Right Wing Nut House

Why did the Bush Administration drag its heels for nearly 3 years in releasing the millions of document that fell into its hands after the fall of Saddam?

This is why:

BAGHDAD, Iraq — The Russian government had sources inside the American military command as the U.S. mounted the invasion of Iraq, and the Russians passed information to Saddam Hussein on troop movements and plans, according to Iraqi documents released as part of a Pentagon report.

The Russians relayed information to Saddam during the opening days of the 2003 war, including a crucial moment before the assault on Baghdad, according to the documents in the report Friday.

The unclassified report does not assess the value of the information or provide details beyond citing two captured Iraqi documents that say the Russians collected information from sources “inside the American Central Command” and that battlefield intelligence was provided to Saddam through the Russian ambassador in Baghdad

There are two broad hints that answer the question above. One, the investigation (and perhaps similar investigations like it) into possible espionage activity by individuals in the US military and intelligence community has now been compromised. In such investigations, it is always best that the targets don’t know they are under investigation lest they become more cautious and fail to reveal contacts and other members of their network.

The second hint is the great big headache the release of these documents has now given everyone in the national security and foreign policy establishment in the Bush Administration. Something has got to be done about Russia and this betrayal by an ally.

As long as the information was secret, the State Department could pretend that it didn’t exist (even though we can be almost certain they were aware of it) thus allowing us to work with President Putin on a variety of other issues unrelated to Russian perfidy in the lead up to the Iraq War. But Ed Morrissey is right when he writes of the consequences the release of the documents have for our diplomatic offensive against Iran:

After finding out that Putin has a habit of supplying tyrannical enemies of the Western nations with military intelligence to use against us, the last country we should trust with Iran’s nuclear program is Russia. We can also kiss off the UN; as long as Russia has its veto, that route will lead nowhere. Russia has revealed itself to be a major part of the problem in the Middle East, and we should stop pretending that they are part of the solution.

At least now we know why the CIA and John Negroponte wanted these documents to remain sealed.

In fact, these revelations have probably thrown a monkey wrench into our overall policy to contain Iranian nuclear ambitions. Any deal on sanctions with Russia that would have been in the works is now out the window which means the UN route - problematic at best with both China and Russia opposed to our sanctions policy - has been blocked. And with our “allies” in Europe kibitzing on the sidelines and waffling back and forth between talking tough and mouthing platitudes about a peaceful resolution, it appears that once again, the US will have to act unilaterally in order to safeguard the security interests of all concerned.

It is a very nice luxury that the Germans, French and other EU members have that they can benefit from American military actions while playing the anti-American card at home by denouncing US “imperialism” in order to cater to their pacifist and clueless populations.

Expect more revelations of this type, especially regarding the French who sold weapons to Saddam even while American tanks were rolling toward Baghdad.

SEE UPDATE BELOW BEFORE READING

After first defending himself at RedState in what I will charitably call a curious fashion, Mr. Domenech has finally come clean and done the right thing:

I want to apologize to National Review Online, my friends and colleagues here at RedState, and to any others that have been affected over the past few days. I also want to apologize to my previous editors and writers whose work I used inappropriately and without attribution. There is no excuse for this - nor is there an excuse for any obfuscation in my earlier statement.

I hope that nothing I’ve done as a teenager or in my professional life will reflect badly on the movement and principles I believe in.

I’m deeply grateful for the love and encouragement of all those around me. And although I may not deserve such support, it makes it that much more humbling at a time like this. I’m a young man, and I hope that in time that I can earn a measure of the respect that you have given me.

I was unaware of Mr. Domenech’s enormous talent as a writer as evidenced in this piece he did for the New York Press:

I walked out of the bright Friday sun and into the Capitol Bldg.’s Document Entrance two hours before the gunman arrived. The back of my collar scratched sweat against my skin, and I loosened my tie in a vain effort to find relief from the sultry July heat. I remember nodding hello to the tall black policeman who was standing at the metal detector in front of the Document Entrance door. I don’t remember if he smiled back. From what friends tell me now, he usually did.

At 3:40 that July afternoon, Russell Weston Jr. stepped into the air conditioning of the Capitol Bldg. through that same door. He took five short steps across the tiles to where the officer on duty, 58-year-old J.J. Chestnut, was writing down directions for a group of tourists who had just finished the official tour. Weston raised his gun with speed and silence and put a .38-caliber bullet through the back of Chestnut’s head.

I don’t care whether you’re right wing, left wing, or a chicken wing, if you can’t recognize that the boy plays music with words there’s something wrong with you. And this makes his word thefts all the more mystifying. Plagiarism is the crime of hacks, those of little talent and an indolent nature whose imagination and vision are as limited as their intellectual acumen. When someone blessed with such obvious gifts gives in to temptation like Mr. Domenech now admits he did, there must be other reasons than simple laziness.

In the heart of every artist, there is a gnawing sense of inadequacy, a belief that at bottom, they are just not good enough to deserve the plaudits and encomiums they receive from their peers and the public. In one respect, this makes many artists insufferable louts as they seek to cover this inadequacy with bluster and braggadocio. But in a more uplifting aspect of this phenomena, it drives the artist to excel. Writing, being part artistic endeavor and part journeyman’s craft, opens itself to practitioners who exemplify the best of creativity while requiring the attitude of a bricklayer. Carefully laying down ideas in a logical and coherent fashion (if indeed that is the writer’s goal) can be a chore at times and it is this facet of the craft that can be irksome.

That irritation can lead to temptation, a desire to shortcut the process by not re-inventing the wheel. There is also the unwritten rule that a nice turn of the phrase or a play on words can be copied and pasted - a curious form of flattery of which I have been guilty in the past (use the site search here to look for references to “dirty necked galoots” which I first saw used by R. Emmett Tyrell). Put it all together and plagiarism becomes an easy trap to fall into unless one is firmly grounded with a strict moral sense and strong ethical standards.

