The Seattle Times Shills for the Enemy

Today the Seattle Times published one of the most ridiculous excuses for surrender in Iraq that I've ever seen. Using this single photgraph ((c) 2007, Seattle Times), seemingly without context, they opined:

The image in Tuesday's newspapers was of a sea of Iraqi flags, as tens of thousands of Iraqis paraded in Najaf against the occupation of their country by the United States. If anyone were looking for an Iraqi answer to the "surge," it is in that photo.

There are those in America who still believe that a measured increase in manpower could bring about order and safety in Iraq. To them, we say: Look at the photos from Najaf. There is what they think of your idea. Ponder that crowd. See how many flags are in it. Think of the last time you saw American flags flying everywhere — what event had just happened. That was 9/11. Recall how people felt then. That is Najaf now. "Death to America," the crowd said. Thousands said it.

There is no arguing with a force like that.

The piece went on to argue that leaving with our tails between our legs was perfectly honorable, and not a surrender at all because we weren't giving our troops up as prisonoers.

Daring to, in fact, "argue[] with a force like that," I wrote the following letter to the editor. I've included links in this version.

Editor, The Times:

Your absurd editorial, “The Flags of Najaf,” represents perfectly the complete disconnect between the reality of Iraq and the head-in-the-sand leftist media vision of it.

You paint a picture of a popular uprising, a spontaneous demonstration from everyday people who just want America to leave so they can get back to their lives and businesses. Nothing could be further from the truth. First, you claim there were “tens of thousands” of demonstrators, when in reality, the numbers were closer to 5 – 7,000. Even the protesters themselves only were able to claim 10,000 – at most half of your claim. Either this is a sloppy oversight or flat dishonesty.

Second, you fail to mention that the demonstration was orchestrated by murderer Muqtada al Sadr from his hiding place in Iran, likely with logistical support and funding from Iran itself. This demonstration is actually a profound sign of this villain’s weakness, not strength. When the best he can do is get a few thousand people to waive flags as opposed to besting joint American/Iraqi forces in the field, things are definitely looking up. This was a failed attempt at enemy propaganda, and it takes a willful blindness to see it as anything other than that.

Finally, you laughably argue that leaving on a timeline demanded by those who have sworn to destroy our nation is not a surrender, as if Iraq is locked away in its own little hermetically sealed bubble. No serious person believes that leaving Iraq won’t have deadly consequences for the brave Iraqis still risking their lives to form their democracy, or for the safety of the United States itself. Iran’s fingerprints are all over the Najaf “protest” – does anyone seriously believe they aren’t a threat to us?

I urge the Times to stop going out of their way to shill for the enemies of America. Your readers deserve facts, not false jihadist propaganda.

I'm looking forward to their correction, of course.

Update: Shockingly, the Seattle Times didn't print my letter, or even include it in the "online only" letters. Oh, well. I suppose I understand, though - they had to make room for the guy informing us all about "Halliburton and the other fattening merchants of war" and "The unborn generations of Americans whose future has already been mortgaged by the Bush administration".

Journalism at its finest.

"Censorship," Public Arts Funding, and Media Bias

I am acutely aware of media bias, and have been trained to read between the lines of newspaper stories since my first debate class my sophomore year of high school. I consider myself a discerning consumer of news, and not easily fooled. But it's amazing how a headline can still inflame. Consider the following story, with the headlines I saw, accompanied by my thought processes:

(From Drudge) "Politician Wants Government to Review Movie Scripts -- Before Cameras Start Rolling..." Me: What the hell? This must be about that Dakota Fanning movie. Imagine - the federal government reviewing every movie script - what is this, North Korea? Outrageous! I wonder if it's a Democrat like Al Gore, who's music censorship insanity now gets a free pass, or if it's some nanny state "conservative." It'll never fly, but the fact that it even is up for debate is shameful! I need to check this out... Click.

The headline from the Wilmington Star, a North Carolina paper: "Republican: Scripts Need Reviewing" Me: Great. Even though I know the headline would read differently if a Democrat had proposed this, way to fulfill every negative stereotype about conservatives. I need to blog about this offensive and unconstitutional attack on free speech. Not only is it outrageous, but it'll be good to show those who think the FedSoc is just a GOP shill that principles trump party politics here. Government pre-screening of movie scripts - Outrageous!

