Fate of an America-Free Iraq

This is the fate that the get-out-now crowd would impose on all Iraqis if their calls to pull out of Iraq were to be listened to:

KARABILA, Iraq, Sunday, June 19 - Marines on an operation to eliminate insurgents that began Friday broke through the outside wall of a building in this small rural village to find a torture center equipped with electric wires, a noose, handcuffs, a 574-page jihad manual - and four beaten and shackled Iraqis.

The American military has found torture houses after invading towns heavily populated by insurgents - like Falluja, where the anti-insurgent assault last fall uncovered almost 20 such sites. But rarely have they come across victims who have lived to tell the tale.

The men said they told the marines, from Company K, Third Marines, Second Division, that they had been tortured with shocks and flogged with a strip of rubber for more than two weeks, unseen behind the windows of black glass. One of them, Ahmed Isa Fathil, 19, a former member of the new Iraqi Army, said he had been held and tortured there for 22 days. All the while, he said, his face was almost entirely taped over and his hands were cuffed.

In an interview with an embedded reporter just hours after he was freed, he said he had never seen the faces of his captors, who occasionally whispered at him, "We will kill you." He said they did not question him, and he did not know what they wanted. Nor did he ever expect to be released. "They kill somebody every day," said Mr. Fathil, whose hands were so swollen he could not open a can of Coke offered to him by a marine. "They've killed a lot of people."

The manual recovered - a fat, well-thumbed Arabic paperback - listed itself as the 2005 First Edition of "The Principles of Jihadist Philosophy," by Abdel Rahman al-Ali. Its chapters included "How to Select the Best Hostage," and "The Legitimacy of Cutting the Infidels' Heads."

Also recovered were several fake passports, a black hood, the painkiller Percoset, handcuffs and an explosives how-to-guide. Three cars loaded with explosives were parked in a garage outside the house. The marines blew them up.

This is Mr. Fathil's account of his ordeal.

He was having a lunch of lettuce and cucumbers in the kitchen of his home in the small desert village of Rabot with his mother and brother. An Opel sedan pulled up. Two men in masks carrying machine guns got out, seized him, and, leaving his mother sobbing, put him in the trunk of their car.

They drove to the house here. They taped his face, put cotton in his ears, and began to beat him. The only possible explanation for the seizure he could think of was his time in the new Iraqi Army. Unemployed and illiterate, Mr. Fathil signed up after the American occupation began.

But nine months ago, when continuing working meant risking the wrath of the Jihadists, he quit. In all, 10 friends from his unit have been killed, he said. So have his uncle and his uncle's son, though neither ever worked as soldiers.

The men tended to talk in whispers, he said, telling him five times a day, in low voices in his ear, to pray, and offering him sand, instead of water, to wash himself. Just once, he asked if he could see his mother, and one of them said to him, "You won't leave until you are dead."

When marines burst in, one of the captives was lying under a stairwell, badly beaten. At first, they thought he was dead. The others were emaciated and battered. Mr. Fathil had fared the best. The other three were taken by medical helicopter to Balad, a base near Baghdad with a hospital.

But he still had been hurt badly. Marks from beatings criss-crossed his back, and deep pocks, apparently from electric shock burns, were gouged in his skin. The shocks, he said, felt "like my soul is being ripped out of my body." But when he would start to scream, and his body would pull up from the shock, they would begin to beat him, he said.

His town has always been a good place, he said, but the militants have made it hell. "These few are destroying it," he said, his face streaked with tears. "Everybody they take, they kill. It's on a daily basis pretty much."

No word yet on whether his captors played loud rap music or turned the air conditioning way up like they do in real torture houses.

Leftist Low-Lifes

Wretchard at Belmont Club has a must read about Col. Nick Rowe. Rowe is a hero, but even more than Rowe, this account is about the kind of people who cooperated with the Communists during the Vietnam war. It would be interesting to know who, exactly, the people are who betrayed our POW's during the early seventies. It would also be interesting to know if Nick Rowe has any friends from his Special Forces days that might be waiting for Danilo Continente to be released from prison. Read the story at Belmont Club to find out why.