Jeff Goldstein, who for some reason has recently come under attack by some pretty heavy hitters on the left for…well, being Goldstein, I guess, places the imbroglio in context:

Having met Ben last month, I can report that I found him to be a very bright, very articulate, very glib young man. He is also a very gifted writer. On the charges of plagiarism, I’ll accept Ben’s explanation—whatever it is—because I also found him to be quite a forthright gentleman, which means that I expect he will admit to any wrongdoing.

What is most distasteful about this episode from the perspective of the blogosphere, on the other hand, is the palpable glee with which many on the left set out after Ben and are now luxuriating in his resignation. And, of course, they have taught the WaPo the lesson they wished to teach it: that rightwing commentary will be scrutinized in direct inverse to the acceptance they give to the obvious biases of leftwing media figures.

There has been a concerted effort by the left in the past year to try and knock down the idea that there is a liberal bias in major media. In fact, liberals are attempting to portray the media as nothing more than a mouthpiece for the GOP and conservatives. They believe if they say “Rush Limbaugh” and “Fox News” often enough and loud enough, people will actually start believing that Chris Matthews is a conservative masquerading as former Chief of Staff to Democratic Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill or that Katie Couric is a closet Republican.

This from the Reality Based Community.

The furious reaction by left wing blogs to the very idea of a page on the Washington Post website devoted to conservatives represents a recognition by the left that their once total dominance of the flow of information (and hence the power to set the national agenda) is under serious challenge. And as Goldstein points out, the next conservative blogger hired by the Post better have a thick skin:

Because make no mistake: their entire schtick has become political theater—and often of the most hateful variety. In recent months, we’ve seen a ratcheting up of attempts to undermine the credibility of writers who don’t toe the progressive line (for my part, I’ve been called an idiot, a failed academic, a pill-popping hausfrau, untalented, uncreative, pretentious etc., etc.). But of course, it’s the right who engages in the “politics of personal destruction.” That’s just, well, an established given.

Ben Domenech is not Dan Rather; but no matter. The scalp is the thing. And the left has theirs today.

Which brings us to a double standard on the left so unfair, so obvious that one can easily question the personal integrity of people who perpetrate it, as Goldstein does here:

[T]hose on the left who have been braying all day over Ben’s downfall have two choices, as I see it: they can continue to gloat and carry around his scalp as a trophy to their own viciousness (they went after him for a host of other things, from his schooling to his family to his supposed “racism” before they got around to the plagiarism charge)—showing themselves to be the very fetishists of schadenfreude I accused them of being; or they can now explain to us why they don’t hold their own to the same ethical standards. Ben has owned up to his mistakes. He has, as I anticipated he would, taken that most difficult first step to rehabilitating his credibility. Now it’s time for other folks to do the same: Molly Ivins; Larry Tribe; Stephen Ambrose; Dan Rather; Jason Leopold; Joe Biden; Micah Wright; Ward Churchill; Eason Jordan; CNN’s agreement with Saddam’s Iraq; Joe Wilson; Steve Erlanger—we’re looking at you.

Surely, our principled guardians of publishing ethics could use their newfound momentum to prompt similarly intensive investigations into the ethical lapses of those mentioned above, yes? Or is it only conservatives who are to be publicly pilloried by the reality based community.

You know—because of the nuance.

Ever so slowly, the attack memes carefully knitted together by the left over the past 3 long years to form a devastating narrative that puts the President in the most evil, unflattering light are unravelling before our eyes. The Saddam documents promise to do what thousands of right wing bloggers could never do; change the tone and tenor of the debate over the Iraq War (and thus the President) by giving the lie to all of the myths, half-truths, exaggerations, and outright falsehoods perpetrated by hateful, spiteful, jealous liberals whose irritation at losing elections has reached the point that they will do anything and say anything, even to the point of bringing shame and humiliation to the United States, in order to achieve power.

Yes, they brought down a conservative blogger. But later this summer, as the revelations continue about not only Saddam but the conspiracy involving our erstwhile allies against our efforts at both the UN and on the battlefield in Iraq becomes more generally known, the decision by Democrats and the netroots to make the election about George W. Bush could very well seem in retrospect to be a blunder of monumental proportions.

UPDATE

My jaw is on the floor and I am royally pissed off.

After Anne informed me in the comments that the piece I linked to from the New York Press above was actually cribbed from an article from the Washington Post I initiated a search of lefty blogs and sure enough, Domenech had copied almost word for word a piece that appeared in the Post on July 26, 1998 on page one!

It appears that my praise for Mr. Domenech was given for a piece in which he had lifted large segments of someone else’s beautiful work and claimed it as his own.

I apologize to my readers for 1)implying that Ben Domenech has any proven talent, and 2) misleading them about the author of the piece I linked above.

Domenech has come far and fast in life. It is apparent that he took many shortcuts to reach the height from which he has now fallen. It is also apparent from reading RedState and Jeff Goldstein that he has many friends who care about him and will stand by him in his hour of trial. This is a good thing because judging by the sheer volume of work in which he has shamelessly stolen others ideas and words, he will never write professionally again. And anyone who would hire him as a writer is a fool.

BTW - as of 7:00 PM Central on Saturday night, the list of plagiarized cites at Daily Kos are 7 pages long in MS Word.

This just in from Post.Blog, Jim Brady’s site:

In the past 24 hours, we learned of allegations that Ben Domenech plagiarized material that appeared under his byline in various publications prior to washingtonpost.com contracting with him to write a blog that launched Tuesday.

An investigation into these allegations was ongoing, and in the interim, Domenech has resigned, effective immediately.

When we hired Domenech, we were not aware of any allegations that he had plagiarized any of his past writings. In any cases where allegations such as these are made, we will continue to investigate those charges thoroughly in order to maintain our journalistic integrity.

Brady tips his cap to lefty bloggers:

We appreciate the speed and thoroughness with which our readers and media outlets surfaced these allegations. Despite the turn this has taken, we believe this event, among other things, testifies to the positive and powerful role that the Internet can play in the the practice of journalism.

We also remain committed to representing a broad spectrum of ideas and ideologies in our Opinions area.

I certainly hope that last is true. More than most media outlets - including all the biggies - WaPo has made a concerted effort to integrate their news coverage with the new media on the web. I applaud their efforts to make conservatives “feel at home” at a news source that in the past has shown open hostility to conservative ideas and personalities.

