewhat in detail. After coming under fire, the troops called in a gunship, which struck the house with rockets. Searching the wreckage, the troops found the Al-Queda shooter still alive, along with four bodies – another man, two women, and a child. A tragedy of war, rather than an atrocity.

By the next morning, the number of bodies in the wreckage had multiplied, appearing to verify the villager’s version. Local police investigated, and it was their report that brought the incident to the attention of the media nearly a week later. Curiously, Coalition headquarters had no idea that anything was out of the ordinary before being quizzed by reporters.

This was a clear case of al Qaeda propaganda as the “added bodies” demonstrates. And then there was this little detail not found in the BBC story:

But at the same time, the Ishaqi scandal had begun to unravel. Quite a few internal contradictions had popped up – the old lady’s age was 75 in one story, 90 in another. The child four months old, or, then again, six months old. One version had the victims tied up, another handcuffed – with neither cuffs nor rope apparent in any of the photos presented as evidence.

The climax came when the still-mystified Coalition staff were hit with an accusation that they had skipped a meeting with local officials to discuss the incident.

“There was no meeting scheduled with any Coalition investigators today,” said Lt. Col. Barry Johnson. “There appears to be a distinct pattern of misinformation surrounding this entire incident.”

The entire incident as an unprovoked, cold blooded massacre by the American military was debunked just days after being reported. This is why it never reached the kind of critical mass that the Haditha massacre has reached.

The BBC purports to have some “new evidence:”

The video tape obtained by the BBC shows a number of dead adults and children at the site with what our world affairs editor John Simpson says were clearly gunshot wounds.

The pictures came from a hardline Sunni group opposed to coalition forces.

It has been cross-checked with other images taken at the time of events and is believed to be genuine, the BBC’s Ian Pannell in Baghdad says.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

Needless to say, for the BBC to fall for this only shows how far some people are willing to go to promote an agenda against America and the war.

What happened in Ishaqi was a tragedy of war. If our military retreated every time they were fired on by civilians either trapped by or sympathetic to the insurgents, needless to say we would make very little progress in tamping down the rebels. And if we were to retreat in such situations, incidents where the insurgents used civilians as cover would increase substantially.

The article says the US is investigating the incident. I have little doubt that they will discover that like many other similar reports swallowed hook, line, and sinker by the media and the left, this report has al Qaeda disinformation written all over it.

UPDATE

Michelle Malkin links to an ABC News report that confirms a military investigation absolving the troops of wrongdoing:

ABC News has learned, however, that military officials have completed their investigation and have concluded U.S. forces followed the rules of engagement.

A senior Pentagon official told ABC News that the investigation concluded that American forces in this case properly followed the rules of engagement and that allegations of intentional killings of civilians were unfounded.

A statement from the military responding to the allegations of massacre at Ishaqi - for a second time - will be made later today.

And Alexandra, in her usual demure and understated way, skewers the BBC with a post whose title says it all: “Get Me Another Marine Murder Story In Iraq And Get It Now!”

Robert Kennedy’s long, exhaustive, investigative piece in Rolling Stone magazine about voting irregularities in Ohio does an enormous service to the cause of making elections in America more free and fair. The article lists about a dozen credible instances where the GOP improperly tried to suppress the vote by purging voter registration rolls, discounting newly registered voters (most from Democratic precincts), highlighting GOP shenanigans on election day at polling places, and even making a good case for some good old fashioned ballot box stuffing in some rural Ohio counties.

That said, Kennedy is on much less firm ground when he tries to sell the notion that the voting machines were rigged, that Secretary of State Blackwell personally oversaw a massive vote fraud operation, that there is anything to the notion that there is proof of fraud in the difference between exit polling and the actual vote counts, that corporations involved in making the voting machines participated in any fraudulent activities, and that a full recount would have changed the eventual outcome.

Overall in fact, this is a jaw-dropping piece of partisan hackery. It might have been helpful if Kennedy had bothered to look into charges of Democratic vote fraud that were also swirling around in Ohio on election day and before. And a helpful overview of charges of Democratic vote fraud in other extremely close states that were lost by the President - specifically Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, three of the most heavily unionized states in the nation and featuring Democratic governors with their hands on the polling machinery - would have given his critique an air of authority and legitimacy.

Instead, Mr. Kennedy decided to mix in the most base of smears directed at a Republican gubernatorial candidate with his fact flakes, thus bringing much of his good work down to the level of the gutter.