And then I actually read it. In my head was the sound of the abrupt record scratch as the jukebox stops playing and everyone in the bar looks up.

That system, said state Sen. Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, would apply only to films seeking the state's lucrative filmmaker incentive, which refunds as much as 15 percent of what productions spend in North Carolina from the state treasury.

Me: Well I'll be darned. I just got punk'd by two headlines in a row. Not only is it entirely reasonable for a 15% stakeholder to want to review a script before committing to it, it has nothing to do with the First Amendment or government censorship of private art (however disgusting) at all. It doesn't have anything to do with the federal government, either.

I think it's a dangerous road to start down, to offer this kind of incentive package. I understand the state's desire to incentivize filmmakers to come to their state and show it off (hopefully in a positive light). But then comes the murky world of deciding what's "objectionable," allegations of "arbitrary and capricious" decision making, etc.

Regardless, nothing in the actual facts being reported has anything to do with the implications of the headline, which is that "Republicans hate free speech and want to censor Hollywood." It is a dishonest way to support an entitlement mentality - "I have the right to make a movie, therefore, the I have a right to government money that may help me do that."

One of the truisms behind the principles of limited government that most of us here share is that if government pays for it, they can control it. We generally therefore seek to limit government control and intrusion by cutting the purse strings. It is one of the logical absurdities of liberalism we here tend to reject - that one is entitled to the government's (other people's) money for our own benefit without any strings attached, and that the Constitution requires it.

Nifong The Victim

"He's devastated. It's very upsetting to be attacked. It's like he's public enemy No. 1," said David Freedman, Nifong's attorney.

Awwww... It's so saaaaad. Well gosh, Mr. Nifong. Maybe you should have thought of that before you violated ethics, discovery, and media communications rules in order to railroad some kids in a cynical race-baiting political maneuver. At least now he knows how the victims of his prosecutorial abuse felt. Thank God they had the means to fight back, both in the media and in the courtroom.

If there's real justice in the world, Nifong won't just get disbarred - he'll live forever in infamy in every Professional Responsibility casebook in every law school in the country. I wouldn't count on it, though - then law professors might have to admit that sometimes whites can be victims of racial politics, too.

I never understood why this case was anything more than a blip on the national news radar, until Publius pointed it out. One of the liberal articles of faith is that rich white people run around and oppress poor black victims whenever they can, especially in the South. Because actual examples of this are increasingly hard to find, when a story that reinforces that mode of belief comes along, the liberal MSM will blow it up into ridiculous proportions. And because it's what they expect to see in the world, there's no need for healthy skepticism, fact checking, balance, or any other journalistic skill they were supposedly taught. Rich white southern boys rape poor black stripper student? Well, duh! That's the sun rising in the east!

Nifong, of course, counted on this MSM complicity, and rode it all the way to re-election. Nothing like a little race baiting to score a few votes - so what if innocent people are flayed because of the color of their skin!

At this point, no one is defending Nifong, except apparently, his attorney helped out by the above linked ABC softball piece. Well, that and a bunch of isolated college professors who aren't about to let the truth get in the way of their social views. But it's important to remember that Nifong was only exposed, despite the best efforts of his abettors in the media and academia who want to shape our perception of the world as racist, because they accidentally picked on victims with the means - and evidence - to defend themselves. As long as we as a society continue to give race baiters a pass so long as they're the right color, the Duke lacrosse players won't be the last victims of this kind of abuse.

Fed Soc annual convention -- a somber meeting?

The New York Times portrays this years Federalist Society Convention as a grim affair, with conservative lawyers apparently coming to terms with the the fact that its now become much harder for them to be elevated to the bench.

The New York Times has been known in the past to let its editorial preferences color its reporting, so I don't know how accurate this depiction is, but it makes for an interesting read.

My favourite quote: "The days when the Federalist Society would get just about anything it wanted are over." -- Chuck Schumer. Further evidence of the fact that he not only has a tenuous grasp on constitutional issues, but apparently on reality as well. The Federalist Society would get just about anything it wanted?? Souter? Harriet Miers? Roberts desperately trying to disassociate himself from the Federalist Society?

