Right Wing Nut House

I no longer am surprised at anything I read from the “Reality Based Community.” I mean, how can you talk to people who actually believe voting machines were hacked by the Republican party and vote totals changed? How can you take people like that seriously? How can you be rational with someone who really believes that the religious right is about to take over the country and establish a theocracy?

Where does this impulse to be so goddamned dramatic come from? Because that’s what we’re talking about here. Real life evidently holds no drama for the moonbat. Or at least not enough drama that they can refrain from foisting their impossible conspiracy theories and irrational hatred of their own country on the rest of us. They’re like high school drama queens who never grew up. They need attention and they’re willing to be outrageous as possible in order to get it.

Witness the left’s reaction to the Newsweek retraction. Is it true that American interrogators desecrate the Koran in order to psychologically injure their subjects? I don’t know. The only people who are saying so are those who were in the damn prisons in the first place! Are they, like incarcerated American criminals, all innocent? Evidently the moonbats think so. They’re certainly much more willing to believe them than they are their own military and government.

And suppose the allegations were true? (I happen to believe they are true.) This isn’t torture. And I doubt whether it makes the terrorists cry. So what’s the problem?

We’re concerned about the feelings of people who would just as soon lop off an American’s head than give you the time of day?

Am I missing something here? Against the Geneva Convention? Maybe it’s about time we started to look at a document that’s going on 80 years old and was drawn up at a time when the Secretary of War Henry Stimson disbanded the code breakers because “gentlemen shouldn’t read other gentlemen’s mail.” Why should we be hamstrung by the Geneva Convention when our enemy isn’t? Because we’re Americans? Get Real!

And that’s the difference here, the chasm that separates left from right. There are those of us who believe we’re in a war for the survival of the United States of America. And then there are those who don’t. They believe if only we can seek to understand the murderous, beheading thugs that we’re fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and other nations where Islamofascism raises its ugly head, then they can’t help but fall in love with us. Or maybe we should address the root causes (barf!) of terrorism.

That’s easy. The root cause of terrorism lies with the religion of Islam itself. It exists in the 10th century. It’s never had a “reformation” which sought to bring religion into balance with the rest of society as those movements did in the west. Poverty is not a root cause of terrorism. Some of the poorest countries in the world are Christian countries in Central and South America. The poor in those countries don’t grow up and strap bomb belts on themselves and blow up school children. Instead, they become communists - dangerous but managably so. Give me your garden variety Marxist and I’ll show you someone who’d rather talk you into somnolence than blow you up. At the very least, they want to live to blow up someone else which would rule out flying planes into buildings.

I have no doubt that some interrogators have gone over the line both in doling out physcial torture and psychological stress to the Taliban and al Quaeda prisoners kept at Gitmo and the irreconcilable Saddamites and foreign fighters in Iraq. These people are not muggers. They’re not sex offenders. They’re not even wife murderers. The overwhelming majority are guilty-as-sin-dyed-in-the-wool bloodthirsty terrorists. And if by making them a little uncomfortable, or experience a little pain, or humiliation, or cause them psychic distress, I SAY GO FOR IT! If it gets them to talk, all the better. If not, at least they’ll suffer a tiny portion of the hurt, distress, and emotional harm they’ve caused others.

That’s not revenge. That’s justice.

So what’s the first reaction of the left to the revelation that the Newsweek story was, in effect, made up? Why they rush to Newsweek’s defense of course! And they do it better than any terrorist or enemy of the United States could ever do themselves:

I’ve found four reports — with more easily found — to back up Newsweek’s sources on the desecration of Korans belonging to Guantanamo detainees. (OH! How exciting for you!)

I see this incident this way: Newsweek has good sources for its allegations, but has backed off because it finds itself in a dicey, ill-founded public relations nightmare.

Newsweek has foresaken journalism to save what it perceives as its own hide.

And then there’s this curious juxtaposition:

If the situation were reversed, just imagine — if it’s even possible — the reaction in this country. Just pretend for a minute: Jerry Falwell being felt up by female Moslem prison guards and then having to watch while a Bible gets flushed down the toilet. Can you say Holy War?

Does this moonbat actually believe that Christians would riot if a bible were thrown in the toilet? I mean, has this guy been asleep for the last 25 years…or more? Here’s one example. Do you remember the awful riots that broke out when this photo appeared at that gallery in Cincinatti?

Do you recall the screaming Christians, blood flowing from their Ginsu knives, rampaging through the streets, murdering, pillaging, raping (well, maybe not raping…).

You have to try to be that clueless.

And that picture is just one example of course. The disrespect shown by secular humanists in this country toward Christian symbols, the Christian faith, and people who practice that faith is so profound that it got Christians out of the pews and into the voting booths. But rioting? Only in the paranoid fantasies of the moonbats.

The Newsweek imbroglio will subside; but not until Newsweek and their allies in the press and leftist websites redouble their efforts to find the “proof” that interrogators did indeed disrespect the Koran. I have absolutely no doubt they’ll find that proof.

The only question I have to them would be…now what? You’ve won a small point that will ignite more riots and result in more bloodshed. Proud of yourself now? Your hatred for your own country has now carried you into the waiting arms of the enemies of everything you purport to stand for.

How can you sleep at night?

UPDATE

Kevin at Wizbang boils the controversy down to its barest of bones and in so doing, rips the moonbat’s “fake but accurate” theme to shreds:

Andrew Sullivan, citing Daily Kos blogger SusanHu finding other allegations of Koran desecration, misses the point of the Newsweek Koran story by a country mile. The point is not that such allegations existed; it is that Newsweek reported that a US government investigation had (or would) conclude that such event took place.

