Men on the Run

Abu al-Zarqawi's laptop continues to bear fruit. The latest announcement of a captured high ranking terrorist is of what the military describes as a key associate of al-Zarqawi's named Ghassan Amin who was apparently a pretty bad guy. See the link for details on his apprehension.

Meanwhile, over the past several months, coalition troops and Iraqi security forces have captured or killed more than 20 of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's trusted lieutenants and other high-ranking network members, military officials in Baghdad reported in a written statement on Friday. Hundreds of other members of the fugitive Jordanian's terror network also have been captured and killed as coalition and Iraqi forces continue to degrade his organization, the statement from Multinational Force Iraq headquarters said.

This link has some excellent insight into how Zarqawi's insurgency is being worn down by coalition pressure.

More on Ms Wilbanks

Jennifer Wilbanks apparently has a criminal record, having been arrested several times in the 1990s for shoplifting. We just thought we'd share that on the off chance that anyone might be interested.

It's both strange and sad that her parents can afford a wedding with 600 guests and yet she feels compelled to shoplift.

Bodies in the Garbage Dump

According to Strategy Page those fourteen bodies which turned up recently in an Iraqi garbage were Sunnis, probably victims of revenge killings by Shia tired of being bullied by the Sunni and angered by the murders of dozens of their fellow Shia whose bodies were found floating in a nearby river.

If this exchange of murders presages a larger conflict between Sunnis and Shia the terrorists may finally be on their way to achieving one of their goals, fomenting civil strife between these two sects.

Emoting About Our Feelings

No Left Turns tips us to the meditations of Mr. David Velleman at Left 2 Right who offers a particularly lucid illustration of the existential problem which atheism poses to its votaries. He approaches the problem with this prelude:

I am especially troubled by the phrase "people of faith and moral conviction," which expresses the ever proliferating fallacy that moral seriousness, of the sort that is desirable in public servants, depends on religious belief. I suspect that one of the sharpest divisions among voters in the last election was between those who read elaborately flaunted religiosity as a sign of moral seriousness and those who read it instead as humbug.

Perhaps I wasn't tuned into the right news sources last Fall, but I don't remember anyone running for major office who indulged in "elaborately flaunted religiosity". Maybe Mr. Velleman considers it "elaborately flaunted religiosity" simply to acknowledge that one is a Christian because in the circles in which he travels, we may surmise, that's an admission which no one would dream of making, nor have occasion to.

It's a quirky thing about the times in which we live that complete strangers can tell us the most intimate details about their sexual preferences, they can inscribe their predilections across their t-shirts even, and we're supposed to take it all in stride like true sophisticates. But let someone happen to mention that he believes in God and is a Christian, and he's accused of elaborately flaunting his religiosity, a breach of manners so egregious that it causes the true sophisticates like Mr. Velleman to shake their heads in disgust and disapproval.

Mr. Velleman then zeroes in on the main point:

I spend a fair proportion of my working hours trying to show how moral imperatives are grounded in reason, but I take this to be a possibly endless task whose results thus far are inadequate to the profundity of the values at stake. At the end of each day, there remains a gap between what I can demonstrate and what I believe, a gap that I expect to bridged by reason in the long run but that must in the meantime be bridged by faith.

Mr. Velleman here puts his finger directly on the sore spot, presses hard, and even rubs it around a bit. His problem is that the project which engages his energies is quite an impossible task. Reason cannot provide a ground for moral values. Reason cannot even provide a ground for trusting our reason. Any argument which seeks to establish the trustworthiness of reason, after all, must presuppose the truth of the very thing it's trying to establish.

Mr. Velleman has been unsuccessful in arriving at a rational basis for his moral sentiments precisely because there is no purely rational basis for any morality except, perhaps, egoism. Reason can offer no answer to the question of why I shouldn't hurt others if doing so benefits me and if I can get away with it. Indeed, reason must actually condone such behavior. It inevitably leads to an ethic of might makes right. Any other outcome to his ethical inquiries can be attained only through one of Mr. Velleman's non-rational leaps of faith.

I long ago stopped identifying myself as an agnostic precisely because the label seemed to me a sign of intellectual timidity about a question on which people should be willing to have an opinion. I now consider myself an atheist, not because I think that I have conclusive reason for denying the existence of a personal God, but because I take His nonexistence, as it were, on faith. My willingness to embrace this indemonstrable vision of the universe is of a piece, to my way of thinking, with my commitment to the incommensurable value of persons as ends in themselves, the value that underwrites my moral code.