That said, all this incident has done is further erode confidence in the press. Already ranked by the American people at the bottom of the list for trustworthiness (right there with the Congress) and suffering from a concentration of power at both the local and national levels, the media is in real danger of trailing off into irrelevancy. And that would be a disaster for our democracy.

This article originally appears in The American Thinker

It appeared to be the beginning of something new and exciting for the mainstream press. The Washington Post hires a conservative blogger ostensibly to give the view from the right on issues covered by the paper’s news department. The Post has proven itself innovative in other ways when it comes to the use of the web having recently included a Technorati listing of blogs covering specific articles. It has also increased its on-line content to include other blogs on culture and politics as well as extensive internet live chats with personalities from media, politics, and entertainment.

In fact, it was Dan Froomkin’s political blog White House Briefing that had conservatives calling for a blog to reflect the views of the right at the Post. The laughable bias of Mr. Froomkin contributed in no small way to the eventual decision by Executive Editor Jim Brady to hire Ben Domenech, founder of the blog RedState and at the tender age of 24, a seasoned political operative having worked at the White House and on Capitol Hill as a speech writer.

No sooner had Mr. Domenech gotten his feet wet than the attacks by the netnuts began. Apparently believing that the Washington Post was their exclusive preserve, a place where they hunt down and destroy conservatives not where they give them jobs, lefties went ballistic. The first attacks were for some pretty stupid things Domenech had said blogging at RedState as “Augustine” such as calling Coretta Scott King a communist the day after she died (for which he apologized) and making an ignorant remark about lower crime rates the result of a high number of abortions among blacks (although he didn’t put it quite as matter of factly as I just did). He tried to explain away the remark by claiming he was only quoting pro-life Pastor Neuhaus who was disgusted with using such “evidence” to support abortion. A pretty lame explanation but understandable if not acceptable.

There is not a blogger on this planet who has not written something and then regretted hitting the “publish” button. The immediacy and speed with which blogs cover and comment on issues sometimes leads to writing stupid, emotional posts full of ad-hominem attacks and vituperative digressions from the facts. I’d hate to think what someone doing a hit piece on me would find when I was venting against the latest outrage from the MSM or some idiot lefty.

So Domenech can be excused - barely - for what he has written in haste or otherwise on his blog. Chalk it up to the nature of the beast and forgive him for writing without thinking.

But what simply cannot be tolerated in any venue where the written word is revered and opinions respected is plagiarism. And according to material dug up by several lefty bloggers, the shocking fact is that Domenech is a word stealer of epic proportions, someone who has lifted entire articles from other sources and claimed the words and ideas as his own.

The issue of why the Washington Post couldn’t have found this out before hiring Mr. Domenech is another question entirely and will not be dealt with here. Suffice it to say that this incident along with recent stupidities at the New York Times regarding a fake hurricane victim and a bogus Abu Ghraib poster boy shows how lazy the media has gotten about fact checking.

Writing, being a combination of art and craft, is an extraordinarily personal way to express oneself. So when a plagiarizer lifts entire paragraphs containing ideas that are not his own, he in effect, takes a little of the writer along with the words. It is a personal affront to the originator of those ideas as well as being acts of selfishness and dishonesty.

The plagiarism of Mr. Domenech cannot be chalked up to youthful indiscretion nor to some kind of unconscious parroting of something he read before putting words to paper. The examples unearthed so far - and bloggers are finding more examples almost by the hour - are so clearly copied verbatim from other sources as to constitute an unusually good case for plagiarism against Mr. Domenech. Most plagiarizers will subtly change the wording of what they intend to copy so as to disguise their crime. Mr. Domenech didn’t even take the time and effort to do that. Here is just one example, a review of the film Final Fantasy that appeared in the National Review Online:

Ben Domenech in National Review Online in July of 2001:

“Translucent and glowing, they ooze up from the ground and float through solid walls, wriggling countless tentacles and snapping their jaws. They’re known as the Phantoms, alien thingies that, for three decades, have been sucking the life out of the earthlings of “Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.” Swollen nightmares from a petri dish, they’re the kind of grotesque whatsits horror writer H.P. Lovecraft would have kept as pets in his basement.”

Steve Murray (Cox News):

“Translucent and glowing, they ooze up from the ground and float through solid walls, splaying their tentacles and snapping their jaws, dripping a discomfiting acidic ooze. They’re known as the Phantoms, otherworldly beings who, for three decades, have been literally sucking the life out of the earthlings of the human.”

There is beauty in the imagery evoked by Mr. Murray’s description - a juxtapostion of words that are pleasing when listened to by our inner voice as well as exciting to our imagination when conjuring up a picture drawn with such clarity.

For Mr. Domenech to steal those words and ideas is like slapping Mr. Murray in the face and laughing at the same time. For at bottom, the plagiarizer fully realizes what he is doing and thinks he is being clever by getting away with it. This is not a case where some graduate assistant helping with research on a book for some famous academic lifts entire passages from someone else’s thesis or an obscure article in an scholarly journal as has happened in recent years with several historians. This is a case where Mr. Domenech was using the platform provided by NRO to advance his own career and pad his credentials, the result being he was shortly thereafter hired by the White House as a speech writer.

Dan Reihl is a conservative blogger who gives voice to sentiments that should be echoed by conservative writers across the country:

No one with a healthy respect for original ideas, or the written words of others could do what it seems Domenech has done. If he’s guilty, his judgment displays a profound lack of moral and ethical grounding. Ambition is no excuse for theft. And that’s precisely what plagiarism is.

I’m assuming the WaPo will act, if it hasn’t already. If guilty, allowing him to continue representing the Right would be terribly wrong.

If we conservatives have any claims to promoting honesty and decency, there will be more calls on the right for Mr. Domenech to do the honorable thing and save himself and his employer the embarrassment of being fired by resigning immediately. Little can be gained from his continuing to blog at the Washington Post as I for one never plan on linking to anything he writes and would hope that other conservatives would join me in such a boycott.