This country is in desperate need of electoral reform. Not only do both parties plan and organize disenfranchisement operations, they have developed techniques over the years that have gone far beyond dirty tricks like graveyard voting, ballot box stuffing, and the outright bribery of voters, which are election day traditions in many parts of the nation and have been for almost two hundred years. Kennedy’s article reveals some of the dirty little secrets of our democracy and of our political parties (although again, Kennedy’s beautification of Democrats by not accusing them of any wrongdoing is laughable). The long and short of it is, the system is broke and there is apparently not much that anyone is willing to do about it.

Kennedy’s critique is strongest when detailing GOP efforts to disqualify registered voters, especially voters newly added to the rolls. There is also a good case made that the distribution of voting machines was deliberately manipulated to make likely Democratic voters wait much longer to vote than likely Republican voters. There were also enormous problems with the so-called “provisional ballots” that were supposed to be given to people who either had questionable registrar information or were voting in the wrong precinct.

This last charge was not confined to Ohio as both Democrats and Republicans across the country sought to fiddle with the requirements of the law. The statute in both Democratic and Republican controlled states appeared to be honored in the breach as there were numerous complaints in Wisconsin about Republican voters being disenfranchised the way Democrats were in Ohio (among other outrageous examples of Democratic vote fraud in that state).

Some of the charges against Blackwell are spurious:

To further monkey-wrench the process he was bound by law to safeguard, Blackwell cited an arcane elections regulation to make it harder to register new voters. In a now-infamous decree, Blackwell announced on September 7th — less than a month before the filing deadline — that election officials would process registration forms only if they were printed on eighty-pound unwaxed white paper stock, similar to a typical postcard.

There was very good reason to cite that “arcane” regulation - massive, systematic Democratic voter registration fraud:

The unfortunate fact is that Ohio election authorities experienced an unprecedented number of fraudulent voter registrations and some organizations appear to have been engaged in efforts to facilitate and pay for the submission of fraudulent voter registration forms.

This point was noted by Keith Cunningham, President of the Ohio Association of Election Officials, when he testified about the election in Ohio before the House Administration Committee in March 2005. During his testimony, Cunningham remarked that “disruptive” and “distracting” political activists on the ground in Ohio made it increasingly difficult for elections officials to do their jobs.

Cunningham: “[T]he November 2004 election was probably the single most difficult thing I have ever tried to manage in my life. … For instance, the card we send out to voters that tell them where they’re registered, what your precinct is. I spent the better part of an afternoon arguing with somebody that the type on that card was too small, when it’s the same card we’ve been sending out for some time and it’s the default setting on the printer. My belief is that not everyone in November 2004 was dealing in good faith. And there were people on the ground and present in Ohio who … were attempting to create chaos and confusion in hopes that out of it could come something that could be exploited.” (266)

Part of the “chaos and confusion” referenced by Cunningham stemmed from the thousands of fraudulent voter registrations submitted to elections officials in every corner of Ohio.

This is what happens when you make charges without giving any context to someone’s actions. Blackwell was responding to massive, systematic, planned voter registration fraud. Groups like the NAACP (paying for voter registration with crack cocaine), ACORN (massive voter registration fraud resulting in the arrest and conviction of several of their Ohio employees who were paid $5 for each new voter signed up), Americans Coming together (ACT), and the nation’s oldest purveyor of voter registration fraud, the AFL-CIO all sought to game the system and hand Ohio to the Democrats in a blatantly illegal scheme to place fraudulent or non-existent names on the voter list so that operatives would be able to vote several times. This is a time honored scheme in Democratic states and appears to have taken place in Wisconsin, a state the President lost by a mere 11,000 votes.

I urge you to read this link for a detailed description of what Blackwell had to deal with. Much of what is criticized in Kennedy’s piece could easily be chalked up to Blackwell’s grim determination to make sure that the registration process - already strained to the limit with more than 1.5 million new names - didn’t degenerate into a democratic farce. This concern regarding registration fraud also played a hand in the snafus with provisional ballots although clearly, Republicans failed to abide by the law in many, many cases.

