More inspiring testimonials from the "religion of peace."

The Rape Jihad
By Robert Spencer

FrontPageMagazine.com | September 24, 2004

“Each of us was raped by between three and six men….One woman refused to have sex with them, so they split her head into pieces with an axe in front of us.”
 
This happened in Darfur, from which Sudanese military personnel actually airlifted women to Khartoum to serve as sex slaves.
 
Meanwhile, Indira Dzetskelova, the mother of one of the child hostages in Beslan, Russia, reports that “several 15-year-old girls were raped by terrorists.” Her daughter “heard their terrible cries and screams when those monsters took them away.”
 
This indicates that there are two things the massacre in Beslan have in common with the ongoing massacres in Darfur: both, no less than the 9/11 attacks, are examples of Islamic jihad terrorism, and both are characterized by rape.
 
The jihadist element has been made clear by the ringleaders of both atrocities. Sudanese General Mohamed Beshir Suleiman recently declared: “The door of the jihad is still open and if it has been closed in the south it will be opened in Darfur.” In southern Sudan, of course, the jihad was waged against Christians; in Darfur, the targets are black African Muslims whose Islamic bona fides don’t satisfy Khartoum. As for Beslan, the Chechen jihadist leader Shamil Besayev warned the Russian government last winter: “Praise Allah, we are dreaming of dying in jihad, we are dreaming of dying on the way of Allah, so that we could earn paradise and mercy of Allah.”
 
What does rape, then, have to do with these religious conflicts? Unfortunately, everything. The Islamic legal manual ‘Umdat al-Salik, which carries the endorsement of Al-Azhar University, the most respected authority in Sunni Islam, stipulates: “When a child or a woman is taken captive, they become slaves by the fact of capture, and the woman’s previous marriage is immediately annulled.” Why? So that they are free to become the concubines of their captors. The Qur’an permits Muslim men to have intercourse with their wives and their slave girls: “Forbidden to you are ... married women, except those whom you own as slaves” (Sura 4:23-24).
 
After one successful battle, Muhammad tells his men, “Go and take any slave girl.” He took one for himself also. After the notorious massacre of the Jewish Qurayzah tribe, he did it again. According to his earliest biographer, Ibn Ishaq, Muhammad “went out to the market of Medina (which is still its market today) and dug trenches in it. Then he sent for [the men of Banu Qurayza] and struck off their heads in those trenches as they were brought out to him in batches.” After killing “600 or 700 in all, though some put the figure as high as 800 or 900,” the Prophet of Islam took one of the widows he had just made, Rayhana bint Amr, as another concubine.

Emerging victorious in another battle, according to a generally accepted Islamic tradition, Muhammad’s men present him with an ethical question: “We took women captives, and we wanted to do ‘azl [coitus interruptus] with them.” Muhammad told them: “It is better that you should not do it, for Allah has written whom He is going to create till the Day of Resurrection.’” When Muhammad says “it is better that you should not do it,” he’s referring to coitus interruptus, not to raping their captives. He takes that for granted.

With Muhammad revered throughout the Islamic world as al-insan al-kamil, the perfect man, the rapes of Darfur and Beslan are nothing surprising. What is surprising, or ought to be, is the silence from the Islamic world about the rapes in both cases. Where are the reformers who will dare to say that Muhammad’s example must not be followed in this case? Who will acknowledge that the world has developed principles of human rights that must supercede those forged in seventh-century Arabia? Where are the Western spokesmen who are not so in thrall to multiculturalism that they will condemn rape that is justified according to Islamic religious principles? The much-lionized “Muslim Martin Luther,” Tariq Ramadan, now banned from entering the U.S., can so far only bring himself to call for a moratorium, not a definitive ban, on stoning for adulterers. Rape of captives? His sentiments are not known. Where is the Muslim Solzhenitsyn, who will speak honestly about the aspects of Islam that so desperately need reform, and call for the overhaul that the system so obviously needs?

The whole world is waiting. But for the girls and women of Darfur and Beslan, it is already too late.

From The Chicago Sun-Times

Kerry's looking for American failure -- and he's it
BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

Before John Kerry, the only alumni of Swiss finishing schools I'd ever met (in my younger days) were a certain type of lively English girl, a couple of minor princesses from Gulf emirates and a charming young Iranian lady whose family had been forced to flee after the shah fell. Collectively, they all fell into the category the British call ''posh totty.'' And, although they were way out of my league, the one thing I noticed was their impeccable carriage -- they'd done all the walking-around-with-books-on-your-head stuff -- and how exquisitely well-mannered they were. Even when giving you the brush for being a broke loser, they were very nice about it.

In this respect, John Kerry isn't exactly the best advertisement for his Swiss finishing school. Forget the impeccable carriage -- if you imagine you're watching streaming video on a slow dial-up connection, his gait seems perfectly natural. But the manners thing seems to have passed him by entirely. His decision to break the time-honored tradition of keeping out of the way during the other guy's convention by rushing on the air within an hour of President Bush's speech to give an instant response was boorish and petty. But, given that his ''midnight rambler'' routine in Ohio was a disaster, there didn't seem much point dwelling on it.

But last week he did it again. Ayad Allawi, the first prime minister of post-Saddam Iraq, was in Washington to give a joint address to Congress. A tough, stocky, bullet-headed optimist, Iraq's interim leader delivered a simple, elegant and moving speech, which made three basic points:

''First, we are succeeding in Iraq. [Applause] It's a tough struggle with setbacks, but we are succeeding . . .

''The second message is quite simple and one that I would like to deliver directly from my people to yours: Thank you, America [Applause] . . .

''Third, I stand here today as the prime minister of a country emerging finally from dark ages of violence, aggression, corruption and greed . . . Well over a million Iraqis were murdered or are missing . . .''

Kerry didn't show up for Allawi's visit to Washington -- he was in Ohio again, which is evidently becoming the proverbial Vietnam-type quagmire for him. Nonetheless, barely had the prime minister finished than the absentee senator did a daytime version of his midnight ramble and barged his way onto the air to insist that he knew better than Iraq's head of government what was going on in the country. One question from his accompanying press corps was especially choice:

''Prime Minister Allawi told Congress today that democracy was taking hold in Iraq and that the terrorists there were on the defensive. Is he living in the same fantasyland as the president?''

It would be nice to think this was a somewhat crude attempt at irony, but given America's Ratherized media this seems unlikely. Just for the record, Allawi is not living in a fantasyland. He's living in Iraq, and he begins his day with a dangerous commute across Baghdad's ''Green Zone.'' John Kerry's regular commute, by contrast, is from his wife's beach compound at Nantucket to his wife's 15th century English barn reconstructed as a ski lodge in Idaho. Nonetheless, he's the expert on Iraq and the guy living there 24/7 is the fantasist, and he's happy to assure us the prime minister doesn't know what he's talking about. It's all going to hell, forget about those January elections, etc.

What a small, graceless man Kerry is. The nature of adversarial politics in a democratic society makes George W. Bush his opponent. But it was entirely Kerry's choice to expand the field, to put himself on the other side of Allawi and the Iraqi people. Given his frequent boasts that he knows how to reach out to America's allies, it's remarkable how often he feels the need to insult them: Britain, Australia, and now free Iraq. But, because this pampered cipher has floundered for 18 months to find any rationale for his candidacy other than his indestructible belief in his own indispensability, Kerry finds himself a month before the election with no platform to run on other than American defeat. He has decided to co-opt the jihadist death-cult, the Baathist dead-enders, the suicide bombers and other misfits and run as the candidate of American failure. This would be shameful if he weren't so laughably inept at it.

Still, you can understand why, inside the Democrat-media cocoon, the senator's bet on the collapse of a free Iraq doesn't sound quite as revolting as it does to the average Iraqi. On Thursday, President Bush held a press conference at the Rose Garden with Allawi. You know the way these things go. The Norwegian prime minister happens to be visiting Washington and they hold a joint press conference and Norwegian issues aren't terribly pressing at the moment so the press guys ask Bush about prescription drug plans for seniors and increased education funding while the visitor from Oslo stands there like a wallflower at the prom. But Iraq's the No. 1 issue in American right now, and they've got the go-to guy right in front of them, and what do the blow-dried poseurs of the networks ask:

''Mr. President, John Kerry is accusing you of colossal failures of judgment in Iraq . . .''

NBC guy: ''A central theme of your campaign is that America is safer because of the invasion of Iraq. Can you understand why Americans may not believe you?''

CNN: ''Sir, I'd like you to answer Senator Kerry and other critics who accuse you of hypocrisy or opportunism . . .''

They're six feet from Iraq's head of government and they've got not a question for him. They've got no interest in Iraq except insofar as they can use the issue to depress sufficient numbers of swing voters in Florida and Ohio.

Who's living in the fantasyland here? Huge forces are at play in a world of rapid change. As the prime minister said, ''We Iraqis will stand by you, America, in a war larger than either of our nations.'' But the gentlemen of the press can barely stifle their ennui. Say what you like about the old left, but at least they were outward-looking and internationalist. This new crowd -- Democrats and media alike -- are stunted and parochial, their horizons shriveling more every day.

So for Kerry the new world war is just a wedge issue. After their schooling in Switzerland, those well-mannered English gels used to describe themselves as ''finished.'' If he wasn't ''finished'' after graduating from the Institut Montana in Zug in 1955, this week John Kerry is looking finished in a far more American sense.

Good thing they're cracking down on Cat Stevens. From ChroniclesMagazine.org:

WHOSE SIDE IS THE ADMINISTRATION ON—IMMIGRANTS OR AMERICANS?
by Samuel Francis

Only one week before a Time magazine cover story breathlessly informed the nation what the nation has long known—that America's borders are grotesquely out of control and getting worse—the Bush administration's border security chief told the nation to forget about the borders, there's nothing we can do. But what Homeland Security Under Secretary Asa Hutchinson told The Washington Times last week is hardly surprising, given this administration's indifference to the immigration crisis.

"It's not realistic to say we're going to reduce that number," Hutchinson told a group of editors at The Washington Times last week, speaking of the 8 million illegal immigrants he says are here (others say as many as 13 million or 14 million, but leave that point aside—what difference does it make if the federal government doesn't have a clue about exactly how many are here if it won't or can't do anything about any of them?) "We don't set goals like that. Our goal is to enforce the law as we see violations of the law."

Great, but with even a piddling 8 million illegals here, "we" are doing a pretty lousy job of it. Hutchinson, whose job includes running the government's agencies for border and transportation security, also had lots of excuses as to why the government can't do what it has a constitutional duty to do—protect the nation from foreign invasion.

"But I don't think America has the will," he added. "I think they have too much compassion to tell our law-enforcement people to go out there and uproot those 8 million here—some of whom might have been here 8 or 12 years, who got kids here that are American citizens—and to send them out of the country." This, despite that fact that the ill-conceived amnesty for illegals that Hutchinson's boss proposed last winter fell as flat as a tortilla pancake the day he proposed it. Has anyone in this administration learned anything about what Americans really think about illegal immigration?

One who has learned is Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado, who is also chairman of the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus in the House and has done more to push serious immigration control than any other public figure in the nation. Tancredo came close to suggesting that Hutchinson ought to be fired. "If the statements attributed to him are accurate," the Colorado congressman said, "then this administration has got some major problems." Hutchinson told a congressional aide that the Times had "misrepresented" what he said, but he never told the Times that.

The blunt truth is that this administration, like the national political elite it reflects, does not have the will to deal with the illegal immigration problem or the larger and more serious problem of mass legal immigration. The reason it does not have the will is that it has forgotten what it means to be a nation—and shows no interest in remembering.