Ben Domenech is not the kind of writer we want representing the conservative viewpoint at the Washington Post or anywhere else. With so many eloquent and able conservative writers, I’m sure the Post will have no problem finding someone else to take over a blog that should be espousing honesty and decency as the principles by which we on the right live by.

Anything short of that just won’t do.

UPDATE

The Political Pit Bull has the best round-up - right or left - of the plagiarism issue. Patterico has some more thoughts here including a personal experience he had with a plagiarizer.

I can’t help but thinking that with these and other conservative bloggers already weighing in on this matter -coming out four square against Domenech’s plagiarism - it would be an interesting thought experiment to think of what kind of reaction lefty bloggers would have if one of their own was accused of something similar. Given the left’s penchant to close ranks for the likes of Joe Wilson (a proven liar) and Bill Clinton, I daresay that there would be nary a peep from the netnuts if the shoe were on the other foot in this case.

John Cole defends Mr. Domenech from the charges of racism (because he called a black person a communist?) as well as other blathering charges from the left. In a comment in the same post, Cole gives his views on the plagiarism issue.

UPDATE II

Michelle Malkin, for whom Mr. Domenech was an editor on her last book, weighs in:

As someone who has worked in daily journalism for 14 years, I have a lot of experience related to this horrible situation: I’ve had my work plagiarized by shameless word and idea thiefs many times over the years. I’ve also been baselessly accused of plagiarism by some of the same leftists now attacking Ben.

The bottom line is: I know it when I see it. And, painfully, Domenech’s detractors, are right. He should own up to it and step down. Then, the Left should cease its sick gloating and leave him and his family alone.

And James Joyner has a thoughtful defense of Domenech here:

I am not ready to toss Domenech under the proverbial bus or call for his firing at the moment. There may, indeed, be perfectly reasonable explanations for these charges. But while Erickson is probably right that “Facts have never been debate winners among the haters,” they should damned well be debate winners among the rest of us. Let alone, I should add, the side that so loudly heralds traditional virtues like honor.

Ordinarily I would agree with Mr. Joyner. However, the examples of Mr. Domenech’s plagiarism ferreted out so far are so egregious, so obvious that the only possible “reasonable explanation” is that either Mr. Domenech’s work is being copied by people like P.J. O’Rourke or Mr. Domenech has been caught red-handed.

Due to the onset of information overload along with unhealthy feelings of homicide toward liberals, I am taking today off to watch the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy.

It didn’t help that I had to wrestle with government forms most of the morning trying to get Sue’s residency situation ironed out. Several times in the last few days, she has informed me that she wished she could go back and live under Communist oppression - at least those guys had a good idea of what bureaucracy really was. Our immigration paper pushers are apparently amateurs compared to what they could accomplish forms-wise in the old Soviet bloc.

At any rate, I will self-identify with Faramir, the misunderstood son, and see the cave trolls as liberals - both seem to share about the same level of intelligence. And I will be back bright and early tomorrow with more scintillating commentary and uproarious dismemberment of the the left.

Disgusted with the draft of an article I was working on that highlighted the cluelessness of the nutroots, I inadvertently deleted my post from this morning “A Racial Slur? Or a Slip of the Tongue?” instead of the draft I was working on.

Moral of the story: Don’t write mad…

Technorati informs us that there are maybe 28 million blogs out there. Think about that number for a moment. That’s 28 million people dreaming of being just like Kos, or Duncan Black, or even Oliver Willis although in Odub’s case, allowances should be made for the lunatic lobby and their agitation to be mainstreamed.

But above all others, if you’re a blogger you want to be like Glenn Reynolds. Even many lefties would kill for the traffic Reynold’s gets at Instapundit. Conservative bloggers have adopted Reynold’s snappy, punchy writing style as well as many of his ubiquitous euphemisms. Is there a blogger out there who hasn’t at one time or another used “Indeed” or the wildly understated “Heh” to make a pithy comment about some eye-brow raising bit of cluelessness?

For myself, I don’t necessarily want to be like Reynolds, I want the brand name of the coffee he drinks in the morning. He does more in an hour than most of us do in a day. His time management skills must be something back-engineered from that crashed alien spacecraft in Roswell. How else do you explain his not only holding down a full time job but also finding time to write several columns a week, read a book every couple of days, keep up with what’s going on in the world, blog up a storm, and still find time to devote to his family.

Maybe I should stop watching re-runs of Jeopardy on GSN.

The fact that he probably reads more books in a month than I do in a year and writes more in a week than many of us will do in a month bespeaks a discipline that is both admirable and scary. With that kind of efficiency, just think what he could have accomplished throughout history:

* If they had put him in charge of the War Production Board during World War II, we would have kicked Hitler and Tojo’s ass in 6 weeks.

* Rome actually would have been built in a day.

* The “Three Minute Egg” would be known as the “Two Minute Twenty Five Second” Egg.

You get the picture.

Now Mr. Reynolds has written a book about this sort of efficiency entitled An Army of Davids which either refers to the biblical story of David versus Goliath or some kind of nightmare that involves a host of clones resembling the mutli-talented star of Baywatch and Knight Rider cavorting naked in my bedroom. I’ll admit the latter possibility is intriguing but hardly germane to the idea of a world revolution in efficiency and problem solving.

With that revolution in mind it struck me that the practical applications for such an “army” were endless. Just think of how much cluelessness could be avoided, curtailed, or even defeated if Mr. Reynold’s mythical army were loosed upon the unsuspecting world of dolts, nincompoops, blockheads, imbeciles, and cluebats. The effects would probably be so beneficial, it is likely that all the fondest dreams of mankind - world peace, the elimination of poverty and hunger, a World Series Championship for the Cubs - could be realized.

Regular Carnival goers will remember my recent “What Would Jack Bauer Do” edition in which I commented on each bit of cluelessness by positing the ultimate question of what Mr. Bauer would have done if faced with a similar situation as that faced by the cluebat in question.

