Take Back the Memorial Rally Today

If you're in the NY Metro area, make it a point to be there:

Dear Families, Friends and Supporters:

For three long years we have played by the rules as set forth by Governor Pataki, Mayor Bloomberg and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. It got us nowhere.

We want a proper, fitting and respectful September 11th Memorial for the 3,000 innocent souls who perished that day. Not “a history lesson about tolerance.”

The planners of the World Trade Center Memorial have been put on notice that we are going over their heads to make our case to the American people. Please join us for a press conference to kick off our national campaign to enlist the American people in a Fight for Ground Zero. Our loved ones deserve no less.

WHAT: PRESS CONFERENCE & RALLY

WHEN: 12:00 Noon, Monday, June 20, 2005 (Please arrive at 11:45 am)

WHERE: Ground Zero at the Corner of Church & Liberty (rain or shine)

REMEMBRANCE: Please wear black or yellow to symbolize unity, or wear clothing that symbolizes your loved one's affiliation and bring a picture of your lost loved one to hold over your heart.

If you can't make it, be sure to email Governor Pataki, your Congressman, and your Senator.

Don't let the psychotic hatred of liberals for all things American screw over these people.

Ground Zero is about honoring those we lost. Fight the IFC.

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Durbin-Inspired Clothing

Thanks, Dick.

This one's for you.

Update: I forgot the picture of the spokesman:

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Thank You, and Pass the Rope

Over these past few days, I've worked up quite a bit of anger over the comments of Illinois senior senator Dick Durbin's comparison of American soldiers to the Nazis, Stalinists, and Khmer Rouge. Now that I've had a chance to cool down a bit, I think that instead of castigating Durbin, we thank Durbin, Hillary, and Dean for offering us a wonderful set of tools to use over the next few elections.

I am by no means saying that we should silently accept or ignore their comments; it is imperative that we respond proportionally and factually to each, providing a crisp, clinical dissection of their fevered rhetoric de jour as it occurs, but beyond that, we should be very judicious in our outrage.

While outrage is the natural response to the asinine comments that make up the bulk of Democratic discourse these days, it should be noted that these Democrats are in their own way doing exactly what President Lincoln suggested:

"Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hanged."

Republicans resign over morally bankrupt behavior. Democrats campaign on it.

We simply need to allow them the rope, they are quite capable of tying the noose around their own necks. As I've mentioned in the past, you've got to love a party whose platform includes a trapdoor with a quick-release.

We can temper our comments to generate appropriate levels of outrage, enough to let the voting public know that these remarks are beyond the pale of acceptable behavior, but we must be careful not to overplay our hand. As the last several national elections have shown, the American people are dissatisfied with the Democratic Party, and we merely need to stay out of their way.

The voters will do the rest.

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Guantanamo Bay, Illinois

"the whites of his eyes were nearly obscured by the red from blood vessels that had ruptured during the beating, and deep lacerations were held together by staples that had been applied to his scalp."

Is this more testimony from Democrat Dick Durbin about the Nazi, Khmer Rouge, and Stalinist tendencies of our soldiers at our terrorist POW camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba?

And while you ponder on that, remember that:

Ignorance of history destroys our judgment. Consider Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill), who just compared the Guantanamo Bay detention center to Stalin's gulag and to the death camps of Hitler and Pol Pot" an astonishing, obscene piece of ignorance. Between 15 million and 30 million people died from 1918 through 1956 in the prisons and labor camps of the Soviet gulag. Historian Robert Conquest gives some facts. A prisoner at the Kholodnaya Gora prison had to stuff his ears with bread before sleeping on account of the shrieks of women being interrogated. At the Kolyma in Siberia, inmates labored through 12-hour days in cheap canvas shoes, on almost no food, in temperatures that could go to minus-58. At one camp, 1,300 of 3,000 inmates died in one year.

...While not one single prisoner has died at the hands of soldiers in Guantanamo Bay.

So where was this outrageous example of abuse, if not Gitmo? It must have been Abu Ghraib, right?

No.

For real, systematic human rights abuses, the repeated brutal beatings of prisoners by gangs of sadistic guards, the rape of inmates by their captors, and even dragging of inmates through fire, we must descend into the very bowels of Hell:

Democratic Sheriff Michael F. Sheehan's Cook County Jail in Chicago, Illinois.

Real torture, real abuse, on Dick Durbin's home turf.

Read more of the damning Nazi-like abuse of prisoners (and subsequent cover-up) by the corrupt Democratic Cook County political machine at John in Carolina.

(H/T Michelle Malkin)

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Durbin's Comments Waking the Dead

Illinois Senator Dick Durbin's recent comments equating the actions of U.S. soldiers with those of the Nazis, the Soviet gulag forced labor camp system and Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge may have backfired, as fully two-thirds of those deceased veterans who voted for him in 2002 have changed their voter registration to Republican.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 06:40 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Dick Equates U.S. Military with Nazis, Pol Pot

Our terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay has remained in the news for months over mostly-unsubstantiated allegations of human rights abuses in a military prison built for enemy combatants in the War on Terror. Allegations include incidents of prisoner “abuse” during interrogations that sound more like fraternity hazing or a bachelor party depending on the specific charge, and the mistreatment of a book.