In other words, he denies the existence of God not because God's non-existence is something for which he has a great deal of evidence, but because he simply doesn't want the world to be the kind of place where a God might be lurking. His atheism, he would have us believe, is consonant with his high view of the value of persons. This claim must have an odd sound to the multitudes of victims of the sundry state atheisms which plagued the twentieth century, but never mind. The really odd thing about Mr. Velleman's last sentence is the complete arbitrariness of his decision to value human beings and the artificiality of the nexus by which he relates it to atheism.

If Mr. Velleman wishes to value persons that's fine, but if his atheism is correct, anyone who chose to treat persons cruelly instead of kindly would not be making a wrong choice, just a different one. There is simply no basis in atheism for his choice to treat people kindly. It's a decision he makes purely on the basis of his subjective inclinations and preferences which could as easily have been otherwise and which in other people are indeed otherwise.

Here's Mr. Velleman's predicament, indeed the predicament of most of his atheist colleagues: They want to hold on to morality while at the same time dispensing with the only thing which gives morality any meaning, the transcendent, omniscient, omnibenevolent Creator of the universe. If there is no such being then all of Mr. Velleman's moralizing is nothing more than emoting about his feelings. His talk of moral values may be interesting from a psychological point of view, but there's absolutely no reason why anyone should otherwise care about them. He can give his students no rational answer to the question of why he holds the values he does rather than some other.

One would think his reason would have shown him all this a long time ago.

Winners and Losers

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid called George Bush "a loser" yesterday. Well. One wonders what facts the senator calls upon to justify such a judgment. The 2000 election? The 2002 mid-term election? The 2004 election? The Afghanistan war? The Iraq war? In what, exactly, does Bush's "loser" status consist?

Perhaps part of the Democrats' slide into political senescence is due to the fact that they regard the above as instances of losing, and presumably consider Al Gore, John Kerry, and Saddam Hussein to be winners. Such an idiosyncratic view of success and failure might explain a lot about the Democratic party's fortunes of late.

If Senator Reid wants to see an example of a real "loser" all he needs do is observe what happens when he seeks to thwart the appointments of Bush's judicial nominees in a week or so. Unfortunately, given the Senator's perverse definitions, he will no doubt hail it as a smashing success for both his leadership and his party as one after another of Bush's nominees is confirmed on the senate floor.

A Heavy Toll

Arthur Chrenkoff has some before and after photos which illustrate the hazards of the terrorist life-style. The profession certainly appears to have taken a toll on these practitioners. The last pair of photos offers an especially vivid lesson to those who are considering the pros and cons of taking up the trade themselves.

The War of Attrition

Bet you didn't read about this in your morning newspaper or hear of it on the evening news:

The Iraqi Army, police and U.S. Soldiers apprehended 84 suspected terrorists in 19 different combat operations conducted in and around Baghdad May 1 and 2.

The largest operation netted 40 terror suspects during raids carried out early in the morning May 2. Thirteen more suspected terrorists were captured in four other missions conducted Monday morning.

On May 1, Iraqi Security Forces and U.S. Soldiers conducted seven different missions and took 31 terror suspects into custody. The largest operation occurred after a terrorist fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a Task Force Baghdad patrol.

The insurgents are still capable of devastating destruction, but their targets grow softer and softer. Their attacks on Americans are generally thwarted or futile, and they haven't been able to successfully attack an Iraqi police station in months. The only way they can do harm, consistently, is by launching suicide attacks against civilians. It's no wonder that they've alienated most of the Iraqi population and much of the Arab world.

There are more details at the link.

How Low Will They Sink?

Little Green Footballs tips us to a line of clothing, advertised at this site, which encourages the murder of Republicans. Sick folks at work here, to be sure, but this is no longer especially surprising rhetoric coming from the liberal left.

A quick perusal of the site turned up further evidence of the moral degeneracy of people who would emblazon their shirts with the words "Kill Republicans". One of the women who manages the site writes:

I've never had any children. I mean I've never given birth or anything horrid like that. I didn't mean that I had never had or been with any children - which I of course have not. I don't hold with any of that sex with children nonsense....So lets be clear: I've never shot a bloody, mucus addled, 7 lb, parasite out of my vagina and I'm sincerely hoping I never will. I figure if you're able to say without hint of sarcasm or longing that you won't risk ruining your figure for the sake of bearing children...

We'd finish the quote, but that's about as much as we can stand.