No one (to my knowledge) is arguing a few detainees (and/or their lawyers) hadn’t made allegations concerning Koran desecration, yet Sullivan implies that those charges somehow lend credence to Newsweek’s shabby reporting. Sullivan then gets swept up in the “look at all the other prisoner abuse stories” mentality that presumably led Newsweek to run with such a poorly sourced report.

Well and truly said.

Everybody.

In hopes that my speculation does not elicit more groans, here is an offering:

Now for my favorite part: Jack puts a bullet in Marwan’s head. No reason, just because.
ROCK ON — Comment by Diamond

MOLE: I still say it’s Sec. of Defense Heller himself, somehow as a ruse for making the case for more DoD security funding. The previews of next week show moonbat dopey son Richard Heller, we knew he’d be back. But a possible nefarious connection with Richard and Marwan is so obvious, how could that possibly be?

NUKE: Hey, I said DC.

Comment by The MaryHunter

Speculation: Jack buys the farm, because he is distraught that he cannot hang on to a woman.

Next season, Chloe realizes she likes being a bitch with a gun and takes over as head of field operations. Edgar goes to a fat farm and loses weight so he can be a field operative as revenge for the killing of his mon and be with Chloe (we find out during next season that he secretly likes being beaten down by Chloe because she treats him like his mommy did). Tony and Michelle get back together for no other reason than no TV show is perfect. The mole is….the guy with the red Star Trek shirt and fake phaser in the background because he is angry about the network no re-upping Star Trek Enterprise. –

Comment by Hector

Oh well…maybe I’ll try posting the contest a little earlier on Sunday.

Don’t forget…next Monday is the night! A two-hour season finale!

There’s news from the nuclear minor leagues. Apparently both North Korea and Iran seem hell bent on breaking into the majors any way they can. First, this from the New York Times:

The Bush administration on Sunday warned North Korea for the first time that if it conducted a nuclear test, the United States and several Pacific powers would take punitive action, but officials stopped short of saying what kind of sanctions would result.

“Action would have to be taken,” Stephen J. Hadley, President Bush’s national security adviser, said on the CNN program “Late Edition.” Asked earlier on “Fox News Sunday” about recent reports that intelligence agencies have warned that North Korea could conduct its first test, Mr. Hadley added: “We’ve seen some evidence that says that they may be preparing for a nuclear test. We have talked to our allies about that.”

But he cautioned that North Korea was “a hard target” and that correctly assessing its intentions was nearly impossible.

What kind of “action” would be taken? Japan, who’s direcly under the gun of the nutty NoKo’s and their certifiably insane leader Kim Jong Il, may take the issue to the Security Council:

On Sunday afternoon, senior administration officials said that concerns about baiting North Korea helped to explain why Mr. Hadley did not specify what kind of penalty was possible. Instead, Mr. Hadley noted that “the Japanese are out today already saying that those steps would need to include going to the Security Council and, potentially, sanctions.”

He appeared to be referring to comments by Shinzo Abe, the secretary general of Japan’s governing Liberal Democratic Party. Returning to Japan from a recent trip to Washington - where he met Mr. Hadley, Vice President Dick Cheney and others - Mr. Abe said Japan faced the most direct threat if North Korea proved that it could detonate a nuclear weapon.

“If North Korea’s possession of nuclear weapons becomes definite,” Mr. Abe said on Asahi TV, and North Korea “conducts nuclear testing, for instance, Japan will naturally bring the issue to the U.N. and call for sanctions against North Korea.”

Unfortunately as I’ve pointed out here, China has gone on record saying that UN sanctions against North Korea (and probably Iran) are not the answer. That means that if Japan and the US take the DPRK to the UN, China will almost certainly veto any sanctions resolution. And given the timidity of the International Atomic Energy Agency and their nuclear enabling leader Mohamed ElBaradie it’s doubtful any sanctions would be forthcoming even if China abstained on a sanctions vote. The IAEA under Mr. ElBaradei has taken the attitude that “if we can’t see it, it doesn’t exist” when it comes to the North Koreans. Even a DPRK test of a nuclear weapon would probably not move that agency to recommend sanctions.

On the good news front, the North and South are about ready to re-open talks at the staff level in order to facilitate a meeting between high level officials later this year:

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and South Korea resumed working-level talks on Monday in the DPRK, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA)reported.

The inter-Korean talks, reopened in the southern border city of Kaesong after a 10-month suspension, were attended by two delegations led by Kim Man-gil, deputy director of the Secretariat of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland from the DPRK, and Rhee Bong-jo, South Korea’s vice-minister of Unification, the report said.

For his part, according to Seoul-based Yonhap News, Rhee called on the north side to normalize suspended inter-Korean relations and rejoin six-party talks over the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula.

“We told the North Korean side that if it comes out to the dialogue table, we’ll make important proposals for practical gains in talks aimed at resolving the nuclear issue,” the chief South Korean delegate told reporters.

With both South Korea and China now urging resumption of the six-way talks, Kim may be threatening to test a nuclear weapon in order to pressure the two nations to grant him major concessions before the talks could resume. Tech transfers from South Korea and more food and fuel from China would probably be on the table.

Meanwhile, the radioactive mullahs are quaking in their slippers now that France, Germany and Great Britain have sent them the dreaded “toughly worded letter” about resuming their not so secret uranium enrichment program. This hasn’t phased the mullahs that much. They’ve just warned the Europeans that they have one last chance to make a deal:

Iran said Monday it will give the European Union a last chance to salvage a nuclear deal at talks on May 23 before it resumes atomic work which Washington fears is part of a weapons program.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi told the official IRNA news agency that Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Hassan Rohani would meet the foreign ministers of France, Britain and Germany on May 23 to try to reach an 11th-hour compromise.