Deja Vu All Over Again

The case of the Downing Street memos that have Left-wing hearts everywhere all aflutter is beginning to sound strangely familiar. Even if the memos are legitimate they do very little to implicate Bush/Blair in some nefarious doings in the run-up to Operation Iraqi Freedom. We're not saying the memos are frauds, but they certainly are peculiar. Check out Captain's Quarters to find out why it seems we've been down this road before.

Quickening the Tempo

The U.S. led coalition in Iraq has launched a second operation downriver from Operation Spear. This second maneuver, code-named Operation Dagger, comes just a day after Spear and raises the question of how we are able to ramp up operations to such a rapid pace given the shortage of American fighting men in theater.Belmont Club offers this explanation:

So where do are US forces getting the the manpower to up the pace of attack? Overall US force levels are being drawn down. America has lost 18,000 men in theater to troop reductions after the Iraqi elections. According to Global Security Org, the total number of US troops in theater is expected to fall from 153,000 to 135,000. One possible answer is that America is understating the number of men in theater by excluding the Special Forces from the count. But even if the entire 10th Special Forces group were included, it would add only about 3,000 men to the total. The increase in tempo cannot come from having more Americans.

One other possibility is that the Coalition is throwing more cannon fodder, what the Daily Kos called "fresh meat", against the insurgents. Austin Bay notes that more and more Iraqi Army units are being used in operations. Austin Bay recently attended a briefing in Baghdad and reported that "In at least nine out of ten security operations, the new Iraqi military is providing half of the forces." That would permit the US to reduce the number of troops devoted to security operations and devote them attacks against the insurgents, where the Left assures us they would be lucky to break even against Zarqawi's men.

In either case, if the calculations of Fester and the Daily Kos are correct, the increased tempo cannot be sustained. Reason: if a player keeps losing chips at the table he will run down his stake. If combat results favor the enemy it necessarily follows that the more combat, the better for the enemy. Sooner or later, according to the predictions of the Left, the Coalition must retire bankrupt from the field.

In the near term, the operational tempo (billed as "violence", "instability" or "mayhem" in the media) will almost certainly increase for the following reasons. First, Iraqi forces are now coming online and they are not the "fresh meat" the Daily Kos claims. Though they may have shortcomings, Iraqi troops are far from totally ineffective and actually represent a net increase in coalition combat power against the enemy. Second, the cumulative results of two years of intelligence infrastructure building coming into fruition in the larger size of caches being found and in the number of "tips" which precede many of the recent captures and rescues. Third, the insurgent strategy of attempting to ignite a civil war as described in the last post, will generate its own backblast.

In other words, the Coalition is actually gaining and will continue to gain in strength. This does not necessarily prove we are winning because the enemy is also reinforcing the Iraqi battlefield with every combatant he can muster.

What we are witnessing is a race between the force-generation capabilities of two sides. Materially speaking, the enemy is bound to lose. Al Qaeda is openly rushing every available fighter into Iraq. But millions of Iraqis Sunnis, Kurds and Shi'ites who have no intention of being resubjugated, fueled by the oil wealth of Iraq can be counted on to resist them, supported by the most deadly military force in the world. On the face of it the enemy cause would be lost. But in the matter of the will to win the outcome becomes more doubtful. Iraq has become the recruiting focus of a generation of Islamists and Leftists while the United States public has won itself enough temporary safety to forget the dangers of September 11. The enemy's hunger -- almost desperation for victory -- stands in symbolic contrast to the desire among many Americans to close Gitmo. The war in Iraq has bought American homeland security in the most unexpected of ways. The enemy has learned to refrain from awakening the US giant, the better to defeat him in his sleep.

History seems to be repeating itself. Americans impatient with the pace of prosecuting the war are growing increasingly disenchanted. The inability of Americans to persist in a difficult enterprise over the long haul was the great hope of Ho Chi Min. It is also being counted upon by Osama bin Laden and his acolytes.

The North Vietnamese were able to outlast the American will because Americans eventually came to believe there was not enough at stake in Vietnam to justify the carnage. They were largely correct. It's not clear that they will come to the same conclusion about Iraq, but if they do they will be greatly mistaken. Moreover, if they ever do reach that unfortunate conclusion, it will be largely because the Bush administration has for the most part abandoned attempts to press upon the American people the significance of the conflict.

Nader's No No

Al Sharpton admonishes Ralph Nader to remember that there are words that whites like him are not allowed to use. Viewpoint wonders if there are any words prohibited to blacks or Hispanics, or whether racial and sociological taboos only go one way.