Instead of working up a proposal to save Social Security, or coming up with a version of an energy bill they'll support, or developing some sort medical-liability reform to save doctors from the malpractice lawyer lobby, or extending tax relief, Democrats have instead focused like a laser on a wind-borne drop of whiz that may have touched a book before an inmate flushed it down the toilet.

When I read it in WSJ Opinion Journal's June 16 Best of the Web, I was dismayed—but not surprised—to see that Senator Dick Durbin, a Democrat (big shocker, I know), had joined the hysterical Amnesty International-led chorus.

Durbin topped Amnesty International shrill “gulag” rhetoric by comparing the actions of America's all-volunteer professional military to that of the Nazis and Pol Pot, forcefully implying that the American military has no concern for human decency, and was perhaps genocidal.

Durbin's bile can be viewed in the Congressional Record courtesy of the SF gate (PDF).

Durbin referenced a report from one FBI agent who had visited Guantanamo Bay:

On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18-24 hours or more. On one occasion, the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold.

On another occasion, the [air conditioner] had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his hair out throughout the night. On another occasion, not only was the temperature unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the room, and had been since the day before, with the detainee chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor.

Detainees—terrorists—were shackled to the floor? Without a chair, a snack, a bottle of Evian? The rooms weren't kept precisely at a comfortable 72 degrees?

Temperatures throughout the Middle East routinely reaching 110 degrees during the day. At the moment I'm writing this it is 111 degrees in Mecca at 4:00 PM local time, a temperature it is expected to reach every day for the rest of June.

Forgive me if I am unimpressed if al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists are subjected to temperatures a little cooler—or a lot cooler—than those they would experience if they were left free to plot murder in the name of the Religion of Peace.

It might also come as a surprise to Senator Durbin that quite a few Americans listen to “extremely loud rap music” around the clock. Those of us who live in apartment complexes call them “neighbors.” Providing Abdullah with some thumping bass and crude lyrics might be an uncomfortable slice of Americana, but it isn't torture, or anything remotely approaching it.

Interrogation of terrorists who would like nothing more than to kill every man, woman, and child in the world (even you, dhimmi Durbin) who isn't enamored with Islam isn't pretty, nor should it be.

But making terrorists physically or psychologically uncomfortable is a far cry from the killing fields of Pol Pot where people were summarily executed for the most arcane of reasons. Nor is it similar to the Nazi concentration camps that gassed or starved people to death because they weren't “pure,” and conducted the random torture in the name of “medical experiments.”

All of these regimes, whether Stalin's Hitler's or Pol Pot's, Were murderous and totalitarian. Americans are neither of these things.

Perennially indignant shriekers on the political left have long maintained that making the terrorists interred at Guantanamo Bay anything less than completely comfortable during interrogation is “torture,” even though not one single charge of anything approaching torture has ever been substantiated. Leftists also continually whine about treating the terrorists according to the standards of the Geneva Conventions, despite the fact that illegal combatants such as the terrorists interred at Gitmo are specifically exempted from the convention and they fact that the terrorists were never signatories.

All of the coverage on the left about Guantanamo is designed with one purpose in mind; to attack President Bush by carelessly and maliciously slandering the U.S. Military for feeding, housing, and educating terrorists to standards far higher than they ever would have obtained in their own countries while running around free murdering women and children.

Dhimmi Durbin doesn't see it that way. He prattles on:

It is not too late. I hope we will learn from history. I hope we will change course. The President could declare that the United States will apply the Geneva Conventions to the war on terrorism. He could declare, as he should, that the United States will not, under any circumstance, subject any detainee to torture, or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. The administration could give all detainees a meaningful opportunity to challenge their detention before a neutral decisionmaker.

Such a change of course would dramatically improve our image and it would make us safer.

We have learned from history, Mr. Durbin.

We learned that standing ideally by allowed Islamic terrorism to flourish under the administrations of Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Clinton. We learned that standing ideal or dropping a few bombs on camels and aspirin factories every few years does nothing to restrain those who would see our nation turned to ash. It emboldened them.

You confuse image with substance Senator Durbin, and our reward for this fatal miscalculation has been ten thousand casualties on attacks against American targets dating back three decades, with September 11th, 2001 the direct and devastating result of people like you who were and are unwilling to take the escalating threat of Islamic terrorism seriously.

Instead, you worry about terrorists suffering “degrading treatment” as if the issue of their self-esteem is even a worthwhile subject for serious discussion.

Your speech is an attempt to score political points, but instead puts the lives of every American at risk as you pander to the extreme left of the Democratic Party.

These are serious times, Senator Durbin. It is too bad you are such an unserious man worried more about trying to score cheap political points and get your name in the papers.