What's Really Happening In Iraq? And Does America Still Have the Will to Win?

Unquestionably, the violence and seeming endless chaos in Iraq is disheartening to those of us who understand its central importance in the global war on Islamo-Fascism. Failure now - whether due to poor execution or simply surrendering - would have catastophic consequences to our nation and to the world. But is there really no end in sight? Or is there reason for hope?

It is important to remember that most of us (including most politicians) see Iraq through the Western Media, an overwhelmingly liberal conglomeration that is stridently anti-Bush and anti-Republican. This media has now stooped to unfettered airing of Fascist propaganda, consequences to the nation be damned, because they think it will hurt the GOP. And even without their political bent, when was the last time we heard a report on Iraq politics? Successes of any kind? Ba'athist death stats alongside the American death numbers? Most reporters never leave the green zone, and face abduction and beheadings if they do. No thinking person can or should take most news reports from Iraq simply at face value, or think they represent the whole of the situation in that country.

Articles like this one from Amir Taheri give me hope:

Iraq today is the central battlefield in the global war between two mutually exclusive visions of the future. Yet the jihadists now know they can't win on that battlefield. After three years of near-daily killings, often in the most horrible manner imaginable, they've failed to alter Iraq's political agenda. Nor have they won control of any territory or even broadened their constituency.

The jihadists have suffered thousands of casualties, with many more captured by Coalition forces and the new Iraqi army and police. Despite more than 120 suicide operations, and countless attacks on civilian targets, the jihadists have been on the defensive since they lost their chief base at Fallujah last year. Their strategic weakness: They can't translate their killings into political gains inside Iraq.

They kill teachers and children, but schools stay open. They kill doctors and patients, but hospitals still function. They kill civil servants, but the ministries are crawling back into operation. They kidnap and murder foreign businessmen, but more keep coming. They massacre volunteers for the new army and police, but the lines of those wishing to join grow longer.

They blow up pipelines and kill oil workers, but oil still flows. They kill judges and lawyers, but Iraq's new courts keep on working. They machine-gun buses carrying foreign pilgrims, but the pilgrims come back in growing numbers. They kill newspaper boys, but newspapers still get delivered every day.

All Americans must understand that the enemy intends to use our media and our perceived soft impatience against us. Declarations of defeat or calls to retreat behind our porous borders must be seen in the context of this Jihadist goal. Those Americans and other Westerners who make such proclamations do not understand the central strategy of attrition our enemy has employed since Osama was first emboldened by our flight from Somalia. Remember, this strategy worked against us in Vietnam, in Cuba, in Yemen, in Beirut, in Iran (until Reagan), in Somalia, and even in pre-9/11 Iraq. Either we left completely, or gave only token responses.

Not since 1945 have we shown the collective will as a nation to truly defeat a world-wide enemy. Even when Reagan inspired us to victory in the Cold War, he did it with a reluctant Congress and a hostile press drug along behind. Some Democrats and that same press, bitter over the public's choosing of Reagan over them, are now seeking their revenge in what I charitably assume they must not know would be a devastating pyrrhic victory. They cannot see past Bush, and so they are blind to the greater needs of American security. And in part because Bush lacks so many of Reagan's gifts, millions of Americans are happy to follow down this unthinking and unthinkable path.

Is our enemy right? Have we given up?

America is the only nation with the power, strength, and influence to stop the millions and millions (and growing) adherents to the Jihadist Culture of Death, dedicated to world wide imposition of Sharia law. Europe is under assault, has already all but capitulated. Israel has lost their first war. The UN is in the pocket of the enemy, and Russia and China care nothing for American safety. We stand alone.

But just as we are the only nation who can win this clash of civilization against barbarism, this conflict is also ours - and ours alone - to lose. Far too many of us are bent on doing just that, even while blind to the peril they are putting us all in.

I am still optimistic that our great Republic and our Constitution have many more centuries of life, and that this grave threat shall be overcome by the forces of good. But I have for many years now given up the notion that victory is a foregone conclusion.