Never mind. We know the answer.

Operation Spear

Operation Spear has commenced in western Iraq:

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. F-16 fighter planes dropped a series of 500 lb (220 kg) bombs on insurgent targets in western Iraq overnight as the U.S. military launched a heavy offensive against rebels near the Syrian border.

Nine of the powerful bombs were dropped, the U.S. military said, two of them targeting suspected rebel safe houses near the town of Qaim, an insurgent stronghold on the Euphrates river about 20 km (12 miles) east of Iraq's border with Syria. Four more were aimed at rebels as they fired mortars and assault rifles at U.S. ground forces near Qaim, and a further three were used to hit suspected weapons caches in the area.

The air power was in support of Operation Spear, the third major offensive U.S. forces have launched in western Iraq in the past six weeks with the aim of crushing insurgent activity in the Euphrates valley which stretches northwest to Syria.

"Operation Spear ... began in the early morning hours with the objectives of rooting out insurgents and foreign fighters and disrupting insurgent support systems in and around Karabila," Captain Jeffrey Pool of the U.S. Marines said in a statement from Ramadi, capital of the surrounding Anbar region.

Iraqi troops and U.S. tank and amphibious assault units were involved, he added. About 1,000 troops were taking part in all.

This is apparently what the buildup on the Syrian border to which Viewpoint alluded a couple of days ago was for.

Meanwhile, Arthur Chrenkoff has two versions of how the Australian hostage Douglas Wood was found. Wood's first words were "God bless America. You don't know how pleased I am to see you." Chrenkoff closes his post by observing that there is no word yet as to whether Wood's captors mishandled his Bible.

Where Are We Now?

In a gold bull market of course. From the link...

Collapsing confidence in the euro has become one of the principal factors behind the breakdown in the close correlation between gold prices and the dollar, suggesting gold may become something of a currency of choice this summer.

It's interesting that a struggle is currently underway by various entities to establish a one-world currency. Up until recently, the US dollar has been winning the war as most important things have been denominated in dollars.

Then the euro came on the scene and challenged the dollar hegemony and was doing quite well until a negative vote on the EU charter by the French and Dutch vote. Small wonder as the charter, as presented, steals national sovereignty from said countries.

On one hand, I am quite surprised as I expected the euro to do much better given the problems plaguing the dollar i.e. US trade and budget deficits, inflation, etc., yet the euro may rebound from all of this eventually. On the other hand, I have always agreed with a quote from Murray Rothbard that "fiat currency by any other name smells just as sour". And it appears that a general consensus is forming that agrees with him. The big investors who have lost confidence in the US dollar (with good reason) are now loosing confidence in the euro as well.

The article at the link above indicates that some of these players are choosing a third alternative as their "play of choice" and that is gold. Currently, gold is rising against both the dollar and the euro. A de-coupling is taking place whereby previously, as the dollar went up against other currencies, the cost of gold went down. That relationship is clearly demonstrated in these two graphs.

However, these graphs also show that, in the last several months, both the value of the dollar and gold are going up. The dollar is rising due to a lack of confidence in the euro and the price of gold is going up as a result of a bigger lack of confidence in the dollar.

It's ironic that all of this is happening since, as I mentioned above, there is an effort under way for a one-world currency yet the ideal one world currency has existed for the last 5000 years...gold. The problem is that gold represents an honest measure of exchange. The powers that be aren't interested in that. They want a measure of exchange they can manipulate and inflate. Remember that inflation is simply a tool that a government uses to transfer wealth from those that have it to those that want it.

Perhaps these thoughts will be influential if you're thinking about the best place to put your money where it will represent and sustain your true wealth as it is protected from a government's proclivity to steal it from you.

Also, if you're not thoroughly bored from my droning on endlessly, a response to 's Pirhanas in the Blogosphere below can be found at the Feedback Page.

Pirhanas in the Blogosphere

PowerLine's readers work over a recent column by the New York Times' Paul Krugman like piranha stripping clean a side of beef.