What a Durbin.

Update(s): Durbin won't back down, as reported by his favorite news network. Good. The only thing better than an idiot liberal is a vocal idiot liberal. I'll go ahead and pencil in that Senate seat as an "R" after '08.

The White House responds. I guess we can sew up the military vote for the next few election cycles.

Another Dick (actually his name is Markos, but it's close enough) has now said that torture conditions under US troops as as bad as they were under Saddam Hussein.

The Jawa Report is all over this, showing dim-bulbs like Kos what Saddam's turture was really like. (WARNING: graphic images).

I've always know that the relativism embraced by the left was morally bankrupt. Outbursts of incredible stupidity such as these just go to prove it.

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Schiavo Postmortem Offers Data, Few Answers

An autopsy report on the body of Terri Schiavo released today confirmed that her husband Michael did not physically abuse her before he obtained a court order to have her killed.

The postmortem also concluded that Terri Schiavo suffered irreversible brain damage and could not hope to recover, regardless of therapy. Her physical condition was also more deteriorated than most people though, with the autopsy concluding that Terri was blind and suffering from severe osteoporosis Medical examiners were unable to find any signs of an eating disorder, meaning that the cause of Terri's 1990 collapse will likely never be known.

The autopsy of Terri Schiavo provides us only with data, not answers.

Based upon what we knew at the time, it would not have hurt anyone if Michael Schiavo relinquished control of his wife to her family. Terri would probably have not known one way or the other, but at least Bob and Mary Schindler would have had hope, if only for a while. Likewise, we'll never know for sure if Michael was carrying out Terri's wishes as he always claimed.

In any event, the long series of legal challenges seems to be an unsettling victory for those who desire for the euthanasia of the inconvenient, and the moral battles remain unresolved.

If nothing else, it comforts me somewhat to think it that Terri is in a better place now.

I'm not so sure about the rest of us.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 05:48 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Kofi Break

An email from a one-time Cotecna officer seems to reference communications between United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan and the company that employed his son. Can you say, “rampant corruption” buys and girls?

I knew you could.

Cotecna, who employed the Secretary-General's son Kojo Annan, was awarded a lucrative contract by the United Nations Oil-for-Food Program.

The 1998 email from Cotecna vice president Michael Wilson was addressed to the company's top three officers, chairman Ellie Massey, managing director and CEO Robert Massey, and senior vice president Andre Prinaix.

"We had brief discussions with the SG and his entourage," wrote Michael Wilson on December 4, 1998, in an apparent reference to the secretary-general.

"We could count on their support."

Cotecna insists that it doubts such a meeting took place and that they would have strongly disproved of such a meeting. This seems to contradict a previous statement by the Secretary-General that Wilson was the person that he “really knew at the company.”

Cotecna's chairman Elie Massey twice met with the Secretary-General prior to Cotectna being awarded a $10 million-a-year contract by the United Nations, but insists that they talked of subjects other than the companies oil-for-food bid.

I would like to give Secretary-General Annan the benefit of the doubt that he was not involved in a scandal that may well prove to be the largest example of organized crime in human history, but is becoming increasingly difficult to do so.

It is a known fact that the Secretary-General twice met with the chairman of Cotecna, a company that his son worked for who was bidding on United Nations contracts. This is highly suspect behavior. Denials by Annan and Massey of impropriety are to be taken with the understanding that they may very well be concealing information that could lead them to be charged in a criminal court of law.

This email was written in 1998 when oil-for-food was still active, and despite Cotecna's down-playing of the incident, indicates collusion between Annan and senior officers in the company that employed his son. Wilson's email, while no smoking gun, points to a pattern of unethical if not illegal behavior by both Cotecna's officers and the Secretary-General.

It remains to be seen if Kofi Annan's actions and inactions in the oil-for-food scandal are illegal, but the information unearthed so far clearly establishes that his is incompetent and probably unethical.

Annan should resign, but I won't hold my breath. He stood by and watched 800,000 die in Rwanda without lifting a finger to help.

He is clearly a politician untainted by ethics.

Update: A second email from the same executive expressed confidence that Cotecna would get the bid because of “effective but quiet lobbying.”

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 05:45 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Documentarian Overboard. Tsunami Warning Issued

Via ABC News:

A major earthquake struck Tuesday night about 80 miles off the coast of northern California, prompting a tsunami warning along the Pacific coast.

It was not known at the time which cruise ship was in the area, nor how Michael Moore was able to waddle far enough from the buffet line to flip over the ship's rail.

Members of a nearby Coast Guard station are reportedly involved in an intensive search.

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What Democrats Stand For

...as cited by President Bush at a fundraiser at the Washington Convention Center.

(h/t: Drudge)

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Words, Words, Words

Via ABC News:

To the victims of lynching 4,743 people killed between 1882 and 1968, three out of four of them black, the Senate issued an apology Monday night for not standing against the violence.