Because nothing succeeds like success (and because I’m running out of original ideas of what to do) I would like to take a similar tack with Mr. Reynolds fictitious army: What would an Army of Davids Do or WWAODD. Following each Carnival entry, I’ll try and answer that question as briefly as possible. Who knows, maybe we’ll come up with some real solutions to these problems. Maybe we’ll really change something. Maybe this mythical army will acquire flesh and bone and roll like a tidal wave across the landscape moving mountains, changing the course of mighty rivers (without harming the snail darter), rebuild cities, reform political parties, and even bring peace to the galaxy.

Okay, well maybe not bring peace to the galaxy. But you get the idea.

We’ve got 35 entries this week from some of the best, the funniest writers on the web. So grab a brew, kick back and be entertained. Click till it hurts!

“Everybody pulls for David, nobody roots for Goliath.”
(Wilt Chamberlain, 7′2″ NBA Hall of Famer)

“Hey Stilt! David probably didn’t play ‘hide the salami’ with 20,000 women”.
(Me)

*****************************************************************

Alexandra at All Things Beautiful joins the Carnival this week by asking the question: Why has the Bush administration, which has labeled Iran one of the world’s most dangerous regimes and has called the hostages American heroes, fought their efforts to win damages for their ordeal from the Islamic republic? Alexandra’s answer is a jaw-dropper.

WWAODD: Using collective wisdom, they would have prevented the election of Jimmy Carter in the first place and never allowed the dirty necked galoots who run the Iranian theocracy to take power.

Our favorite conservative streetwalker, Feisty Republican Whore takes us to Australia where some media types are shocked, just shocked I tell you that the words “Muslim” and “terrorists” appear in the same context 89% of the time.

WWAODD: A re-examination of the record by the AOD’s would find that the actual percentage is closer to 100%.

Giacomo (whose coverage of Hoop Fever has been fantastic) offers an explanation as to why the clueless reporters at ESPN writing about the World Baseball Championship can’t figure out why the Cuban ballplayers seem to be living in another era - like the 1940’s and 50’s.

WWAODD: The Army would find a way to smuggle plans into Cuba to build thousands of Apple II computers made from sugar cane stalks, tin cans, and spare parts from a 1957 Chevy Bel Airs which would help unite the Cuban people and assist them in overthrowing Castro.

The best Finnish-Canadian blogger out there from Sixteen Volts takes us back to his childhood and the Marxist children’s book The Little Red Book of Schoolchildren which offered some rather interesting suggestions as to how kids could overthrow capitalist governments.

WWAODD: Laugh.

Tom Rants has a rant about the cluelessness of World Net Daily, one of the most inaccurate sources for news on the web.

WWAODD: The AOD gave up trying to fact check the cluebats long ago.

XYBA has the mandible depresser of the day about a child rapist given no jail time who immediately after being released raped again.

WWAODD: Find a way to build a trap door leading to hell so that people like this could be dealt with in a proper manner.

Dan Melson has written a superior post about the myth of the media being a “superior class” in American society.

WWAODD: The AOD belled that cat long ago.

Fausta has a smorgasbord of cluelessness from a variety of sources for your enjoyment.

WWAODD: Smorgasbords being the most efficient and profitable way to serve a large number of people, the AOD would approve (and help themselves to the kippers).

Tom Bowler updates us on the “Joe Wilson Magical Mystery Tour” of Democratic fundraisers where the most famous man in America whose wife isn’t a covert operative for the CIA has been speaking.

WWAODD: The AOD has written a program for the web that automatically debunks Wilson’s charges. The file has been corrupted by overuse.

HERE’S YOUR WEEKLY DOSE OF CARNIVAL SATIRE FROM OUR RELATIVELY STABLE STABLE OF WEB SATIRISTS:

Conservathink has an obit that is kinda, sorta, well…let’s face it. It’s disgusting. Funny? You be the judge.

Buckley F. Williams gives us the lowdown on Katie Couric’s interview with the Muslim cluebat who drove his vehicle into a crowd of people at UNC.

Mr. Right treats us to a learned academic study showing that George Bush is indeed Adolph Hitler.

MAKE SURE YOU CHECK BACK NEXT WEEK FOR SOME OF THE FUNNIEST SATIRE ON THE WEB.

The Yaks are back! Random Yak gives us a collective “Yak of the Week” for a bunch of clueless executives who refuse to use to internet. Their reasons may surprise you.

WWAODD: Disguising the internet as a set of golf clubs, the AOD tricks the executives into becoming more comfortable with going on line.

The smartest kitty on the internet, Ferdy informs us that although the Constitution does not specifically prohibit anyone from being a chucklehead, there may in fact be a foreign precedent that SCOTUS could use to prohibit Congressional idiocy.

WWAODD: The Army would work tirelessly and with eventual success in getting Ferdy elected President.

Cao has the tangled web a blogger has woven trying to hide their identity and the thread of lies she/he put out to throw people off the trail.

WWAODD: One would definitely need an army to unravel the story of this prevaricating poseur.

Carnival Pin-Up Girl Pamela enlightens us about Darfur and the demonstration in support of people who are being slaughtered as we speak.

WWOADD: The army would find a way to bring these outrages to the attention of the entire world as well as light a fire under the UN, the US government, and other western nations to get off their butts and do something.

Beth rants against the left and their argument about Iraq (and any other conflict involving the US) being about oil.

WWAODD: The AOD will eventually develop alternatives to oil anyway which will cause lefty’s heads to explode all over the world when they no longer can use their favorite anti-capitalist, anti-American argument.

Jay at Stop the ACLU wants to stop the ACLU from destroying American sovereignty in this blood-pressure raising article.

WWAODD: An army of bloggers works to expose the perfidy of the so-called civil liberties organization. Oh wait…Jay’s already doing that.

A Different River tells us about a “performance artist” who believes “If it’s not offensive, it’s not art.”

WWAODD: Art being an individualistic endeavor, The Army would normally have scant interest in such obscenity. However, since this kind of outrageousness demands action, AOD would see to it that the cluebat’s “art” never saw the light of day.

Jack Cluth bitterly bemoans the fact that Serbian mass murderer Slobadan Milosevic escaped justice.