Krugman's article was erected around the claim that "Working families have seen little, if any, progress over the past 30 years." This assertion seems silly on the face of it, and a number of bloggers, including PowerLine, offered rebuttals. These posts elicited, in turn, comments from readers, many of which were quite thoughtful. One response in particular deserves special note. Responding to Hindrocket of PowerLine Dafydd ab Hugh replied:

You wrote that "the Census Bureau data show that for the category "Married-Couple Families," median income went from $46,723 in 1973 to $62,281 in 2003. (All numbers are in constant 2003 dollars.) That's a hefty 33% increase in real income."

With all due respect, Hindrocket, that's bullpuckey. The increase in "real income" would be hundreds of times that 33%, once you take into account the value of what you can now buy. Riddle me this:

* In 1973, how many households could afford a desktop computer with hundreds of megabytes of RAM? Ans: none.

* How many could afford a portable telephone that fits in a pocket? Or for that matter, how about a portable computer terminal? Ans: none.

* How many could afford to have genetic diseases in their children repaired by gene therapy? Ans: none.

* How many childless couples could afford in-vitro fertilization? Ans: none.

* How many could afford to have diseases diagnosed with Positron Emission Tomography or treated by laser surgery? How many could afford to have Lasik corrective eye surgery? How many could afford to have depression or anxiety cured or controlled by selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) like Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Luvox or Celexa? How many could afford to have their teeth repaired by composite resin fillings? How many could afford laser microsurgery, radio-telemetry surgery, foetal-abnormality surgery, minimally-invasive surgery, robotic surgery, or "beating heart" cardiac surgery? Ans: none.

* How many could afford to start their own "magazines" that could be read by tens or hundreds of thousands of people each week without even being distributed? Ans: none.

* How many could afford a luxury family vehicle suitable for offroading adventures? Ans: none.

* How many breadwinners could afford to telecommute? Ans: none.

* How many could afford a Mint Mocha Chip Frappuccino? How many could buy fat-free potato chips? How many could afford NutraSweet? How about lactose-free milk? How many could afford to go out routinely for Pad Thai, Japanese sushi, Armenian khorovatz, Ethiopian aleecha, Chorizo Argentino, Lebanese hummus and shawarma, or even a nice, simple blueberry bagel? Ans: none.

The point should be clear: it is impossible to legitimately compare buying power in 1973 with buying power today, for the simple reason that a huge proportion of what we buy today simply did not even exist thirty years ago. This is more obvious when you try to compare today's economy with the economy of the Middle Ages: the strides in technology and society are so staggering, they swamp any attempted calculation of monetary value: how many emperors in A.D. 750 could afford antibiotics?

Claiming that "working families have seen little if any progress over the past 30 years," as Krugman claimed, is so manifestly preposterous -- even before taking economics into account -- that I don't question his veracity so much as his sanity. Is he mentally ill?

We had a couple of additional thoughts on this question of middle class progress. For example, although it was around in the 70s, relatively few middle class families had central air conditioning back then. In our opinion, the air conditioning of America has done more to improve the quality of middle (and lower) class life than most of the items on Dafydd's tally. We might also add to his list access to health information like the hazards of tobacco and high fat diets which has made life better for those who avail themselves of it and act upon it. Moreover, anti-inflammatory and cholesterol lowering drugs like Ibuprofen and statins have greatly enhanced the quality of life of many middle class families in the last couple of decades. Nor should we neglect the emergence of cable television and VHS and DVD formats of entertainment.

We're confident that our readers can come up with more examples of how life is better for middle class citizens today than it was thirty years ago.

People like Krugman don't see all these developments as progress because they only consider economic advancement in terms relative to the wealthy. In other words, if the lives of middle class families are improving in numerous ways, that progress is negated by the fact that the middle class still doesn't make as much money as the upper classes. How else to explain a claim so clearly counter to the facts as Krugman's that the middle class has seen little, if any, progress over the last thirty years?

At any rate another good reply to Mr. Krugman's claim can be found here.

One of the beauties of blogs is that five years ago the only way to expose nonsense like the sort that Paul Krugman dispenses was to fire off a letter to the editor which would probably never get published or would be so severely edited as to render it ineffectual. No longer. Now when someone like Krugman writes something ridiculous, which seems to happen with astonishing regularity, it's immediately amplified and rebutted by the pirhanas in the blogosphere. We're all better off for it.

Who's Driving The Bus?

One can only wonder where the Bush administration is taking us.