"The apology, while late, is very necessary," Doria Dee Johnson, an expert on the subject of lynching and the great-great-granddaughter of a victim. "People suffered. When the United States government could have done something about it, it did not."

Two words come to mind. “Bull” is one. You can guess the other.

The same article later continues:

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., the Senate's only black member, said, "I do hope that this chamber also spends some time Â… doing something concrete and tangible to heal the long shadow of slavery and the legacy of discrimination so that 100 years from now we can look back and be proud and not have to apologize once again."

Let me respond to Senator Obama (Or as Uncle Teddy likes to call him, “Osama bin Obama”) by saying that the chamber did do “something concrete and tangible to heal the long shadow of slavery.” In fact, it did quite a few things:

• The 13th Amendment abolished slavery and was ratified on December 6, 1865.
• The 14th Amendment gave automatic citizenship to all former slaves, and was ratified July 9, 1868.
• The 15th Amendment ratified February 3, 1870, ensured that a person's race, color, or prior history as a slave could not be used to bar that person from voting.
• The 24th Amendment eliminated the poll tax, was ratified on January 23, 1964, eliminating one of the last legal vestiges of segregation.

These constitutional amendments are of course in addition hundreds of civil rights bills, appropriations bills, federal programs, and resolutions that have been passed to help minority communities over the years.

It might be of some historical note to Senator Obama that all four of these constitutional Amendments were necessary to counter the tendency of southern Democrats and their Ku Klux Klan confederates to try to marginalize blacks—often violently—something that still continues today.

The ABC News article continues in the very next paragraph:

Simeon Wright said, "Good men did nothing" as his cousin, Emmett Till, was dragged from his uncle's Mississippi home and murdered, reportedly for whistling at a white woman. Wright, who was there the night Till was abducted in 1955, said that if there had been a federal anti-lynching law, "there was no way men would have come into my house and taken him out and killed him."

Mr. Wright, do you care to run that by me once again?

The abduction and murder of your cousin Emmitt Till is shocking and tragic, just like the abduction and murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, the three young men murdered by Klansmen in the summer of 1964 for helping blacks in Mississippi register to vote. Both of these cases were lynching, and a federal lynching law wouldn't have averted either one of these cases, nor the 579 other lynchings that happened in Mississippi between 1882 and 1968.

Not a single one.

While the rhetorical flourishes are nice, the Senate apology means nothing. It is political grandstanding, three decades too late. The legislation the Senate filibustered would have meant nothing to the ignorant racist thugs that carried out these attacks and the thousands more just like them.

Nothing.

Both of these assaults, and probably the vast majority of other lynchings, were planned with malice aforethought. A civil rights law not would dissuade single-minded, bigoted predators already willing to commit premeditated murder and kidnapping.

A senate confirmation of anti-lynching legislation, whether passed 105 years ago or in 1963, would have changed nothing. Mr. Wright's words are wistful and full of emotion, but they have no bearing on reality.

This Senate apology is a resolution of words, not substance. At least one other person seems to feel the same way.

"If you hit someone with your car, but you apologize, he's still hurt. It's (the apology) a good idea, but it's too late."

His name is James Cameron, and he should know. Now 91, he is the only known survivor of a lynching.

The practice of lynching came from intolerance and hatred, two things of which the Senate and politics in general are never in short supply. While Robert Byrd's favorite tool of the filibuster stalled federal legislation about lynchings, it was only changes in the greater society itself that led to the near disappearance of lynchings in American life.

The American people have long since passed the time of race-motivated public lynchings.

It is time the Senate does the same.

Note: Via Instapundit, David Hardy weighs in (correctly) that is the Supreme Court, not the Senate, that should be issuing an apology.

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Divide & Conquer

As terrorist attacks by the insurgency are estimated to be peaking, The Iraqi government seems to be using diplomacy in an effort to drive a wedge between native Iraqi insurgents and their foreign al Qaeda allies:

BAGHDAD, Iraq — U.S. and Iraqi officials are considering difficult-to-swallow ideas — including amnesties for their enemies — as they look for ways to end the country's rampant insurgency and isolate extremists wanting to start a civil war.

Negotiations have just begun between U.S. and Iraqi officials on drafting an amnesty policy, which would reach out to Iraqi militants fighting U.S. forces, say officials in both the Iraqi and American governments.

But foreign extremists like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, responsible for Iraq's bloodiest attacks, would not be offered any amnesty, the Iraqi and U.S. authorities told The Associated Press in recent days.

The amnesty proposal is seen as a key weapon to split the insurgency between Iraqi and non-Iraqi lines and further alienate foreign fighters like al-Zarqawi.

So what does this really mean?

Negotiated solutions via internal politics were always the preferred option in deciding the future of Iraq from the coalition's standpoint, but Sunnis did not want to cede the power and control they wielded under Saddam's regime. Fighting against this loss of power is the basis for the Sunni-led insurgency. The domestic element of the insurgency was their way of trying to leverage a better position for themselves than they thought they would have in a post-Saddam Iraq.