But Iran has become frustrated with the talks and said it would restart making nuclear fuel, an action that would marshal the Europeans behind U.S. attempts to haul Tehran to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions.

Iran said it would give ministerial level talks one last shot before announcing the return to making atomic fuel.

The Iranian parliament has already voted to go ahead with an accelerated enrichment program that most experts agree would allow the mullahs to have a weapon by year’s end. But according to the Lebanon Daily Star, they may continue to delay the start up of the enrichment process - if they get some satisfaction from the Europeans:

Iran said Sunday it was postponing its threatened resumption of sensitive nuclear activities, but insisted the climbdown was merely a temporary gesture ahead of “last chance” emergency talks with European officials.

The move came hours after a defiant Iranian Parliament voted to oblige the government to develop a nuclear fuel cycle - which would include the controversial process of enriching uranium.

Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, Hassan Rowhani, warned that long-term nuclear negotiations could not continue without Iran first resuming uranium work.

“We cannot continue the negotiations with the Europeans without having resumed some of our activities,” Rowhani told state television, adding Iran’s decision to resume conversion of uranium - a precursor to enrichment - was “still valid.”

Clearly Iran wants some kind of concession from the Europeans on enrichment. They may wish to present the Europeans with a fait accompli regarding some kind of enrichment (there’s a way to enrich uranium that would be slower and have a lower yield of bomb-grade uranium) which might satisfy the appeasers in Germany and France. The mullah’s goal has to be to split the Europeans off from the Americans. Even picking off France would be a victory and probably result in a failure to impose UN sanctions if we took the Iranians before the Security Council.

We’re now poised on the razor’s edge. Will it be confrontation? Or will we be able to get the rest of the world to stand with us and prevent two states - Iran and North Korea - from getting these enormously destablising weapons? I’m not confident that a confrontation with Iran can be avoided. North Korea however, is so desperately poor that given the right incentives and some pressure by the Chinese and South Koreans, we may be able to roll back Kim’s mad nuclear scheme that has bankrupted his country.

Post Script: For a good laugh, check out the North Korean website. I definitely want to get me some of them badges!

The real joke? Click on the link marked “shopping.”

For a little more than a year now, the opponents of the war in Iraq have sought desperately to undermine our efforts there by using the Abu Ghraib prison scandal as a metaphor for the immorality of the conflict in general. Since they couldn’t attack the idea that deposing one of the truly bestial tyrants of the 20th century was the right thing to do, they’ve had to discredit the military and the Administration by attacking the way Americans see themselves and how they want the rest of the world to see us.

They’ve succeeded beyond their wildest expectations.

In the process of trying to discredit the war in the eyes of the American people, the media and their allies on the left have made common cause with some of the most despicable human beings on the planet - Islamic terrorists and their supporters around the world. Make no mistake. The constant barrage by the mainstream press of hair raising stories telling of widespread and systemic torture by the military in Iraq and Afghanistan are being used by people who, as I write this, are using these reports to recruit people into the insurgency to kill American soldiers.

And Newsweek is concerned that they caused a riot? When will they become concerned that there is a direct correlation between printing stories told by terrorists, their lawyers, and family members of terrorists about torture being the rule rather than the exception and getting American soldiers killed?

There’s no getting around this fact. And by taking Newsweek to task for one exaggerated, suspect story we’re all missing the point. Abu Ghraib, like the Watergate mess, has become a catchall phrase, media shorthand for the immorality of our efforts in the War on Terror. There’s been absolutely no effort to put these charges - both real and imagined - into any kind of context. How many stories in the New York times have you seen where an effort has been made to separate legitimate methods of coercive interrogation (so-called “stress techniques) from the gruesome hijinks and fraternity pranks of the apparently ill-disciplined and out of control rabble that ran Abu Ghraib? Even the legitimate complaints of actual, physical torture by the Red Cross are filled with uncertainty and qualifications.

The fact is that both the status of prisoners and the idea that we’re not treating these stateless murderers like we treat muggers or jewel thieves is what’s sticking in the craw of both the press and their leftist apologists. James Bennet inadvertently makes this point in his article in yesterday’s New York Times:

This surge in the killing of civilians reflects how mysterious the long-term strategy remains - and how the rebels’ seeming indifference to the past patterns of insurgency is not necessarily good news for anyone.

It is not surprising that reporters, and evidently American intelligence agents, have had great difficulty penetrating this insurgency. What is surprising is that the fighters have made so little effort to advertise unified goals

In other words, we can’t understand the insurgents because they’re not acting like the Viet Cong. This is nuts. The insurgents are not concerned with anything except making headlines in American newspapers in order to convince the American people that our stated goal of bringing stability to that country is failing. The only possible way they can win is if we leave. And the American press, whether they admit it or not, have become the terrorists willing partner in this endeavor.

Rather than trying to glorify the insurgents (and by extension, terrorists around the world) as “freedom fighters” or “agrarian reformers” as they did 35 years ago in Viet Nam, the press has taken to portraying them as victims of torture somehow worthy of our pity. And because there’s been so little perspective offered, the press has been able to get away with this.

Yes there has been torture. Is it any more widespread than the mistreatment of German or Japanese prisoners in World War II during their interrogations? My guess would be that our enemies back then were treated much more harshly and on a more systematic basis than the stateless beheaders who fall into our hands today. The goals are the same; to get as much information as quickly as possible. And given the success of our efforts at Guantanamo Bay using stress techniques that the media has dubbed “torture,” it seems logical to assume that the comparatively mild measures used by interrogators today compare favorably with the less scientific, more physically abusive techniques carried out during WWII.