WWAODD: Develop a life-prolonging drug that would have kept the dictator alive long enough to receive his just desserts.

Don Surber has the latest evidence of global warming; yellow snow in Korea. No, it’s not what you’re thinking.

WWAODD: Find a way to turn snow blue so that it won’t look so icky.

Mark Coffey has the Nutroots Manifesto that is not only, well, nutty but dishonest and unintentionally funny to boot.

WWAODD: Send Kos, Armstrong, and the whole bunch copies of An Army of Davids and hope they don’t only use the book as a coaster for their kool-aid.

Fred Fry gives us another fascinating post on the Maritime industry (in which he’s worked for many years) and more fallout from the Dubai port deal…AND -

The Maryhunter has more on the backlash caused by the port deal.

WWAODD: The collective intelligence of The AOD would have prevented the brouhaha from occurring in the first place.

The lovely Mensa Barbie has some information on the clueless Belarus dictator who is acting like elections are a game.

WWAODD: What they’re doing right now; sitting in the cold and snow in the middle of Minsk demonstrating for democracy.

Stephen Littau gives us some Fearless Philosophy about the cluebats in Hollywood.

WWAODD: The AOD would recognize that Hollywood is on its last legs and that in the near future, independent films will overtake the over-fed, over-hyped gluttons who pass for film artists today.

Jon Swift has an excellent rant against the Democrats trying to make political hay out of Claude Allen’s troubles.

WWAODD: Try and get to the bottom of the strangest political story this year.

Those parsing pachyderms at Elephants in Academia point out a typical bit of cluelessness from CNN.

WWAODD: CNN is beyond the assistance of the AOD and is about to be replaced by them anyway.

Dean Swift celebrates National Meat-Out day by also celebrating “The National Eat More Yummy Animals Day.”

WWAODD: Although The Army rarely takes sides in such disputes, they would immediately recognize the cluelessness of PETA and other groups as well as the unconscionable interference in other people’s lives.

Stingray has the salty story linked by Drudge about the flying cows that left two police cars on fire in Texas.

WWAODD: AOD would have developed a cow catcher so that the police cars could have saved both the animals and their vehicles.

Lecentre has a tidbit about the Canadians debating the country’s military commitments in Afghanistan.

WWAODD: The AOD would agree with the sentiment in a poll published that showed people questioning why Canadian Members of Parliament were making $100,000 per year.

Did I use that title once already? I got a curious sense of deja vu when typing it out just now (cue Twilight Zone music).

That is the hazard of falling behind in posting the winners to the Watchers Vote every week. In order to rectify that situation, here are the winners from the week of March 10:

Council Winners

First Place: Gates of Vienna for “The Bloody Borders Project.”

Second Place: “From Way up Here” by The Glittering Eye.

Third Place: AJ Strata at the Stratosphere for “Are we Closing in on Al Qaeda?”

Non Council Winners

First Place: “Ex Taliban at Yale: Another Changed Mind?” by Neo-neocon.

Second Place: Varifrank and “Just a Passing Thought.”

Third Place: The Intel Dump and “Shop and Awe.”

Fourth Place: “Really Stupid Remarks about Terrorism” from The Anchoress.

Week Ending March 17.

Council Winners

First Place: “King Solomon and the Roe Men” by Gates of Vienna.

Second Place: The Glittering Eye for “Why the Iranians aren’t Deterred.”

Non Council:

First Place: NHS Blog Doctor with “The Crippen Diaries (Week 11).”

Second Place: “Why George Bush will be Important for Decades” by Middlebrow.

In other Council news, a spot has opened up on the Council and if you’d like to try for it, follow instructions here.

As always, if you would like to participate in the weekly Watchers Vote, go here and do as the man says.

The turf war shaping up between the bureaucrats at CTU and the Department of Homeland Security in the show may seem petty and even a little bizarre, what with 19 cannisters of nerve gas about to be released on an unsuspecting public. But the fact that such maneuvering takes place even in real life illustrates just one of the reasons the intelligence services of the United States are so dysfunctional.

The 9/11 Commission found numerous examples of jealous bureaucrats at the FBI and the CIA guarding their turf not against terrorists but against each other. Even within those organizations, there was friction between counter-terrorism and law enforcement (here and overseas) as the CIA lost track of several of the 9/11 terrorists and then failed to put them on a domestic watch list. FBI agents in Minneapolis and Phoenix pleaded with their superiors on numerous occasions to take note of terrorists at flight schools. Instead of paying heed, Washington had the local offices of the FBI agents in question try and stifle the investigations by making life difficult for the agents.

This behavior can be explained only in the context of “channels” that careerists at the nation’s intelligence agencies are slaves to. Only by following procedure and not “rocking the boat” can one advance. This attitude punishes originality, faults thinking outside the box, and penalizes independent action.

This is not to say that most employees at our intelligence agencies aren’t dedicated, patriotic, hard working public servants, many of whom place their lives on the line for our country. What it indicates is a sick culture, a working atmosphere that rewards playing it safe and rarely punishes mistakes no matter how large.

Former Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet may have been the most spectacularly unsuccessful DCIA in history, missing as he did 9/11, Saddam’s lack of WMD, downplaying Iraqi ties to al Qaeda (which we are now finding out were much more extensive than the CIA said they were), and underestimating the Iranian nuclear program. Instead of being fired, President Bush allowed him to retire and then gave him a Congressional Gold Medal.

Is it any wonder our intel services need an overhaul?

As for as the CTU-DHS war, one need only look at what Congressional investigators have pointed out was the mistake of folding FEMA into DHS and the subsequent problems with Katrina assistance. A case can be made that FEMA should never have assumed the role of disaster nanny in the first place. But the fact that states had come to rely on the agency as a first responder (even though that was never its mission) only points up the consequences of DHS turf building.

The DHS representative has let on that she doesn’t plan on taking over CTU completely until the crisis is over. That won’t stop her or her assistant Miles from probably making a hash of CTU’s efforts to stop the terrorists. Muscling in on someone else’s turf is a time honored tradition in bureaucracies - even when the stakes are so high.