In contrast, Iraqi Kurds and Shiites were aware early on that their best prospects for the future are tied to the success of the fledgling Iraqi national government.
Insurgent attacks by primarily Sunni insurgents just went to reinforce this belief.

As it became increasingly apparent that the fledgling Iraqi government would not bow down to the insurgency and elections were successfully held, it buoyed faith among most of the people that they could build a better future for Iraq. The upswing in insurgent violence around the elections and since has not seemed to dissuade the Iraqi people's attempt for democracy; instead it seems to have tempered it.

The insurgency, sensing that they are losing the support of the Iraqi people, has attempted to bomb the civilians into compliance with their wishes. But every new insurgent attack against civilians seems to have had the opposite effect; instead of being intimidated, the Iraqi people are becoming increasingly fed up with the insurgency.

And the insurgency is indeed having problems.

The insurgency was never a monolith, with Sunni Iraqi insurgents fighting for power within a new Iraq having completely different goals than the foreign fighters of al Qaeda intent on killing infidels (Iraqi and foreign) for their brand of radical Islam.

While the growing dissatisfaction with the insurgency matters little to the foreign jihadists (other than making things more difficult), the pressure is beginning to wear on Sunni insurgents that see their guerilla military efforts accomplishing very few, if any of their goals. A political option is increasingly in their best interests, as continued attacks only erode both their manpower and political position.

It is into this gap between al Qaeda's foreign fighters and the Sunni insurgency that the Iraqi government intends to drive a wedge. By offering amnesty for Sunni insurgents who lay down their arms, the Iraqi government is giving them a chance to join the political process instead of fighting against it.

The much talked about tipping point will occur when Sunni leaders in the insurgency realize that it is in their best interests to fight for their people in the political arena instead of the streets of Iraq. Once the Sunni insurgency is dissolved, an isolated al Qaeda insurgency cannot long stand. Insurgencies only succeed when they have the support of the people, and without assistance from Sunnis, al-Zarqawi and al Qaeda in Iraq will be living on borrowed time.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:00 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Keep Up The Pressure On The IFC

From Men's News Daily:

Future visitors to the 9/11 memorial that's planned for the rebuilt World Trade Center site won't learn what we learned that day. They won't learn about terrorists murdering defenseless civilians in the name of their vicious version of Islam. They won't learn about the horror, the grief or the pain we all felt, or how we came together as a united nation... at least, until we began to fight back. They won't learn how ordinary Americans rose to the stature of heroes, or the reasons for our determination to root out terrorism wherever it is found. They won't learn what we learned at all; they won't feel what we felt. That's not politically correct, you see. Instead of a memorial honoring the dead, both the innocent victims and the brave men and women who died trying to save them, visitors will "learn" that America "deserved" what we got.

My dislike of liberal ideology is evident, pervasive, and capitalistic. I find them spineless, opportunistic, and morally bankrupt.

So it was with very little surprise that I found that the party of bloated stupidity, self-righteous hypocrisy, and gluttonous indulgence, was virtually foaming at the mouth (and out of George Soros' pockets) to blame the victims of September 11, 2001 for their own deaths.

We cannot let this stand; must not less this be ignored.

Please, go to Take Back the Memorial and use the contact information there to make your voice heard.

Your voice matters.

Do not let the memories of these people become victims of the Left's cowardly, craven attempt to turn a tragedy into grist for their attempts at ideological indoctrination.

Ground Zero should be politics free. It should be a place of reflection, reverence, and rememberance.

via Globe & Mail.

Don't let liberals play political games slandering the memories of the dead.

Take Back the Memorial. Not for me. Not for you.

Do it for them, and those they left behind.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:03 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Open Borders, Open Graves

Now if only Bush will follow suit...

I've always been a conservative first and a Republican second, and I am increasingly becoming disgusted at the Bush Administration's unwillingess to confront immigration issues, especially our all-too-porous borders.

I'm pro-immigration, and I favor allowing more legal immigration with certain constraints (work visas, not permanent citizenship, and that includes the children of work visa immigrants born here) for guest workers from Central and South American countries.

But by refusing to address border control issues, President Bush has severely compromised Homeland Security efforts. If we have another catestrophic terrorist attack on United States soil because the federal government refuses to do their jobs, the blood of the men, women, and children who die and are maimed will be the responsibility of the White House.

Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate are pandering to the growing Hispanic lobbies as well, but the ultimate responsibility stops at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. President Bush, your primary duty is to the safety of this country's citizens.

It's time to step up to the plate.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 07:36 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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A Man Without Decency

According to Drudge, Edward Klein's new book The Truth About Hillary makes the claim via an anonymous source that former President Bill Clinton made the incredible claim, "I'm going back to my cottage to rape my wife,” while on a Bermuda vacation in 1979.

