Blogroll?

I’ve made a few changes to the blogroll scripting.
I’m not happy about the HTML errors it seems to be generating, and I’m trying to cure that.

Anyone notice Hillary seems to be among the missing at the “Unity” dinner?

The Jerusalem Post reporing on that 13 year old they stopped at the border:

“It is sad and tragic,’ said Guy. ‘He was fully aware of his actions and wanted to blow up, as he was promised 72 virgins in heaven and NIS 100,’ Guy said.
Abdu, who lives in Nablus, told interrogators he was jeered at by his friends who made fun of him, and decided to take advantage of the offer.
‘Blowing myself up is the only chance I’ve got to have sex with 72 virgins in the Garden of Eden,’ Abdu said his handlers had told him. “

I am actually encouraged by this just a bit, for several reasons.
When the third reich was falling, Hitler, strapped for cannon fodder, was forced to use young men and boys, many of whom could just barely carry a rifle. This clearly is a desperation move on the part of the Islamofacists, and is a valid guage as to how successful the west has been in it’s control of the situation. Clearly, they’re running out of adults willing to pull this.

But more; Perhaps peace starts with just one kid taking off his bomb.

It’s apparently this last point that motivates the Israeli troops. Boortz picks up the narative, here:

Now, at this point, what do you think happened?  From everything the media reports about the evil Israelis and their incursions into the “occupied territories,” it leaves the impression that the Israeli Army would have just shot the boy, right on site.  Of course, that is not what happened.

So why can’t Israel? 

Why, indeed.

One of my favorite writers, Rich Lowry in the New York Post today sums up the last week for Richard Clarke:

“Rarely has a former public servant with such a sterling reputation shot it all away so quickly. “

RTWT.

One after the other, the Democrats have tossed up people laying one charge after another at Presdient Bush. One after the other, they have all disgraced themselves, having been exposed as liars, or, as in the case of O’Neil, simply getting stupid and allowing the Desperate Democrats (TM) to twist their words. IN every event, it’s all been exposed as lies.

You’d think they’d learn.

Ann Coulter points out some contrasts in coverage:

“(Gary) Aldrich was mentioned on fewer than a dozen TV shows during the entire year of his book’s release … many with headlines like this one on CNN: ‘Even Conservatives Back Away From Aldrich’s Book.’ That’s almost as much TV as Lewinsky mouthpiece William Ginsburg did before breakfast on an average day.”
…
“But a “tell-all” book that attacks the Bush administration gets the author interviewed on CBS’ “60 Minutes” (two segments), CNN’s “American Morning” and ABC’s “Good Morning America” with an “analysis” by George Stephanopoulos, no less. In the first few days of its release, Clarke’s book was hyped on more than 200 TV shows. “

She goes on to point up that:

In contrast to Aldrich’s book, which was vindicated with a whoop just a few years later when the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, many of Clarke’s allegations were disproved within days of the book’s release.

Oh, yeah.. THAT liberal media, huh?

Boortz seems to be hitting some home runs of late. Of course, they’re on subjects we already knew… just most of the left hasn’t gottenh around to admitting it yet:

“Announcing some of its preliminary findings yesterday, the commission confirmed that President Clinton ordered the CIA to take Osama Bin Laden alive or not at all.  The following statement read at yesterday’s session says it all: ‘CIA senior managers, operators and lawyers uniformly said that they read the relevant authorities signed by President Clinton as instructing them to try and capture Bin Laden.’  A former CIA station chief said ‘We always talked about how much easier it would have been to try to kill him.’  A former CIA official told NBC News last week that White House orders to spare Bin Laden’s life cut the chances of getting him in half.  Once again, they viewed terrorism as a law enforcement problem, worrying about Bin Laden’s rights instead of just unleashing the CIA to exterminate him.
If this commission wants to lay blame for policy failures that led to 9/11, then they need to do it where it belongs, with the Clinton administration and Richard Clarke. “

Emph is mine.

Again, he’s right, of course.

You’ll recall Richard Clarke suggesting that Terrorism was the highest priority in the Clinton administration.

John Weidner over at Random Jottings asks :

“Does anyone else find it odd that in his entire run for president, Al Gore never mentioned the most urgent foreign policy issue of the administration he was helping to lead?
Somehow I think that Clarke saying that the Clintonites had ‘no higher priority’ than combatting terrorists just isn’t going to stick. It won’t adhere.”