David Hackworth, 74

David Hackworth, war hero, author, and columnist is dead at the age of 74 after a battle with bladder cancer. Hackworth enlisted in the army at the age of 15 in 1946 and rose through the ranks to full colonel in Vietnam where he was highly decorated, earning roughly 80 medals.

In his later years he had become an outspoken critic of the Bush administration's conduct of the war in Iraq.

More details of his life can be found at the link.

Marine Exonerated

Common sense prevails:

A Marine corporal captured on video shooting an apparently injured and unarmed Iraqi did not violate the rules of engagement and will not face a court-martial, the Marine Corps announced.

A review of the evidence showed the Marine's actions in a Fallujah mosque last year were "consistent with the established rules of engagement and the law of armed conflict,'' Maj. Gen. Richard F. Natonski, commanding general of the 1st Marine Division, said in a statement Wednesday.

There are more details here.

Painful Acknowledgements

The Guardian's Max Hastings finds himself dragged by the facts, his fingernails leaving scratch trails in the dirt, to grudging and qualified admission of George Bush's success in the Middle East. His chief criticism of what the administration has accomplished seems to be that he doesn't like the "triumphalist mode" that the White House exudes. Some of what he writes follows:

The greatest danger for those of us who dislike George Bush is that our instincts may tip over into a desire to see his foreign policy objectives fail. No reasonable person can oppose the president's commitment to Islamic democracy. Most western Bushophobes are motivated not by dissent about objectives, but by a belief that the Washington neocons' methods are crass, and more likely to escalate a confrontation between the west and Islam than to defuse it.

Such scepticism, however, should not prevent us from stepping back to reassess the progress of the Bush project, and satisfy ourselves that mere prejudice is not blinding us to the possibility that western liberals are wrong; that the Republicans' grand strategy is getting somewhere.

It seems wrong for either neocon true believers or liberal sceptics to rush to judgment. We of the latter persuasion must keep reciting the mantra: "We want Iraq to come right, even if this vindicates George Bush."

Those who say that Iraqis are incapable of making a democracy work may well be proved right. But until we see what happens on the ground over the months ahead, we should not write off the possibility that the Iraqi people will forge some sort of accommodation. A premature coalition withdrawal promises catastrophe for them, not us.

Hastings is holding his nose as he gives credit where it's due, but he at least has the honesty to acknowledge that much of what Bush has accomplished, though halting and precarious, would never have been accomplished in any other way by any other nation and certainly not by the U.N:

Here, indeed, is the nub of the issue about American foreign policy. The Bush vision is founded upon the exercise of military power. It is hard to regard Condoleezza Rice's "charm offensive" or the state department's protestations that in the second Bush term diplomacy will blossom, as more than cosmetic. The president himself has declared that, while he welcomes more allies, they must accept that the game will be played on Washington's terms.

We must respect American power, and also acknowledge that the world sometimes has much need of it. As Sir Michael Howard, wisest of British strategic thinkers, often remarks: "If America does not do things, nobody else will." We should acknowledge the limitations of the UN. The pitiful performance of many international peacekeeping contingents, not least in Afghanistan, highlights the feebleness of what passes for European security policy.

Although the Bush team knows how to wage war they are inept at diplomacy and stand to lose all unless they become more sensitive to the feelings of others:

Yet it still seems reasonable to question the optimism currently prevailing among Washington's neocons, because this remains founded upon a woefully simplistic vision. It is true that, in some chronic, unstable regions, some bad governments - those of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein - have been removed by the Americans. But the fragile advantages gained will be lost, unless Washington can match its boldness in the deployment of military power with a new sensitivity to alien cultures, matched by far more subtle political skills.

We're quite sure that Mr. Hastings is not pleased with President Bush's nomination of the decidedly insensitive and unsubtle John Bolton to be our representative at the U.N. We're confident that Mr. Bolton is emphatically not what Mr. Hastings had in mind, but we wonder whose diplomatic skills he thinks the Bush people should emulate. Those of the esteemed Kofi Annan? Bill Clinton? Jacques Chirac? Gerhard Schroeder? Vladimir Putin? These men are exemplars of the art of getting nothing done while simultaneously filling one's own wallet.

For our part, we think the administration's diplomacy is working just fine considering the difficulties it faces. Unlike the gentlemen listed above, the White House's diplomacy is based upon a realistic assessment of the people with whom we must deal. Some of them, to be sure, can be motivated by emoluments, others can be moved only by fear, still others are intransigently hostile and must be dealt with by force.