The healthy leadership of a nation puts the interests of the nation it leads ahead of the interests and preferences of the illegal aliens who have invaded it. Hutchinson, bubbling about "compassion," is more worried about "uprooting" the invaders and hurting their feelings. But since they came here illegally and remain here at the expense of the nation, serious compassion—compassion that is just and not merely mawkish slop or a politically expedient slogan—should be for the victims of the invasion.

"I don't know that we've arrived at a consensus and, sure, that makes a difference," Hutchinson told the Times. "You can define that as political will. You also can describe it in terms of whether we've debated it sufficiently and drawn our thoughts together." "It," presumably, is immigration, and as a matter of fact we have not debated it quite enough. As any writer who favors stronger immigration control can tell you, what usually gets published and promoted is Open Borders propaganda. Those who publish and promote it don't want a "debate" because they know they'd lose.

But as for the "political will" to start the arduous process of enforcing elementary border control, that really should not be a problem for an administration that has already fought two wars halfway around the planet and set up the most massive internal security apparatus in American history. Just what exactly does Hutchinson think would give us the will?

Hutchinson, if he really said what he is reported to have said and what he has never denied saying, should be fired at once. But more importantly, the American people need to wonder just whose side this administration is really on—that of the nation it claims to represent, or the aliens who have invaded it?

From washingtonpost.com:

Rather Irrelevant
by Anne Applebaum

Wednesday, September 22, 2004

Try as I may, I am unable to conjure up a single shred of nostalgia for the once-fabled network evening news programs. Walter Cronkite is a name to me, not a symbol of reassurance or stability. Edward R. Murrow is a historical figure. As for the hallowed idea of "the six o'clock news," it means nothing: In my adult life, I've never had time to watch the daily news at 6 or 6:30, at least not with any regularity. When I watch television at all, I switch without any particular loyalty from CNN to Fox to C-SPAN, depending on who is doing the talking, and I feel reasonably cynical about all of them.

I hasten to add that I am not writing this because I believe my viewing habits are interesting -- quite the contrary -- but because I suspect that they are typical, and growing more so all of the time. There is little to be said about the amorphous post-baby boomers -- anyone born after about 1960 or so -- but it's pretty clear that as a group we have no emotional attachment to ABC, NBC and CBS.

The networks have known this for a long time and have therefore spent much of the past decade trying to get us to watch news programs to which we don't feel loyal. Flashy videos, human interest stories, jingly music -- none of it has worked, and indeed their effect has been the opposite of their purpose. When the big three effectively stopped covering political conventions, the nation collectively shrugged -- and changed channels. C-SPAN and PBS viewership spiked this year. During the Republican convention, Fox got the biggest audience of all.

It's only in this context, it seems to me, that the Dan Rather-fake letters fracas marks a fascinating turning point. Otherwise, it's a pretty run-of-the-mill scandal. Journalists have been fooled by fake documents before -- remember "Hitler's diaries"? News organizations have been slow to acknowledge obvious mistakes before. What was striking in this case was not what happened or how CBS executives initially reacted but the language used by Rather himself. Faced with criticism, Rather took the position he thought he, as a national icon, had a right to take: He dismissed his critics as "partisan political operatives," and spoke of how CBS "took heat during the McCarthy time, during Vietnam, during civil rights, during Watergate." He attempted to defend the "truth of the information," as opposed to the authenticity of the documents, as if the two could somehow be separated.

What became clear, as the story wound down to the inevitable apology on Monday night, was that Rather and his fellow network newsmen are stuck in a Vietnam/Watergate-era time warp. Most of us regard network anchors as faintly pompous talking heads, people who read other people's prose off teleprompters. But the anchors, rather extraordinarily, still regard themselves as the conscience of the nation. They aren't mere "journalists" who have to use authentic documents to prove their allegations but rather people whose fame and large paychecks and unchallenged power entitle them to some kind of automatic credibility, even if their documents are fake.

I'm sure we'll see this episode as the final collapse of network television's dominance over the news, and the final triumph of something else, something that is in some ways better, in some ways worse. On the one hand, the media are reverting to a more combative, pre-television norm, a time when partisanship was normal and you picked up your newspaper in the morning with a clear idea of the writers' opinions -- which did at least allow you to compensate for them. On the other hand, in this more competitive, post-television age, partisans expend a great deal of energy fact-checking others, and have more outlets on the Internet, on the radio, in the press and on TV for their findings. You don't like Rather? Click on www.ratherbiased.com. You don't like Fox? Read Al Franken.

Much has been made in the past few years of the networks' "liberal bias." More dangerous, it seems to me, was the fact that the networks held a virtual monopoly over the most powerful form of communication. By its nature, television news has had far greater influence on politics, particularly national politics, than any newspaper or magazine could dream of. For that reason alone, more viewers watching a wider range of channels has to be better for the political health of the country.

I expect the death throes of network news will be long and drawn out, and there will be tedious weeping and wailing while it happens. But once it's gone, think of all that might go with it: the stories that are simultaneously pompous and superficial, the atmosphere that is at once grave and silly, the too-famous faces, and the too-brief stories. With any luck, the really good television journalists will survive and migrate elsewhere -- and the rest of us can channel surf until we find them.

Dan Rather: Fairly Unbalanced
By Ann Coulter

I believe we now have conclusive proof that:

(1) Dan Rather is not an honest newsman who was simply duped by extremely clever forgeries; and

(2) We could have won the Vietnam War.

A basic canon of journalism is not to place all your faith in a lunatic stuck on something that happened years ago who hates the target of your story and has been babbling nonsense about him for years. And that's true even if you yourself are a lunatic stuck on something that happened years ago (an on-air paddling from Bush 41) who hates the target of your own story and has been babbling nonsense about him for years, Dan.

CBS' sole source authenticating the forged National Guard documents is Bill Burkett, who's about as sane as Margot Kidder was when they dragged her filthy, toothless butt out of somebody's shrubs a few years back. Burkett has compared Bush to Hitler and Napoleon, and rambles on about Bush's "demonic personality shortcomings." (This would put Burkett on roughly the same page as Al Gore.)

According to USA Today, an interview with Burkett ended when he "suffered a violent seizure and collapsed in his chair" – an exit strategy Dan Rather has been eyeing hungrily all week, I'm sure. Burkett admits to having nervous breakdowns and having been hospitalized for depression.

At a minimum, the viewing public should have been informed that CBS' sole "unimpeachable" source of the forged anti-Bush records was textbook crank Bill Burkett in order to evaluate the information. ("Oh no, not that guy again!") The public would know to use the same skeptical eye it uses to watch the "CBS Evening News With Dan Rather" itself.

Whoever forged these documents should not only be criminally prosecuted, but should also have his driver's license taken away for the stupidity of using Microsoft Word to forge 1971 documents.

And yet this was the evidence CBS relied on to accuse a sitting president of a court martial-level offense 50 days before a presidential election.

As of Sept. 20, Dan Rather says he still believes the documents are genuine and says he wants to be the one to break the story if the documents are fake. (Dan might want to attend to that story after his exclusive report on the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.) Rather is also eagerly awaiting some other documents Burkett says he has that prove Bush is a brainwashed North Korean spy.

By now, the only possibilities are: (1) Dan Rather knew he was foisting forgeries on the nation to try to change a presidential election or (2) "Kenneth" inflicted some real brain damage when he hit Rather in the head back in 1986.

Liberals keep telling us to "move on" from the CBS scandal – which means we're really onto something. They act surprised and insist this incident was a freak occurrence – an unfortunate mistake in the twilight of a great newsman's career.

To the contrary, such an outrageous fraud was inevitable given the mendacity and outright partisanship of the press.

Burkett didn't come to CBS; CBS found Burkett. Rather's producer, Mary Mapes, called Joe Lockhart at the Kerry campaign and told him he needed to talk to Burkett. Lockhart himself is the apotheosis of the media-DNC complex, moving in and out of Democratic campaigns and jobs with the mainstream media, including at ABC, NBC and CNN.

CBS was attempting to manipulate a presidential election in wartime. What if CBS had used better forgeries? What if – like Bush's 30-year-old DUI charge – the media had waited 72 hours before the election to air this character assassination?

There is one reason CBS couldn't wait until just before the election to put these forgeries on the air: It would be too late. Kerry was crashing and burning – because of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. (Funny that the Swift Boat veterans haven't been able to get on Kerry PR agency CBS News.)

Despite a total blackout on the Swift Boat Veterans in the mainstream media, the Swifties had driven Kerry's poll numbers into the dirt long before the Republican National Convention – proving once again that it's almost impossible for liberals to brainwash people who can read.

Even the New York Times had to stop ignoring the No. 1 book on its own best-seller list, "Unfit for Command," in order to run front-page articles attacking the Swift Boat Veterans.

The "Today" show has given Kitty Kelley a chair next to Katie Couric until Election Day. (It's now Day Seven of Kelley's refusal to produce records concerning charges that she is in the final stages of syphilitic dementia.) At least they're more likely to get the truth in Kitty Kelley's book than in Doug Brinkley's "Tour of Duty." But Katie hasn't had time to interview the Swift Boat veterans.

CBS showcased laughable forgeries obtained from a man literally foaming at the mouth in order to accuse the president of malfeasance. But CBS would never put a single one of the 264 Vietnam veterans on the air to say what they knew about Kerry.

The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth show the role of the individual in history. It wasn't Republican strategists who finished Kerry off two months before the election; it was the American people. The Swift Boat veterans came along and kicked Kerry in the shins and no matter how much heat they took, they were brave and wouldn't give up. The veterans who served with Kerry told the truth and the American people listened (as soon as they managed to locate a copy of "Unfit for Command" hidden on one of the back shelves at their local bookstores).

CBS was forced to run a fake story so early in the campaign that it was exposed as a fraud – only because of the Swift Boat vets. These brave men, many of them decorated war heroes, have now not only won the election for Bush, they have ended Dan Rather's career.

It's often said that we never lost a battle in Vietnam, but that the war was lost at home by a seditious media demoralizing the American people. Ironically, the leader of that effort was Rather's predecessor at CBS News, Walter Cronkite, president of the Ho Chi Minh Admiration Society.

It was Cronkite who went on air and lied about the Tet offensive, claiming it was a defeat for the Americans. He told the American people the war was over and we had lost. Ronald Reagan said CBS News officials should have been tried for treason for those broadcasts.

CBS has already lost one war for America. The Swift Boat Vets weren't going to let CBS lose another one.

The useful idiots of Osama bin Laden
By Patrick J. Buchanan

Of all Ronald Reagan's achievements, among the greatest was that this president who began his term declaring the Soviet Union an "evil empire" was, by the end of his tenure, strolling through Red Square with Mikhail Gorbachev to the cheers of the Russian people.

That the Cold War ended without our tearing our nations to pieces, as Britain and Germany did, was a triumph, especially considering the awesome power of our weaponry. And since the Cold War ended, Americans have seemed to understand the importance of good and strong relations with Russia. The Washington-Moscow connection is among the most critical on the planet.

Why, then, this raft of attacks on President Vladimir Putin over his efforts to consolidate power to combat his terrorist threat?

In late August, two Russian airliners were brought down in minutes by "Black Widow" Chechen terrorists. Days later, a school of Russian children was seized by Chechen terrorists loyal to Shamil Basaev, the Osama bin Laden of the Caucasus. Hundreds were slaughtered in the most barbaric atrocity since 9-11.

After these horrors, Putin acted to centralize power over his Balkanizing country. He called on parliament to approve a plan to let him name the governors of Russia's 89 provinces, rather than have them elected. Most of the governors approved. But Western elites are howling as though Putin were using the Beslan horror as Hitler used the Reichstag fire – to railroad his rivals to Dachau.

In the Washington Post, Robert Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute and the Weekly Standard calls Putin's plan an "unambiguous step toward tyranny in Russia." Putin "is imposing dictatorship," rails Kagan. "Putin is not really 'with us' ... A dictatorial Russia is at least as dangerous as a dictatorial Iraq ... A Russian dictatorship can never be a reliable ally of the United States."