Cap’t Ed over at Captain’s Quarters has an interesting discussion on an editorial from of all people, Michael Young, the opinion editor of the Daily Star in Lebanon:

As far as the Bush administration was concerned, a democratic Iraq at the heart of the Arab world could become a liberal beacon in the region, prompting demands for openness and real reform inside neighboring states. Ridiculous you say? The Syrian regime, faced in the past two weeks with protests by individuals seeking greater freedom and a revolt by disgruntled Kurds, would surely disagree.
This is where Clarke’s allegations, and those of critics who see a disconnect between Al Qaeda and Iraq, are misleading. Iraq always was essential to the anti-terrorism battle precisely because victory there was regarded as necessary to transform societies from where terrorists, spawned by suffocating regimes, had emerged. One can disagree with the practicability of such a strategy, but it is difficult to fault its logic.

The Captain goes a step further;

“Iraq was not a distraction…. (from the war on terror);…. it was a bold move to change the entire nature of the game in order to deprive al-Qaeda and others of their most precious resources: hate and despair. “

Brilliant bit, Captain. President Bush would appear to agree with you. By way of Q&O, here he is:

“The current Iraqi regime has shown the power of tyranny to spread discord and violence in the Middle East. A liberated Iraq can show the power of freedom to transform that vital region, by bringing hope and progress into the lives of millions. America’s interests in security, and America’s belief in liberty, both lead in the same direction: to a free and peaceful Iraq.
….
The world has a clear interest in the spread of democratic values, because stable and free nations do not breed the ideologies of murder. They encourage the peaceful pursuit of a better life. And there are hopeful signs of a desire for freedom in the Middle East. Arab intellectuals have called on Arab governments to address the “freedom gap” so their peoples can fully share in the progress of our times. Leaders in the region speak of a new Arab charter that champions internal reform, greater politics participation, economic openness, and free trade. And from Morocco to Bahrain and beyond, nations are taking genuine steps toward politics reform. A new regime in Iraq would serve as a dramatic and inspiring example of freedom for other nations in the region”

I wonder how John Kerry is finding the ski slopes?

I knew there was something I liked aboutVictor Hanson:

“Most Democrats we saw this year …Howard Dean, Al Gore, John Kerry, Terry McAuliff, and John Edwards…either grew up in aristocratic bounty or are themselves multimillionaires. Does this matter?….only in the sense of sincerity and consistency. When Republican grandees talk of the glories of the free market you know what you get; when very liberal grandees talk of its evils, you have only the assurance that what they advocate and whom they champion most certainly will have little to do with the lives they themselves will live. And the message is no longer one of guaranteed equality of opportunity but of forced equality of results…as long as we accept that such a utopia applies for everyone else outside the world of corporate Ketchup money, astronomical trial lawyer fees, inherited Kennedy capital, Park-Avenue bond security, Sun Valley, and prep-school privilege.”

AP’s wire says::
“Explosive Found in French Railway Bed
6 minutes ago

Bomb disposal experts neutralized the device, which was half-buried under a track in the village of Montieramey, on a train line heading from Paris to Basel, Switzerland, the ministry said in a statement. It was discovered shortly after noon. “

Then we go to Reuters, by way of Aldaynet, who reports:

BERLIN (Reuters) – German President Johannes Rau has cancelled a planned visit to Djibouti after German security services warned him of an assassination plot, his office says.

The decision to cancel the visit comes amid heightened security fears following the recent train bombings in Madrid by a group suspected to be linked to al Qaeda.

Hmmm. Apparently, the appeasers are starting to reap what they’ve sewn…

What did I say would happen?

Boortz this morning, makes the obvious point about Hamas, CAIR and Yassin, etc:

Thanks to James Taranto’s Opinion Journal column, we can now take a look at the Covenant of the Hamas.  This document was issued on August 18, 1988.  It is the founding document of Hamas.  Cair calls Yassin an “Islamic religious leader?”  Yeah .. the leader of Hamas. 

Read those bits from the founding document of Hamas … and then spend a few of your precious moments thinking about how idiotic it is for CAIR to be imploring the international community to talk about “wanton Israeli violence.”  Didn’t we read something about “fight Jews and kill them” and “there is a Jew hiding be hind me, come and kill him”?  And the world needs to protect these goons from those bad, bad Israelis? 