The Newsweek imbroglio won’t last long. Already there’s a theme emerging in various press accounts of the magazine’s semi-retraction that while this one story may be false, don’t forget all the incidents that are true:

But while the Pentagon is disputing the Koran incident, U.S. officials have confirmed numerous reports by detainees, especially at Abu Ghraib, about guards attempting to humiliate them with tactics that violate religious taboos of the Muslim faith. A senior Pentagon official has confirmed reports that female interrogators rubbed their bodies against the men, wore skimpy clothes, touched them provocatively and pretended to spread menstrual blood on them. The Newsweek item that triggered the violence also said the forthcoming report would describe “one woman who took off her top, rubbed her finger through a detainee’s hair and sat on the detainee’s lap.”

This is “torture?” If you go by standards set in American prisons I guess you could say yes it is. But by the standards of a war against stateless thugs?

We’ve not seen the last of the Koran incident. Here’s our intrepid reporter Mr. Isikoff:

“Obviously we all feel horrible about what flowed from this, but it’s important to remember there was absolutely no lapse in journalistic standards here,” he said. “We relied on sources we had every reason to trust and gave the Pentagon ample opportunity to comment. . . . We’re going to continue to investigate what remains a very murky situation.”

Not content to leave well enough alone, Mr. Isikoff will not rest until he finds something - anything - that will show how American interrogators show disrespect to Muslims. And if he thinks this last round of riots were bad, just wait until he gets the real story. Or at least one that the Pentagon can’t deny so easily.

Abu Ghraib will continue to haunt our efforts in the War on Terror. The press will see to that. Is there any hope that this could change? Only a similar or, God forbid, more serious attack on American soil would convince the press that this is indeed a war of survival and that by coddling the enemy, they endanger each and every one of us.

UPDATE

I’ve got search engine bots all over my site this morning what with the Newsweek blogswarm and my updated info on Brooke Greenberg. So as a service to all my new visitors and to save you some time in your search for the best commentary on the Newsweek brouhaha, here’s some great links you can click on:

La Shawn Barber has a nice roundup of blogs big and small with her own take:

They’ll get what’s coming to them. The blogosphere has erupted in a righteously indigant swarm (The conservative side, of course. Liberal bloggers are busy defending the rag.), forcing mainstream media to pick up the story. I hope they lose advertisers, readers, and heads over this.

The Captain is incensed (aren’t we all…mostly):

Quite frankly, this is bullshit. They went to the Pentagon with a wild story about flushed Qu’rans and now they’re surprised when no one knew anything about it? Can you imagine what Newsweek would have written and published had the Pentagon told them to keep quiet about it? They would have turned it into another Abu Ghraib, complete with cover-ups and military censorship. It would have resulted in more silly Senate hearings, and even worse publicity than what Newsweek already generated, with more loss of life — and all for a story that sounded patently false from the very beginning.

Michelle Malkin has some thoughts on who Isikoff’s source may be with some links to the milblogs who are speculating about it.

You absolutely must go to Austin Bay’s blog and read his long, powerful diatribe against the press.

Mark Noonan has some words for Newsweek’s editor:

Mr. Whitaker, they weren’t victims of “violence”; they were victims of irresponsible reporting which always presumes the worst about the United States and it’s military forces. You’re correction is nice, but the correction wont carry as far as the initially broadcast lie…for a long time now, American soldiers will be contending with men who’s motivation to fight us stems from your magazine’s irresponsible report.

Wizbang has some contrary thoughts about Newsweek’s liability:

So, bring on the abuse, the sanctions, the penalties for Newsweek. Ban their reporters from covering events. Contact and boycott their advertisers. Pillory them in public. Blame them for the damage to our diplomatic efforts. Mock them. Deride them. Taunt them. Make them stand in the corner at press events while wearing silly hats. Use back issues as toilet paper.

But don’t hold them liable for the deaths. To do that is to excuse the real people to blame — the rioters themselves.

More great commentary at Powerline and good links as usual from Glenn Anderson. And more Instapundit here.

And for a little balance (and because the moonbat linked to a blog that links to me) here’s the one, the only Kos and his “All is well” meme.

Cross Posted at Blogger News Network

With a little more than 24 hours to go before this week’s exciting episode, it’s time for our 24 Till “24″ Speculation contest!

Leave your funniest, weirdest, most logical, or most outrageous speculation below. You can speculate on anything you’d like but here’s some questions to get you started:

1. What will be the fate of Tony and Michelle? I’ve been speculating for months that they’ll agree to “give it another try” only to have Tony die saving Jack’s ass.

2. More “Who’s the Mole” speculation. I hinted last week that there’s a possibility it could be Michelle. Did anything happen last week to give you an idea of who else it might be?

3. Where’s the nuke targeted? I say DC.

4. What will happen to Marwan? Will he escape? Will fat geek Edgar go postal on him for killing his beloved mother? Will he make a deal?

Okay you “24″ fanatics…give it to me. The best speculation will appear in my post around 4:00 pm central tomorrow.

Scott Johnson of Powerline has a post on Newsweek’s internal investigation into how Michael Isikoff and John Barry’s story on the copy of a Qur’an being flushed down a toilet - a story that now appears to have no basis in fact - made it into the magazine’s “Periscope” section.

Late last week Pentagon spokesman Lawrence DiRita told NEWSWEEK that its original story was wrong. The brief periscope item (”SouthCom Showdown”) had reported on the expected results of an upcoming U.S. Southern Command investigation into the abuse of prisoners at Gitmo. According to NEWSWEEK, SouthCom investigators found that Gitmo interrogators had flushed a Qur’an down a toilet in an attempt to rattle detainees. While various released detainees have made allegations about Qur’an desecration, the Pentagon has, according to DiRita, found no credible evidence to support them.