"[T]he aspiring dictator of Russia has forced President Bush to reveal how committed he really is to the cause of democracy around the world." Kagan demanded that Bush denounce Putin – which Bush and Colin Powell both mildly did, infuriating Moscow – and even consider sanctions against Russia.

Query: Have we lost our minds? In Russia, what is vital to us is that we have a stable, friendly government and reliable partner in combating terrorism. How Russia chooses its regional or provincial leaders or parliament is none of our business. What are Western media and politicians doing hectoring Putin and mucking around in Russia's internal affairs?

British journalist John Laughlin has looked behind the attacks on Putin and discovered the "oligarchs" – Russian billionaires who looted the privatized assets of the old Soviet Union, men like Boris Berezovsky and Mikhail Khordokovsky. Putin has run them out of Russian or locked them up. And they have used their vast fortunes to buy up intellectuals in Western capitals to agitate against him.

Also agitating against Putin is the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya, a front group of neocons such as Richard Perle, James Woolsey, Michael Ledeen and Kenneth ("Cakewalk") Adelman.

ACPC wants Bush to cut Putin adrift in the name of democracy. These are the same ideologues who engineered the war to "democratize" Iraq and prevailed on Bush to declare "world democratic revolution" the overarching goal of his foreign policy.

These neoconservatives are demanding that Putin negotiate with the Chechens rebels. Many favor a NATO presence in Chechnya along the lines of the NATO missions in Bosnia and Kosovo.

Putin sees them as pressuring him to negotiate with child-murderers and as pursuing a devious Western strategy to further weaken and break up Russia. In interviews, he has expressed a growing bitterness toward the West – reacting just as Andrew Jackson would have if Czar Nicholas I had loudly demanded that Jackson sit down and start negotiating with the Cherokees.

But the larger question is: Why is Bush still listening to these people? These were the propagandists and agitators for the war in Iraq that may yet cost him his presidency. Nothing they promised has been delivered. They constantly undercut relations with our European allies with their insults. They persuaded Bush to outsource Middle East policy to Sharon, to our national detriment.

Now, they are pushing Bush to distance ourselves from, if not to destabilize Saudi Arabia and Russia.

Why does Bush continue to heed men whose policies have radicalized the Middle East and converted much of the Islamic world into a giant recruiting station for Osama bin Laden?

Reliable Ally Strikes Again 
by Joseph Sobran

August 31, 2004 

Not again.

The FBI says it has found a Pentagon employee who has been slipping secrets about Iran to the Israelis. The Israelis deny everything, as usual, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) likewise denies serving as the conduit.

There are many reasons to be skeptical of these denials. Here are just a few.

The state of Israel — “our only reliable ally in the Middle East,” as they say — has a long record of spying and technology theft against its allies, especially the United States. New Zealand has recently charged two Israeli nationals with spying.

In 1985 the Israelis insisted that the espionage of Jonathan Pollard was a “rogue operation.” Yet they promoted Pollard’s handler, set aside a pension for Pollard himself, and have persistently demanded Pollard’s release from an American prison, where he is serving a life sentence. They have neither returned nor identified the documents he stole, many of which were apparently passed along to the Soviet Union and China. Today Pollard is a national hero in Israel.

The Pentagon employee now under scrutiny, Lawrence Franklin, was stationed at the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv for two years and is said to be strongly pro-Israel and anti-Iranian.

Franklin works for Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, a supporter of and advisor to the Likud Party, an admirer of the radical Zionist Vladimir Jabotinsky, and of course a hawk in the current war. Long before the state of Israel was founded, Jabotinsky urged the creation of a much larger Jewish state, on both sides of the Jordan — a dream his disciples still cherish; a recent biography of him thanks Feith in the acknowledgments.

Perhaps most damning — and certainly most amusing — is that the New York Times has found a character witness, identified as “a friend of Mr. Franklin”: none other than Michael Ledeen, one of the most fervent, not to say fanatical, neoconservatives in Washington. Having Ledeen vouch for your patriotism is a bit like having Alger Hiss swear that you aren’t a Soviet agent. You have to wonder if the Times story quoting Ledeen was meant as a bit of deadpan humor.

Franklin, in short, would appear to be part of the Zionist network that has enjoyed a free rein in the Bush administration, just as the old Soviet network did in Franklin Roosevelt’s administration.

Dante reserves the lowest circle in Hell for those who betray their benefactors. That would seem to cover the Israelis’ contempt for the United States. But an Israeli spokesman says his country wouldn’t do such a thing to its “cherished friend,” never mind that it has often done so before.

Moreover, it has done so with impunity. And that’s the real problem. Our rulers, from Lyndon Johnson to Bush, including the U.S. Congress, have taken no punitive action when the Israelis have treated America treacherously. There wasn’t even a congressional inquiry when the Israelis made a murderous attack on the USS Liberty in 1967, nor when Pollard was found to have stolen a huge cache of secrets two decades later.

Now, when George W. Bush has put the highest priority on national security, it appears that the Israelis are still helping themselves to such secrets, expecting to get away with it as always. The individual agent who is caught may, like Pollard, pay a stiff price; the Israeli government, never. Franklin is reportedly cooperating with the FBI; but he may still go to prison. Billions in U.S. aid to Israel, however, will continue, as will the pro-Israel policies that have made us so many enemies around the world, helped provoke the 9/11 attacks, and are sure to bring us more grief.

Will any American president ever stand up to the Israelis? Not likely. All the men who have come within shouting distance of the presidency in the last few years have been shamefully obsequious toward Israel, including John Kerry, Al Gore, and John McCain. Even Howard Dean quickly backed away from his call for a more “even-handed” policy in the Middle East.

Even-handed? Why not a simply pro-American policy that puts American interests ahead of Israeli interests? Unthinkable. When the two countries’ interests clash, American interests must yield. Gore and McCain have actually told Jewish audiences that the United States must stand prepared to go to war — to sacrifice American blood — to defend Israel.

Such amazing declarations don’t even rate news reports. But if a presidential candidate promised he would never sacrifice American lives for Israel, he would achieve instant notoriety.

From The New York Times;

First, Find the Forger
By WILLIAM SAFIRE

Whoever, having devised any scheme or artifice to defraud transmits or causes to be transmitted by means of wire, radio or television communication in interstate or foreign commerce, any writings for the purpose of executing such scheme or artifice, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both. " U.S. Criminal Code, Chapter 63, Section 1343.

WASHINGTON — At the root of what is today treated as an embarrassing blunder by duped CBS journalists may turn out to be a felony by its faithless sources.

Some person or persons conceived a scheme to create a series of false Texas Air National Guard documents and append a photocopied signature to one of them. The perpetrator then helped cause the fraudulent file to be transmitted by means of television communication to millions of voters for the purpose of influencing a federal election.

That was no mere "dirty trick"; it could be a violation of the U.S. criminal code. If the artifice had not been revealed by sharp-eyed bloggers, a national election could have been swung by a blatant falsehood.

Who was the forger? Did others conspire with him or her to present a seeming government document - with knowledge of its falsity and with intent to defraud, which is a felony in Texas? Who was to benefit and how?

CBS News belatedly apologized and agreed to appoint independent examiners. That's a start.

The government and the courts have no business forcing journalists to reveal sources. But no ethic requires a journalist to protect a source who lied. Accordingly, Dan Rather went to the Texas ranch of his source and telecast Bill Burkett's admission of having falsely "thrown out the name" of someone who gave him the false evidence. Burkett now claims his real source was some hard-to-find mystery woman.

What benefit did the Bush-hating Burkett gain from CBS in return for his fake documents? One plausible answer: he got coveted access to someone high up in the Kerry campaign.

We learned last week that Burkett had reached Kerry's convention introducer, former Senator Max Cleland, to plead for access to higher-ups so as to launch a "counterattack." Cleland confirms getting the call and says he told him to try the D.N.C., (where Terry McAuliffe, as former prosecutor Joseph DiGenova noted on MSNBC, carefully denied a role only in the preparation of the documents).

When his call to headquarters was not returned, Burkett then asked Mary Mapes, the CBS producer, to help him gain the top-level Kerry access he so highly valued.

Only days before the telecast, Mapes or some other "60 Minutes" staff member delivered the goods: their "unimpeachable" source was paid off with a call from Joe Lockhart, the Clinton press aide newly hired to strip nuance out of Kerry's message. With the number supplied by CBS, Lockhart called Burkett. We don't know what was said, but the call from on high was payoff in itself.

What should CBS do now? First, release Rather's interview with Burkett in its entirety; viewers are entitled to the outtakes now. Next, let Mary Mapes, at the center of all this, speak to reporters. Third, expend some Viacom resources to track down the possible original sources, including the man whose name Burkett says he "threw out" to mislead CBS.

Appointing independent reviewers should not be a device to duck all others' questions; that's Kofi Annan's trick to stonewall his oil-for-food scandal. But lacking the power of a grand jury's subpoena or testimony under oath, victimized CBS cannot put real heat on the perpetrator or conspirators. We have hard evidence of crimes by low-level operatives here - from wire fraud to forgery - as well as the potential of high-level political involvement. Is no prosecutor prepared to enforce the law?

Conservatives should stop slavering over Dan Rather's scalp, and liberals should stop pretending that noble ends justify fake-evidence means. Both should focus on the lesson of the early 70's: from third-rate burglaries to fourth-rate forgeries, nobody gets away with trying to corrupt American elections.

From The Washington Times:

A bridge too far?
By Arnaud de Borchgrave

MADRID. -- Before the Iraqi war, Europe's principal intelligence services shared the Bush administration's view that Saddam Hussein was hiding his stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction. Today, these same services disagree with the White House on several critical assessments.

    Off-the-record conversations with intelligence chiefs in five major European countries -- each with multiple assets in Iraq -- showed remarkable agreement on these points:

    • The neocon objectives for restructuring Iraq into a functioning model democracy were a bridge too far. They were never realistic.
    • The plan to train Iraqi military and security forces in time to cope with a budding insurgency before it spun out of control was stillborn.
    •  The insurgency has mushroomed from 5,000 in the months following collapse of Saddam's regime to an estimated 20,000 today and still growing. Insurgents are targeting green Iraqi units and volunteers for training, and some have already defected to the rebels.
    •  Iraqi soldiers trained by the U.S. are complaining the equipment ordered by the U.S. from Ukraine being assigned to them gives them "second-class status."
    •  To cope with the insurgency, the U.S. requires tenfold the rebel strength -- or some 200,000 as a bare minimum. Short of that, the insurgency will continue gaining momentum. The multiple is based on the British experience in Northern Ireland for a quarter-century as well as France's civil war in Algeria (1954-62), when nationalist guerrillas were defeated militarily, but won the war diplomatically. France deployed half a million men to defeat the fellaghas in Algeria.
    •  The U.S. occupation has lost control of large swathes of Iraq where the insurgency operates with virtual impunity.
    • Iraq was a diversion from the war on a global movement that was never anchored in Baghdad.
    • Iraq does not facilitate a solution to the Mideast crisis. And without such a solution, the global terrorist movement will continue spreading.
    • Iraq has become a magnet for would-be Muslim jihadis the world over; it has greatly facilitated transnational terrorism.
    •  Charting a course out of the present chaos requires an open-ended commitment to maintain U.S. forces at the present level and higher through 2010 or longer.
    •  The once magnificent obsession about building a model Arab democracy in Iraq now has the potential of a Vietnam-type quagmire.
    •  Everything now undertaken in Iraq is palliative to tide the administration over the elections.
    •  What is urgently needed, whether a Bush II administration or a Kerry White House is for the world's great democracies to meet at the summit to map a common strategy to confront a global challenge. The war on terrorism -- on the terrorists who have hijacked Islam -- is only one part of a common approach for (1) the defense of Western democracies and (2) the gradual transformation of an Arab world that must be assisted out of poverty, despair and defeat.
    •  A war on terrorism without a global strategy, which must include funding major educational reforms in poor countries like Pakistan, where wannabe jihadis are still being churned out by the hundreds of thousands, could only lead to the gradual erosion of Western democratic structures.
    • The "war on terror" is a misnomer tantamount to rhetorical disinformation. One can no more fight terrorism than one could declare war on Adolf Hitler's Panzers in World War II or Dreadnoughts in World War I. Terrorism is a weapons system that has been used time and again for the last 5,000 years. The root causes are the problem, not the weapon.
    •  Ignoring the causes guarantees escalation -- to weapons of mass destruction.
    
Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large of The Washington Times and of United Press International.

From touchstonemag.com:

THE "TEMPERANCE" BOOK:

My late father collected hymnals. While going through his library I came upon a Temperance Movement songbook published in 1900 anomalously entitled Prohibition Songs. Edited by Charles M. and J. H. Fillmore, it begins with “Bible Readings for Reform Meetings” under several heads, including “The Christian and the Liquor Traffic” (“Abhor that which is evil, cling to that which is good”; “What fellowship has righteousness with iniquity? and what concord hath Christ with Belial?” Indeed. Or, one may add, with Irish (Catholic) politicians?

I know a good old preacher, he’s a staunch Republican,
He argues that his party is the only one that can
Do anything or ever has done aught for temperance,
He makes the facts and figures pile up high in its defense.
But he votes with Jimmy Doolan, Paddy Ryan, Teddy Flynn,
All saloonists, and his ballot counts and helps these men to win; With
brewry and distillr’y men,his vote is just the same,
And means perpetual hell on earth and everlasting shame.

And then, there are rich and the haunting verses of Prohibition, sung to the tune of Come to Jesus:

Prohibition, Prohibition, Prohibition is right.
Prohibition, Prohibition, Prohibition is right.
It is asking, it is asking, it is asking your vote . . .
Nothing better, nothing better, nothing better is known . . .
It will triumph, it will triumph, it will triumph some day. . . .

And so it did, at least for a while, but with scant help from the Germans, less politically inclined, perhaps, than the aforementioned Irish, but similarly greedy and bibulous:

Mine name vas Yakob Schneider, Von lager peer unt cider,
Mit my saloon I git reech soon, Don’t you vergit dot neider;
Sumtime, I know, dot viskey, It makes der poys so frisky,
Ven dey gets tight dey shoots unt vight, Dot makes der peesness risky. O,
Yakob Schneider, O, Yakob Schneider,
You’re getting very fat unt reech, From lager peer unt cider;
O Yakob Schneider, O, Yakob Schneider,
You’re getting very fat unt reech, From lager peer unt cider.
Von Deutchland I koom ofer, A poor unt itle loafer,
But now I’m reech unt fat, you see, Shust like a pig in clofer;
Ven fools pegin dere trinkin, Dey does not den been tinken’,
Der tollars fill my money till, So quick as you vas vinkin.

O Yakob Schneider . . . etc.

On the other side of the shining line is the “ ‘Publican Niggah”—a man, unlike the Republican preacher above, with a conscience:

I’se a ‘Publican niggah, yes I is, An’ I votes dat ticket eb’ry time;
But de Mastah, he say, I am his, An’ my ‘legiance in de heb’nly clime.
So I votes fo’ de man, if he’s all right, An’ takes no likker at de bar;
But ef fo’ de whisky sid he’ll fight, Den I draws de line right dar. Yah! Yah!

And finally, on a graver note:

Who is on the Lord’s side, who? Who is on the Lord’s side, are you?
Not if it is your business to sell, liquor that fits the drinker for hell.
E’en though the State permission may grant, ‘Tis a satanic--a vile covenant.
Not if you drink the poisonous cup, E’en but a small, occasional sup.
While you yourself may be very strong, You may lead weaker ones into the wrong. Not
unless you uphold with your might, All that is good and noble and right.
Not unless you oppose all you can, Ev’rything evil and hurtful to man.

The Lord is holy just and true, And such alone his will can do. . . .

There is much more of the same in this smelly little book. Although I was born more than fifty years after its publication, I was born to the culture it helped to create. It is a religious culture in which the mere ingestion of alcoholic drink was considered a sin, and in which the preachers shamelessly argued “from the Greek” that Jesus didn’t make or drink real wine.

Of course, as C. S. Lewis noted, what is being taught here with such intensity and devotion isn’t Christianity; it’s Islam, for “alcoholic drink” isn’t simply permitted by our faith, it’s at the center of our worship of God, whose Son took a cup of wine, said of it, “this is the New Covenant in my blood,” and told us all to drink of it.

Beyond the all the obvious foolishness here, however—the foolishness of denying the goodness of a divine gift because it is abused by foolish men, thus heaping folly upon folly--is a cautionary tale for every Christian of every generation. American Protestants of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have not been the only ones susceptible to mistaking the pious and strongly held opinions of men for the precepts of God, and defining the Communion accordingly.

My own comment is that we can be saved from making mistakes like the one we see here— abandoning the temperance to which everyone has been called for legal prescription of abstinence--by paying careful and honest attention to the scriptures we claim to believe. No honest exegete can extract from the Bible teetotalism as the Christian standard and norm. What, indeed, is the substantive difference between the accusations found in these execrable ditties and those of the people who indicted the Lord for being a winebibber who consorted with sinners?

To make such mistakes one must first enter and submit to a delusionary system, a system (and we have many of them) that pays him, either a salary or in the coin of self-righteouness, to accept a lie. If scripture is indeed profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and instruction righteousness, then it is exactly what we need—what we have been given—to correct errors like this, and so to relieve the Church of the burdens upon life, worship, and fellowship they create.

—S. M. Hutchens

From The Duke Chronicle"

Duke's Terror Odyssey
By Nathan Carleton

When President Richard Brodhead announced his decision to allow the 2004 Palestine Solidarity Movement conference at Duke, he called it an “easy” one. Last week, he heard three big reasons why it shouldn’t have been.

First, it’s now clear that the views expressed at the conference will be of the most hateful and offensive nature possible. As the Duke Conservative Union’s Sept. 14 advertisement in The Chronicle revealed, previous PSM speakers have publicly advocated suicide bombing, attacks against civilians and terrorism. The PSM’s reaction to the DCU ad was revealing—spokesperson Fayyad Sbaihat dismissed his own speakers’ quotations as having been “taken out of context.” One wonders if Brodhead has inquired as to the proper context of statements like: “Why is there something particularly horrible about ‘suicide bombing’—except for the extreme dedication conveyed in the resistance fighter's willingness to use his or her own body to fight?,” as last year’s original conference organizer Charlotte Kates told a journalist last year.

Second, Brodhead should now know that the PSM conference will stifle free speech. According to reporter Lee Kaplan, last year’s conference-goers were searched with metal detectors. Last week, Kaplan said that a Duke administrator told him the University won’t prevent the PSM from doing the same this year. So far, no one from Duke has challenged Kaplan’s reporting nor explained how banning recording devices could contribute to the “dialogue” the PSM conference was supposed to foster.

Ben Rubinfeld then voiced the third criticism of the PSM when he identified it as the student arm of the International Solidarity Movement: an organization that recruits American students to work as human shields for Palestinian terrorist organizations. The links between the PSM and ISM are undeniable. For one, ISM co-founder Adam Shapiro spoke at the 2002 PSM conference, where participants formalized support for the ISM. And it’s also worth nothing that local PSM spokesman Rann Bar-On, a graduate student in mathematics, was identified on the syllabus for the Duke House Course “Nonviolent Activism in Israel & Palestine” as an “ISM activist.”

Sbaihat’s earlier claim that there is “no link” between the PSM and the ISM is an outright falsehood. Even the section on Duke’s website set up to defend the conference calls the PSM and ISM “related.” That Duke would sanction a PSM conference knowing this is shocking, for the ISM’s stated purpose in recruiting Americans to risk their lives overseas is publicity. As ISM co-founder George Rishmawi has said: “When Palestinians get shot by Israeli soldiers, no one is interested anymore. But if some of these foreign volunteers get shot or even killed, then the international media will sit up and take notice.”

Brodhead has responded to every criticism of the PSM conference the same way. He has abstractly discussed “free speech” and “dialogue” and implied that those challenging his decision support censorship. This response is neither logical nor appropriate.

Just nine days ago, Brodhead condemned terrorism and violence around the world during remarks at the Sept. 11 memorial. He can certainly do the same with a group whose speakers advocate terrorism and murder and won’t condemn suicide bombings.

Moreover, Brodhead’s own words contradict his above-the-fray stance. Consider his response to Tuesday’s DCU ad: “The deepest principle involved is not even the principle of free speech. It’s the principle of education through dialogue.”

By drawing a distinction between the legal right of “free speech” and the supposed good of “education through dialogue,” Brodhead has already made a value judgment about the PSM conference. In short, he is not just allowing the conference to take place, he is supporting it. If he is authorized to publicly support something, then he is certainly authorized to publicly oppose it.

The concept of “dialogue” has become a red herring in this debate. Not only is it acceptable for a University president to take a stand against a group this deviant, it is necessary. Brodhead should have never approved the PSM conference in the first place, and he owes it to the entire Duke community to denounce it.

Nathan Carleton is a Trinity senior and president of the Duke Conservative Union.

Trying to put a good spin on Iraqi insurgency
by George Will
 
WASHINGTON -- Sounding like Mark Twain mischievously insisting that Wagner's music is better than it sounds, Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, who is not known for drollery, says events in Iraq are better than they seem. Speaking Sunday on ABC's "This Week," Allawi said the insurgency is "still raging" but that is a good sign -- a sign that "it's not getting stronger, it's getting more desperate."

Other good news, as Allawi sees it, is that the violence is not just internecine Iraqi strife, it is "an international war that's being fought on Iraqi territory" by "foreign terrorists" who are "still pouring in." He says "Iraqi forces" will enter Fallujah "soon." When he says that "by four months a lot of things will change," he implies that the elections scheduled for January could not occur under today's conditions.

Allawi disputes his U.N. ambassador's judgment that more U.S. and British troops will be needed to defeat the insurgency, but he disputes it by confirming that current forces are inadequate: "No, we need more participation from other countries."

After "This Week" arranged with Allawi's office for Sunday's interview, the U.S. State Department called ABC to say that the office of U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte in Baghdad had decided that the interview would not happen until this coming Sunday, after Allawi's U.S. visit. This attempt by the U.S. embassy to exercise sovereignty over the prime minister raised interesting questions about just what was actually transferred on June 28 when sovereignty was supposedly given to the Iraqi government. The White House recognized the inconvenience of such questions. The interview occurred.

After listening to Allawi, Sens. Richard Lugar and Joe Biden, who have struggled to be supportive of U.S. policy, were studies in decorous exasperation. "He (Allawi) has to put his game face on," said Biden. Lugar said the Iraqi elections scheduled for January "may not be perfect, but they're going to happen."

The question is: How imperfect can they be before they make matters worse? And how do you protect, say, upward of 3,000 polling places, which are sure to be targeted by insurgents?
"Fallujah," says Lugar, "is not in a position to have an election." So the conquest of that city, and perhaps of others in the Sunni triangle, must precede the elections. "Whether it happens before the (U.S.) election or after," says Lugar, "it will have to happen before the (Iraqi) elections occur in January."

Here is John Kerry's dilemma: What, if anything, can he say about this? Should he charge that the military decision about the timing of the offensive that must precede Iraq's elections is being controlled by political calculations about the U.S. elections? Can he find electoral traction by charging, plausibly, that administration incompetence is one reason the Iraqi police and military are unready to be much help in the fighting that evidently will be done in November and December?

