Archives for May 2004

Must read, with 3 updates

If you read one article this entire week, read this: How to lose this war. Hanson gives a menu on how to lose this war. Among others:

• As gas prices rise at home, scream that the war abroad was fought to steal Iraqi oil and get American hands on cheap petroleum.
  

• Insist that Iraq has nothing to do with the wider struggle against Islamic fundamentalists and their autocratic state supporters in the Middle East.
  

• Ignore, if not ridicule, any evidence that does not fit a preconceived view: Mohammed Atta could have never met with Iraqi intelligence officers; Abu Abbas and Abu Nidal were not really terrorists and not really in Baghdad; there is no chance that WMD have been transferred to Syria or evidence of its removal or destruction found in Iraq.
  

• Ignore American soldiers in battle and turn the entire nation’s attention toward sexual abuse and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners by a few miscreant American soldiers.
  

• Pay as little attention as possible to horrific footage of American civilians burned alive and desecrated or to Jewish-American citizens beheaded on tape.

Suggestions? We must press on, of course. Use the troops that we have to put down the insurrectionists immediately and without mercy—and we will not need perpetually to call for ever more soldiers. One subdued Fallujah is worth two additional armored divisions in terms of deterrence. Give the Iraqis a higher public profile, and do not waver from the long scheduled dates of transfer of power. And finally, keep reminding the American people how much has been accomplished and how rare is our effort to defeat fascism and leave consensual government in its wake—and do that every day.

Clarity of purpose is what wins struggles. This article is a must-read.

Update: Congress, Media Could Talk U.S. Into Iraq Defeat. Second update: Kill Faster! Third update: Dr. Sowell has something to say.

https://faustasblog.com/2004/05/167/

The cicadas are out . . .

. . . and making such a loud noise that even the France2 newscast talked about it. In spite of the large number of cicadan carcasses, the France2 commentator surprisingly didn’t call it a quagmire and didn’t blame GWB.

https://faustasblog.com/2004/05/166/

UNScam raid

A friend just emailed me this article. She highlighted the final paragraph:

The Americans also raided other offices of the INC, Musawi said.

U.S. officials declined to comment on the raid targeting a longtime ally of the Pentagon. Privately, however, American authorities have complained that Chalabi is interfering with a U.S. investigation into allegations that Saddam Hussein’s regime skimmed millions of dollars in oil revenues during the U.N.-run oil-for-food program,

which explains this.

The same friend tells me she watched a Fox News TV reporter today stick a microphone on the face of a UN official and ask uncomfortable questions. To me, this is progress. In the meantime, Friends of Saddam has new information on UNScam, and Roger has commentary (don’t miss the comments!).

https://faustasblog.com/2004/05/165/

Olympic worries

Kelly at Suburban Blight shares my feelings.

https://faustasblog.com/2004/05/164/

Paul’s great Highlands idea

The principle of Occam’s Razor teaches us that one should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything. It admonishes us to choose from a set of otherwise equivalent models of a given phenomenon the simplest one. A cynic would say that this is antithetical to politics, but I digress.

In today’s article, Paul Mulshine explains his plan

Unlike the state’s plan, which takes up 100 pages, mine can be stated in two sentences.

1) Set up a Highlands Commission that is empowered to buy land and/or conservation easements with that money.

2) Give that commission the right to match any private offer on any land for sale in the Highlands.

Clearly Paul has been following Occam.

https://faustasblog.com/2004/05/163/

Taranto’s in fine shape . . .

. . . in yesterday’s Best Of The Web.

Blogger Arthur Chrenkoff has an excellent, and long, roundup of good news from Iraq, along with links. Here’s a very brief summary:

* Several parts of the country are already holding local elections.

* Iraqis are wealthier, and their health and education systems are better.

* Iraq’s culture is undergoing a revival. The national soccer team beat Saudi Arabia for a place in the Olympics, Kurdish music albums are selling big, and the Marsh Arabs are coming back and restoring the environment that Saddam Hussein wrecked.

* Reconstruction is going well.

* Outside Fallujah and some parts of the south, the security situation is good.

* Nine Iraqis whose hands Saddam’s regime amputated are getting prosthetic ones thanks to American volunteers, as our Dan Henninger noted last week.

* Other Middle Eastern countries are beginning to make reformist noises.

But the top story is this,

Bizarre as it may sound, that’s the tack the Times is taking toward the discovery earlier this week of an artillery shell containing sarin in Iraq. Although, as we noted yesterday, the volume of the sarin is between three quarts and a gallon, the Times insists that field tests found only “very small traces of sarin.”

The Times continues protesting Saddam Hussein’s innocence, suggesting that he did away with his weapons in “a large-scale destruction program” from which only “some residual weapons” may have “escaped”–never mind that U.N. resolutions obliged Saddam to destroy all his weapons and to document their destruction.

Which reminds me of what this blogger said, also yesterday (warning: bad language) How far the rabbit hole goes. When it comes to Iraq, the ironies are many

https://faustasblog.com/2004/05/162/

Dead-tree headlines in The Principality:

Project Developers Target Late Summer To Begin “Phase II”; Large Delays Expected in PHS Construction; Arts Council Plans to Lobby for Expansion Despite Differences With Community Groups

All three have to do with buildings that will never pay taxes.

I’ve blogged about “Phase II”.

The neighbors of the Art Council have talked and compromised, and the Arts Council still trys to push through an ugly building the neighbors don’t want.

The Principality High School construction, part of the district’s $81.3 million construction project, is expected to be delayed six or seven months from the original plan. And how much will this cost?

Stay tuned.

https://faustasblog.com/2004/05/161/

Le Monde speaks, Updated twice

So here we have the French — who supposedly hate Americans because they’re fat, vulgar, uneducated, gross, vile, ignorant, egotistical, self-important cretins and greedy blowhards — embracing Michael Moore, whose latest oeuvre is up for the Palm D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

A contradiction?

Not at all. The headline says it all “Fahrenheit 9/11″ : un film de guerre pour chasser George W. Bush” (Fahrenheit 9/11: a war film to drive out George W Bush). “Michael Moore is not just a filmmaker, he’s a man who’s found the role of his life: the man who drives George Bush out of the White House” (my translation).

If Moore spends 35-hr weeks at this, GWB’s got nothing to worry about.

Update: Great minds think alike Second Update On the red carpet (sent by “No Friend Of Moore”)

https://faustasblog.com/2004/05/160/