First, there seems to be a bizarre reluctance on the part of the Bush administration to protect our borders. Case in point, the individual in this article is about as bizarre as the reluctance of the Bush administration to do something about the situation.

On April 25, Gregory Despres arrived at the U.S.-Canadian border crossing at Calais, Maine, carrying a homemade sword, a hatchet, a knife, brass knuckles and a chain saw stained with what appeared to be blood. U.S. customs agents confiscated the weapons and fingerprinted Despres. Then they let him into the United States.

The full story can be read here.

I'm reminded of the pun that went: if the terrorists want to smuggle a nuclear weapon into the US all they have to do is hide it in a bail of marijuana.

Then on the fiscal responsibility front, things are getting equally bizarre.

From the link...

Why then, during a period of relatively rapid inflation, is the outcry so muted? Why is the government so quick to claim victory over an adversary that is so clearly winning the fight? I believe there are two primary reasons for this apparent paradox. First, in the 1970s and 1980s, when America was a nation of savers, most people easily perceived how inflation robbed them of their purchasing power. Today, American debtors sees inflation as their salvation, as rising home prices and equity extractions increase their purchasing power. Second, as the Fed deliberately peruses a policy of inflation as a means of repudiating government debts, as well as bailing out other borrowers, including hedge funds and homeowners, it can only do so to the extend that it conceals it true intentions from America's creditors. If the world's savers only knew the truth, interest rates would soar, bursting the bubble economy the Fed is trying so desperately to keep inflated.

As I've said before, if a group of conspirators gathered together to plot the destruction of America, they could not design a better master plan than what is currently taking place in this country today.

Another Top Terrorist Arrested

The use of multiple intelligence sources has led to the apprehension in Mosul of another top aide to Abu al-Zarqawi, a man named Abu Talha. The report suggests that questioning of underlings who had been arrested earlier led to information about the whereabouts of Talha.

Rumor has it that the information on Talha was extracted from these sources by subjecting them to round the clock recitations of the lyrics to early Beatles songs. Amnesty International is believed to be looking into the charges.

Real Torture

There's been a lot of talk about torture by American servicemen and women at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo and less well-known venues in Afghanistan. To the extent that real abuses have occurred they should, and doubtless will, be prosecuted, but the key word is "real."

Many of the accusations that have been leveled by such as Senator Durbin have involved things that, though they may make someone uncomfortable, hardly seem like torture. To call them that risks trivializing a word which should evoke horror. To put matters in some perspective, if the reader isn't too squeamish, he or she might go here to see the terrifying and gruesome face of real torture, real cruelty. It's something much worse than having to listen to loud rap music, or being kept in a hot or cold room, or having one's Koran handled without gloves.

Perhaps someone might pass on the link to Senators Leahy and Durbin.

An International Embarrassment

Apparently the Democrats have decided that the best way to discredit the current administration is to talk as if they, the Dems, are all raving lunatics. Indeed, Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont illustrates the point while at the same time aptly describing the Left-wing of the contemporary Democratic party when he said of Guantanamo Bay that it's "an international embarrassment to our nation, to our ideals, and it remains a festering threat to our security."

Another fine example of the madness which seems to have seized the Democrats is Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, the Senate's No. 2 Democrat. Durbin essentially equated Guantanamo Bay with the Nazi death camps in which about 9 million people lost their lives, Stalin's prisons in which 2.7 million persons died, and Pol Pot's reign of terror in which 1.7 million Cambodians were systematically murdered.

Mr. Durbin also likened the treatment of terror suspects at the prison in Guantanamo, and the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's decision to authorize the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II:

"It took us almost 40 years for us to acknowledge that we were wrong, to admit that these people should never have been imprisoned. It was a shameful period in American history," Mr. Durbin said. "I believe the torture techniques that have been used at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and other places fall into that same category."

Perhaps one of his aides will help the Senator to understand the difference between interning innocent American citizens simply because of their ethnicity, and interning terrorists captured while trying to murder innocent American citizens. The distinction is not a difficult one to grasp, and we're confident that Sen. Durbin, if it's explained to him slowly, will get the gist of it.

What was the treatment that elicited the Senator's fatuities? An FBI agent reported to higher-ups that he witnessed one al Qaeda suspect at Gitmo who was chained to the floor, kept in an extremely cold air-conditioned cell and forced to hear loud rap music. The Justice Department is investigating the complaint sort of like the Soviets and the Nazis did when allegations of abuse in their death camps came to light.