It's up to us. All of us. Up to CNN not to demoralize us with needless and newsless snuff films; up to Republicans to stop being stubborn and be more flexible and more ruthless; up to Democrats to shake of their hippy past and stop letting the enemy use them for their rhetoric, or to think more cargo inspections will keep us safe; up to our security agencies not to leak classified information to the press for any reason. We don't need to grow victory gardens or ration rubber, but we do need to stand up and say to the Islamo-Fascists with one voice that we will stay in Iraq because they are there, and will not leave until they are gone. And we will stay in Afghanistan because they are there. And we will stay on Iran's case because their belligerence is incompatible with Democracy's survival.

It's up to us. Can we do it?

The Life and "Death" of Habeas Corpus

I just read Juvenal's post below, and my comment took on a life of its own. We've talked about this before, but it's worth doing again. And as a preview, remember that we'll be hosting an event on this very issue this November.

First of all, Kieth Olbermann's vile little piece of journalism propaganda to which Juvenal was referring was bad. Profoundly bad. It wasn’t even good from a purely rhetorical standpoint, not to mention the factual inaccuracies. Fortunately, more people watch O'Reilly's third re-run than Olbermann's prime-time show. His impact is limited, as it should be. I still have faith in the American people’s ability to know when they’re being BSed, and I think Olbermann’s ratings attest to that. But to the merits:

Here’s one particularly good rebuttal.

Habeas Corpus is disallowed only as to alien UECs, who ARE subject to the military commissions. Before that, all detainees are processed through an initial administrative fact finding to determine why they're there (to separate out the grudge cases from the terrorists). It’s called a Combatant Status Review Tribunal, and includes with it a right to an appeal. It’s not a habeas writ, but it does provide an avenue for alien detainees to challenge their detention (with an appeal), which is what everyone is hyperventilating over. And it's not even new with the new bill - that provision was passed by Congress last December. And as I understand it, the CSRTs weren't new, either, but merely codifications (important, I think) of pre-existing policies already in place in our detention facilities.

Citizens can be UECs, but they may still bring the writ of habeas corpus to challenge their detention. Anyone who says or implies differently either doesn’t know what they’re talking about or is lying to your face. The people can decide for themselves which one Olbermann is guilty of.

Interestingly, we only keep the worst of the worst - we let the Iraqi and Afghani government keep the run-of-the-mill baddies. Any guess as to where the detainees would RATHER go?

Congress has the clear Constitutional authority to suspend HC in times of “invasion [when] the public safety may require it.” And that goes for citizens, too. I’m not surprised that neither John Kerry, Arlen Specter, nor Patrick Leahy understand we’re at war, or that foreigners are attempting to enter our country to do us harm, but that’s why none of those guys could get elected President, or should be listened to now.

Suspending habeas for alien combatants in a time of war seems to me not only fully constitutional, but clearly the right thing to do. When have POWs ever been granted trials? And why should we grant trials to murderous scum who wouldn't even qualify as POWs for their penchant to bomb children and not wear uniforms? Besides, since this is not only not an across-the-board suspension, but a carefully considered limitation far less onerous than in virtually every other military engagement this nation has fought in, something tells me Olbermann’s unencumbered-by-fact “obituary” is a bit premature.

To me, there’s an even larger policy consideration that seems to be missed in the larger debate. If we determined that only enemy combatants that played by the rules, wore uniforms, didn’t target civilians, etc. could be held without trial, in their case as POWs, then as a matter of policy we would be encouraging our enemies to “fight dirty.” “The Americans are coming! Quick – strip off your uniform! You get a lawyer and a trial that way, with the ACLU’s finest lawyers who will believe all your lies! It beats summary and indefinite detention, and you might even get a signed picture from Susan Sarandon before you're let go to kill more Americans...”

Here are some actual Constitutional scholars talking about the issue, with many of their far better reasoned (and real) legal concerns. Thank God Congress ignored the Constitutional Chicken Littles and did the right thing to keep the country safe.

---

UPDATE: I just got called a "legal scholar" on the Olbermann Watch blog. I'm a little embarassed to be sandwiched between Andrew McCarthy and Mark Levin, but I'm honored anyway. Thanks for the link, and thanks for reading, everyone.