SUMMARY

We discover that the woman in the hotel room who promised Bierko the schematics is one Collette Stenger, described as an “International Intelligence Broker.” I’d love to see her business card: “Serving the terrorist community since 1999…” After one last leer at her mystery lover, she leaves the hotel to meet Bierko after informing lover boy that she will be at the airport in 45 minutes.

At the ranch, Vice President Strangelove asks Jellyfish if he has any second thoughts about declaring martial law. He does, especially after Martha works him over one last time trying to get him to change his mind. Too late - Logan appears before the cameras and announces a “curfew” for Los Angeles starting immediately. The press sees through the fiction and even Fox News is calling it martial law. The negative reaction has Jellyfish outraged as his political foes are “debating” whether or not the action is legal. I wonder which party the writers are talking about when we have some politicians trying to score political points with the nation under attack? Duh.

Whether you believe martial law was necessary is not the point. Debate later. Even impeach later. For the immediate crisis, swallow your doubts and keep your yap shut, especially when you don’t have the information that the President does. Of course, we can see that martial law is a ploy by Strangelove but the bitching politicians don’t know that. Best for the country if everyone holds their fire until the crisis is over, then go ballistic if you want to.

At CTU, Grandma Hayes shows up with her sleazeball assistant Miles (who played the gay guy that Bruce Willis used and then murdered in The Jackal). Miles immediately endears himself to all of us when he casually orders Chloe to set up a workstation for him where Fat Geek Edgar used to sit. The look Chloe gave him would have melted the CTU mainframe.

Agent Pierce (who finally has a decent role after 5 years of faithful service both to the executive branch of government and Fox television) gets a call from Wayne Palmer who asks to meet the agent clandestinely. Wayne has obviously uncovered some more information from his dead brothers computer files and needs to tell someone. Why Pierce? Evidently the writers needed some way to get Aaron involved in the plot and this seemed as good as an excuse as any.

Jellyfish is getting antsy about the political fallout from his rather draconian security measures but Strangelove assures him that “I’m in control of the situation.” Mike’s ears prick up at that announcement although one wonders why he should be surprised. It’s becoming pretty clear that President Jellyfish will soon be supplanted by the Vice President either through some kind of trickery or maybe even assassination.

Collette shows up at Bierko’s terrorist hideout and shows that she has dealt with many a murderous thug in the past by handing over the schematics only after getting her money. It appeared that Bierko was torn about whether or not to kill her. The fact that the email confirmation showed that she received $10 million for the information made it bad business to off the dark haired beauty.

We discover that the plans are for a “distribution center” with the target a residential area. There is only one possible explanation: The terrorists are going to flood the gas lines with nerve gas. And as Sue pointed out to me, the fact that martial law has been declared means that everybody will be at home, thus raising the body count dramatically.

Could such an attack succeed in real life? I’d be interested if someone could figure out how many parts per million would get into a household from 18 cannisters of nerve gas and whether it would be enough to kill 200,000 people. Remember, not everyone has a gas appliance so you would have to figure that the nerve toxin would have to hit something like 75,000 homes.

Meanwhile, CTU is on the trail of Collette thanks to some geek magic by Chloe who hacked Henderson’s hard drive to find her name. Jack and Curtis take a TAC team to the hotel only to find Collette’s lover Tio who, although appearing to be Italian (and with an Italian sounding name), actually works for German intelligence. Tio refuses to help Jack having spent 6 months undercover bedding down the gorgeous intelligence broker in order to uncover her networks. The fact that it was a two month job evidently has not crossed the minds of Tio’s clueless superiors.

Jack tries to tell the love struck spy what’s at stake:

JACK: If we don’t find Bierko, hundreds of thousands of people will die here today. That is more important than your “pre-emptive” operation.

TIO: It is not a question of importance. It’s a question of different agendas. Your job is to save American lives. Mine, German lives. You’re asking me to betray my duty to my country. Ask yourself what you would do in my position.

JACK: You better start asking yourself what you would do in mine. (Leading him away) Let’s go.

TIO: I’m here with the permission of your government! You can’t touch me!

JACK: Riiiiiiight.

After telling Curtis to take a hike, Jack gets down to business telling the German agent that he will give the NSA’s “wet list” of terrorists around the world if he helps CTU get Collette. Tio eagerly agrees (perhaps hoping that he will be sent on another plum assignment where he gets to screw some terrorist babe). After a little tomfoolery, Chloe gets her keycard back from Miles and hacks the NSA database through a backdoor and downloads the wet list to Jack’s PDA. Tio, Jack, and Curtis head to the airport to meet Collette.

Back at the ranch, Wayne is stopped at a checkpoint and is cleared through only after Strangelove and his assistant give the okay. The fact that Wayne is later run off the road by men intent on killing him reveals that either Strangelove himself or his assistant is working for the traitors at the Department of Defense. Wayne barely survives and runs off into the night with his would be assassins in hot pursuit.

After getting caught red handed by Miles, Chloe informs Bill and Grandma Hayes that she gave Jack one of the most classified secrets of the American government. Why? “Because Jack wanted it.” Bill goes ballistic and poor Chloe for once is rendered speechless. Grandma gives the okay to continue the operation reluctantly and only because Collette has arrived at the airport. Once identified, the woman is expertly captured by the TAC team and like all terrorist small fry, knows the drill perfectly; she asks for immunity from Jack who, given any other context, would be considered soft on crime so many times he has granted immunity to terrorists.

Tio tries to download the wet list into the German intelligence files but instead, hears a strange voice coming from the device: “This card will self-destruct in 5 seconds. Good luck, fool.” Jack is nice enough to call Tio immediately after the meltdown and assure him that he will help “rebuild his investigation.” Who wouldn’t given the fringe benefits.

In exchange for immunity, Collette can offer only the name of her contact who sold her the schematics. The person works at the Department of Defense. And we discover that it is not a “he” but a “she.”

Were you surprised she blurted out the name Audrey Raines? I must confess that I was indeed shocked, the first real slam-bang jolt of the season. The obvious question would be is it, in fact, true? Can Audrey really be the traitor?