The anonymous source then claimed that the Clinton's room, "looked like World War III. There are pillows and busted-up furniture all over the place," implying that a very violent rape did indeed occur. The same source also claimed Bill Clinton only found out about Hillary's resulting pregnancy by reading about it in the Arkansas Gazette, and that President Clinton was completely unfazed that he found out about the pregnancy in the newspaper instead of from his wife, instead boasting:

'Do you know what night that happened?"

"'No,' I say. 'When?"

"'It was Bermuda,' he says, 'And you were there!'"

I have some hope that these allegations Drudge attributes to Klein's book are untrue, but if Klein does in fact make these incendiary charges in his book, then Klein has stooped to a low I've not yet seen in covering the lives of political figures.

Klein's unnamed source is most likely lying, and even on the off chance that the story turned out to be true, it still does not bear repeating. Just when you thought the caliber of person the NY Times would hire has hit rock bottom, the former NY Times Magazine and former Newsweek foreign editor Klein tunnels feverishly toward the earth's molten core.

This is triple character assassination, pure and simple.

Neither Bill nor Hillary Clinton nor their daughter Chelsea should be smeared in such an irresponsible manner. Bill Clinton has a history as a womanizer dating back decades, and Hillary has been criticized for sticking around for it, but neither deserves this unprecedented, unprincipled assault upon their characters. Most assuredly, this scurrilous attack most deeply affects the very being of Chelsea Clinton, and this unnerving and unwarranted assault against her is completely unforgivable.

I can only hope that one day Edward Klein will discover that “fist” can be a verb—and Hillary will write a book about it. As that is highly unlikely, Klein deserves to be sued—hopefully into bankruptcy—should the story prove to be without merit. Even if the story does turn out to be true, it still did not warrant publication.

Some things you simply don't do out of a basic respect for innocent people. Apparently all those years working for the liberal Times and Newsweek stripped away any vestiges of decency Klein may have once had.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 07:19 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Difference between Interrogation and Torture

It is interrogation when you use Christina Aguilera music to keep prisoners awake.

It is torture if you use this guy.

Listening to pop music, being made to stand a long time, forced removal of clothing and facial hair, hanging pictures of scantily clad-women around their necks--were these log books gathered from Guantanamo Bay, or just a random fraternity house?

"Torture" at Arizona State University, 1937

I'm sorry, while this stuff it is uncomfortable, and maybe even humiliating, it isn't torture.

It isn't even close.

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Overplaying The Downing Street Memo

[06-26-05 Update: Welcome Times Herald-Record readers! By now you've likely read Beth Quinn's hysterical editorial on the Downing Street Memo. This is one of two articles I've written on the Downing Street Memo. Read the second article, "Downing Street Downer" to understand why Beth's "proof" has absolutely no merit.]

“You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war,” goes the old canard from the (relatively few) half-baked half-wits that half-finished college when I was at East Carolina in the early-to-mid 1990s.

Like other clueless ideologues from the Berkshires to Berkley, they sincerely if only half-lucidly believed that capitulating to tyrants would somehow make the world a better place.

These people naively held, and indeed many still do hold, the sincere, bong-induced belief that happy thoughts will solve the words ills, that it is all just a matter of coming to a mutual understanding. Much of this crowd would like us to cut our military down to bare minimum levels—just enough to stop the enemy before they make it to Beverly Hills or the Hamptons. This is the “bake sales for bombers” crowd.

These people are fools.

"In peace prepare for war, in war prepare for peace. The art of war is of vital importance to the state. It is matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence under no circumstances can it be neglected." –Sun Tzu, circa 500 BC

Despite this, the Internet, especially center-left blogs, have been in an orgasmic frenzy over what is being called the “Downing Street Memo.” The memo purports to be the secret minutes of a meeting of a handful of high-level British government officials that took place July 23, 2002, eight months prior to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

I'd avoided talking about it until this point for several reasons.

Some on the right would point to the fact that there is not a single credible source confirming this memo's authenticity, and that it could have been fictitiously written just like the fake documents dredged up by CBS News. Only “anonymous government sources” have confirmed this document. Pardon me, Michael Isikoff, if I take“anonymous government sources” with a grain or two of salt.

But even if the Downing Street Memo is fake, I certainly hope it accurately reflects what was going on behind the scenes.

According to the memo, recent talks in Washington noted:

“…a perceptible shift in attitude. War was now seen as inevitable.”

A perceptible shift in attitude? I should certainly hope so.

Just ten months after September 11 Americans were still raw with the realization that far away terrorist regimes could indeed strike the United States. Those who kept abreast of the subject knew that Iraq played a role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing by being a refuge for the bomb-builder, and Iraq had put into motions plans to assassinate President George H.W. Bush in Kuwait.

Despite continued diplomatic pressure in the form of international sanctions, two regional wars, and a violently crushed rebellion, Saddam was still firmly in power. With little hope of a coup arising, and Saddam a continued threat to U.S. interests in the region, war was indeed inevitable at some point. The only question was, “when?”