Keith Olbermann, constitutional scholar

Media dishonesty taken to a new level : Keith Olbermann (video clip) discusses the recent detainee treatment act that passed Congress. No attempt to inform here, just rank misrepresentation. There are plenty of valid reasons (constitutional and prudential) to dislike the recent act, but this hatchet job by Olbermann does a disservice to those who have serious and principled objections to the act.

How the Enemy Uses - And Is - The Media

Our enemies are barbarians and evil, but they are not unsophisticated. They know how to plan their attacks for sympathetic cameras, including many western press outlets. And more, they know those media people are sympathetic to them.

Here's the latest in western media being used for Jihadist propaganda:

Many, including grisly images from the Qana tragedy, clearly are posed for maximum dramatic effect. There is an entire series of photos of children's stuffed toys poised atop mounds of rubble. All are miraculously pristinely clean and apparently untouched by the devastation they purportedly survived. (Reuters might want to check its freelancers' expenses for unexplained Toys R Us purchases.) In some cases, the bloggers seem to have uncovered the same photographer using more than one identity. There's an improbable photo by Hajj of a Koran burning atop the rubble of a building supposedly destroyed by an Israeli aircraft hours before. Nothing else in sight is alight. (With photos, as in life, when something seems too perfect to be true, it's almost always because it is.) In other photos, the same wrecked building is portrayed multiple times with the same older woman -- one supposes she ought to be called a model -- either lamenting its destruction or passing by in different costumes. . . .

Here's more.

Much has already been said about Hajj and his doctored photos, and they have been purged from Reuters' servers. But it's not the obvious photoshopping that worries me. It's not even the brazenness with which they publish the obviously photoshopped pics - although that's troublesome all by itself.

The worst propaganda are the undoctored or even unstaged photos, that convey a completely false sense of the event being covered. It doesn't even take fakery. Clever editing and cropping can do it all. Consider this example from a protest last year, where this fairly innocent picture (above) was all that was shown at this pro-Palestinian, Communist run rally in San Francisco:

Complete details on the SF rally and the San Francisco Chronicle's coverage of it.

I wrote a few days ago about the need to not just read the news, but know how to read the news. Same goes for pictures as well. As long as the MSM in this country is more interested in undermining Bush than in keeping Americans safe from the threats we face, vigilance is the key to protecting ourselves from anti-American propaganda - both foreign and domestic.

Reading Between the Lines

"Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: 'There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.'"

- Autobiography of Mark Twain

I first learned this lesson my sophomore year of high school in beginning Debate, when the topic was Homelessness. Every advocacy group and most media outlets repeated, citing multiple sources with authority, that there were about 3 million homeless people in the United States. But when you did a little research and drilled down, every single one of those sources derived from just one person - a homeless advocate named Mitch Snyder who testified before Congress in 1982 the results of a study that was later discredited. He later admitted to fully making the number up out of whole cloth. The 1990 census, the first to do a full scale "find 'em and count 'em" study, could only find about 250,000. Still a problem, but 1/12 of the problem advocates claimed. Of course, that was far more about attacking Ronald Reagan than addressing the homeless issue, but then, that's no surprise to anyone.

No one who claims to be serious about trying to responsibly prioritize and address society's problems with other people's money can do so without understanding how organizations from scientists to NGOs to PACs to governmental departments themselves warp their data to support their preconceived notions. One of the few valuable things I learned while getting my political science degree was how polls work and how they don't work, and how questions can be skillfully asked and the pool carefully chosen to arrive at The People's ("correct") Opinion.

We see it all the time in global warming scares, economic statistics, polls, Jihadist propaganda, military stories, education studies demanding more money, affirmative action stories, race relations, etc. It colors everything we read.

To that end, Thomas Sowell recently published a three part must read on how pervasive the problem is, and how important it is to truly understand any news article from any source. (Part I | Part II | Part III)

Drilling skepticism is crucial to good science (which is why global warming is not), good legal reading and writing, good journalism, and most importantly, good citizenship.

Homeless Vet Stories - Grains of Salt Required

Just after the 4th of July, this story about homeless Iraq/GWOT veterans appeared in the local paper. Y'know, just in case we were feeling too good about our country after our nation's birthday.

