American Atrocities

Perhaps you wonder what ever happened with the investigations of those recent reports coming out of Iraq of horrible massacres perpetrated by American troops. It turns out that they were lame, if fervent, attempts by the jihadis to propagate a little misinformation and to drag the world media into another round of lamentation over America's loss of the "moral high ground," etc.

The American Thinker has the details here, but you probably knew all along that the stories were a crock. Indeed, the best indicator that they were phony was that TruthOut.org touted them as if they were a modern My Lai. When TruthOut gets excited about something that reflects poorly on the United States, which they do with remarkable frequency, you can bet your home equity that there's nothing to it.

The American Thinker article describes the first horrifying episode this way:

Over the past few weeks, two serious accusations of mass murder by Coalition units have surfaced, both involving current operations - one against the Jihadis, the other against illegal militia. Both were given a wide airing in the international media.

At Ishaqi, a village near Samarra, at some time between 1:30 and 2:30 (reported times are inconsistent, as are other details of the story) on the night of March 16, a firefight took place between U.S. troops involved in Operation Swarmer and at least one member of Al-Queda in Iraq hiding out in an isolated house.

According to the locals, the troops fought their way into the house, owned by aschoolteacher, Faiz Mratt, and tied up, beat, and then shot Mratt, his wife, their three children, his sister, her three children, his father, and a woman who was visiting. Afterward they blew up the house, set fire to three cars, and, to top things off, killed all the livestock as well.

As it turns out the story is largely false. Read the article at The American Thinker to learn what really happened.

Paris As Mother Teresa

An Indian movie director said he hopes to persuade Paris Hilton to play the role of Nobel laureate and prospective Catholic Saint, Mother Teresa, in an upcoming film.

"Her features resemble Mother Teresa," director T. Rajeevnath told AFP from the southwestern coastal state of Kerala.

The filmmaker said Hilton is on his shortlist after a computer-generated image showed a close facial match between the hotel heiress and the Albanian-born nun.

Yes, the resemblance between the two is uncanny. And who better to play the role of Mother Teresa than a rich, dumb, narcissistic socialite whose previous movie experience included a home-made sex video made by a former boyfriend that appeared on the Internet, and parts in several Hollywood B-films.

She's the perfect choice.

This Year's Pollys

Diversity run amok, suppression of free speech, discrimination against Christians, conservatives, and patriots and other rancid fruits of contemporary liberalism continue to be the norm in American higher education. The Collegiate Network (CN) has once again chronicled the worst of those abuses in its 9th Annual Campus Outrage Awards called The Pollys.

Tongue-Tied has a summary of this year's winners:

The Collegiate Network's annual nod to the PC ninnies of American academia, the Pollys, are out today. Yale University takes the top award for admitting a former Taliban bigwig with a fourth-grade education -- in the name of diversity, of course.

DePaul University also gets a nod for, as the judges put it, declaring war on free speech.

"First, the university suspended -- without a hearing -- a veteran adjunct professor for daring to debate students handing out pro-Palestinian literature on campus. Next, the administration branded as 'propaganda' a College Republican protest of a Ward Churchill speech on campus. Finally, college officials shut down an affirmative action bake-sale sponsored by the campus conservative club and charged the club member who organized the event with harassment," the network says.

The third place award is shared by officials from Stanford University and at the College of the Holy Cross, both of which tried to silence conservative alternative newspapers on their campuses after The Stanford Review and Holy Cross' The Fenwick Review mocked or criticized sacred PC cows on campus.

For the full story on why these worthies were selected to receive the highly coveted Polly go here.

The Clock is Ticking in Tehran

Kevin Drum at the Washington Monthly reports that Washington insiders are forecasting a late summer air strike against Iran's nuclear facilities. The good news is that there is still time for the mullahs in Tehran to give up their dreams of a nuclear bomb with which to attack Israel and to blackmail, and possibly attack the U.S., through terrorist intermediaries.

If they don't, however, it looks as if war will be inevitable.