Such lack of context permeates Kennedy’s critique:

In another move certain to add to the traffic jam at the polls, the GOP deployed 3,600 operatives on Election Day to challenge voters in thirty-one counties — most of them in predominantly black and urban areas.(157) Although it was billed as a means to ”ensure that voters are not disenfranchised by fraud,”(158) Republicans knew that the challengers would inevitably create delays for eligible voters. Even Mark Weaver, the GOP’s attorney in Ohio, predicted in late October that the move would ”create chaos, longer lines and frustration.”(159)

The day before the election, Judge Dlott attempted to halt the challengers, ruling that ”there exists an enormous risk of chaos, delay, intimidation and pandemonium inside the polls and in the lines out the doors.” Dlott was also troubled by the placement of Republican challengers: In Hamilton County, fourteen percent of new voters in white areas would be confronted at the polls, compared to ninety-seven percent of new voters in black areas.(160) But when the case was appealed to the Supreme Court on Election Day, Justice John Paul Stevens allowed the challenges to go forward. ”I have faith,” he ruled, ”that the elected officials and numerous election volunteers on the ground will carry out their responsibilities in a way that will enable qualified voters to cast their ballots.”(161)

What? Nothing about the legions of Democratic challengers who were also present? I guess we ought to just put the halo on Democrats in Ohio right now rather than waiting for the Vatican to bestow sainthood.

And in a rerun of issues surrounding the 2004 Florida debacle, Kenned pulls out the same, tired canard about “ballot crawl” - the practice that some voters inadvertently or out of sheer stupidity vote for the wrong person on the punch card ballot:

In addition to spoiling ballots, the punch-card machines also created bizarre miscounts known as ”ballot crawl.” In Cleveland Precinct 4F, a heavily African-American precinct, Constitution Party candidate Michael Peroutka was credited with an impressive forty-one percent of the vote. In Precinct 4N, where Al Gore won ninety-eight percent of the vote in 2000, Libertarian Party candidate Michael Badnarik was credited with thirty-three percent of the vote. Badnarik and Peroutka also picked up a sizable portion of the vote in precincts across Cleveland — 11M, 3B, 8G, 8I, 3I.(178) ”It appears that hundreds, if not thousands, of votes intended to be cast for Senator Kerry were recorded as being for a third-party candidate,” the Conyers report concludes.(179)

But it’s not just third-party candidates: Ballot crawl in Cleveland also shifted votes from Kerry to Bush. In Precinct 13B, where Bush received only six votes in 2000, he was credited with twenty percent of the total in 2004. Same story in 9P, where Bush recorded eighty-seven votes in 2004, compared to his grand total of one in 2000.(180)

This is the “idiot factor” at work and there is little to be done about it. The fact that it happens in precincts where people are less educated:

In an attempt to bring illiteracy to the attention of the American people, the U.S. Department of Education pointed out a decade ago that an alarming 47 million American adults were functionally or marginally illiterate. Arguably, little meaningful progress has been made in the fight to reduce illiteracy in the most affluent nation in the world.

A 2001 Newsweek article pointed out that an astonishing 47 percent of Detroit, Mich. residents, or almost one-out-of-two adults in the predominately African-American and urban city were functionally illiterate. By way of comparison, only 6.7 percent of citizens in Vietnam are functionally illiterate.

“Ballot crawl” is a problem of reading, not fraud. This is another dirty little secret of American politics - a sizable minority of people (black and white) are unable to function in our democracy as a result of their being marginally or functionally illiterate. I don’t see Kennedy or Conyers advocating doing anything about it either when they attempt to intimate fraud where remedial reading classes are called for.

Kennedy really jumps the shark when trying to tie the idea of massive vote stealing by the GOP to the skewed exit polls. Ed Morrisey does an excellent job debunking this canard:

News flash: mathematics is an exact science. Polling isn’t, and for at least one basic reason — you can’t force people to participate. The only people answering exit polls are those inclined to share their opinions. It also relies on the skill, integrity, and execution of the actual polltakers, many of whom are hired with little training. Moreover, reporting results in the middle of the sample almost always guarantees bad conclusions.

And interestingly enough, that’s exactly what two research firms looking into the exit poll debacle found:

Indeed they did. And, as I pointed out on election night, the high turnout was playing havoc with the computer models anyway:

A word about exit polls…they take a couple of dozen “key” precincts and average turnout, party reliability, and a few other mundane factors to project a winner. The big turnout here COULD be skewing the computer models and not giving confidence to the networks.

Indeed, that is what happened. An increase of almost 17 million Republicans offset an increase of 15 million Democrats. Rove won the numbers game and Democrats still can’t believe it. And the forecaster’s models broke down as a result of the unpredictability in the increase in voters.

Any notion that the exit polls were going to reveal who won can safely be put to rest by the projected results in these states:

But Kerry winning by 16 in PA? Up 15 in MN? Kerry by 17 in NH? These numbers aren’t just wrong, they’re numbers taken from some kind of weird parallel universe where bloggers don’t exist! How could they have gotten it so wrong?