Most of Kerry's dilemmas are of his making -- his dreamy belief that even with a war raging he could campaign on domestic issues; his Jackson Pollock canvas of positions on the war. But now his dilemma is that in American politics, optimism is mandatory, even -- no, especially -- when it is dubious. Everybody has a game face on. Too bad this is not a game.

Time will tell whether Allawi will ride the whirlwind or be consumed by it -- whether he will be Iraq's Aleksandr Kerensky. Allawi certainly seems tougher than that mild Russian who briefly held power in Russia in 1917, during a semi-democratic moment after the czar and before the Bolsheviks swept him, and parliamentary government, aside. Kerensky died in New York in 1970.

When President Bush proclaims, as he regularly does, that "freedom is on the march," he cannot be thinking of Russia. Across its 11 time zones, freedom is in retreat, again.
When Allawi addresses a joint session of Congress Thursday, he will stand where British Prime Minister Tony Blair stood in July 2003 to proclaim that it is a "myth" that American and British "attachment to freedom is a product of our culture" -- a myth that "freedom, democracy, human rights, the rule of law" are Western rather than universal values. Allawi will not say anything less plausible to an audience that is sadder, and perhaps wiser, than it was 14 months ago.

From townhall.com:

The left thinks legally, the right thinks morally
Dennis Prager

To understand the worldwide ideological battle -- especially the one between America and Western Europe and within America itself -- one must understand the vast differences between leftist and rightist worldviews and between secular and religious (specifically Judeo-Christian) values.

One of the most important of these differences is their attitudes toward law. Generally speaking, the Left and the secularists venerate, if not worship, law. They put their faith in law -- both national and international. Law is the supreme good. For most on the Left, "Is it legal?" is usually the question that determines whether an action is right or wrong.

Take the war in Iraq. The chief leftist argument against the war -- before it began, not later when no weapons of mass destruction were found -- was that without U.N. sanction, attacking Iraq violated international law.

Whatever their feelings about George W. Bush or about attacking Iraq, for most of those on the Left, the rightness or wrongness of toppling Saddam Hussein's regime was determined by its legality (i.e., whether it was authorized by the U.N. Security Council). On the other hand, for those who supported attacking Iraq, whether the war was deemed legal played no role in their assessment of its rightness or wrongness.
To those who supported removing Saddam Hussein by force, if the United Nations did not authorize it, it was a reflection on the morality of the United Nations, not the morality of the war.

International law thus provides a clear example of the Left-Right divide. To the Left, an international action is right if nations such as China, Russia, France and Syria vote for it, and wrong if they vote against it. To the Right and to the religious, an action is good (or bad) irrespective of the votes of the world's nations. They judge it by a code of morality higher than international law.

To cite one other contemporary example, the Left throughout the world opposed Israel's 1981 air strike razing Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor, thereby destroying his ability to manufacture nuclear weapons.
Among major American newspapers, only the conservative Wall Street Journal supported the strike along with various religious Jewish and Christian groups. From The New York Times to Le Monde to your local university, there was outrage that Israel had acted against international law. It meant nothing to their judgment of Israel's action that the leading mass murderer of the time had his nuclear weapons facility destroyed with the loss of but one life. All that mattered was that it was illegal.

To the Left, legality matters most, while to the Right, legality matters far less than morality. To the Right and to the religious, the law, when it is doing its job, is only a vehicle to morality, never a moral end in itself. Even the Left has to acknowledge this. When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Ala., bus in 1955, she violated the law. Therefore, anyone who thinks she did the right thing is acknowledging that law must be subservient to morality. Why, then, must the overthrowing of Saddam Hussein be subject to international law as determined by Communist China, neo-KGB Russia, amoral France and the thugs who rule Syria?

The answer is to be found in the Left's substitution of legal for moral.

And why is the Left so enamored of law?

First, the Left, which is largely secular, regards morality not as absolute, but as relative. This inevitably leads to moral confusion, and no one likes to be morally confused. So instead of moral absolutes, the Left holds legal absolutes. "Legal" for the Left is what "moral" is for the Right. The religious have a belief in God-based moral law, and the Left believes in man-made law as the moral law.

Second, whereas they cannot change God's laws, those on the Left can and do make many of society's laws.
In fact, the Left is intoxicated with law-making. It gives them the power to mold society just as Judeo-Christian values did in the past. Unless one understands that leftist ideals function as a religion, one cannot understand the Left.

Laws are the Left's vehicles to earthly salvation. Virtually all human problems have a legal solution.
Some men harass women? Pass laws banning virtually every flirtatious action a man might engage in vis a vis a woman. Flood legislatures with laws preventing the creation of a "hostile work environment." Whereas the religious world has always worked to teach men how to act toward women, the secular world, lacking these religious values, passes laws to control men.

In fact, since it lacks the self-control apparatus that is a major part of religion, the Left passes more and more laws to control people. That is why there is a direct link between the decline in Judeo-Christian religion and the increase in governmental laws controlling human behavior.

Of course, the more laws that are passed, the less liberty society enjoys. But to the Left, which elevates any number of values above liberty -- e.g., compassion, equality, fairness -- this presents little problem.

All this helps to explain the Left's preoccupation with controlling courts; passing laws; producing, enriching and empowering lawyers; filing lawsuits; and naming judges. Laws and the makers of laws will produce heaven on earth.

And that's one reason the Left hates the America represented by George W. Bush. This country under this president says morality is higher than man-made law. To the Left, that, not Saddam Hussein's torture and rape rooms, must be fought.

Interesting post from Dean Esmay of Dean's World:

Startling Observations

This morning I noticed this teaser about an upcoming Time Magazine piece on weblogs. Allahpundit has some complaints about how Time is spinning things, and Bill shares those criticisms.

Without even addressing the complaints (I've given up on expecting political reporters to say things that make sense, their need for "balance" exceeds their need for an honest assessment of the facts), I found several other things genuinely startling.

First was the revelation that the White House now has staff people routinely cruising Technorati and the top blogs on the Truth Laid Bear ecosystem (Hi White House guys! Yay Bush! Boo Kerry!). When I predicted earlier this year that blogs were going to have a big influence on this election, even I didn't imagine it would be as big as it's become, or that the White House would already be so savvy as to be monitoring the blogosphere to see what we're talking about out here. (Side note: I suspect Peggy Noonan, who is a regular blog-reader, might have something to do with this.)

Anyway, while that was a little startling, a little more startling was to learn that the Kerry campaign and the Democratic Party have people explicitely assigned to feed information to top left-wing webloggers. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Indeed, it makes the Kerry people look smart. But so far as I know, there are no such people feeding the Bush-supporting bloggers. It's interesting to speculate on whether that's a good thing or a bad thing.

In any case, this led me to the realization that startled me the most: if you look at the top 30 weblogs on the Ecosystem, every single one of the Kerry-supporting bloggers, save for Matthew Yglesias, is either a paid Democratic political operative, or is paid to write an explicitely left-wing blog:

Daily Kos is run and operated by a paid Democratic political consultant. So is Eschaton. Kevin Drum is paid by the left-wing Washington Monthly specifically to run his explicitely left-wing blog. Josh Marshall is paid to blog.

The only exception, Matthew Yglesias, is neither a political operative nor is he paid to blog by an explicitely left-wing organization--although he works for an explicitely left-wing organization, The American Prospect.

Of the top Bush-supporting blogs, not a single one matches that description, although I guess Michelle Malkin comes close (sort of, since she's a professional right-wing pundit).

Fascinating.

From FrontPageMagazine.com:

Who Is Dan Rather?
By Lowell Ponte

DAN RATHER HAS ALWAYS BEEN STRANGE. But as the veteran CBS Evening News anchor approaches his 73rd birthday this Halloween and the sunset of his career, the lengthening shadows cast by his latest controversy have begun to expose how eccentric, megalomaniacal and devoid of ethics and judgment he for decades has been.

Daniel Irvin Rather was born
October 31, 1931, near Houston in Wharton, Texas. Less than two years later his grandfather John Daniel “Dan” Rather, namesake of both baby Dan and his pipeline supervisor father, died of a “self-inflicted gunshot wound.”

In 1953, Rather graduated with a degree in journalism from Sam Houston State Teachers College. He had already been working for Associated Press and then United Press International and a few radio stations as a “stringer” reporting stories that happened in Huntsville north of Houston. But being in college gave Rather a semester-by-semester student deferment from being drafted into the Korean War.
 
After Rather graduated, “the way he got around being eligible for the draft was he joined a reserve unit – Army reserve,” wrote B.G. Burkett, co-author of the book Stolen Valor. Rather dropped out of the reserves as soon as the Korean War ended in armistice. Whether Rather used journalist or related politician connections to get into the Army reserves, as he would later accuse President George W. Bush of doing in the Texas Air National Guard, is unknown.
 
Former CBS reporter Bernard Goldberg in his 2002 best-seller Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News described a confrontation with the anchorman: “Rather’s voice started quivering, and he told me how in his young days, he had signed up with the Marines – not once, but twice!”
 
This was inaccurate. Rather signed up once with the Army reserves and once with the U.S. Marines. Rather, wrote Burkett after studying his military record, “was discharged less than four months later on May 11, 1954 for being medically unfit… He couldn’t do the physical activity.” As a boy, Rather “had suffered from rheumatic fever,” reported veteran UPI journalist Wes Vernon.
 
Ever since Dan Rather has described himself as a former U.S. Marine, after spending roughly the same amount of time in Marine Corps training before being rejected that now-Senator John F. Kerry spent in Vietnam.  “This,” wrote Burkett, “is like a guy who flunks out of Harvard running around saying he went to Harvard.”
 
Returning to journalism, Rather worked at the Houston Chronicle 1954-55. In 1959 he became a television reporter for KTRK-TV in Houston, then moved to rival KHOU-TV, where by 1962 he had worked his way up to station news director. CBS network executives saw Rather’s dynamic work as a reporter covering Hurricane Carla from Galveston in 1961, and in 1962 he was hired as a correspondent for CBS News. He would, quite by accident as his autobiography described, be the first journalist to report that President John F. Kennedy had died. In 1964 Rather was promoted to cover the White House for CBS.
 
The loose journalistic ethics that have characterized Rather’s entire career were soon evident.  “Rather would go with an item even if he didn’t have it completely nailed down with verifiable facts,” wrote Timothy Crouse in his best-seller about presidential campaign coverage in the Nixon era The Boys on the Bus. “If a rumor sounded solid to him, if he believed in his gut or had gotten it from a man who struck him as honest, he would let it rip. The other White House reporters hated Rather for this. They knew exactly why he got away with it: being handsome as a cowboy, Rather was a star at CBS News, and that gave him the clout he needed. They could quote all his lapses from fact….”
 
During a 1974 press conference with President Richard Nixon, the president indicated that the next question belonged to an ABC reporter, but Rather butted in: “Thank you, Mr. President. Dan Rather of CBS News. Mr. President…” By now other reporters were jeering Rather’s brazen, unethical behavior, prompting President Nixon to joke: “Are you running for something?” “No, sir, Mr. President,” Rather replied arrogantly, “Are you?”
 
CBS executives debated whether to fire Rather over the White House incident. But veteran anchorman Walter Cronkite was nearing retirement, and CBS’s attempt to hire NBC’s Tom Brokaw was scrapped after it became public. Rather was the brightest star the “Tiffany network” had to succeed the avuncular Cronkite.
 