The enlightened ones in the salons of Europe believe all men are vulnerable to the blandishments of reason and self-interest. They're convinced that everyone can be seduced by economic bribes if the seducer is skillful enough. Lacking ideology and religious conviction themselves, they fail to understand the power these exert in the lives of others, and have been making this same error since at least the 1930's. They couldn't see the true nature of the Nazis or the communists in the 20th century, and they fail to see what makes the jihadis so implacable today. Their blindness would be the death of the West were it not for men like Winston Churchill, Ronald Reagan, and George Bush who have a clearer vision, who recognize that men are often driven by imperatives other than simple greed, and have had the courage and steadfastness to do what needs to be done to preserve us from them.

Anti-Christian Rhetoric in the MSM

Former New York Times reporter John McCandlish Phillips has a delightful piece in Wednesday's Washington Post in which he indicts a number of commentators, but particularly the Times' Maureen Dowd, Frank Rich, and Paul Krugman for their super-heated anti-Christian rhetoric, their secularist paranoia, and their utter lack of historical understanding. He notes that there have been 13 opinion columns in the WaPo and the NYT in a one month stretch between March 24 and April 23 which have been of the "sky is falling and it's the Christians' fault" variety.

Phillips then closes with this:

It is said, again and again and again, that the evangelical/Catholic right is out of accord with the history of our republic, dangerously so. What we are out of accord with is not that history but a revisionist version of it vigorously promulgated by those who want it to be seen as other than it was.

The fact is that our founders did not give us a nation frightened by the apparition of the Deity lurking about in our most central places. On Sept. 25, 1789, the text of what was later adopted as the First Amendment was passed by both houses of Congress, and subsequently sent to the states for ratification. On that same day , the gentlemen in the House who had acted to give us that invaluable text took another action: They passed a resolution asking President George Washington to declare a national day of thanksgiving to no less a perceived eminence than almighty God.

That's president, that's national, that's official and, alas, my doubting hearties, it's God - all wrapped up in a federal action by those who knew what they meant by the non-establishment clause and saw their request as standing at not the slightest variance from it. It's a pity our phalanx of columnists cannot crawl into a time machine to go back and reinstruct them.

It's an outstanding column and we invite our readers to read the whole thing.

Rolling Up the Enemy

Recent days have brought us two very significant developments in the war against al Qaida. The first was the interception of a letter written to al Zarqawi by a mid-level commander named al Qusaymi who paints a bleak picture of al Qaida's situation in Iraq.

Bill Roggio at The Fourth Rail has some outstanding commentary on the letter. After analyzing its contents he concludes with this:

Assuming this letter is authentic, the picture al-Qusaymi draws of the current state of al Qaeda in Iraq is not positive [for al Qaeda, that is]. Their soldier's morale is very low and for good reason. They are being mistreated by their own leaders, they feel they are being sacrificed without any positive effects on the outcome, they do not feel they have direction, and some are deserting. No doubt incidents like the failed and costly assaults on Abu Ghraib and Camp Gannon contribute to the feelings of being thrown to the wolves.

There is great distrust between local commanders and Zarqawi's inner circle. al-Qusaymi asks to meet Zarqawi face to face as he does not trust his lieutenants. This can stem from several sources, the main one being that al-Qusaymi is not impressed with their command decisions. The recent spate of arrests of Zarqawi's lieutenants means that less experienced and qualified commanders rise through the ranks. Despite media portrayal that al Qaeda has a limitless supply of experienced operatives and leaders, organizations do not gain strength by losing their best and most seasoned leaders, particularly while under fire.

Al-Qusaymi is writing this letter to attempt to correct problems within al Qaeda's organization. His capture should be a high priority for the Coalition, as he is both insightful and brave enough to approach Zarqawi to address some perceived fundamental flaws in the organization. al-Qusaymi will have detailed information on the weaknesses of al Qaeda which can be exploited, as well as operational information on the makeup and organization of terror cells and their leaders. Removing the smart leaders and allowing the poor ones to remain in place is an effective way to destroy terrorist organizations, as the poor leaders will make bad decisions that will likely alienate both their own recruits and the Iraqi people.

The overall message of al-Qusaymi's letter to Zarqawi is supported by past letters intercepted or published on the web by al Qaeda. Al Qaeda leaders have complained that the Muslim world is shirking jihad and not supporting the fight in Iraq, indicated there are manpower issues in Iraq and Afghanistan and recruiting problems. The lack of quality recruits combined with the Coalition's dismantling of the organization and the arrest of senior leaders is having a negative affect on the morale of both the foot soldiers and leadership of al Qaeda in Iraq. This letter is further evidence that Iraq has provided for the opportunity to deal an operational defeat to al Qaeda.

