The Necessity of Free Will

Last month we cited the thread at Evangelical Outpost addressing the free will /determinism problem. It's a difficult puzzle, for which a satisfactory resolution has eluded philosophers for over two thousand years.

The fundamental question is this: Is there more than one possible future, or is the future wholly determined by our environment, our genes, and/or God?

Those who argue for determinism often make two arguments, one stronger than the other. The weaker is simply an untestable assertion that we always act in accord with our strongest desire. Our strongest motives determine our action. As many people have pointed out, however, this is based upon a tautology since our strongest desire is defined as whichever one we act upon. It's therefore true that we always act upon our strongest desire, but its a trivial truth.

We might break out of the tautology and define strongest desire as whichever one we feel most urgently, but then, since it is possible to act on desires that we're not aware of at all, the claim that we always act in accord with our strongest desire becomes problematic. The determinist has no way to demonstrate that we always act in accord with the desire we feel most strongly and his position is thereby undermined.

The determinist's second, more compelling argument, is based on the difficulty of stating exactly what is meant by a free choice. The determinist rightly points out that an absolutely free choice cannot be one which has no causes. If our choices, or at least some of them, were completely uncaused then they would be spontaneous, constantly surprising, and totally unpredictable. But if our choices do have causes then, the argument goes, isn't it those causes which determine the choice? If so, in what sense is the choice free?

We might say that if atheism is true there would really be no point in defending the idea that we are in some sense, at least, free and that the future is open. If atheism is true then the world is almost certainly a closed system of cause and effect under the tyranny of unyielding physical laws. There's no more reason to believe that human freedom can exist in such a system than there is to believe that opposite poles of magnets can choose not to attract.

What difference, then, does God make? The theist believes, first of all, that we are morally responsible. This is implied in the teaching of the Bible, but such teaching would be incoherent were we not free to make moral choices. Responsibility entails freedom to choose. We may be unable to accurately describe what that freedom consists in, but that it exists must be the case if we are significantly responsible for our actions.

Secondly, the theist believes that human beings have dignity and worth, but if our behavior is purely the result of mechanistic forces over which we have no control then we are little more than a particularly interesting form of laboratory rat with no dignity at all. We simply respond to the stimuli in our environment and the pressures of our genetic complement just like the rat does. Since human dignity and worth are the grounds for human rights, if we are just flesh and bone machines there really is nothing upon which to build any notion of "rights". Thus significant moral freedom is a pre-condition for human rights.

Thirdly, theists believe we are created in God's image. Part of what that entails, perhaps, is having the power to choose. God is not constrained by anything outside of Himself, nor by anything in His past that He does not choose. It is possible that we, too, share in God's freedom, at least to some extent.

Fourthly, theists believe that God is good and just, but we confess that these words must mean something completely different to God than they do to us if we are not morally free. If God has created beings to live a vanishingly brief time on earth with no freedom to choose their destiny and then to be divinely consigned to eternal punishment for living and choosing in ways for which they were programmed by their environment, genes, or by God Himself, then we at are a loss to understand what is meant by God's goodness and justice.

Immanuel Kant said that we cannot prove we have free will but we have to assume that we do in order to make sense out of our lives, but the assumption itself makes no sense unless there is a God who somehow grants us a measure of moral freedom.

Our belief that we possess a significant degree of such freedom is based on our belief that God is good and just in ways which are meaningful to us, that we are created in His image, that we are morally responsible for our actions, and that we have dignity and worth. No doubt there are atheistic materialists who believe in free-will but it seems that such a belief is inconsistent with their atheism. Take God away and there is no moral responsibility, there is no human dignity or worth, and there is no basis for believing we are free except the powerful conviction that we are.

In a Godless world, however, that conviction is a chimera.

Operation Matador

The Fourth Rail has some analysis of the fighting going on in western Iraq in Operation Matador in which three Marines and over 100 insurgents have already lost their lives.

Perhaps one of The Fourth Rail's more interesting observations is this:

Col. Stephen Davis states, "The insurgents we're fighting today are not the guys getting $50 to put [a roadside bomb] on the side of the road... These are the professional fighters who have come from all over the Middle East. These are people who have received training and are very well-armed." The insurgents are fighting to the death from bunkers, basements and other concealed positions that do not provide for easy escape. Similar tactics were used by dead-enders in Fallujah, and similar results - the enemy's defeat - will occur during Operation Matador, dealing yet another blow to al Qaeda's jihad in Iraq.

Belmont Club has maps and additional details.