Dan Rather’s first broadcast as the new Anchorman and Managing Editor of the CBS Evening News took place March 9, 1981, weeks after Ronald Reagan had been sworn in as President. The anti-Republican bias in Rather’s own reporting was already widely recognized, but the Texan as Managing Editor of the news now imposed his slant on all newscast reporting, not just his own. Every bad economic story mentioned “Reaganomics,” a label Rather ceased using after economic news turned good. In one surreal report by correspondent Ray Brady, Reagan’s success in ending predecessor President Jimmy Carter’s double-digit inflation was reported as bad news – bad, said Brady and Rather, because with no rise in the cost of living, welfare recipients would get no cost of living increases in their welfare checks.
 
During the 1988 presidential race Rather, after making much of the alleged Iran-Contra affair, confronted then-Vice President George H.W. Bush. Bush hit back, asking Rather if he wanted viewers to judge his entire journalistic career by a 1987 incident in which, in a fit of pique that a tennis broadcast had delayed his newscast, Rather walked off the set, leaving affiliate stations with six minutes of dead air. “I would have fired him,” said Walter Cronkite of Rather’s petulant, hotheaded, egotistical and unprofessional behavior. “There’s no excuse for it.” Rather has evidenced a personal animus for President Bush and Bush’s son George W. Bush since that confrontation.
 
As CBS News ratings slid downward, CBS has frantically tried to improve Rather’s image with everything from putting him in sweaters, to teaming him 1993-95 with co-anchor Connie Chung. CBS’s handlers have had the Texan use “folksy” sayings that have come to be known as “Ratherisms,” e.g., “This race is shakier than cafeteria Jello,” or “Governor Bush would probably be as mad as a rained-on rooster.” For a time they had Rather end each broadcast with the word “Courage.” None of these gimmicks have halted the Rather ratings slide, which continues.
 
Rather is now viewed by many not as a serious journalist but as an American eccentric and pop-culture icon. Since trekking into Afghanistan to report live on the Soviet invasion dressed as a Mujahadeen, Rather has been widely referred to as “Gunga Dan.” After he was assaulted on the street by a man who kept saying “Kenneth, what is the frequency?” this phrase inspired a hit song by the pop group R.E.M. Rather has become a figure for satire and ridicule on Saturday Night Live and elsewhere.
 
Rather’s leftward bias, as Bernard Goldberg warned, is one reason for the rising average age and declining number of CBS viewers. If it returned to fair and even-handed reporting CBS might win back the trust of viewers, but Rather is apparently unwilling to employ non-liberal producers or reporters.
 
Dan Rather has almost always deflected questions about his bias and lapses in journalistic ethics by dismissing all who question him as partisans. Sigmund Freud coined a term for this psychological condition – projection – the innate tendency to project one’s own traits onto others, e.g., of a thief to assume that everybody else is a thief. Those who call me a partisan, says Rather, are obviously partisans.
 
"You have to understand that Dan Rather is Richard Nixon," Goldberg in Bias recounted a colleague telling him. "If he sees you as an enemy even for a second, you're an enemy for life. And like Nixon, Rather must destroy his enemies…[and] has become what he detested."
 
“Who among us have not lied about somebody?” said Rather to Fox News Channel host Bill O’Reilly regarding the veracity of President Bill Clinton. “I think you can be an honest person and lie about any number of things.” 
 
Rather apparently believes that his longstanding pattern described by Crouse of presenting rumors as fact, or apparently even outright lying and rule-breaking, are entirely acceptable so long as they advance a liberal agenda. One example of this, dubbed “The First Rathergate” by National Review reporter Anne Morse, was a 1988 documentary in which Dan Rather purported to interview Vietnam veterans about atrocities they had committed. It resembled an hour of John Kerry’s 1971 testimony before Congress describing U.S. soldiers as war criminals that instantly became anti-American propaganda for the Soviet Union. But as Morse documented, everything in Dan Rather’s documentary was a lie.
 
“If we could be one-hundredth as great as you and Hillary Rodham Clinton have been in the White House,” said Rather during an interview with President Clinton, “we’d take it right now and walk away winners.” Such are Dan Rather’s morals and ideals, but note that as a monarch of media he speaks in the royal “we.”
 
But while he has done nearly-sycophantic interviews with Hillary Clinton, Fidel Castro and Saddam Hussein, Rather over the years has demonstrated almost-unrelenting hostility and negative statements regarding Republicans and conservatives. His outright confrontations with Presidents Nixon and George H.W. Bush are examples of this.
 
Goldberg in his 2003 book Arrogance: Rescuing America from the Media Elite quotes a typical Dan Rather news story: “The new Republican majority in Congress took a big step today on its legislative agenda to demolish or damage government aid programs, many of them designed to help children and the poor.”
 
“I think Dan is transparently liberal,” Rather’s CBS colleague Andy Rooney told CNN’s Larry King during a 2002 interview. “I always agree with him, too. But I think he should be more careful.”
 
The current controversy over forged memos and Rather’s attack on the son of his longtime nemesis President George H.W. Bush continues several old Dan Rather patterns of behavior. To understand its context, we should examine some key details.
 
In 2001 Dan Rather helped the Travis County Democratic Party raise $20,000. “Please join us for an evening with DAN RATHER” read the invitations that, as Brent Bozell of Media Research Center reported at the time, arrived with “an RSVP envelope asking for $1,000 for the Democratic Party.” Rather later claimed he did not know the event, created by and for his activist, politically-ambitious daughter, was a fundraiser.  When asked about it by Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post, Rather said he “wouldn’t be surprised” if “critics” used the incident to call him a closet Democrat. “I’m going to get that criticism,” said Rather, “whether I deserve it or not.”
 
Rather, according to columnist Liz Smith, also took part in a 1988 fundraiser for Democrat Ann Richards in New York City that “gathered up money in buckets” used in 1990 to elect Richards Governor of Texas. Rather’s comrade Governor Richards lost her bid for re-election to George W. Bush.
 
Travis County, Texas includes the liberal capital city Austin. The county party for which Rather appeared at that 2001 fundraiser is heavily connected with local Democratic money man and lobbyist Ben Barnes, the third biggest fundraiser for Democrats in the United States. Barnes appeared on the same “60 Minutes II” feature in which Rather first displayed his apparently-forged documents. Barnes claimed in that interview to have used political influence to get a young George W. Bush into the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War, a claim Barnes’ own daughter has said her father told her was a lie. Rather, in introducing Barnes, told the CBS audience nothing about the shipwreck of Barnes’ political career amid a bribery and stock fraud scandal, nor that Barnes stood to become very wealthy as a toll-collecting “gatekeeper” for White House favors if John F. Kerry were elected President. This column on September 8 did, documenting Barnes’ sordid and sticky-fingered past. Barnes has raised at least $500,000 in campaign contributions for Kerry.
 
These apparently-forged memos were sent to CBS, according to the Washington Post, from Abilene, Texas. The suspected faxer Bill Burkett is represented by lawyer David Van Os, former chairman of the Travis County Democratic Party. Burkett has been a Democratic Party activist in Travis County, and has said that he gave his information to John Kerry’s presidential campaign via Kerry spokesman former Georgia Senator Max Cleland. 
 
It seems likely that Barnes and Van Os both attended the Dan Rather fundraiser for this county party in which both remain major players and spoke with Rather there.
 
Dan Rather’s story, based on apparently-forged documents, could have caused the defeat of President George W. Bush in November’s election. Because Mr. Rather seems always to have regarded himself as having the moral right to topple elected presidents and thereby put others more to his liberal liking in power, he as an un-elected ruler of the national media ought to face the same kind of scrutiny he applies to others.
 
What if a document from Dan Rather’s past revealed information that suggests he engaged in criminal behavior, violated the ethical standards of journalism, and engaged in activities so reckless, irresponsible and self-destructive that they could be impairing his judgment today?  Is Dan Rather man enough to answer the hard questions about this genuine document that he has demanded President Bush answer about Rather’s fake documents?
 
This Rather-incriminating document, in fact, exists.  My column here at FrontPage Magazine laid it out in detail five years ago, and also framed a set of precise questions for Dan Rather to answer. The irony, of course, is that if Dan Rather were interviewing a Republican President named Dan Rather, these are exactly the kinds of questions to which a reporter with his skill and determination would demand answers.
 
Twenty-four years ago Dan Rather gave a remarkable interview to journalist Cliff Jahr. It appeared in, of all places, the July 1980 issue of that news-breaking national magazine Ladies' Home Journal under the title "Soft Side of a Tough Anchorman." You can find it at any large public library. In it, asked about his children in a era of widespread drug use, Rather is quoted by Jahr: "I told them … if you're hell-bent to try pot, and I suspect you will be, then try it at home around people who care about you."
 
When Jahr asked if the anchorman himself had smoked marijuana, Dan Rather in part replied: "As a reporter—and I don't want to say that that's the only context—I've tried everything. I can say to you with confidence, I know a fair amount about LSD. I've never been a social user of any of these things, but my curiosity has carried me into a lot of interesting areas."
 
Jahr quotes Dan Rather as continuing: "As an example, in 1955 or '56, I had someone at the Houston police station shoot me with heroin so I could do a story about it. The experience was a special kind of hell. I came out understanding full well how one could be addicted to 'smack,' and quickly. When the children were fairly young, and there was so much emphasis everywhere on drugs, it was not possible for them to tell me I didn't know what I was talking about."
 
As the CBS Evening News managing editor, Dan Rather would undoubtedly dispatch investigative reporters to Houston to interview every person who knew, or had heard rumors about, Republican candidate Dan Rather's drug experimentation. And he would report every shred of solid (negative) information – or perhaps even rumor – that could be found.
 
But the press rarely scrutinizes itself, and as one of the Olympian gods of news Dan Rather will almost certainly remain above press questions that he would face were he a mere mortal or a U.S. president.

From www.washingtontimes.com:

When life and death matter
By Nat Hentoff
    
    Kate Michelman has long been the most devoted, tireless advocate for abortion rights. She resigned as president of NARAL Pro-Choice America because of her conviction that "[this] is the most important presidential election of my lifetime, and I want to bring to bear everything I've done in my life to helping John Kerry become the next president."

    It's easy to see why she supports Mr. Kerry so strongly. In a July 22 interview with ABC News anchor Peter Jennings, Mr. Kerry said: "Let me tell you very clearly that being pro-choice is not pro-abortion."

    A consistent defender of Roe v. Wade during his 20 years in the Senate, Mr. Kerry nonetheless told Mr. Jennings that "in the fertilization process ... a human being is first formed and created, and that's when life begins."

    But doesn't abortion kill a human being? Mr. Kerry says that Roe v. Wade sets the standard for viability "as to whether or not you're permitted to terminate a pregnancy, and I support that." (Note the euphemism "terminate.") But isn't human life a biological continuum from the very beginning?

    Mr. Kerry has even voted against bills, which, if passed, would have ended partial-birth abortion.. And he voted against the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which recognizes the unborn child as a victim when he or she is injured or killed in the commission of a violent federal crime. The law specifically exempts all forms of legal abortion from any penalty under this legislation. The Senate adopted the measure by a vote of 61-38.

    Polls show that about 80 percent of the public agrees with the "Laci and Conner's" law (named after the pregnant mother and unborn son allegedly murdered by husband Scott Peterson). And 18 states have fetal homicide laws that designate unborn children as victims throughout the extent of prenatal development.

    But it's Mr. Kerry's unwavering opposition to the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act that especially underscores his loyalty to "pro-choice" doctrine. (So much for his concern about the "viability" standard for terminating life.) He voted six times against the ban on partial-birth abortion. (The president signed the ban into law in November 2003.)

    On Aug. 26, New York federal Judge Richard Conway Casey, during his decision on the constitutionality of the law, described partial-birth abortion as a "gruesome, brutal, barbaric, and uncivilized medical procedure ... the fetus's arms and legs have been delivered outside the uterus while the fetus is still alive. With the fetus's head lodged in the cervix, the physician punctures the skull with scissors or crushes the head with forceps."