How did NEWSWEEK get its facts wrong? And how did the story feed into serious international unrest? While continuing to report events on the ground, NEWSWEEK interviewed government officials, diplomats and its own staffers, and reconstructed this narrative of events:

Scott sums it up nicely:

So Isikoff relied on a telephone call with an anonymous government official paraphrasing a forthcoming report, confirmed by placing a draft of the Periscope item before another anonymous government official. Isikoff never saw the underlying report or even had it read to him.

And this is what passes for “journalism” at Newsweek.

The magazine’s critique, written by Evan Thomas, finds something even more startling:

On Friday night, Pentagon spokesman DiRita called NEWSWEEK to complain about the original periscope item. He said, “We pursue all credible allegations” of prisoner abuse, but insisted that the investigators had found none involving Qur’an desecration. DiRita sent NEWSWEEK a copy of rules issued to the guards (after the incidents mentioned by General Myers) to guarantee respect for Islamic worship. On Saturday, Isikoff spoke to his original source, the senior government official, who said that he clearly recalled reading investigative reports about mishandling the Qur’an, including a toilet incident. But the official, still speaking anonymously, could no longer be sure that these concerns had surfaced in the SouthCom report. Told of what the NEWSWEEK source said, DiRita exploded, “People are dead because of what this son of a bitch said. How could he be credible now?”

This is an everyday occurence in Washington. An “anonymous source” curries favor with the media by exaggerating or even making up out of whole cloth incidents or quotes that reflect badly on someone else. Who knows what this guy’s axe is. The fact that he’s bactracking from his story immediately after the riots indeed raises the question “How could he be credible now?”

Isikoff is an experienced investigative reporter. He made his bones breaking the Lewinsky scandal back in the 1990’s. The life blood of most investigative journalists has now become “anonymous” or “unnamed” sources. Until Watergate, such sources were used sparingly and judiciously by the press for the obvious reason that if someone wasn’t willing to “go on the record” the chances are there were other motives involved for the source talking to the press in the first place. The motives could be personal, sexual, political, or the simple need for attention.

And Evan Thomas does a poor job of trying to explain how this questionable information got into his magazine in the first place. Scott has an observation about that:

Like Lawrence DiRita, I have a question of my own for NEWSWEEK. Is this how an elite newsmagazine confesses error and corrects the record when it makes a big mess?

On a related note, Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs takes issue with our government’s response:

Perhaps even more disgusting than this display of violent irrationality from the RoP (Religion of Peace) is our own government’s rush to appease, even before any facts are discovered. The Newsweek article isn’t the only reason this madness is continuing to spiral out of control; when the US’s first reaction is to apologize and abase ourselves in the face of thuggish Dark Ages behavior, what else should we expect? Weakness invites attack.

I agree wholeheartedly. We should have waited until the Pentagon at least had completed a preliminary investigation (finished Saturday) and then denied the Qur’an incident in the strongest possible language. By leaving the door open to the idea that the incident is true, we’ve allowed our enemies to stir up the Arab street against us. Now we have the prospect of having to deal with things like this:

The clerics in the northeastern province of Badakhshan said they wanted President Bush to handle the matter honestly “and hand the culprits over to an Islamic country for punishment.”

“If that does not happen within three days, we will launch a jihad against America,” said a statement issued by about 300 clerics, referring to Muslim holy war, after meeting in the main mosque in the provincial capital, Faizabad.

(HT: LGF)

I doubt whether this issue is going to go away anytime soon. And just like with Abu Ghraib with everyone who ever set foot in that prison being tortured, every poor little terrorist who found himself incarcerated by the US will weep about the desecration of the Qur’an that the infidel’s forced him to watch.

The hell of it is, the moonbat left will pick up on this and once again make common cause with the enemies of the United States.

UPDATE

As you can imagine, the blogosphere’s big guns have trained their sights on this story and are letting Newsweek and by extension their MSM critics have it right in the chops.

Michelle Malkin does her usual great job of rounding up reaction from blogs both big and small.

The Captain fire’s a well aimed broadside:

Remember this when the Exempt Media gets on its righteous high horse and instructs us on their superior system of checks and balances. Newsweek ran an explosive story based on a single, unnamed source that it knew would cause a huge effect on the Muslim world, at precisely the moment when we need to ensure that people understand that we’re not at war with Islam. It’s just a little late to say, “Oops, we’re sorry.” It’s a little late to unring the bell that Newsweek rang with its false story — it’s too late for the nine people who died because Newsweek couldn’t wait to run its story without checking it properly first.

Ouch!

The Anchoress asks an excellent question:

Great job, NEWSWEEK. The new standard in journalism is the “prove the negative” standard? If someone “does not argue” against a story that confirms it is true, and so it’s okay to run with an anonymous story that will undoubtedly ignite something violent and bad? Clearly, Mark Whitaker is trying to claim that reporting these so-called desecrations of the Muslim Holy Book is a matter of ethical journalism. Rules of Ethical journalism has never inspired him to report on the Holy Bible being used for toilet paper, but I digress…

The Jawas have a nice summary.

Sisyphean Musings gets flamed by a Kossak on the subject and gives back generously.

Cross Posted at Blogger News Network

Was this heart tugging story a hoax? (SEE UPDATE BELOW)

Brooke Greenberg weighs 13 pounds and is 27 inches long.

But Brooke is actually 12 years old, reported WBAL-TV in Baltimore.