There were no details given about the prisoner in question. Why was this one terrorist deprived of the considerable amenities enjoyed by his co-detainees? The Senator apparently isn't interested in telling us. Perhaps context would spoil the effect he was trying to create which is to extrapolate from a single case of possible mistreatment to the conclusion that Gitmo is another Dachau and American troops are as bad as the German SS.

Meanwhile, the Senator is blithely indifferent to the fact that, whereas the death camps to which he has compared Gitmo killed millions and subjected millions more to years of starvation, pain, and inexpressible misery, not a single one of the five hundred or so Gitmo detainees have died and only a handful have made credible claims of poor treatment. The most significant allegations of abuse, in fact, have been five charges of irreverence toward the Koran.

Somebody should explain all this to Senator Durbin before he makes an even bigger fool of himself with his next round of pronouncements.

Muslim Peace-Makers

A friend passes along this short article which holds out hope that Muslims will find in their tradition and holy book a rationale for peace-making:

Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) recently conducted a five-day training for Muslim peacemakers at the request of a human rights organization in Karbala. Four CPTers, Peggy Gish, Cliff Kindy, Maxine Nash, and Allan Slater conducted the highly participatory training at the office of the human rights organization from 22-26 January 2005.

Some of the topics covered in the training included stories of non-violent peacemaking, the power of non-violence, the spirituality of non-violence and planning for public action. On the last day, the trainers covered various smaller topics, including trauma and self-care, working with media and human rights documentation.

In response to the stories and exploration of the power of non-violence, participants asked the questions, "How did that work?" and "Can we do that here?" The group also explored the roots of non-violence in the Muslim tradition and told the CPTers that Islam has a firm tradition of non-violence rooted in the teachings of the Qu'ran and in the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed.

During each day's session, the trainees had opportunities to facilitate sessions, be the daily photographer, log keeper, time-keeper, convener and process observer. The concept of assigning roles for the day was new to the trainees and they greeted it with great enthusiasm.

In the course of the training, participants shared stories of suffering and trauma they experienced under Saddam Hussein and during the wars in which Iraq has participated, including the most recent war with the United States and the subsequent occupation. The trainees said they feel compelled to use their suffering for peacemaking instead of avenging wrongs done to them.

Muslim peacemakers and CPT are planning for future trainings in other venues around Karbala. Possibilities include training at a university in Karbala and in the surrounding cities of Najaf and Hilla.

Let's hope that their desire to be peace-makers catches on among their co-religionists.

Autopsy Report

Anyone tempted to think that the autopsy of Terri Schiavo has settled the matter of the circumstances surrounding her condition should read Michelle Malkin's discussion of the coroner's report and the related links.

No Apologies, Please

LaShawn Barber offers her opinion of the Senate's debate on its failure to pass anti-lynching laws 60 to 100 years ago. In short, she thinks it's dumb:

In light of the serious problems we face in the world and our own country, I think this apology is one of the dumbest, emptiest, most politically correct pile of rubbish I've heard in a long time.

We've got fanatics trying to kill us all in the name of their god and hiding among us. We're being taxed to death taking care of deadbeats and criminals, while President Bush is sending even more of our money to brutal dictators in Africa. And the Senate apologizes for failing to pass anti-lynching laws 100 years ago?

A hundred years from now, I hope politicians will apologize for the lynchings that took place in Los Angeles after a jury acquitted the white cops who subdued lifelong criminal Rodney King. They should also apologize for the lynching that goes on right here in the streets of D.C., as black and Hispanic gangbangers kill each other and innocents for the most ignorant reasons. Apologize for failing to deport Hispanic thugs who jumped the border to spread their thuggery into America's heartland. And the Senate apologizes for failing to pass anti-lynching laws 100 years ago?

Perhaps Congress should apologize for decades of bloated socialist programs that caused the black family to disintegrate. Paying unmarried women to have babies is obscene, immoral, and the reason so many (too many) black children have no fathers to speak of. Treating blacks like dummies who require separate (LOWER) standards than every other race is offensive. I'm offended. Where is my apology?