Not to mention the poll’s split of 59% women and 41% men. Did anyone bother studying that anomaly?

Those exit polls also showed Kerry winning North Carolina and Arizona - two states where there are no charges of vote fraud and which the President carried comfortably. I wonder if Mr. Kennedy would be kind enough to explain that?

In summary, Kennedy should have applied Occam’s Razor to his Exit Poll theory; given multiple explanations for the same outcome, the simplest is probably true. And it’s a helluva lot easier to say that the exit polls were wrong rather than positing the notion of massive, nationwide vote fraud.

Finally, Kennedy raises legitimate questions about the recount of the vote by the state. There apparently were many irregularities in following established procedures and the law for which Mr. Blackwell should be criticized. But would a recount really have given the state and therefore the election to Kerry? The candidate himself didn’t think so and was advised I’m sure by the most knowledgeable and savvy pols in his party. Besides that, it would have been asking too much to expect the President’s lead of nearly 128,000 votes to disappear entirely in a statewide recount. Such an eventuality would have no precedence in American history which is why Kerry probably conceded in the first place.

If I sound dismissive of most of Kennedy’s article, I don’t mean to. As I pointed out, he makes several troubling and valid points about what happened before and after election day in Ohio. Overall, however, his criticisms ring hollow due to his total disregard for Democratic tomfoolery - especially the blatant disenfranchisement campaign carried out against overseas citizens (among many other transgressions) in next door Pennsylvania by Governor Ed Rendell - a state where Kerry’s margin of victory was smaller than Bush’s in Ohio.

What I applaud Mr. Kennedy for is in bringing these issues out into the open for discussion. I have no idea how to solve these problems - I will leave solutions to others. But there is no doubt in my mind that the problem of election and registration fraud is getting worse and threatens our entire democratic system. Best heed the calls for reform now before people lose faith in our system of government entirely.

UPDATE

The Editors make some interesting points about the article while taking some righty bloggers to task for inconsistency. Check out some of the comments as well - some of them still don’t get the fact that the exit polls were so far off thanks to methodology, not conspiracy.

Kim Priestap:

The Democrats just can’t accept that they lost in 2000 and 2004. As far as they are concerned, power is their right, their entitlement. Therefore, as they see it, Democrats don’t lose elections. The elections are stolen from them, which is why Kennedy puts all his eggs in his the-exit-polls-were-accurate basket. Now their target is Secretary Blackwell. And it appears that no smear is low enough for them.

I would say there is a lot of truth in that but in RFK’s case, I think he did raise some legitimate issues.

UPDATE II 6/3

James Joyner does a first class job debunking many of Kennedy’s theories and links to a Salon article that also criticizes Mr. Kennedy’s fact flakes.

A decent critique of the Ohio vote in 2004 would have included the intense scrambling for new voters that caused the Democrats to step over the line of legality and the Republicans to respond by trying to suppress some of the registrations. Again, Blackwell was in an impossible position but, as one of my non-partisan commenters pointed out, it is ludicrous to have the state Chairman of one party’s nominee in charge of seeing that a fair vote is conducted. The appearance of impropriety is too great to give much confidence to the people that nothing underhanded is going on.

Tristero also notes the Salon article and walks back a little from his flat statement that the 2004 election was stolen. He believes Kennedy should acknowledge his mistakes and apologize.

The last forecast I saw for hell did not show any cooling trends in the near future.

UPDATE: 6/7

Readers who have come here via The Poorman Institute must be a little confused. I’m sure they were expecting to read a piece that tries to whitewash Republican malfeasance during the election, when in fact I praise Mr. Kennedy for bringing many of these issues - including the deliberate disenfranchisement of Democratic voters - into the light.

No, the Editors did not direct you to the wrong link. And no, I will not descend to the level of the barnyard to point out that whoever wrote that post did not read much of what I had to say and further, did not give even a hint that both sides were doing their best to supress the other’s vote in Ohio on election day.

To say otherwise is moronic…or is it “moranic?”

The votes are in from this week’s Watchers Council and the winner in the Council category is “Let us Make Them All Welcome” by Gates of Vienna. In second place, The Glittering Eye rolled in with “Assessing the Threat At Our Southern Border.”

Finishing first in the non Council category was “The Essential President Bush” by The Anchoress.

If you’d like to particpate in the Watcher’s Vote, go here and follow instructions.