The other development is the capture announced yesterday of Abu Farj Farj al Liby, bin Laden's third in command. One wonders if his location wasn't gleaned from al Zarqawi's laptop. In any event, he himself should prove to be a treasure trove of information on the whereabouts and operations of other al Qaida bigwigs, perhaps of bin Laden himself and his second in command Ayman al Zarwahri.

Rolling up this terrorist organization is like rolling a snowball down a mountain. Pretty soon it gathers so much momentum that it becomes an avalanche. Each low-level prisoner has information that leads to others which in turn leads to others until top people are being smoked out. When the leadership is interrogated the information inflow takes a huge leap and the pace of shutting down terror operations accelerates even more.

One thing about all this that's important to remember. It's hard to imagine how any of it would have happened had we not invaded Iraq. When the administration told us that draining that swamp was essential to winning the war on terror, it was right. Had we not invaded Iraq, Saddam would bestride the Middle East like the mythical colossus, few if any of the terrorists who've been apprehended would today be in custody, Libya would still be producing nuclear weapons, Syria would still be in Lebanon, Pakistan would be an indifferent ally in the WOT, and the Arab world would be smelling the scent of victory over a decadent west which lacked the will to defend itself against the armies of Allah.

It's good to remind ourselves every now and then.

Incoherence

"What are we to believe in, then? Nothing. That is the beginning of Wisdom. It is time to rid ourselves of 'Principles' and to espouse Science, objective inquiry."

Gustave Flaubert

The problem with so much of skepticism is that it is self-refuting. Flaubert's aphorism is an example. If he really means that we should believe in nothing then he has to admit that he doesn't believe that we should believe in nothing. This, of course, is incoherent.

Flaubert wants to make an exception to his skepticism for Science, but in order to believe in Science he has to believe in a host of other things as well. He has to believe, for example, that Reason leads to truth, he has to believe in the trustworthiness of his senses, he has to believe in the orderliness and uniformity of nature, the reality of an external world, and so on. In order to place his faith in science he must set his skepticism aside, otherwise it's sure to get in the way.

Despite his silly assertion about throwing out all one's beliefs, Flaubert didn't really mean that we should literally believe in nothing. I don't think he was a complete nihilist. But it would be interesting to know what sorts of things he thought unworthy of belief and what his reasons were for not believing in them. Maybe a reader can enlighten us on the matter.

Basic Genetics

Professional scientists have for a long time been critical of much of what passes for science education in some American public schools. After reading this story in our local paper we're inclined to think they may have a point:

Artis Hicks 28, of Clarion, demanded a paternity test when a woman identified him as the father of her newborn son and asked for child support, prosecutors said. Then Hicks allegedly sent his brother, Walter Hicks, 35, of York, to take the test, York County Senior Assistant District Attorney Geoffrey McInroy said Wednesday. When the brother's signature didn't match that on file for Artis Hicks, further DNA testing uncovered the switch, and showed a 99.99 percent probability that Artis Hicks was the child's father, investigators said.

The brothers face charges including forgery, criminal solicitation and tampering with evidence and public documents. Both waived preliminary hearings before District Judge Paula Correal and she ruled that they will face trial in Cumberland County Court.

Dave Rudy, a domestic relations enforcement officer, said a support order was secured against Artis Hicks and he is paying child support.

Let's see. Artis tried to avoid paying child support by demanding a DNA test and then sending his brother to submit the sample. How different Artis thought his brother's DNA would be from his own, the article doesn't say. Let's put a charitable interpretation on Mr. Hicks' scheme and allow that perhaps Artis and Walter are adoptive brothers.

Iranian Youth

A recent poll of Iranian students (Scroll to May 1st: Life and Liberty in Iran) at Regime Change Iran gives reason to think that if we can avert a military showdown with Iran long enough the fundamentalist regime might fall like a rotted tree in the winds of popular contempt.

In early 2003 a large Internet poll of students of the Amir Kabir University (the second most prestigious university in Iran) was conducted. Here are some of the results:

For example, a government conducted survey revealed that 86 percent of the youth say that they do not perform the obligatory daily Islamic prayer.

Only 6 percent of the students said that they support the hardliners, while another 4 percent said they support the reformists within the regime.

In other words, only ten percent of respondents supported the regime at all.