After September 11 and the still unsolved anthrax attacks, taking out a rouge nation with a previous and flaunted history of using WMDs against both its own people and foreign nations became not just a matter of “when,” but “how soon?” in many people's estimations.

Another failure point of the memo, as pointed out by liberal Michael Kinsey, is that the memo is hardly a smoking gun impeachment document liberals have been slobbering for. Liberals harp on the claim that Bush was lying over his position about the war. But the Memo doesn't come close to supporting that assertion:

But even on its face, the memo is not proof that Bush had decided on war. It says that war is "now seen as inevitable" by "Washington." That is, people other than Bush had concluded, based on observation, that he was determined to go to war. There is no claim of even fourth-hand knowledge that he had actually declared this intention. Even if "Washington" meant actual administration decision makers, rather than the usual freelance chatterboxes, C is saying only that these people believe that war is how events will play out.

Once again, liberal hysteria is borne out only in their “reality-based” fantasy world, not in actual reality. It is quite possible, that Bush, in preparing for war, was hoping for peace, following Sun Tsu's time-honored advice. The memo simply does not address the assertion of a pre-determined war made by the left.

So the far left shrieks"cover-up!" and the rest of the world yawns.

One would be tempted to think that there is no outrage because there's nothing to hide.

Note: Also read "Downing Street Downer" to understand why the Downing Street Memo isn't the "smoking gun" liberals hope it would be.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:06 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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More Dishonor From the IFC

Yet another reason we cannot allow the Americans Deserve to Die Center to be built at Ground Zero.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:20 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Shooter Control

From CNN:

More than a dozen Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department deputies will be disciplined for their roles in a controversial shooting incident in which more than 120 rounds were fired at a vehicle driven by an unarmed suspect, Sheriff Lee Baca announced Thursday.
The 13 deputies will face punishments ranging from written reprimands to 15-day suspensions, Baca said.

During the May 9 incident, a suspect led police on a 12-minute chase through Compton, considered one of the more dangerous cities in Southern California.
The chase ended when officers surrounded the vehicle and opened fire. The driver, 44-year-old Winston Hayes, was hit four times but survived.
One deputy was also wounded, Baca has said, possibly by so-called friendly fire...

Â…Baca said the department has changed its policies on firing at moving vehicles, requiring that deputies independently decide whether to shoot, rather than all firing at a single command.

Um, yeah.

I watched the video several times, and the things that amazed me most about this incident were (a) the shoddy marksmanship of the L.A. County Sheriff's Dept., and (b) a complete and utter disregard for fire discipline by the deputies on-scene.

Part of the problem involves policy.

As noted above, deputies were told to fire at a single command. While the details of the shooting policy in place at the time are not explicitly detailed, the implication is that deputies were compelled to fire at a verbal command, regardless of how advantageous their firing position was at the time. This means that a deputy at the right rear of the vehicle (and there was more than one shown on the video) or other position without a clear line of site to the target (or anything else behind the target) was expected to discharge his weapon.

This is a patently dangerous policy.

Obscured by the mass of the SUV driven by the suspect, these deputies were quite literally firing blind, and had little chance of hitting the suspect. In addition, the bulk of the vehicle blocking their line of site also meant that they had little indication of where the rounds they fired might end up. Where these rounds did end up was obvious—in one deputy, and in the walls of houses in the area in addition to the suspect vehicle. With 120 rounds fired in a circular firing squad (men in a circle, firing at a target in the middle), it is a minor miracle that no one died.

Luckily, this “spray and pray” policy has been abandoned in favor of a policy relying on the independent judgement of individual officers. This is a move in the right direction, but it only will work if training is sufficient, both in terms of combat marksmanship and in terms of teaching proper shoot/no shoot situations.

It may be a surprise to many, but most police officers are not “gun people.”

They are people who have dedicated their lives to public service, and more often than not in law enforcement, a handgun (and occasionally shotguns, carbines, and true assault weapons for SWAT or ESU teams) is just another piece of their gear. Many officers never fired a gun before joining law enforcement, and many officers never take their guns out of their holsters except to maintain a department-mandated level of basic proficiency. Herein lies the problem.

Law enforcement officers generally only deploy their handguns in high-risk situations when they perceive a threat to themselves or others. In these situations their pulse rate quickens and as a result, the fine motor skills needed to accurately shoot a handgun diminish significantly. At this point, their training completely fails them.

Firearms training for many officers around the country still follows an archaic system of shooting at un-obscured static (non-moving) paper targets from a fixed position in the known and usually well-lit environment of indoor and outdoor shooting ranges.

These situations are completely divorced from the reality of a world where the “target” is often at least partially hidden, prone to quick, often erratic movements, and quite capable of returning fire. In addition, instead of occurring in a range where downrange safety is assumed and almost a given, most officer-involved shootings occur in populated areas where there is a significant risk of downrange targets being hit be the officer's bullet.