It's frustrating to read articles like this, because it's clear that the journalist (a) has no military experience, (b) fully expects that this is par for the course in the military, and (c) wants to further develop the idea that military people are victims who have no responsibility for anything that happens in their lives - and are, in fact, completely incompetent to exert responsibility even if they wanted to.

A more competent reporter would have asked questions like, "What does your Platoon Leader/Commanding Officer/Sergeant think about your situation? What about the Commanding Officer of the Reserve Center you drill with? What about the VA? The Navy/Marine Corps Relief Society? Your Congressman?" And then the competent reporter would have had the courtesy to actually call a military official in the know and ask them about what services they do and do not provide.

The military has never in the history of the nation been better about taking care of soldiers returning home from service than it is today. Destitute World War I soldiers marched on Washington, setting up camp to demand promised benefits they literally needed to survive. For their efforts, they were shot at, first by police, and then attacked by military forces. WWII vets were treated better, but in a time where mental illness and PTSD were seen as merely being weak, plenty of them failed to successfully reintegrate into society without anyone saying the war effort was wrong. Vietnam vets, despite the false popular image of them as depressed, drug addled failures torn by guilt over acting like "Jen-jis Kahn," have fared as well or better than the general population. Since then, programs and services, both public and private, have only gotten better.

We as a nation have gotten and continue to get better in the way we treat vets, and that's a good thing. But we need to take some care to be honest about what the problems actually are, and what we should expect of people when it comes to expending a little effort to ensure they get the benefits they deserve.

I spent two years working at a Naval Reserve Center before I started law school in 2004, the last six months of which was as the Commanding Officer. I can assure anyone that plenty of services are available to people who are having a hard time transitioning. There are dozens of people to whom demobilizing vets can turn if they are having a difficult time accessing those services. Here's an example.

One of my people, a senior enlisted sailor who frankly should have known better, was mobilized for a period of time in 2003. He was a cop in his civilian life. Just before he demobilized, he injured his ankle. During the demobilization process, the record of his injury didn't get from the active duty command he was supporting to the Naval Reserve folks processing him out, and he didn't bother to tell them he had hurt himself - he just assumed they knew or would find out eventually. He didn't inform his reserve unit or my own medical staff that he had any issues.

Instead, he showed up for work and told them he couldn't do his job, and applied for medical bennies through his civilian employer. His claim was denied, because they rightly told him that the Navy needed to pay for that care. Still, he never informed us of the problem, apparently assuming we were just handling it. I didn't find out about it until he came in nearly a month later asking me to sign a letter so he could get food stamps. One phone call to any one of half a dozen people at any point in that last month would have gotten him the care he needed, and he could have easily avoided the financial situation he found himself in. That's not too much to ask of anyone, veteran or not. The US Military and the VA are enormous and inefficient bureaucracies (often made larger and usually more cumbersome when well meaning politicians try to "support the troops").

As soon as we did find out, we dropped everything to get him what he needed, which by then was harder because of the time that had lapsed. Of course, that didn't stop him from going to a town hall meeting with one of our Senators and telling his tale of woe about how the country he served wasn't serving him, which was then dutifully picked up by the local media. I never did see a follow up story when he got the care he needed, although if there had been, the media surely would have taken credit for it, falsely assuming it wouldn't have happened without them.

Our veneration for veterans in this country, while proper, sometimes spills over to sacred cow status, which is improper. Conservatives are often the worst about this, frankly.

Veterans are well trained and well educated adult Americans who, while they deserve to be treated respectfully and well and shouldn't have to jump through 5 million hoops to obtain promised benefits, also have a responsibility to, at the very least, keep their chain of command informed about issues that they might have. They also have a responsibility not to marry their girlfriend of 2 months just prior to deployment, or worse, give them a durable power of attorney and access to all of their bank accounts. They have a responsibility to actively look for a job upon return, and contact their VA, VFW, or USERRA rep if they're having a difficult time getting work or if their employer violates federal law by not rehiring them. They have a responsibility not to do drugs.