He’s right, of course.

I’m starting to get really annoyed about this. Damn it…..At what point do we stop weeping about how the west is the aggressor, and start dealing with the fact that we are under unrelenting attack by an outright insane group of people that don’t WANT peace??

As I pointed out in a quote I posted here yesterday, Leftist sympathies, singing koombyah and carrying peace symbols, whether in Israel, America or Europe will prove no armor against car bomb fragments. Their purposes in the ‘peace’ process has been shown over time to be nothing more than an effort to gain time to mount further attacks against us, and to gain followers.  Even the most superficial of studies of the patterns invlolved with any of the Palastinian leadership, including Arifat, and his Fatah party, will show this quite clearly. and yes, they, and the remainder of the Islamofacists are all linked together; we’re finding new evidence each and every day of this.

The killing of Yassin is a good step toward limiting that effect, but will only be fully effective if our own left, much less the world-wide left will learn the facts. I fear they have neither the brains nor the guts for them. If we let our left rule the day on this, the west will lose. It’s really that simple.

Now, of course I recognize fully that some of our own left WANTS this to happen. They’ve said so. I even quoted them here in this venue, from DU and other sources.

Now, which foreign leaders did you say supported you, Mr. Kerry? I’d really like to know.

AP quotes Clarke’s resignation letter:

“‘It has been an enormous privilege to serve you these last 24 months,’ said the Jan. 20, 2003, letter from Clarke to Bush. ‘I will always remember the courage, determination, calm, and leadership you demonstrated on September 11th.’ “

Guess he forgot, huh?

With all of the praise being heaped on Richard Clarke by a press wiling to believe ANYTHING that will cause president Bush political problems, perhaps it’d be worthwhile to examine what the press, and the left…(A redundancy) thought of him just a couple years ago.

Vmyths.com- Truth About Computer Virus Myths & Hoaxes:

“Unsurprisingly, a two year review of Clarke literature in the news media shows the public record of the National Security Council advisor’s speeches and interviews to be almost utterly devoid of substantive discussion on computer security and ‘cyberterror’ but rich in cliche and numblingly over-reliant on simplistic and unsubstantiated claims.

In fact, Clarke’s public work resembles looks like nothing more than a ham-handed campaign of threat-mongering propaganda….”

Think France is our friend?
You may want to read:

Winds of Change.NET: France – Pas Comme Les Autres

(Hat tip: Mike Totten)

A downright brilliant bit or reasoning, and of writing, over at Belmont Club: today. Here’s a few pieces of it:

“September 11 proved that terrorism could not be contained. It had to be finished. A prescient European foreign policy would have realized on September 12 that this conflict structure would inevitably lead to a widening war, one that would engulf Europe’s own borders. But it did not grasp the implications of the struggle in time. It is now terribly vulnerable to the tides of conflict that lap against its frontiers.”

…

“Neither the man commuting to work in Central Madrid nor the peace marchers in costume on Market Street can escape being combatants. Leftist sympathies, whether in Israel, America or Europe will prove no armor against car bomb fragments. War was Osama Bin Laden’s goal in attacking the United States on September 11. He hoped to force America into fruitless but ineffectual reprisals against the Islamic world, then offer a hudna at intervals while he prepared his next blow. George Bush’s counterstroke, which history will either judge as an act of supreme folly or genius, was to go beyond Afghanistan into Iraq. In a worthy riposte to Osama’s, he escalated the struggle to the point where it was mutually mortal. If the fall of the Twin Towers was a gauntlet in America’s face, the fall of Baghdad was a glove shoved down the Islamist’s throat. Both Bin Laden and Bush have made compromise impossible. If the jihadis believed they could control the tempo of the conflict they were misinformed; American forces in the Arab heartland have forced a zugzwang to compel the game to the bitter end.

Yassin’s assasination serves the same purpose. Israel’s main problem was to escape the cycle of murder and negotiation that was slowly bleeding it to death. No matter how horribly Israel was attacked it was always expected to return, in an attitude of abjection, to the negotiating table. The Jihadis learned that any Israeli counteroffensive could be aborted by throwing the prospect of further talks into its path. Israel’s superiority on the battlefield would be nullified because it would always be restrained by the “Peace Process”, a misnomer if ever there was one. But the operation against Yassin reverses the dynamic.”

Brilliant.
Read the whole thing at the above link.