Brooke doesn’t age. Her syndrome remains undiagnosed and unnamed, and as far as doctors can tell, she is the only one in the world who has it.

“In height, weight, she’s 6 to 12 months,” Pakula said. “If you ask any physician who knows nothing about her, the response is that she is maybe a handicapped 2-year-old.”

When I wrote a post on this story on Friday, there were several dozen links to various TV News websites all carrying exactly the same story. They had all re-broadcast the original WBAL piece and used the same teaser on their websites.

All links to the story have now disappeared. The only links that work are to blogs that posted on the story in the first place.

A Welsh View has a cached copy of the original broadcast of the story. But that’s it. Every newsite that carried a blurb on poor little Brooke has yanked the piece from their websites.

Why?

Yesterday, I sent an email to WBAL in Baltimore asking them if the story was a hoax. I have yet to hear back from them. I’ve gotten about 200 search engine hits all referencing “Brooke Greenberg” so I know that there are a lot of people wondering the same thing.

At the moment, there just aren’t any good answers.

I’m going to stay on top of this all day today. I may even call WBAL and find out what the heck is going on. In the meantime, if you go to WBAL’s website, they have a drop down menu for sending emails. I urge everyone who’s interested to send them an email asking about this story.

If you get any kind of an answer, I’d appreciate it if you shared it with me. Send the info to elvenstar522-at-AOL-dot-com. (Remove hyphens).

Let’s get to the bottom of this.

UPDATE:

A Welsh View has also done an update on the story and with a little digging, found out that the story goes back to at least 2001.

A hoax? Probably not. So why pull the story? Did the parents intervene? Since they cooperated in the making of the story in the first place that seems hard to imagine.

Don’t ya just love mysteries?

UPDATE

I finally received an answer to the email I sent to WBAL in Baltimore asking if the story was a hoax. Here’s their response in its entirety:

Good morning,

Due to certain agreements, we are unable to provide additional information
on this story. It was not a hoax.

“Certain agreements” could mean anything. It could mean that the family didn’t realize the worldwide noteriety that would accompany the story after Drudge linked to the WBAL webstory and requested that it be pulled. Or it could be something contractural having to do with the news service that carried the story on so many websites (57 TV and radio sites by my count).

Regardless, while an insatisfactory answer, the only important thing is that the story is in fact true and not a hoax.

UPDATE II (5/18)

I received an email from WBAL telling me that the story is once again “active.”

No explanation. No rhyme nor reason to it.

Here’s a link to the same story that appeared originally.

It was an innocuous paragraph in an otherwise routine story about investigating abuses at Guantanamo. Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff and John Barry reported that interrogators used various means of psychological pressure on detainees, some of them clearly over the line:

Investigators probing interrogation abuses at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay have confirmed some infractions alleged in internal FBI e-mails that surfaced late last year. Among the previously unreported cases, sources tell NEWSWEEK: interrogators, in an attempt to rattle suspects, flushed a Qur’an down a toilet and led a detainee around with a collar and dog leash. An Army spokesman confirms that 10 Gitmo interrogators have already been disciplined for mistreating prisoners, including one woman who took off her top, rubbed her finger through a detainee’s hair and sat on the detainee’s lap. (New details of sexual abuse—including an instance in which a female interrogator allegedly wiped her red-stained hand on a detainee’s face, telling him it was her menstrual blood—are also in a new book to be published this week by a former Gitmo translator.)

What caught the attention of al Jazeera and other Arab media outlets was the flushing of the Qur’an down the toilet. So far, no-one has been able to confirm this story, least of all the Newsweek reporters. But that hasn’t stopped al Jazeera and a host of other anti-American press organs from fanning the flames of hate among muslims all over the world:

The spreading anger comes after a report published by Newsweek magazine said that US interrogators at Guantanamo Bay desecrated copies of the Quran by leaving them in toilet cubicles and stuffing one down a lavatory.

Did the Newsweek story say that interrogators left them in toilet cubicles? No. And there are indications that al Jazeera TV in Afghanistan may be responsible for exaggerating the story:

“After people heard the news that a Quran was set on fire and was thrown in the toilet in Guantanamo by US soldiers they were angered and that sparked the demonstration,” car mechanic Mohammed Nadir, 24, said.

Mr. Nadir got his information from al Jazeera television. And while no transcript is available, one wonders how the idea that the Qur’an was set on fire got into his head. The Newsweek story makes no mention of the Muslim holy book being set on fire. This is pure fiction.

Also, the most widely read English language newspaper in the world, The International Herald-Tribune ran with an exaggerated version of the story:

The protests, as before, were over reports in Newsweek on May 9 that U.S. interrogators at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, placed the Koran on toilets and in one case flushed a Koran down the toilet in order to “rattle” prisoners, a reported act that has angered Afghans more than any other action by American or other foreign troops in Afghanistan in the last three and a half years.

No where in the Newsweek story does it say that interrogators “placed the Koran on toilets.” When even a respected news organ like the Herald Tribune exaggerates a story, one has to wonder at the motives of those responsible.

The protests in Afghanistan began in Jalalabad, a hotbed of anti-American and anti-Western sentiment. They have since pretty much spread across the entire Muslim world:

In three Pakistan cities, Peshawar, Quetta and Multan, hundreds of protesters led largely by religious parties burned American flags and chanted anti-American slogans after Friday Prayer. The protests were peaceful, though, thanks in large part to the large numbers of police officers deployed outside mosques and official buildings.