The idea that she could be bought is nonsense. But working with Vice President Gardener and the other traitors thinking that she was doing the right thing? Not impossible. Improbable, yes. But don’t worry, Jack will beat it out of her I’m sure.

BODY COUNT

The Grim Reaper took the night off.

UPDATE Long time House reader Hector informs me that Grandma Hayes mentioned that 56 CTU employees bit the dust in the nerve gas attack. Since I only used the figure 55 (given by Bill) we will add one more to the show’s blood total.

JACK: 15

SHOW: 143

SPECULATION

Is Gardener the main man in the conspiracy or is there someone behind him? Is Gardener involved at all? Could it be Gardener’s assistant acting as a mole and the Vice President just an innocent boob?

If Audrey is involved, might not her father also be a player? And if Audrey is not involved, why set her up? Are the traitors trying to throw Jack off the scent? Collette must realize that if she’s lying about Audrey, her immunity deal is kaput. If that’s the case, then even Collette has been misdirected for purposes unclear at this point.

Or, Audrey is a terrorist loving, traitorous bitch. Which is it fans?

UPDATE

First, make sure you stop by Blogs4Bauer and catch up on all the news, speculation, and funnies from last night’s show.

Then come back here and let ‘er rip in the comments about whether or not you think Audrey is really a traitor.

And what’s with Michelle Malkin? I’m surprised to see Michelle have time for anything outside of taking care of her family and writing so the fact that she has now confessed an obsession with Prison Break comes as something of a shock. But the real shocker is her taunting of Jack Bauer. Has she no clue of the consequences of dissing Jack? Those two losers from Prison Break would make a fine midday snack for Jack who, if Michelle is unaware, is an equal opportunity torturer, administering pain in equally large doses to women and men.

Standing up to moonbats is one thing. Standing up to Jack…?

She’s braver than I thought.

Can you stand one more “Where we stand” post on Iraq?

Your humble host almost decided not to do such a post for several reasons. After all, it is the height of hubris to believe that lil’ ole me would have anything original or insightful to say about matters of war and peace. And why should my opinion be more perceptive or matter more than the any other internet pundit?

I am a reasonably intelligent human being who spends 8-10 hours a day on the internet reading for the most part everything I can on the situation in Iraq. My sources are left, right, government, anti-government, Middle East media, American MSM, former government officials, Iraqi bloggers, and dozens of other sites who have proved themselves if not non-partisan then at least honest in their assessment of the situation.

I believe that anyone who says that Iraq is a lost cause is dead wrong. I also believe that anyone who says things are going reasonably well is also incorrect. The situation in Iraq today is balanced on a knife’s edge. There are some signs that are encouraging. Many more are not. In the end, there is little more the US military can do combat wise to materially affect the outcome. From here on out, it’s up to the Iraqis.

The problems with the Iraqi security services are daunting. Not only are most units not ready to take over without American back-up, but there are signs that both the NCO’s and officers are not taking to their responsibilities in such a way as to inspire confidence of either the Americans or the Iraqi soldiers serving under them. The good news is that this is slowly changing for the better as unit cohesion improves and officers gain experience in leading their men in the field. It is impossible to say at this point when these units will be able to stand on their own. The best guess of our military is 2 years.

As for the police, it is an entirely different story. There are disheartening signs that the militias have infiltrated the police and are acting independently of their local commanders, answering instead to either their militia leaders or directly to the Interior Ministry which is controlled by an ex leader of the Badr Brigade Bayan Jabr. There is some anecdotal evidence that these police units that are dominated by one of the many Shia militias are helping in the massacre of Sunni civilians. This could be misinformation being put out by al Qaeda propaganda cadres as was the case in the immediate aftermath of the bombing of the Shrine in Samarra. But such reports are troubling nonetheless.

The good news is that the situation is redeemable. The political factions have just brokered an agreement to create a National Security Council to oversee the army and police. It will be Shia dominated but - and there are going to be a lot of “buts” when talking about Iraq - the Sunnis, the Kurds, and the secular parties will, if they band together, be able to outvote the Shiites.

Something similar is going on in Parliament. One of the reasons for the delay in convening the legislative body is that the Shiite choice for Prime Minister, current interim Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jafari, is unacceptable to all the non-Shiite factions and have promised to vote him down if his name is put forward. This is extraordinarily encouraging in that it shows that on the big questions facing the legislature, the Sunnis, Kurds, and secularists are capable of acting together to outvote the Shiites.

The Shiites themselves are fractured with nationalists like Sistani at odds with fundamentalists allied with Iran like Muqtada al-Sadr. But as the violence continues (egged on partly by al-Sadr’s Mehdi militia) Sistani’s influence wanes. The Americans have rightly given Sistani a wide berth trying not to make it appear that he is “our man” as much as we would like him to succeed. But the clock is ticking on Sistani who is old and tired and he may be losing the respect of the very people who Iraq needs to find a way through to peace.

The insurgency is alive but has never been very organized which makes it that much harder to stamp out. Much of the violence directed against Americans comes at the hands of small cells of rebels acting with only the loosest connection to any unified whole. Tribal based rather than ideological or sectarian, there is a chance that the new government could negotiate to bring them into the political process. We probably won’t like the amnesty program that will allow the killers of American soldiers a free ride but it will be one of the costs of a peaceful, stable Iraq.

The militias are the real sticking point. As it stands now, it is still possible to disband them and integrate their members into the army and police with a minimum of friction. But the longer the militias are patrolling the streets, manning checkpoints, carrying out revenge killings, and working to make things worse rather than better, the less likely the country can avoid a bloody civil war. Only time will tell the story here. And no one is looking at their watch.

Of course, all this boils down to improving the security situation. Which won’t happen until the army improves. Which won’t happen until the political situation improves. Which won’t happen until the militias are reigned in. Which won’t happen until the security situation improves.

If it sounds like all depends on improving the safety of people in Baghdad and the Sunni Triangle, you’re correct. That has always been the key. And all the reconstruction and school building and hospital stocking and neighborhood outreach put together will be meaningless unless that one disheartening problem can be dramatically changed.