    During a hearing before Judge Casey's decision, he asked a doctor who performs partial-birth abortions if he "had any caring concern for the fetus whose head you were crushing." The answer was "no."

    Judge Casey, citing testimony from a fetal neurobiology expert that the fetus experiences extreme and excruciating pain during partial-birth abortion, asked another doctor who does these late-term abortions, "Do you tell the mother the fetus will feel pain?"

    "I never talked to a fetus," she said angrily.

    Nonetheless, the judge ruled that the law banning partial-birth abortion is unconstitutional because the ban does not include a health exception as required by the Supreme Court in Doe v. Bolton, decided on the same day as Roe v. Wade (Jan. 22, 1973).

    The exception for a woman's health, as very broadly ruled by the Supreme Court in the Doe decision (which struck down a Georgia law essentially requiring three physicians to approve of an abortion), covers "all factors -- physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman's age." According to this highly permissive wide-ranging standard, allowing the "brutal, barbaric and uncivilized" procedure of partial-birth abortion characterizes how this nation, under our rule of law, describes itself as civilized.

    In the Feb. 26, 1997, New York Times, Ron Fitzsimmons, the executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, disconcerted his colleagues by estimating that up to 5,000 partial-birth abortions were performed annually; and, he added, "in the vast majority of cases" on "a healthy mother with a healthy fetus that is 20 weeks or more along."

    But those numbers are obviously a very small proportion of the number of abortions since 1973. Using the figures of the Alan Guttmacher Institute (which is affiliated with Planned Parenthood) through the year 2000, the National Right to Life Committee estimates "1,312,990 abortions for 2001-03; and factoring in a possible 3 percent undercount (that) AGI estimates for its own figures, the total number of abortions performed in the U.S. from 1973 to 2003 equals 44,670,812."

    One can argue whether those are exact figures, but clearly, many millions of unborn Americans will not be voting this year. Conceivably, if it's a close election, enough of them might have been voters for Mr. Kerry to decide the Electoral College vote. And who knows whether one or more of the disappeared might have cured any presently life-endangering conditions?

    But on Jan. 24, Mr. Kerry pledged: "I will support only pro-choice judges to the Supreme Court." Mr. Kerry said this is not a litmus test. However, is this his tribute to judicial independence?

From NationalReview.com

Johnny Was a Punk Rocker
Johnny Ramone, R.I.P.
By Steve Beard

Last July, I was shoulder-to-shoulder with a bunch of sweaty rockers at the House of Blues on the Sunset Strip while they were complaining about needing a cigarette. We were all crammed in to see Alice Cooper and Ted Nugent blow the doors off the place. As everyone was grousing about the Los Angeles smoking ban, I could not help but chuckle to myself as I thought that if Johnny Ramone and Kid Rock joined them on stage, we would be at the one and only rock-n-roll Republican jam session.

Of course, everyone knows about all the Democrat rockers. Bruce Springsteen even wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times. How is that for rock-n-roll? All the hipsters have signed up to do fundraising concerts for John Kerry because, uh, well, he is not George W. Bush. It has been speculated that these concerts will raise upwards of $44 million dollars for the Kerry/Edwards campaign — becoming the rather absurd situation of rich musicians raising money for even richer politicians.

Having rock stars snatching cash for liberal causes is not really news. Who is startled to hear that Sheryl Crow and the Dixie Chicks are joining Dave Matthews and Jon Bon Jovi in hawking tickets for the Democratic National Committee?

The more intriguing stories, of course, revolve around independent rockers who do not tow the party line of Rolling Stone, notable house organ for the Democrats (except when P.J. O'Rourke lampooned the Commies).

On Thursday it was qnnounced that guitarist Johnny Ramone, one of the great independent-minded rockers, died in his sleep after battling prostrate cancer for the last five years. He was 55 years old. Born John Cummings, he was one of the founding members of the legendary American punk-rock band the Ramones (named after an alias that Paul McCartney used when checking into hotels).

"He was the leader of the band when things got tough," Marky Ramone told the Associated Press. "To me, it's like losing a brother. I'll never forget him."

Johnny Ramone, was indeed, an unforgettable character. While the Ramones were being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002, Johnny took his opportunity at the microphone to make his allegiances known. "God bless President Bush," he said, "and God bless America." Bedecked in his trademark torn jeans and black leather motorcycle jacket, he understatedly thumbed his nose at he lockstep orthodoxy of the rock establishment. Now, that is punk rock.

"I said that to counter those other speeches at the other awards," Ramone told the Washington Times. "Republicans let this happen over and over, and there is never anyone to stick up for them. They spend too much time defending themselves."

On his website, Ramone assembled Top-10 lists of his favorite baseball players (Greg Maddux), guitarists (Jimmy Page), singers (Elvis), Elvis films (Loving You), and horror films (Bride of Frankenstein). He even listed his favorite Republicans: Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, Charlton Heston, Vincent Gallo, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sean Hannity, Ted Nugent, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Barr, and Tom DeLay.

"It was in 1960, the Nixon-Kennedy election," Ramone told the Washngton Times, that he first realized he was a Republican. "People around me were saying, "'Oh, Kennedy's so handsome,' and I thought, 'Well, if these people are going to vote for someone based on how he looks, I don't want to be party to that."

Ramone's conservativism extended to his financial advice for the band — encouraging them to demand more money for shows and driving nonstop between cities to save on hotels. His bandmates called him the "Rush Limbaugh of rock-n-roll."

After hearing Slim Jim Phantom of the Stray Cats complaining about high taxes, Ramone told him the charges would be higher without the Bush tax cuts. "I told him he needs to vote Republican to keep his taxes lower — and donate to President Bush's campaign," he recalled.

Ironically, Ramone had an eclectic collection of friends who included shock rocker Rob Zombie, provocative filmmaker Vincent Gallo, and Bush-basher Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam. After Vedder impaled a mask of President Bush during a concert, Ramone tried to convince him of how alienating his political theater was for fans.

"I try to make a dent in people when I can," he said. "I figure people drift toward liberalism at a young age, and I always hope that they change when they see how the world really is."

Ramone died only days after a tribute concert was held in Los Angeles to celebrate the band's 30th anniversary. The proceeds went to the Lymphoma Research foundation and the Cedars-Sinai Prostate Cancer Center. Singer Joey Ramone died three years ago from lymphoma, and Dee Dee Ramone died from a drug overdose in 2002.

Emcee Rob Zombie called Johnny Ramone on a cellphone from the concert so that the fans could yell, "Hey ho, let's go!" That was a fitting way for a rocker to leave the stage, knowing that his fans will never forget the music.

Gabba gabba, hey, Johnny. R.I.P.

— Steve Beard is the creator of Thunderstruck.Org and a contributing author to Spiritual Journeys: How Faith Has Influenced Twelve Music Icons.

From the September 27, 2004 issue of The Weekly Standard:

What Blogs Have Wrought
How the guys sitting at their computers in pajamas humiliated the suits at CBS News
by Jonathan V. Last

IF YOU TRAWL the posting boards at FreeRepublic.com long enough, you'll go mad. Hundreds of voices are shouting, spitting, and clamoring for attention at any given moment. The night of Wednesday September 8 was no different. Following the 8 P.M. airing of CBS's 60 Minutes hit on President Bush's record in the Texas Air National Guard, Freepers were rattling their cages and pinging around the web in anger and disconsolation. On a thread begun in response to a New York Times article about the 60 Minutes story, "tomahawk" wrote, "The MSM [mainstream media] are whores for Kerry, whores for Democrats, and whores for Jihadists. Through their lies and distortions, our country's continued existence is now in doubt."

Amidst this clamor, the post by "Buckhead" could easily have gotten lost. At 11:59 P.M. (all times in this article are Eastern Daylight Time), Buckhead wondered about the fonts and spacing of the memos supposedly typed by Bush's National Guard commander and "newly obtained" by 60 Minutes. Buckhead speculated that they couldn't have been produced in the early 1970s, when they were dated. "I am saying these documents are forgeries," Buckhead wrote, "run through a copier for 15 generations to make them look old." In an email to THE WEEKLY STANDARD, Buckhead was loath to claim credit for his insight: "The internet is a big place, and I can't believe that other people didn't notice the same thing around the same time." Nor did he want acclaim: "I don't care to be outed as my alter ego. Day job and all that."

Buckhead's doubts were No. 47 in a list of 217 comments, on one of dozens of such discussion threads. But they were noticed by Tom Mortensen and Liz MacDougald who, the next morning, emailed the link to Scott Johnson, a lawyer in St. Paul. Sitting at home, Johnson reprinted Buckhead on the blog he runs with two fellow lawyers, Power Line (powerlineblog.com), at 8:51 A.M., and then went to work. When he arrived at the office, he had nearly 50 reader emails waiting for him from people like John Risko, a former Navy clerk and typist, who explained why he, too, thought the memos might be forged.

This small snowball of doubt was about to become an avalanche as something Los Angeles radio host and blogger Hugh Hewitt calls the blogosphere's "multiplier effect" took over. In California, Charles Johnson, who runs the blog Little Green Footballs, had seen both Buckhead and Power Line and decided to run a test. A desktop publishing pioneer and webpage designer in his day job, Johnson opened Microsoft Word and without changing any of the default settings--tabs, margins, font--created an eerily similar replica of one of the memos in just a few minutes, and posted it at 1:24 P.M. By lunchtime Thursday, the small, incestuous blog world was humming with the notion that CBS had presented forgeries. The story went nationwide at 2:50 P.M., when the Drudge Report linked to Power Line with the headline: "'60 Minutes' Documents on Bush Might Be Fake /// 32-year-old documents produced Wednesday by CBSNEWS 60 MINS on Bush's Guard service may have been forged using a current word processing program // typed using a proportional font, not common at that time, and they used a superscript font feature found in today's Microsoft Word program, Internet reports claim . . . Developing . . ."

The server hosting Power Line crashed as hundreds of thousands of Drudge readers tried to learn about the 60 Minutes scandal. By 5:00 P.M., CBS was spooked enough to release a statement saying the memos were "thoroughly investigated by independent experts, and we are convinced of their authenticity." At 7:20 P.M., Stephen F. Hayes published a piece on weeklystandard.com citing interviews with several forensic document experts, none of whom thought the documents were authentic. Before the night was done, ABC News got in on the action, posting a story on its website calling the memos possible forgeries. In just 24 hours, the CBS story had been almost completely undermined.


ON FRIDAY, September 10, the left struck back. At a press conference Democratic party chairman Terry McAuliffe denied that Democrats had "anything at all to do with any of those documents." "If I were an aspiring young journalist," McAuliffe noted, "I think I would ask Karl Rove" where the CBS memos came from.

McAuliffe was tacitly admitting that the memos were fake, but the liberal side of the blog world wasn't ready to go that far. On his blog Talking Points Memo, Joshua Micah Marshall went further than most, admitting, "The ball is in the court of the publishers of these documents to authenticate them. And so far I'm not hearing any adequate defense." The American Prospect's Matthew Yglesias (on his personal blog) wrote that the CBS memos had "a presumptive validity." He granted that the "would-be debunkers" had "presented a good deal of evidence demonstrating that the documents might be forgeries in the sense that it is technologically feasible today to produce things that look just like the memos. This, however, doesn't really get you anywhere unless you can produce some actual evidence of forging."

On the far-left Daily Kos, "Hunter" posted a lengthy defense of the memos, arguing that, however improbable it might seem, the memos could theoretically have been produced in the early '70s (this would later be proven untrue). David Brock's MediaMatters.org chimed in that "the case for their authenticity is strong," while also sounding the McAuliffe theme that if they were fakes, suspicion should fall on Karl Rove. (Slate blogger Mickey Kaus noticed the tension: "Media Matters," he wrote, "might want to decide if a) the documents are authentic, as argued at the top of their Web page or b) the documents are forgeries planted by Republicans, as argued at the bottom of their Web page. Lawyers are allowed to plead in the alternative, but a) and b) can't both be true, and the evidence for each of those propositions is also evidence against the other one.")

