The Axis of Evil

AllahPundit relates this story about the trial and execution of a sixteen year old girl in Iran:

On Sunday, August 15, a 16-year-old girl in the town of Neka, northern Iran, was executed. Atefeh Sahaleh was hanged in public on Simetry Street off Rah Ahan Street at the city center.

The sentence was issued by the head of Neka's Justice Department and subsequently upheld by the mullahs' Supreme Court and carried out with the approval of Judiciary Chief Mahmoud Shahroudi.

In her summary trial, the teenage victim did not have any lawyer and efforts by her family to recruit a lawyer was to no avail. Atefeh personally defended herself. She told the religious judge, Haji Rezaii, that he should punish the main perpetrators of moral corruption not the victims.

The criminal judge personally pursued Atefeh's death sentence, beyond all normal procedures and finally gained the approval of the Supreme Court. After her execution Rezai said her punishment was not execution but he had her executed for her "sharp tongue".

Like many girls in the Muslim world Sahelah was evidently put on trial because she was the object of some man's (or men's) sexual advances. She may have been complicit or the advances may have been forced upon her. In Islamic law it's all the same. She's been soiled and is deserving of death. Allah must be pleased.

Lest one think that this is just an aberration among the merciful and compassionate followers of the Prophet, AllahPundit links us to this site where recent examples of Islamic justice are catalogued so that the infidels may get a foretaste of the glorious world that awaits the divinely-ordained global establishment of Sharia law.

And Americans, whose sixteen year old daughters are ensconced safely in their $350,000 homes, in their ignorance, ridiculed George Bush for proclaiming Iran to be part of an axis of evil. Ronald Reagan declared the Soviet Union to be an evil empire, and although this was obviously true to those who lived under its boot for seventy years, Reagan was loudly chastised by the left for his temerity in stating that truth. Nevertheless, that speech was instrumental in precipitating the collapse of totalitarian communism six years later.

George Bush has the moral clarity to speak the truth about the evil in Iran and we may hope that his words, like Reagan's, will have shaken the foundations of Iranian oppression so that even now fissures are spreading throughout that ghastly system that will one day cause its collapse, and with it the culture of death that is contemporary Islam.

The SBVT Controversy

The Democrats and their media accomplices are finally emerging from their journalistic slumbers and beginning to work themselves into a froth over the Swift Boat vets and their ads. Although no one at the NYT, WaPo, or the Nets seems to be interested in actually investigating the vets charges, of course, all manner of questions are now being raised about who's funding them, what their motives are, whether there are connections to the Bush campaign, etc. Everything about this group and their claims is being scrutinized except the only thing that really matters: The truth of the claims themselves. That little issue is being buried under an avalanche of slime from the lefties, who are more interested in trying to obscure the issues than to shed light on them.

Chris Matthews' treatment of Michelle Malkin is a good example of the embarrassing silliness of the left's response to the Swift Boat vets charges. Malkin, a guest on Matthews' Hardball show Thursday night made the obvious assertion that there are those who think that some of John Kerry's wounds in Vietnam were self-inflicted. Anyone who has been following this story would know exactly what she was referring to, but Matthews, apparently hearing this news for the first time, became almost hysterical. Everytime Malkin tried to explain to the viewers what it means to have a self-inflicted wound Matthews interrupted her, drowning her out, and ranting that it was ridiculous and despicable to say that Kerry deliberately shot himself to get out of Vietnam. In trying to discredit and obfuscate Malkin's words he managed to show himself to be a complete buffoon.

To say that a wound is self-inflicted is to say that the agent was the cause of his own injury. No one claims that Kerry deliberately injured himself, much less was anything said about shooting himself. The testimony of the swiftees is that Kerry accidentally superficially wounded himself through his own reckless action. Such wounds, not resulting from enemy fire, do not merit a purple heart. This is all that Malkin was attempting to clarify, over Matthews' boorish, fatuous, and frenzied protests. It's an obvious distinction, but nevertheless too esoteric, apparently, for some minds to comprehend.

While Matthews' has comported himself on this issue like a man on the edge of insanity, his colleague at MSDNC (oops, MSNBC), Joe Scarborough of Scarborough Country, has set the standard for journalistic objectivity and decorum. In Viewpoint's opinion he has done the best job on television of establishing the conditions for a useful debate between antagonists and allowing the viewer to decide for himself where the truth lies. He serves as a moderator, keeping the disputants on the topic and staying out of the fray himself. Kudos.

On the subject of the Swift Boat controversy here are two interesting items courtesy of Powerline which has been posting some great stuff on the issue over the last couple of weeks.

The first has to do with the charge that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are funded by a "wealthy Republican" as if this were somehow shocking to a party propped up by people like billionaire George Soros who has promised to spend his entire fortune if it would unseat George Bush. If the Democrats are going to of a sudden wax sanctimonious and assure us that it is offensive them that big money donors are supporting ads critical of their candidate, it should be noted that it is the Democrat party which is disproportionately reliant upon the fat cats. Power Line relays this from Little Green Footballs:

Now that John Kerry and the Democrats have started denouncing section 527 committees, it's worth pointing out that of the twenty-five largest contributors to 527's, only one -- that's right, one -- is a Republican. The top two donors are Peter Lewis ($14,030,000) and George Soros ($12,600,000). Altogether, the 24 Democrats contributed $56,693,000. The lone Republican donated $1,020,000.

And here's an exquisite piece of hypocrisy from the Dems who are complaining now that the Swift Boat vets know people who know members of the Bush family, which ties are, for the desperate minds in the Kerry camp, ipso facto proof of collusion. Power Line writes:

Reader Cecil Bordages sent us a link to this MSNBC story titled "Kerry says Bush broke the law in TV ad dispute." Cecil comments:

Here's the amazing part...about half way through the main article is this section: "Out of desperation, the Bush campaign has picked the wrong fight with the wrong veteran," said Jim Jordan, former Kerry campaign manager who now runs an outside group airing ads against Bush. "Today's the start of the mother of all backlashes."

Let me see if I got this straight...the proof of the connection between SBVT and Bush is ...the same person had donated to both SBVT and the Bush campaign...another person once worked for Bush advisor Karl Rove ...and other similar tenous connections, must certainly mean that the Bush campaign and SBVT are working together.

However, when Kerry's former campaign manager is now running an organization which airs anti-Bush adds, there's not even a whif of concern about a connection. Unbelievable.

Unbelievable indeed. Sometimes I wonder whether reporters even read the stuff they write.

There's much more about Kerry's military service that the elite media have just not yet been able to find space for, evidently. His claim to have been in Cambodia on Christmas eve of 1968, repeated several times, once from the floor of the Senate, and his claims to have on more than one occasion inserted special ops personnel into Cambodia, have been shown to be almost certainly false. This is devastating to Kerry's credibility and, coupled with his numerous reversals on important issues, paints a portrait of a man who will say or do just about anything to realize his ambition. Kerry is day by day revealing himself to be a hollow man.

For anyone interested in following developments on the matter of Kerry's claims about his military accomplishments, which he has himself declared his chief qualification for the presidency, Viewpoint recommends PowerLine and Hugh Hewitt, and the great sites to which they link.