Most significantly, 85 percent of the students said that they would support the establishment of a secular and democratic republic.

The balance of the post discusses why the mullahs still retain their power despite their immense unpopularity. The analysis includes with this:

While apathy may be the outward appearance, there is a cumulation of repressed anger, which may explode by a trigger. A potential trigger may be an outrageous act by regime elements as occurred in Lebanon by the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri. Another trigger may be American military attacks on fundamentalist coercive apparatuses such as Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Basij corps, Ansar-e Hezbollah vigilantes, Ministry of Intelligence headquarters, and the like.

We do not believe that any military strikes on the nuclear facilities would serve as a trigger for mass uprising as some have argued in Washington. The reasons being that with coercive apparatuses being intact, they have not only the power to crush any uprising, but also the added motivation and anger to do so. Iranians are angry at the coercive apparatuses for having oppressed and repressed them for so long but not at any inanimate nuclear facility.

Perhaps we shouldn't place too much confidence in the poll results, since it was conducted over the net and there's no explanation of the measures taken to insure a representative cross-section of respondents nor of the measures taken to prevent fraud. Nevertheless, it is suggestive.

The discussion of what might trigger a revolution in Iran makes a very interesting and important point about the sources of Iranian resentments. It could be that an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities will produce only a shrug from the people themselves. This could be disappointing, but it could also be good news if such an attack becomes necessary. If the popular reaction tends toward indifference it makes such an attack somewhat less perilous.

From the Depths of Hell

These are the sort of people with whom moral nullities such as Mike Whitney have cast their lot in Iraq. The following is a MEMRI transcript of an interrogation of a captured Iraqi terrorist:

Interviewer: Your name?

'Adnan Elias: 'Adnan Muhammad Elias.

Interviewer: Date of birth?

'Adnan Elias: 1984.

Interviewer: What education do you have?

'Adnan Elias: I got to 4th grade, but I don't know how to read or write.

Interviewer: What do you do for a living?

'Adnan Elias: I clean for the municipality.

Interviewer: To what group do you belong?

'Adnan Elias: The Ansar Al-Sunna, sir...We tied (the policeman) up and blindfolded him, and then threw him into the trunk. Then we went to the house of the Emir. We untied his hands and eyes, and then punished him.

Interviewer: How did you punish him?

'Adnan Elias: We whipped him.

Interviewer: You whipped him?

'Adnan Elias: Yes, Muhsin did.

Interviewer: And you?

'Adnan Elias: I didn't whip him. I just stood there holding the gun.

Interviewer: Go on.

'Adnan Elias: They told us to take him to the house of Habib 'Izzat Hamu. We took him out there. We said to him: "Why did you do this and that... Why are you after us?" He answered: "It's out of our hands. We get orders." Then we were told to bring a knife.

Interviewer: You slaughtered him?

'Adnan Elias: Yes, sir. Habib 'Izzat Hamu got the knife. He slaughtered him, and when he was dead, he opened his shirt buttons and cut open his stomach.

Interviewer: Who opened him up?

'Adnan Elias: Muhsin, sir.

Interviewer: When a doctor performs an operation he wears a surgeon's mask over his nose and mouth.

'Adnan Elias: No sir, he didn't wear one.

Interviewer: He didn't wear one?

'Adnan Elias: No sir, he didn't wear one. He cut open his stomach and took stuff out.

Interviewer: What did he take out?

'Adnan Elias: I don't know, his guts.

Interviewer: Weren't you nauseous? Didn't you vomit?

'Adnan Elias: You mean Muhsin?

Interviewer: No, you.

'Adnan Elias: I was standing a little bit aside.

Interviewer: And he didn't vomit or get nauseous?

'Adnan Elias: No, sir.

Interviewer: What is he, Dracula?

'Adnan Elias: Huh?

Interviewer: Go on.

'Adnan Elias: Yes, sir. He opened him up, took stuff out, and put TNT and explosives inside. Then he sewed up his stomach with thick thread.

Interviewer: With thread?

'Adnan Elias: Yes. And a needle. He put the buttons back in place...

Interviewer: He buttoned him up.

'Adnan Elias: Yes, he buttoned him up. We were told to take him in the car near the square in Tel A'far. We threw him there and placed his head back on his shoulders.

Interviewer: My God!

'Adnan Elias: 15 to 30 minutes later they told his family to come and get their son. His father came with two policemen. They picked up the body and made no more than two steps - we were standing far away - Ahmad Sinjar pressed the button.

Interviewer: By remote control.