The war is gradually, maybe even quickly, evolving from an indigenous insurgency to a foreign invasion. This is going to make it much harder for the radicals on the loopy Left to claim that the insurgents are just Iraqis patriots trying to expel foreign infidels. We're confident, though, that somehow they'll find a way to turn these alien fighters into naturalized Iraqi citizens.

See UPDATE below.

Unconfirmed Rumor

Word is passing around the blogs about a report that Abu al-Zarqawi has either been seriously wounded or killed in the fighting in western Iraq. The report is encouraging but there's been no confirmation of it as yet. Read Bill Roggio at The Fourth Rail for more on this and related developments pertaining to Operation Matador.

Alzheimer's Vaccine

A story at Fox News.com on work being done to develop a vaccine to slow or prevent Alzheimer's disease is encouraging:

A vaccine that triggers the immune system to fight against the plaque-building protein implicated in Alzheimer's disease may still be a viable option in the future for treating -- or perhaps even preventing -- the devastating disease, according to new research.

[T]wo new studies that followed the participants suggest that the approach may slow the memory loss associated with Alzheimer's disease by reducing the buildup of beta-amyloid plaques in the brain.

"The idea of inducing the immune system to view beta-amyloid as a foreign protein, and to attack it, holds great promise," says researcher Sid Gilman, MD, a neurologist at the University of Michigan Health System, in a news release. "We now need to see whether we can create an immune response safely and in a way that slows the progression of Alzheimer's disease and preserves cognition."

Follow the link to read the rest of the story.

Priscilla Owen

Senator John Cornyn of Texas makes the case at NRO for giving Priscilla Owen a straight up or down confirmation vote. The fact that a nominee of her caliber has been held hostage for four years to partisan power struggles by the Democrats really is unconscionable. Cornyn begins his piece with this:

I know Priscilla personally, because we served together on the Texas supreme court. Throughout her life, she has excelled in virtually everything she has ever done. She was a law-review editor, a top graduate from Baylor Law School at the remarkable age of 23, and the top scorer on the Texas bar exam. She entered the legal profession at a time when relatively few women did, and after a distinguished record in private practice, she reached the pinnacle of the Texas bar - a seat on the Texas supreme court. She was supported by a larger percentage of Texans than any of her colleagues during her last election, after enjoying the endorsement of every major Texas newspaper.

Unsurprisingly, then, the American Bar Association, after careful study, unanimously rated her well qualified to serve on the federal bench - their highest rating.

Unsurprisingly, she enjoys the enthusiastic support of a bipartisan majority of senators.

Yet a partisan minority of senators now insists that Owen may not be confirmed without the support of a supermajority of 60 senators - a demand that is, by their own admission, wholly unprecedented in Senate history. Why? Simple: The case for opposing her is so weak that changing the rules is the only way they can defeat her nomination.

What's more, they know it, too. Before her nomination became caught up in partisan special-interest politics, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee predicted that Owen would be swiftly confirmed. On the day of the announcement of the first group of nominees, including Owen, he said he was "encouraged" and that "I know them well enough that I would assume they'll go through all right." Indeed, just a few weeks ago, the Minority Leader announced that Senate Democrats would give Justice Owen an up-or-down vote - albeit only if Republicans agreed to deny the same courtesy to other nominees.

The senator goes on to discuss her critics' objections to her appointment - a flimsy and insubstantial lot. The only reason for objecting at all, of course, is that the Democrats have to offer some reason for opposing her other than the real reason, which is that she's Bush's nominee.

The sooner we see that metaphorical mushroom cloud in the senate chamber, the better.

The Saudis Are Not Our Friends

The Saudi government underwrites the propagation of radical Wahhabist Islamic beliefs in mosques all across the United States. A recent examination by Freedom House's Center For Religious Freedom of the literature that is pressed into the hands of the members of these American mosques has turned up some chilling material. Here's part of Freedom House's report:

The 89-page report, "Saudi Publications on Hate Ideology Invade American Mosques," is based on a year-long study of over two hundred original documents, all disseminated, published or otherwise generated by the government of Saudi Arabia and collected from more than a dozen mosques in the United States.

The propagation of hate ideology by Saudi Arabia is known to be worldwide, but its occurrence within the United States has received scant attention until now. Within worldwide Sunni Islam, followers of Saudi Arabia's extremist Wahhabi ideology are a distinct minority, as is evident by the millions of Muslims who have chosen to make America their home and are upstanding, law-abiding citizens and neighbors.