What's more, it is quite possible and even likely that with the kind of ammunition used by most departments (zero-expansion “ball” and controlled-expansion hollowpoint bullets), that even a direct hit on the target can overpenetrate, going completely thorough the suspect and killing or maiming innocent bystanders.

Because of this unrealistic training environment, officers are all but doomed to fail in the real world, as this example by the L.A. Sheriff's Dept. shows.

In an ideal world, police officer's would be trained in the high-stress and varying “shoot house” environments common to emergency services and SWAT team personnel, where officers are forced into unknown situations with “no shoot” civilians, and physical barriers controlling the tone for the engagement.
Unfortunately, these live-fire “shoot houses” are themselves hazardous for officers without significant levels of training, and are prohibitively expensive to maintain.

A compromise can be struck between these two extremes that while still not ideal, is significantly better than the “old school” range training too many departments still use. Departments can build less expensive “shoot house” environments and officers can be training using so-called “simunitions,” which are special training cartridges that function in the officer's duty weapon (thus better familiarizing officer's with their weapon in high-stress environments) while not posing lethal risk.

Until these more realistic training environments become standard, you can continue to expect more situations where officers put themselves and others at risk due to antiquated training and policies.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:04 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Trying to Reason with Hurricane Season

It's that time of year again, and Arlene, the first named tropical storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, is churning for a Gulf coast landfall as we speak. Therefore, as a public service from a North Carolina native who's been through more hurricanes than Tammy Faye Bakker's been through makeup, I present to you:

Confederate Yankee's Guide to Dealing with Hurricane Season

Days Before the Storm Arrives

1. Move. Seriously, people in Idaho never have to deal with this crap.
2. Get milk and bread. Nobody seems to know exactly why, but I'm pretty sure it's the law.
3. Send Mama and the kids away to her folks for a few days.
4. Go to the beach and grab a seat in the dunes. Huge waves are cool to watch crashing on the beach, and if you're lucky, you can see some idiot from Quebec get swept out to sea. Screaming is funny in French.
5. Go home.
6. Throw all the crap you don't want any more in the yard. If the storm surge comes you can avoid a dumping fee, and if it doesn't, you can use all the debris to convince the guys from FEMA that it did and they'll cut you a big, fat check.

The Day before the Storm

1. Get more beer. Lots of it. If you're living in hurricane country, you might as well make the best of it.
2. Get ice. That way your beer stays cold even if you lose power for a couple of days.
3. Get one of those huge 490-quart Igloo coolers that looks like chest freezer, but bigger. It'll keep your iced beer cold, and can be used as a raft. Put it in the bass boat tied to your back porch.
4. Board up the windows of your trailer. You already have all the boards numbered from last year, so it should be a snap. Put all the crap you really need (rifles, radio, lawn chairs, cans of vienna sausages, etc.) in a big waterproof bag and tie it tightly well off the ground in a nearby tree.
5. Invite your best buddy over. Remind him to bring his cooler.
6. Wait.

Landfall

1. Sit inside and drink beer. Watch that 90-pound girl reporter from the local television news crew get battered by the wind and sideways rain while doing a live report. Take bets on whether or not the cameraman will warn her about that dumpster bearing down behind her. Wonder why he hates her so much. Giggle until you loose power.
2. Put on your lawn ‘n leaf bag and step outside for a smoke. Wow, those 100 MPH lighters really do work.
3. Go out back, get in the boat, and tie a rope around your cooler. Mount up. When the storm surge comes, you can ride that bucking 490-quart beast like a bull.
4. Yee-haw!
5. Float serenely along, drinking more beer. At this point you should have enough beer in you to “contribute to the storm surge,” if you know what I mean.
6. Empty your bladder up-current from that still-screaming guy from Quebec.
7. Thow your empty cans at, err, to him. Empty beer cans are nature's unsung floatation devices. Don't let him get too close though—he smells like piss.
8. Enjoy the ride while it lasts. Likes the French, storm surge always retreats eventually, and you'll be back on land soon enough.

Afterward

1. Climb off your cooler, hop out of the boat, and immediately start picking up full cans and bottles of beer left over from that convenience store down the street that washed away.
2. If he hasn't stopped screaming yet, an ice-cold beer should encourage “Frenchy” to settle down—especially if you catch him in the temple.
3. When he comes too, have him help pick up beers. If he refuses to work—which you should expect of socialists—simply hum a few bars of “Dueling Banjos.”
4. Deliverance needs no translation.
5. Have “Frenchy” drag your cooler back to your freshly scoured lot and then send him on his way.
6. Retrieve your rifle, radio, lawn chairs, and viennas from that waterproof bag you tied in a tree.
7. Pose for the CNN news crews that come by. They LOVE filming guys guarding nothing from lawn chairs. When Mama sees you on CNN, she and the kids will know you're “ah-ight.”
8. Have a can of viennas and a beer.
9. Wait for FEMA to come by.
10. Listen to the radio. According to the National Weather Service, you'll get to do it all again next week.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 06:20 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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