'Adnan Elias: The body exploded on them, and they died.

Interviewer: So his father and the two policemen died.

'Adnan Elias: Yes sir, and we took off.

These are the people that Mike Whitney is championing as the true representatives of the Iraqi people. These are the people he wishes would kill enough Americans to force us to leave Iraq. These are the heroes, in Mr. Whitney's eyes, of the Iraqi people.

These insurgents are not heroes. They are depraved savages and those among us who cheer them on share in their depravity.

There is a putrefying disease afflicting the soul, what remains of it, of the American Left. Mr. Whitney is but one instance of an advanced case of the sickness.

For more see Bill Roggio's commentary at the Fourth Rail. Roggio links to this report on Arthur Chrenkoff's site:

"Authorities have found the bodies of three Afghan women, one of whom worked for an aid group, who were raped, strangled and dumped with a warning for women not to work for such groups...

" 'This is retribution for those women who are working in NGOs and those who are involved in whoredom'... The note was found attached to the chest of one of the dead women...

"The bodies were dumped near a road outside Pul-i-Khumri city, the provincial capital of Baghlan...

"One of the three was a 25 year-old woman who until recently worked for a Bangladeshi non-governmental organisation (NGO) involved in providing micro credit, mostly to widows.

"A group calling itself 'Afghan Youths Convention' claimed responsibility for the killing, according to a caller who telephoned a Reuters reporter in northern Afghanistan.

"The caller did not say if the previously unheard of group had any connection with any faction or radical Islamic movements such as the ousted Taliban.

"A doctor in the city said forensic tests showed the three were raped and then strangled with a rope."

No doubt Mr. Whitney approves.

Newspapers in Decline

Newspaper circulation is dropping, in some cases precipitously. Circulation figures for the last six months at the nation's top twenty newspapers can be found here along with the percentage they have grown or declined.

Reasons for the overall decline are no doubt numerous and varied, but surely two of them are the rise of alternative media and the growing feeling among readership that many papers can't be trusted to fairly report and comment upon the news.

There's an irony in this. For years liberal newsrooms have railed against corporate America and have championed diversity in whatever way it manifests itself. Now their own corporate profits appear to be tanking, and they're being undone, in part at least, by the increasing diversity of news sources available to consumers.

I wonder if they're savoring this irony at the L.A. Times.

Axis of Tortured Logic

Little Green Footballs tips us to this exemplary illustration of what passes for moral discourse on the political left. Herewith some excerpts from a disturbing piece by Mike Whitney at Axis of Logic:

The greatest moral quandary of our day is whether we, as Americans, support the Iraqi insurgency. It's an issue that has caused anti-war Leftists the same pangs of conscience that many felt 30 years ago in their opposition to the Vietnam War. The specter of disloyalty weighs heavily on all of us, even those who've never been inclined to wave flags or champion the notion of American "Exceptionalism".

For myself, I can say without hesitation that I support the insurgency, and would do so even if my only 21 year old son was serving in Iraq. There's simply no other morally acceptable option.

At the same time we have to recognize that the disparate elements of Iraqi resistance, belittled in the media as the "insurgency", are the legitimate expression of Iraqi self-determination.

The only hope for an acceptable solution to the suffering of the Iraqi people is a US defeat and the subsequent withdrawal of troops. Regrettably, we're nowhere near that period yet.

Ultimately, the Bush administration bears the responsibility for the death of every American killed in Iraq just as if they had lined them up against a wall and shot them one by one. Their blood is on the administration's hands, not those of the Iraqi insurgency.

We should also ask ourselves what the long-range implications of an American victory in Iraq would be. Those who argue that we cannot leave Iraq in a state of chaos don't realize that stabilizing the situation on the ground is tantamount to an American victory and a vindication for the policies of aggression. This would be a bigger disaster than the invasion itself.

The Bush administration is fully prepared to carry on its campaign of global domination by force unless an unmovable object like the Iraqi insurgency blocks its way. Many suspect, that if it wasn't for the resistance, the US would be in Tehran and Damascus right now. This, I think, is a rational assumption. For this reason alone, antiwar advocates should carefully consider the implications of "so-called" humanitarian objectives designed to pacify the population.

Therefore we look for an American defeat in Iraq.

Whitney hopes that enough Americans die in Iraq that we pull out, even should his own son be among the fallen. This is the talk of a man who can barely control his hatred. The prospect of American deaths, even of his own son, is more attractive to him than the prospect of peace, if that peace means an American success. I wonder what he'd say if it was his son's head being held aloft by Abu al Zarqawi on a video of his son's execution: "Sorry, son, but you have to understand its better that you have your head cut off than that America succeed in freeing the Iraqis from oppression and tyranny."