Among the key findings of the report:

Various Saudi government publications gathered for this study, most of which are in Arabic, assert that it is a religious obligation for Muslims to hate Christians and Jews and warn against imitating, befriending, or helping them in any way, or taking part in their festivities and celebrations.

The documents promote contempt for the United States because it is ruled by legislated civil law rather than by totalitarian Wahhabi-style Islamic law. They condemn democracy as un-Islamic.

The documents stress that when Muslims are in the lands of the unbelievers, they must behave as if on a mission behind enemy lines. Either they are there to acquire new knowledge and make money to be later employed in the jihad against the infidels, or they are there to proselytize the infidels until at least some convert to Islam. Any other reason for lingering among the unbelievers in their lands is illegitimate, and unless a Muslim leaves as quickly as possible, he or she is not a true Muslim and so too must be condemned. For example, a document in the collection for the "Immigrant Muslim" bears the words "Greetings from the Cultural Attache in Washington, D.C." of the Embassy of Saudi Arabia, and is published by the government of Saudi Arabia. In an authoritative religious voice, it gives detailed instructions on how to "hate" the Christian and Jew: Never greet them first. Never congratulate the infidel on his holiday. Never imitate the infidel. Do not become a naturalized citizen of the United States. Do not wear a graduation gown because this imitates the infidel.

One insidious aspect of the Saudi propaganda examined is its aim to replace traditional and moderate interpretations of Islam with extremist Wahhabism, the officially-established religion of Saudi Arabia. In these documents, other Muslims, especially those who advocate tolerance, are condemned as infidels. The opening fatwa in one Saudi embassy-distributed book, published by the Saudi Air Force, responds to a question about a Muslim preacher in a European mosque who taught that it is not right to condemn Jews and Christians as infidels. The Saudi state cleric's reply rebukes the Muslim cleric: "He who casts doubts about their infidelity leaves no doubt about his." Since, under Saudi law, "apostates" from Islam can be sentenced to death, this is an implied death threat against the tolerant Muslim imam, as well as an incitement to vigilante violence.

Sufi and Shiite Muslims are viciously condemned.

For a Muslim who fails to uphold the Saudi Wahhabi sect's sexual mores (i.e. through homosexual activity or heterosexual activity outside of marriage), the edicts published by the Saudi government's Ministry of Islamic Affairs, and found in American mosques advise, "it would be lawful for Muslims to spill his blood and to take his money."

Regarding those who convert out of Islam, the Saudi Ministry of Islamic Affairs explicitly asserts, they "should be killed."

Saudi textbooks and other publications in the collection, propagate a Nazi-like hatred for Jews, treat the forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion as historical fact, and avow that the Muslim's duty is to eliminate the state of Israel.

Regarding women, the Saudi publications instruct that they should be veiled, segregated from men and barred from certain employment and roles.

We're sure that just as soon as the Michael Jackson trial is over the MSM will get right on this story. Until then we can thank Little Green Footballs for their vigilance.

The full report from Freedom House can be read here.

James FitzJames Stephen

"The way in which the man of genius rules is by persuading an efficient minority to coerce an indifferent and self-indulgent majority."

James Fitzjames Stephen, Liberty, Equality and Fraternity

If we substitute liberalism for the words "man of genius" in Stephen's quote, and replace "efficient minority" with the words mainstream media then perhaps we have a pretty fair explanation for the last half-century of American history.

Keep Talking Harry

Senator Harry Reid claimed recently that President Bush's judicial nominees, including Janice Rogers Brown, were "bad people". Senator Reid is evidently intent on proving himself a buffoon. It seems that every time he opens his mouth he says something astonishingly intemperate.

Captain Ed at Captain's Quarters posts excerpts from an editorial in the liberal Sacramento Bee showing just how silly Reid is and how impoverished is his judgment. The post is worth reading by anyone interested in determining Ms Brown's fitness for the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

17,000 Scientists Oppose Kyoto

Little Green Footballs tips us to an article that our environmentalist friends ought to read if they can manage to wrest themselves away from bashing the president for his refusal to sign the Kyoto accords. The article comes from Canadafreepress.com and is written by Gary Pritchard. Pritchard says:

Last Thursday, I received a telephone call from Douglas Leahey, Ph.D., representing a group of Canadian scientists under the umbrella of "Friends of Science." It seems that they had been talking to Peter Worthington of the Toronto Sun, and he had mentioned to them that they should get in touch with me.