Generations of blacks have been lulled into feeding from the government trough, and the damage it caused will reverberate for generations. And those numbskulls down the street are apologizing for failing to pass anti-lynching laws 100 years ago. Lord, give me strength.

I'm sick of politicians wasting time and money pandering to blacks, treating us like empty-headed children, spoon-feeding us putrid pabulum, and prostrating themselves for every perceived slight. Don't apologize to "Black People." Apologize to individual blacks who actually care about this mess.

Apologize for failing to protect Americans against foreign invaders. Apologize for taking our hard-earned money and giving it to people who don't want to earn it themselves. Apologize for constantly referring to me as "African American," implying that I'm a lesser American than everyone else. Apologize to all Americans for pushing racially divisive entitlements and preferences and insane "hate crime" laws. Thanks to your misguided paternalism, racial tension will always be front and center.

Freedom is more important than all the apologies, handouts, and excuses Congress could ever come up with. I'm living in the best country in the world, and I'd never be freer anywhere else. To blacks who grew up believing America was the most racist place on earth, if you no longer believe that and realize freedom, the right to be left alone, is the only apology you need, demand that from your senators.

Pretty eloquent stuff. Parenthetically, we should mention that many observers have noted that the reason such legislation failed in the past is because it was filibustered, mostly by southern Democrats. You would think that the party that employed the filibuster to block anti-lynching legislation would have been a bit ashamed to employ it to block a vote on a black nominee to the Federal bench. Such a thought, however, assumes a certain sensitivity to historical irony among Democrats that is apparently well-suppressed.

Clueless Bishop

African Anglicans are paying a steep price for adhering to principle:

Anglican bishops in Africa who are refusing millions of dollars from liberal AmericanEpiscopal sources to protest homosexual clergy say the price of their protest has been higher than they thought.

"To be honest, there is not enough money for the needs we have in Rwanda after the [1994] genocide," said Rwandan Bishop John Rucyahana of the Diocese of Shyira, "but if money is being used to disgrace the Gospel, then we don't need it."

The Rev. Alison Barfoot, assistant to the Anglican archbishop of Uganda, said the Anglican province has no working phones in its Kampala headquarters because it lacks the funds. Conservative American churches haven't pitched in enough -- "definitely not to the extent of what we've given up," she said.

Bill Atwood, general secretary of Ekklesia Society, an international Anglican network, just returned from a tour of Tanzania, Malawi, Kenya, South Africa and Uganda and called the lack of money for Africans "scandalous." "I just met with some archbishops a week ago," he said, "They were saying how painful it was, with people starving to death to make these choices."

What choices are these? The Bishops of Africa have decided that they will not accept money, as desperate as is the need, from those Episcopal bodies which support the ordination of gay priests and the marriage of gay couples. The amount of money declined totals in the millions of dollars.

Kenyan Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi said in an interview he was willing "to do without the money" if it's necessary to remind the Episcopal Church of its mission. "It was to preach the Great Commission," he added, "but what kind of Gospel are they preaching now, saying there should be union of people of the same sex?'"

In March, Bishop Jackson Nzerebende of Uganda's South Rwenzori Diocese cut ties with the Episcopal Diocese of Central Pennsylvania, which had donated more than $65,000 for school fees, transportation, college tuition and an AIDS program. Then, last month, the Ugandan province rejected a $27,000 donation from the New Hampshire Diocese to improve local schools.

Central Pennsylvania Bishop Michael F. Creighton called Bishop Nzerebende's decision "a Good Friday nail in the compassion of Christ." "Our consent to the election of a bishop in New Hampshire (Bishop V. Gene Robinson, who is divorced and living in a homosexual relationship) appears to be more important than the compassionate ministry we have shown with his own people," he said, "who are struggling with and dying of AIDS."

Leave it to an American Bishop to be clueless about what fidelity to a principle means to those who truly believe in it.

The "Christers" Are Coming!

Doug Ireland is beside himself with angst at the success of organizations of "Christers," as he calls them, in mobilizing their troops to boycott sponsors of entertainment which promotes sexual license.

He detects a whiff of fascism emanating from the offices of the gentle folks at the American Family Association and Focus on the Family, Ireland calls them "religious primitives," and grabs his readers by the lapels to scream in their face that theocracy is just around the corner, can't you see. Quick, hide the children.