The fact that Whitney thinks the insurgency, which is comprised largely of non-Iraqis, which kills Iraqis indiscriminately, and whose support among the people is falling asymptotically close to zero, are the true representatives of the people, makes him either demented, ignorant, or stupid, or all three.

We suspect Father's Day will be a rather subdued event in the Whitney household this June.

Spoofing the Bigots

Stanley Kurtz has a fine spoof of the anti-Christian paranoiacs at Harper's whom he wrote about last week (see here):

What is the real agenda of the religious far Right? I'll tell you what it is. These nuts want to take over the federal government and suppress other religions through genocide and mass murder, rather than through proselytizing. They want to reestablish slavery. They want to reduce women to near-slavery by making them property, first of their fathers, and then of their husbands. They want to execute anyone found guilty of pre-martial, extramaritial, or homosexual sex. They want to bring back the death penalty for witchcraft.

But aren't extremists like this far from political power? On the contrary, the political and religious movement called "Dominionism" has gained control of the Republican party, and taken over Congress and the White House as well. Once they take over the judiciary, the conversion of America to a theocracy will be sealed. The Dominionists are very close to achieving their goal. Once they have the courts in their hands, a willing Dominionist Republican-controlled Congress can simply extend the death penalty to witchcraft, adultery, homosexuality, and heresy. The courts will uphold all this once conservatives are in control, since Scalia himself appears to be a Dominionist.

Shocking as it seems, Dominionists have gained extensive control of the Republican party, and the apparatus of government throughout the United States. Yet Dominionists continue to operate in secrecy. It is estimated that 35 million Americans who call themselves Christian adhere to Dominionism, although most of them are unaware of the true nature of their own beliefs and goals. Dominionism has met its timetable for the complete takeover of the American government.

It would be a mistake, by the way, to think of Dominionists as fundamentalist Protestants alone. Dominionism has stealthily swept over America, incorporating conservative Roman Catholics and Episcopalians within its ranks. And of course, Dominionists are allied with the neoconservative followers of the political philosopher, Leo Strauss. The quest of these neoconservatives for power and world domination is a self-conscious program of pure, unmitigated evil.

You don't believe me? Well, consider the fact that on December 24, 2001, Pat Robertson resigned his position as president of the Christian Coalition. Religious conservatives understood very well that Robertson had stepped aside to allow the new president of the United States to take his rightful place as the head of the true American Holy Christian Church. Robertson openly revealed at least a portion of his Dominionist plans on The 700 Club on May 13, 1986, when he clearly stated: "We can change the government, we can change the court systems, we can change the poverty problem, we can change education...We can make a difference."

What you've just read is a composite I've created (often word for word) by drawing on a couple of web-sites I'll link you to in a moment (See Kurtz's essay at NRO for the links). The disturbing thing is that this sort of conspiratorial nonsense is being taken seriously by real media and political players.

The notion that conservative Christians want to reinstitute slavery and rule by genocide is not just crazy, it's downright dangerous. The most disturbing part of the Harper's cover story (the one by Chris Hedges) was the attempt to link Christian conservatives with Hitler and fascism. Once we acknowledge the similarity between conservative Christians and fascists, Hedges appears to suggest, we can confront Christian evil by setting aside "the old polite rules of democracy." So wild conspiracy theories and visions of genocide are really excuses for the Left to disregard the rules of democracy and defeat conservative Christians - by any means necessary.

The left had largely managed to keep its hostility toward Christianity muted before the November election. Since then, however, things have changed dramatically. They view Bush's victory as a result of the Christian conservative vote, and they realize that a Republican dominated legislature, elected in large part by Christians, is likely to fill the courts with Christian judges. Jurists operating out of a Christian world-view and a broadly conservative ideology will stop, and perhaps even roll back, our heretofore unimpeded slide into the cultural sewer, our march toward a purely secular society, and our growing death fetish. Such restraints drive the left into a rage, and their frustration and detestation of Christian conservatives has reached the point where they're unable any longer to suppress their incandescent hatred.

Hatred ultimately consumes those who yield to it, of course, but our concern is over how much damage these people will do, how many people they will hurt, before they self-immolate.

You can read Kurtz's whole essay here. Interested readers might also check out an illuminating piece on the same topic at Captain's Quarters.