The partisan liberal sites were joined by a short piece from PC Magazine, which supposed that an IBM Selectric Composer could have produced the memos. But this wasn't news. The previous morning, Power Line--which had quickly established itself as the blog world's clearinghouse for updates on the story--had posted an email from one John Burgess, saying, "By 1969, I was using an IBM Selectric typewriter, with proportional type balls." Burgess claimed that the Selectric was widely available and could employ the Times New Roman font. The blog world was quickly deep into contemplating the capabilities of the Selectric.

Not so Dan Rather. Ambushed on the street Friday morning by a CNN camera crew, Rather insisted, "The story is true. The story is true." "The Internet," he said, "is filled with all kinds of rumors." That evening, Rather defended the 60 Minutes story during the Evening News. Appearing on the O'Reilly Factor shortly afterwards, a former CBS News executive, Jonathan Klein, dismissed the blogs. On the one side, he said, you have a professional news bureaucracy with "multiple layers of checks and balances." With blogs, you have "a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing." Klein's "pajamas" taunt would be seized on throughout the blog world. It would also come to represent the high-water mark of the CBS defense.


ON SATURDAY MORNING (or late Friday night, if you were reading the websites), two shoes dropped. The Dallas Morning News reported that Texas National Guard Col. Walter "Buck" Staudt, whom the August 18, 1973, CBS memo described as applying pressure from above for favorable treatment for George W. Bush, had retired from the Guard a year and a half before, on March 1, 1972. The Los Angeles Times, picking up an ABC News story from the night before, reported that Maj. Gen. Bobby Hodges, one of CBS's principal sources and a man they said had authenticated the memos, was claiming that CBS had misled him. Hodges had been read the memos over the phone and thought that they were handwritten. After seeing the actual documents--photocopied documents, that is, since CBS has never claimed even to have seen originals--he declared they were a fraud.

Still, the Boston Globe and New York Times--which had given lavish play to CBS's National Guard accusations in their Thursday editions--were nominally siding with the network. In their Saturday story, the Times reported that "for every expert who said the documents" looked fake, "there seemed to be another who said they could indeed have been authentic." This was demonstrably untrue. In fact, the only pro-CBS "expert" the Times was able to find was Bill Glennon, "who worked for IBM in Midtown Manhattan for 14 years and repaired typewriters."

The Washington Post was much more circumspect, partly because the only CBS expert who had been revealed was San Francisco handwriting analyst Marcel Matley, who told the Post's Howard Kurtz that CBS had asked him not to give interviews.

The biggest news of the day came again from the Internet, where Joseph M. Newcomer posted on his website (www.flounder.com/bush.htm) an incredibly detailed, scientific, 7,000-word explanation of why the documents were necessarily forgeries. Today his account remains definitive.

Apparently moved by Gen. Hodges's testimony, the New York Times swung against CBS on Sunday. The Los Angeles Times, already skeptical, ran a nearly admiring piece about bloggers. After crediting them with breaking the news, though, the story ended with an attack from Emerson College professor Jeffrey Seglin, who said, "The fear I have is: How do you know who's doing the Web logs? And what happens when this stuff gets into the mainstream, and it eventually turns out that the 60 Minutes' documents were perfectly legitimate?"

Seglin's fears were misplaced. For one thing, the CBS documents would not turn out to be legitimate. But for another, bloggers are fantastically more transparent than major news organizations, which in their inner workings are among the most inscrutable institutions in America. Most blogs have an "About Us" link near the top of their page. Had Seglin clicked this link on Power Line, for instance, he would have found that bloggers John Hinderaker, Scott Johnson, and Paul Mirengoff were lawyers with prestigious firms such as Minneapolis's Faegre & Benson and Washington's Akin, Gump. On Flounder.com, Newcomer had posted his entire résumé, his home address, his email, and his telephone number. Besides Dan Rather and his lead producer Mary Mapes, Seglin would have been hard pressed to get even the name of a CBS employee who worked on the memo story.

But at least Seglin was able to bring himself to talk about the issue. Some prominent media watchdog groups would barely deign to discuss it. Over at the Poynter Institute (where Seglin was once a media ethics fellow), media critic Jim Romenesko had posted just one tiny item. (Romenesko wouldn't begin covering the story in earnest until September 15, a full week after it first broke.) The Columbia Journalism Review was just as bad. Their website, CampaignDesk.org, had not a single mention of the CBS story until September 13, when they referenced it in passing during a roundup of blog activity. On September 14, after criticism from this writer, CampaignDesk's managing editor, Steve Lovelady, explained why they were avoiding the story: "It's not clear whether CBS has been had by some undercover operative intent on smearing the president, or whether the network itself is the victim of a smear campaign."


ON THE NIGHT of September 12, however, all that lay in the future. At 11:28 P.M., Power Line's John Hinderaker published a virtual interview with Robert W. Strong, a veteran of the Texas National Guard and one of CBS's key sources. A pair of Power Line readers, it turned out, live down the road from Strong near Austin, and Hinderaker furnished them with questions. Again, the Internet was first.

On Monday, the New York Times swung fully against CBS, publishing a tough op-ed by William Safire and a pro-blogger piece in their Technology section. The left-wing of the Internet sunk into incoherence. Media Matters began publishing oppo-research dossiers on journalists who were covering the CBS story. At the blog of the left-wing American Prospect, Nick Confessore speculated that if the documents really were fake, the White House would have released the originals. Unless, Confessore noted, "the original documents make Bush look even worse than the fakes." This was nonsense. CBS claimed that the memos were from the "personal files" of Col. Jerry Killian; even if some "originals" of the memos had existed, Bush would not have had them.

CBS continued spinning during the evening newscast. Dan Rather brought out expert Bill Glennon to testify on the network's behalf. This was the same typewriter repairman who had been quoted in the New York Times. Curiously, given CBS's professed contempt for bloggers, Glennon had come to prominence as a blog commenter (first on the Washington Monthly's Political Animal, with comments later copied to the Daily Kos). As blogger Tim Blair noted, CBS's desperation had overpowered its suspicion of the rumor-filled Internet.

The traditional media, which at first had been following the lead of bloggers, started breaking more and more anti-CBS developments. On Tuesday, September 14, the Washington Post published a devastating story in which its reporters (1) demolished Glennon's testimony of just five hours before; (2) brought Newcomer's expert testimony to the fore; and (3) aired the results of their independent analysis, which found "dozens of inconsistencies [in the memos], ranging from conflicting military terminology to different word-processing techniques."

That afternoon the Dallas Morning News piled on with an interview of Killian's secretary, who said that her boss had never typed and that she didn't type the memos in question. That night ABC News ran a story with interviews of two document experts who had been consulted by CBS. Both of them claimed to have told CBS that they could not authenticate the documents. One of them, Emily Will, said that she sent CBS "an email message about her concerns and strongly urged the network the night before the broadcast not to use the documents. 'I told them that all the questions I was asking them on Tuesday night, they were going to be asked by hundreds of other document examiners on Thursday if they ran that story.'"

Meanwhile, Power Line's Scott Johnson appeared on Fox News Channel's Special Report, a newly minted celebrity.


REGARDLESS of what tack CBS now chooses, the questions about the authenticity of the 60 Minutes documents are settled. The evening of September 15, Dan Rather cluelessly told the Washington Post's indefatigable media reporter Howard Kurtz, "If the documents are not what we were led to believe, I'd like to break that story." Rather was a week late; Free Republic's Buckhead had scooped him. And dozens of bloggers, whether in pajamas or three-piece suits, had subsequently filled in many of the details. (CBS could still break one big story--who gave them the forged memos?--but has so far hidden behind an invocation of "longstanding journalistic ethics" governing "confidential sources." So forgers are now sources?) Bloggers, and Internet-savvy writers more generally, have now proven that they can ferret out journalistic malpractice and expose the guilty parties.

Part of what makes bloggers well-suited for the role of fact-checking is that there are so many of them. With millions of people blogging and reading blogs, you're bound to find a handful of real experts on any given topic, and these experts can coalesce quite easily. When National Review Online's blogger Jim Geraghty asked readers about James J. Pierce, a new document expert CBS trotted out on September 15, he was deluged with responses. Within an hour, Geraghty had been furnished with a link to a website showing the sort of low-level expert witness business Pierce usually does. As Little Green Footballs's Charles Johnson noted, "It's sort of an open-source intelligence gathering network that draws on expertise from around the world."

This critical mass creates a buzzing marketplace of ideas. To be fair, many of these ideas are bogus, but they are also rapidly exposed as such, sometimes in mere seconds. For example, an exuberant commenter will note that one of CBS's memos carries a Saturday date; another, dripping with condescension, will remind the first that Guard members are called "weekend warriors" for a reason--they drill (and keep office hours) on Saturdays. A number of the specific criticisms of the CBS documents on blogs were overstated, too categorical, or simply wrong. These provided aha! moments for CBS and its blogging partisans, but they were shot down just as quickly by commenters on the blogs criticizing CBS. It is not true, for instance, that typewriters couldn't do superscripts, as some CBS critics too triumphantly generalized. It is true that typewriters couldn't produce the particular superscripts seen in the memos, and that these same superscripts are automatically produced by Microsoft Word.

As a recent piece in Investor's Business Daily noted, "In the same way the market sifts and analyzes information stocks better than any individual investor or institution ever could, the blogosphere weeds out the chaff." Thus, a lone helpful comment at FreeRepublic.com gets quickly elevated into the spotlight, while the multitude of cranky grumblings disappear down the memory hole.

Aside from technological advantages, there seems to be an ideological divide at work, too. The political blog world is arguably more conservative than liberal, though there is a sizable contingent of liberal blogs. But these liberal blogs function more like the old media than do their conservative Internet brethren. While blogs such as Power Line and Little Green Footballs and Instapundit were chasing the CBS story, interviewing experts, posting material as they found it--whether or not it supported the case against CBS--many of the liberal blogs went into entrenched-partisan mode.

With the exception of the September 10 Daily Kos, few, if any, liberal blogs contributed any facts to the CBS debate. Few tried to unearth new information; many tried to change the subject; most insisted that there was no reason to believe the memos were forgeries until quite late in the game. Those who rationally weighed the evidence, like the Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum and Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo ("There's a word, though, for these sorts of recreations, if that's what they are: forgeries"), were pummeled by the commenters on left-wing blogs.

On September 14, blogger Matthew Yglesias finally conceded that the documents were probably forged. In a fit of pique, he sought to deny bloggers any credit. "They didn't break the story," he blogged. "The stuff they posted . . . was all wrong." Besides, Yglesias noted in a later item, "Nothing important about Bush's National Guard record hinges on the accuracy of those memos." Nick Confessore agreed, blogging, "We don't need the CBS memos to know" that Bush is guilty. They were aping the line the Los Angeles Times editorial page eventually took: "Whatever the truth, CBS' real error was trying to prove a point that didn't need to be proved. It doesn't take documents for anyone to realize that Bush pulled strings to get into the National Guard." Or, in the now immortal phrase of a New York Times headline writer on September 15, "Memos on Bush are Fake But Accurate . . ."

Despite all this, there were still lefty bloggers out in the fever swamps who refused to believe that the documents had been forged. Lindsay Beyerstein continued making attacks on the Washington Post blockbuster and then, when they came forward, on the document experts who told CBS not to use the memos. "Notice how this bullshit comes in waves?" Beyerstein sneered. "One claims that she sent an email to CBS urging them not to go ahead with the story because she had doubts about the memos' authenticity. I'd like to see that email."

The Internet is filled with all sorts of crazy stuff these days. Just ask Dan Rather.

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