Dr. Leahey began by asking me how they could get a 27-minute documentary on television. I have 15 years experience of fighting with federal and provincial slush funds for that very thing. I asked some routine questions at first: Did they have a letter of licence? Had they rolled a camera before they got permission? Had they talked to the big broadcasters? Did they have a "pitch" and a budget?

Then I found out what their documentary was about. The story was incredible: it documented scientists--from Canada--speaking out against the $10-billion scam known as the Kyoto Protocol. Yes, the very same Kyoto Accord that our government has committed Canada and Canadians to support.

I understood instinctively that getting two scientists to agree at what time the sun is coming up tomorrow is--at best--difficult. But here were tens of thousands, from around the world, all agreeing on one issue: that there is no scientific evidence of man-made global warming.

The numbers of scientists staggered me--17,100 basic and applied American scientists, two thirds with advanced degrees, are against the Kyoto Agreement. The Heidelberg Appeal--which states that there is no scientific evidence for man-made global warming, has been signed by over 4,000 scientists from around the world since the petition's inception. I strongly questioned these high numbers, since I've had benefit of the Canadian government's public relations machine on this issue. Dr. Leahey has since sent documentation to back his figures up.

All those scientists were in total agreement: the Kyoto Protocol was complete fiction. The scientists are so committed to fighting the Kyoto Accord and its misrepresentation of the truth, that they produced a 27-minute documentary and paid for its production with their own money.

The rest of the column explains how the scientists have been blocked from airing their documentary on Canadian television. Apparently, these thousands of scientists have drawn conclusions about man-made global warming which are much at variance with liberal orthodoxy on the subject and must therefore be prevented from corrupting the minds of impressionable viewers with their noxious documentary.

The great liberal tradition of encouraging a free flow of competing ideas is dead in Canada as elsewhere. Today the only ideas that stand a chance of being disseminated in the Canadian media are those bearing the Left's stamp of approval.

We wish the Canadian scientists would bring their documentary to the States. We bet Fox would run it if nobody else would. There's a link at LGF to the full video.

Republicans Need to Act Like Winners

Rush Limbaugh discussed a Roll Call magazine report today that Senators Trent Lott and Ben Nelson are working on a deal that would block the Republicans from invoking the "nuclear option" in the senate. Rush said:

"They [Roll Call] are reporting that the two senators believe they're close to a deal that could avert triggering of the so-called nuclear option. The deal would do this. It would involve having a half dozen members of each party sign a memo of understanding that would bind all of them to certain actions on judicial nominations. The six Republicans would agree to block Majority Leader Bill Frist's plan to invoke the nuclear option and to give up trying to seek confirmation of three of the seven federal appeals court nominees who were filibustered in the last Congress. For their part the six Democrats would pledge to allow votes on the other four nominees, and vote to cut off filibusters on all other judicial nominees named by President Bush for the next year and a half, except in 'extreme circumstances'". The deal would include nominees for the Supreme Court, which could see one or two vacancies this summer. No commitments would be made for any nominations made after the 2006 elections.

This is essentially the deal floated last week by David Broder and Joe Biden and would allow the Democrats to veto Janice Rogers Brown and any other nominee they deemed to be "extreme". Rush had a lot to say about this that's worth reading (see here), and he says it much better than we could.

We'll repeat what we said last week about this, however. We're quite certain that if the Republicans cave on the matter of getting judges confirmed it will be the end of the Republican party as we know it. The need for conservative judges is the reason why a substantial number of voters cast their ballots for George Bush and other Republicans in November. It was the reason why Arlen Specter almost lost his primary race against Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania last spring and probably would have lost were it not for the endorsements he received from Rick Santorum and George Bush.

If Republicans show themselves unwilling to act like a majority party on this issue then conservatives will abandon it in numbers that will make the Israelite exodus from Egypt look like a few stragglers on a Crop Walk. Republicans scoff and ask where the conservatives will go. They'll go nowhere. They'll simply stay home from the polls and keep their check books in the desk drawer. And the Republican party will once again be the minority party it will deserve to be.

UPDATE: ConfirmThem.com has this from Sen. Lott's office:

Susan Irby, Lott's communications director, issued a statement saying there was in fact no deal and that Lott remained committed to having an up-or-down vote on all the pending judicial nominees.

We're relieved but still wary. These are Republicans, after all, that we're dealing with. These are people who couldn't find the political jugular if it was circled with magic marker. They think winning is not getting beat too badly. In other words, we'll believe it when we see the votes taking place for the judges on the senate floor.

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.