Hundreds of people gathered peacefully outside a mosque in Jakarta on Friday while a statement was read condemning the United States for the reported abuses. In Gaza, about 1,500 members of the radical Islamic group Hamas marched through the Jabaliya refugee camp as outrage spread over the reports, including a brief item in Newsweek, that interrogators at Guantánamo Bay had flushed a Koran down the toilet in an effort to upset detainees.

Protesters carrying the green banners of Islam and Hamas shouted, “Protect our holy book!” Some burned American and Israeli flags. Anti-American protests are rare among militant Palestinians, who decry American support for Israel but emphasize that their struggle is with Israel, not the United States.

Arab editorial writers have not been shy in expressing their feelings. The United Emerites’ Kahleej Times believes there’s a broader, underlying cause of the unrest in Afghanistan:

This alienation of the majority, the Pashtuns, is at the heart of Afghan unrest. As long as the majority of the Afghan population is kept out of the political process, Afghanistan will continue to remain unstable. The violent demonstrations Wednesday, though stemming from injured religious sensitivities, are an expression of an alienated and suppressed people. The Karzai government and the U.S. would do well to heed the warning signs if they don’t want Afghanistan to go the way of Iraq. At the same time, strong action must be taken against those who perpetrated such outrage against the Holy Book.

And events in that country are starting to move faster than the authorities can handle. President Karzai has admitted his forces cannot handle the demonstrations:

The protesters slammed police for resorting to shooting their weapons and causing bloodshed. “We were staging a peaceful demonstration but police started firing at us without any provocation,” Mohammad Mohsin charged.

Students from three different universities coalesced in Kabul, where law-enforcement personnel had already taken stringent security measures, and marched calmly to Karta-e-Sakhi Square shouting anti-U.S. slogans all along the way.

They demanded that the Karzai government prevent U.S. forces from frisking and arresting Afghans and that it drop plans for a long-term American military presence in Afghanistan.

An editorial in the Arab News is incendiary in its language:

If the report of desecration is true, it will be another example of how ignorant and insensitive the US, particularly the US military, remains to other cultures and what those cultures hold most dear. Coming after Abu Ghraib, after all the stories of humiliation suffered by Muslims arriving at American airports and of attacks on Muslims in the US, and given the general hostility toward Muslims in the US and the anti-Muslim mood in certain sections of the US media, nothing could have been more guaranteed to stir Muslim anger across the world. Washington constantly proclaims that attacks on Muslims will not be tolerated and that the war on terrorism is not a war on Islam. Evidently, the American institutions are not listening; they are not interested in the feelings and beliefs of anyone other than themselves. It is crass insensitivity. It is also appalling stupidity. The US government has spent hundred of millions of dollars trying to improve its image with Muslims worldwide; a story like this undoes all that work at a stroke. It is also disastrous diplomacy. Washington presumably wants to retain its friends in the Muslim world; something like this actively undermines that friendship

Clearly, there has been some exaggeration to this story by those who seek any opportunity to rally ordinary Arabs to their twin causes of anti-semitism and anti-Americanism. I certainly hope either Newsweek or the Pentagon will be able to confirm or deny this story and soon.

If not, expect much more in the way of protests as pro-jihad forces seek to regain ground they’ve lost since the successful elections in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

UPDATE

It looks like the exaggerated story involving US troops placing the Qur’an on top of toilets in addition to flushing them down the commode, could be the work of our old friends at Reuters.

For a while, I was worried that perhaps the print version of Newsweek carried a little different story. Then I saw this from Roger Simon: in which he links to the very same on-line Newsweek story that I did.

Amazing! All these reporters had to do was google-up “Newsweek Koran flush” and they would have found the original article immediately.

UPDATE II

Did Reuters get the part about placing the Qur’an on toilets from AP? Here’s the original AP story (HT: Little Green Footballs)

The source of anger was a brief report in the May 9 edition of Newsweek that interrogators at Guantanamo placed Qurans on toilets to rattle suspects, and in at least one case “flushed a holy book down the toilet.”

As we’ve pointed out in the past, the AP is no more a reliable barometer of what’s happening in the middle east than Reuters. This would tend to prove that assumption.

Cross Posted at Blogger News Network

If this little girl lived in Holland or had parents who didn’t care, she would have been euthanized long ago:

Imagine being frozen in time as a baby forever. It sounds impossible, but it describes Brooke Greenberg.

The Baltimore-area girl may look like a baby, but she’s nearly a teenager. In most respects, Brooke looks and acts like your average 6-month-old baby — she weighs 13 pounds and she is 27 inches long.

But Brooke is actually 12 years old, reported WBAL-TV in Baltimore.

As far as scientists and doctors can determine, Brooke is the only human being on the planet who has this as yet unnamed condition. And it hasn’t been any picnic for her parents. She’s had numerous health problems:

Her body may not be aging, but Brooke’s health is deteriorating. She is fed through a tube, and she’s had strokes, seizures, ulcers, severe respiratory problems and a tumor the size of a lemon.

The four times Brooke has come dangerously close to death, she bounced back and no one knows why.

Pakula points out that the girl has a strong sense of self and of sibling rivalry. Brooke has no language skills, but she does have enough motor skills to pull herself up in her crib or scoot across the kitchen floor.

Somebody please get me the address of this Dr. Pakula. After listening to medical “experts” for months tell us that human beings like little Brooke should be taken out with the trash, it’s so refreshing to find a Doctor who has this kind of an attitude:

Pakula said Brooke has thrived because of the support of her parents and three sisters.