It's never perfect and often frustrating. Pay issues do happen, and can be crippling. National Guard and Reserve forces are much worse about ensuring a smooth transition home than the active duty side, although it is a HUGE focus of the senior leadership of all the services now. Mental health issues are still inadequately addressed.

But I will go out on a limb and say that no veteran is actually homeless without a significant pattern of poor choices on behalf of the veteran him or herself.

I would be curious to see how many of those homeless vets were kicked out when the military got tough on drugs in the service. I'd be curious to know how veteran status is verified by the keepers of those statistics. Every roadside panhandler claims to be a vet because it increases the sympathy factor and generates more cash - I hope they aren't simply taken at their word.

Sometimes our vets are not treated as well as they deserve to be by the Nation that they served. But it's the rare exception, not the rule. And when it does happen, it takes more than that to lead to homelessness. The stories that appear in local, liberal media are quite simply not telling the story of these people completely or accurately.

Some Things Never Change

I've been busy learning my new Rule 9 jobs at work, but even though I've been out of the bloggosphering loop for a little bit, it's nice to know I haven't really missed anything. Since I've been gone:

• The sun still rises in the east,
• My cat is still really fat,
  
• John Kerry changed his mind a couple times on Iraq, and
• The New York Times still thinks scoring political points against President Bush is more important than national security.

Andrew McCarthy breaks it down:

The effort, which the government calls the "Terrorist Finance Tracking Program"” (TFTP), is entirely legal. There are no conceivable constitutional violations involved. The Supreme Court held in United States v. Miller (1976) that there is no right to privacy in financial-transaction information maintained by third parties. Here, moreover, the focus is narrowed to suspected international terrorists, not Americans, and the financial transactions implicated are international, not domestic. This is not data mining, and it does not involve fishing expeditions into the financial affairs of American citizens. Indeed, few Americans even have information that is captured by the program — though there would be nothing legally offensive even if they did.

The New York Times' executive editor Bill Keller said that he made the decision to run the story because it was in the "public interest." Well, gosh, Bill - you know what else is in the public interest? KILLING TERRORISTS! Except that if Bush is the world's biggest terrorist, then I guess it makes sense... Sigh.

Other papers reported on the story of course, but it was NYT reporters who did the investigation and had apparently had the inside sources. Without them, the program would not have come to light.

There's just no excuse for this. None. Bill Keller, the leakers inside the intel agencies, and the reporters involved are American citizens, and they have responsibilities as such. Why is it too much that they root for the good guys? It's one thing to not think President Bush is prosecuting the war on terror correctly, and to say so publicly. It's another thing entirely to actively work for his failure in keeping Americans safe. But hey - don't you dare question their patriotism.

If the terror cell this program would have caught next year succeeds in a bio attack on the NYC subway, the Times and its far left readership will without any question scream bloody murder about "incompetence," "not connecting the dots," etc. What world do these people live in? Can they not see the consequences of their actions?

We cannot live in safety without SOME clandestine operations, SOME ability to gether data and follow the money to the terror financiers, and SOME state secrets. It doesn't equal police state to have these types of programs in place. It equals survival.

To be fair, though, some good press about the war on terror HAS been leaking through. What, really, did we expect?

The Press Haditha Feeding Frenzy Continues

Shameful. Just shameful. But don't question their patriotism. And their slander proves they support the troops!



Is it too much to ask that the American press at least pretend to hope we succeed in Iraq?

Today's Media in WWII

I recently started reading Stephen E. Ambrose's Citizen Soldiers, which follows the progress of American GIs in WWII from the end of D-Day through to V-E Day. I'm constantly struck by how differently it would have been seen in today's media, and how much more successful our Herculean efforts in the Middle East would be if we had that kind of commitment and sense of perspective today. One example - they had NO problems blowing up churches, some of which must have been centuries old, if the Germans were using them as spotting towers or hiding weapons there. Contrast that with mosques, which a regularly used to hide terrorists and their munitions, but which we leave alone.

The biggest failure of the Iraq war is the lack of perspective with which we view it. I've read other pieces that remind us of how historically successful we have been and continue to be, and that remind us that lasting victory over determined fascists isn't easy, but this is one of the best I've seen in awhile.