It's all very comical. Here are a couple of examples:

Ireland quotes Martin Kaplan, director of the Norman Lear Center at the Annenberg School of Communication at USC, who calls the new "Christer" offensive a drive toward "theocratic oligopoly. The drumbeat of religious fascism has never been as troubling as it is now in this country."

Ireland and Kaplan fear that our government agencies are actually responsive to the people's wishes. This ugly recrudescence of dreaded democracy can only lead to trouble. Once the government starts listening to its citizens where does it stop? Auschwitz?

[E]vangelicals feel they have permission to push their way into public and cultural policy in every walk and expression of life.

Imagine the chutzpah of these "Christers" who think they have the same rights as every other American citizen. Where do they get such an impertinent idea? Haven't they learned that religious people, unless they're liberals, are supposed to keep their opinions to themselves, and let the Left alone to run things and impose its values on the rest of the country?

Nobody at the national level is tracking these Christer censorship and pressure campaigns in a systematic way, to quantify them or assess their impact, so that strategies to defeat them can be developed....Unless Hollywood, and the entertainment and broadcast industries, all want to live through an epoch of increasing content blackmail and blacklists, the wealthy folks who make a lot of money from those industries better wake up and start funding intensive and systematic research on the Christian right and its censorship crusades against sexual subversion and sin in the creative arts - or soon it will be too late, and the "theocratic oligopoly" of which Martin Kaplan speaks will be so firmly established it cannot be dislodged.

What this frantic statement lacks in honesty it makes up for in humor. It's dishonest because what Christian organizations are doing is not censorship and, even if it were, there's nothing illicit about censorship unless it's imposed by the government, and even then it's not necessarily unconstitutional. If corporations are persuaded not to subsidize the dissemination of certain ideas on television networks, that's not censorship. They're making a business decision based on the customer's wishes. If the government, through the FCC, chooses to regulate the content of what's going out over public airwaves, that's not necessarily bad either. It's similar to a public school administrator prohibiting the school library from placing pornographic magazines on its shelves.

Ireland's paragraph is humorous because the overwrought author, in his excitement, tacitly acknowledges what I'm sure he didn't intend to admit: that what Hollywood is engaged in is an attempt to sexually subvert the culture. Mr Ireland is obviously distraught that this noble cause is encountering resistance from people who don't want the culture subverted. Resistance to sexual subversion is an evil, in Mr. Ireland's mind, equivalent to being a fascist.

Or worse, a "Christer."

Thanks to No Left Turns for the tip.

What Does <i>This</i> Mean?

A United Arab Emirates daily, citing unnamed sources, reported Wednesday the United States was massing troops on the Syrian-Iraqi border:

The pro-government al-Bayan daily quoted unidentified Arab officials as saying that Egypt and Saudi Arabia "have reliable information from Damascus of U.S. military mobilization on the Syrian-Iraqi border."

The sources also told the paper the U.S. forces have repeatedly crossed the Iraqi border with the "pretext of chasing infiltrators and Iraqi insurgents."

They said that Egypt and Saudi Arabia will express their "grave concern over the growing U.S. administration's threats against Syria" during U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's visit to the Middle East that starts at the end of the week.

If this is true Bashar Assad has probably had to change his underwear a couple of times.

One Way Or Another

The Washington Post tells us that:

The Bush administration, under fire for what critics call its failed North Korea policy, expressed confidence on Tuesday that "one way or another" Pyongyang ultimately would give up its nuclear weapons.

"One way or another they're not going to have these systems," said Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, the top U.S. diplomat dealing with Pyongyang. "And so the real issue for them is what are the terms under which they'll give them up," he added.

But he reiterated the U.S. position that other options remain under discussion and added a dose of reality to recent optimism that Pyongyang may soon come back to the table. "North Korea's unwillingness to return to the table casts increasing doubts on how serious it really is about ending its decades-old nuclear ambitions," he said.

Hill said Pyongyang seems to be "testing our mettle ... testing to see whether we're going to get into endless arguments with our partners. They're waiting to see whether we're going to start negotiating with each other and with ourselves to sweeten the pot for them. And so they feel there's some advantage in waiting."

One wonders what, exactly, the other options are.

Fumento On Iraq

Michael Fumento's two most recent columns at National Review On-Line offer excellent glimpses into what our troops are experiencing in Iraq. They can be read here and here.