“When one sees how much she has accomplished, it’s a wonderful reminder that even for someone who’s limited, it’s a wonderful world out there,” Pakula said

The point that little Brooke makes by being alive is very simple; being alive is better than the alternative. It sounds like an old joke but given the choice, also a truism. This little girl has battled odds greater than she should and has come up fighting each and every time. It doesn’t matter that she can’t understand what’s wrong with her. To come back from death like that takes a will - a free will - where a human makes a choice to live or die. If Brooke was one whit less feisty, one iota less determined to live, she would have passed on. But whatever spirit animates her, it’s not ready to go anywhere yet.

In Holland, the doctors would have shaken their heads, said to themselves what a terrible shame it was, and then tried to talk the parents into euthanizing the child. And I’m sure the temptation for some parents must be tremendous. But in the end, it appears that familial love won the day and little Brooke is still fighting.

Just a nice, uplifting story to start your weekend with.

NOTE: The link above to the Pittsburg TV station that carried the story no longer is valid. I got the link via Drudge so I’m assuming they didn’t want to pay the bandwidth costs.

UPDATE

My Wide Awakes bud Raven, who blogs at And Rightly So, weighs in by giving the benefit of her many years of experience of working with severely handicapped children:

This is typical with kids with developmental disabilties. They are often tiny and do not look their age. They hate it I work with several kids who are under 50lbs. but older than 16. One of my favorite “little guys” hates it when I call him that…he is 12 and weighs 40 lbs. Most of these kids have severe medical needs… not just g tubes, but PIC and Central Lines, IV, vac pumps and hemo pumps…chest drainage systems to keep their lungs clear; kids with intra-cranial shunts with tubes popping out to keep their skulls from expanding…. I work with the most profoundly disabled kids…very few of them have active trachs or use vents for breathing (that is usually for the brain injured kids and young adults). But they require body splints made of hard plastic just to keep them upright…because they have no ribs or only half a spine. It’s very sad in some respects-to watch these kids get by. But they are the happiest beings on planet. They really are.

This little girl is fortunate to have an actively involved family. Many are not involved and only wish to be called upon the death of their child.

Cross Posted at Blogger News Network

Senate Democractic leader Harry Reid doesn’t look much like a Senator. He looks more like a small town accountant or shopkeeper which, judging from these remarks he made last night about one of the stalled judicial nominees, he may have been better suited for than lawmaker:

“Henry Saad would have been filibustered anyway,” Mr. Reid said on the floor yesterday, about the Michigan Appeals Court judge who is nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit.

“All you need to do is have a member go upstairs and look at his confidential report from the FBI, and I think we would all agree that there is a problem there,” Mr. Reid continued.

Republican staff members and supporters of Mr. Bush’s nominees were outraged.

“Can you think of a better way to trash someone’s reputation?” Sean Rushton of the conservative Committee for Justice asked after seeing a transcript of the remarks. “Say that there is bad stuff from an FBI investigation in a file somewhere and leave that hanging. This is character assassination of the lowest order and completely improper.”

(HT: Captains Quarters)

This isn’t McCarthyism; it’s a Stalinist purge.

Back in the 1930’s, Stalin and his minions destroyed the Red Army by bringing charges against ideologically suspect officers. They did this by using hearsay and character assassination while not producing any documents that the defendent could question in an attempt to clear himself. As a result, tens of thousands of Red Army officers were slaughtered - officers Stalin could have used a few short years later when Hitler attacked.

Forget the gross violation of Senate rules that prevent Senators from revealing anything about the contents of an FBI file. Simple common decency would preclude all but the most virulently partisan to reveal their contents. The Captain correctly points out what’s contained in those raw files:

FBI clearance files contain raw data from every interview the agency conducts with people known to the person applying for the clearance. Anything said goes into the file. The FBI does not filter the information, and will usually investigate criminal activity suggested by the interview only if they find anything substantial. What this means, especially in political appointments, is that a fair amount of gossipy but usually exaggerated or false information gets entered into the file and later mentioned in the file’s summary.

This is one move by Reid that even the MSM can’t ignore. Here are some other gems by Reid that somehow never quite landed him in hot water with the press (or his own party for that matter):

1. Called President Bush a “loser” while the President was out of the country then apologized, and then withdrew the apology.

2. Said of Janice Rogers Brown, another Circuit Court nominee: “She Is A Woman Who Wants To Take Us Back To The Civil War days.”

3. Said of Justice Clarence Thomas: “I think that he has been an embarrassment to the Supreme Court. I think that his opinions are poorly written. I don’t… I just don’t think that he’s done a good job as a Supreme Court justice.”

4. Called the President a “liar”

5. Said of Alan Greenspan: “I Think [Alan Greenspan's] One Of The Biggest Political Hacks We Have In Washington.”

I’d say that Senator Reid is an embarrassment to the Democratic party except there’s no way you can embarass people who have no shame in the first place. If I were Senator Frist I’d introduce a motion of censure against the Senator from Nevada.

I doubt whether it would phase that gentleman in the least. Because, like the man he’s imitating, the Senator from Wisconsin who long ago lent his name to the most odious of practices in democratic governance, he fails to “get it.”

Where’s Joe Welch when you need him?

Welch: Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator.

Welch: I’ll say it hurts!

UPDATE

Ace says it’s time to go nuclear:

Reid can’t be held legally accountable for any of this, as the Constitution immunizes Congressmen from legal consequences from any statement made in Congress. But I’d sure like someone to bait Reid into repeating his remarks outside of Congress.

It’s time to go nuclear. I know nothing about Saad, and of course I know even less about what dirt the FBI may have dug up on him, but it is clear that the Democrats have made the judiciary their last redoubt. It’s well past time to drain that swamp.

Yup.

And Michelle Malkin does her usual great job of rounding up media and blog reaction to “Dirty Harry” Reid’s diarrhea of the mouth.”

Cross Posted at Blogger News Network