De-commison The 9/11 Commission

The credibility of the 9/11 Commission has taken a severe mauling lately, and it's about time.

A "Disaster" To Be Proud Of

While working my day job back in June I came across a mail room employee at a company in Brighton, MA, who is an avid Air America fan and who apparantly no longer works there, as he has not been seen in my subsequent visits. (Yes, believe it or not, there are fans of Radio Moscow Redux) On the air was Stephanie Miller, who mixes being generally obnoxious with a high-pitched whiney voice more appropriate for WEEI's equally useless Michael Felger. Miller was talking about the "disaster in Iraq" and "George and Dick's excellent adventure," which might actually be funny if Air America didn't always play dumb by whining about "mean-spirited" Republicans.

What is amazing is that Comrade Steph cited US News & World Report to buttress an argument about terrorism in general - as if the Mainstream Media has any credibility anymore. Certainly the "disaster" in Iraq can only be called such by taking MSM seriously - which can't be done since the "disaster" isn't. The credibility of the MSM has long been absymal, especially on their military coverage.

Meanwhile, further disproving the kidiots of Air Amerika was the continuing Good News From Iraq, from several months ago, from more recently, and from the end of August. (Kudos to Winds Of Change) There is also the utter lack of logic in the Left's serial complaint about "breeding more terrorists" - a claim they've been making every time the US fights back against the enemy from the 1986 bombing of Libyan military bases after the Libyan-backed bombing of a Berlin discoteque (they also tried to deny Libyan involvement there, too) onward. It reminds me of a brief mini-popularity back in the 1970s among some psychiatrists against fighting back against rapists, their logic being that rapists become more violent and liable to kill if women fight back. No, it doesn't make any sense, and the new version of don't-fight-back perpetuated by the Left is akin to that.

It all boils down to that we have irresponsible people belitting what is truly a noble cause.

The Monkees And Robert Moog

With the passing of synthesized keyboard designer Robert Moog, numerous retrospectives have noted how music groups of the latter 1960s made use of his revolutionary compact Moog synthesizer. Virtually all these retrospectives note how The Beatles used the Moog synthesizer in 1969 and how it got substantial usage in the early-70s' progressive rock phase.

And I have yet to find a national retrospective that notes the group that introduced the Moog to pop records - The Monkees. In 1967 Micky Dolenz was among the first people to purchase a Moog synthesizer, and he integrated it into the making of the group's fourth long-player album, Pisces Aquarius Capricorn & Jones Ltd. Micky played the Moog for the album's cryptic exploration of 1967 rioting on Sunset Strip Daily Nightly while Moog retailer Paul Beaver handled the keyboards for the group's rip-roaring put-down of groupies Star Collector. The use of the Moog on the album was a mixed blessing; Micky's random Moog riffing on Daily Nightly is ultimately a distraction despite showing some cleverness, while Beaver's perfectly synched riffing on Star Collector (other than on the song's admittedly overblown and prolonged ending) adds enormously to the song's power.

It was the first time a Moog synthesizer found use on a mainstream pop album, and yet this fact goes unmentioned in media retrospectives. As Michael Nesmith once put it about media coverage of the Sunset Strip rioting, it is one of the goofball moments in press coverage.

Wanted: Iraq War's Peter Braestrup

"Mac" Owens took a look at the recent river campaign by Allied forces in shutting down ratlines from Syria and elsewhere trying to resupply Islamo-Arab guerrillas in Iraq. In discussing this campaign, Owens notes how recent coverage by the Boston Globe is inaccurate, and it is just the latest such example, going with a claim that "indig" Iraqi units aren't combat ready. And if coverage isn't just misleading (did you know that the US is REDUCING its forces in Iraq? I didn't, either, until I found this out away from the MSM) it is downright dishonest, and not only with regard to "indigs," but even more so to pre-war intelligence memos, and to Iraq's alliance with Al Qaida. And on that angle the deniers of Iraq's alliance with Al Qaida won't quit, nor are the know-it-alls of the press quitting about Guantanamo, even though there never was any "torture".

It all leads to a depressing reality - that even with the proliferation of media and the decentralization of media, the hard-left Main-Stream Media still holds sway in coverage of the war and the world, and it brings to mind the late Peter Braestrup, the reporter and scholar whose landmark 1977 book "Big Story" showed in vivid detail the sensationalism and inaccuracy that permeated media coverage of the 1968 Tet Offensive, covering what was a calamitous Communist defeat and portraying it as a colossal enemy victory.

The Iraq war is in need of a Peter Braestrup.

Joe Wilson And Iraq's Niger Uranium

Why the left keeps denying Saddamite Iraq was building nuclear weapons is a rhetorical mystery - I say rhetorical because the reason they deny it is obvious - to acknowledge that Iraq was building nuclear weapons is to acknowledge that Bush was right, the liberals' eight-year policy of refusing to act on the building threat was wrong, and the philosophy behind the popular bumper sticker "War is NOT the answer" is not just wrong, but dishonest.

Which leads to this look back at the 500 tons of weapons-grade "yellowcake" uranium (which had zero peaceful application and had undergone some enrichment) found by the US Army at the Al-Tuwaitha nuclear research center (see also this 2008 followup). As the piece's author Rick Moran notes, the site where the Iraqi weapons uranium was stored was under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which ostensibly was charged with making sure Iraq didn't use it for weapons but basically didn't try to stop Iraq from stockpiling such "yellowcake" uranium, and it offers some insight (conspicuously missing from mainstream coverage of "Broadway Joe" Wilson and his phony search for Iraqi efforts to acquire yellowcake from Niger) into why there is such a bureaucratic snit over President Bush's remarks that Iraq sought this yellowcake from Niger.

Basically what is coming out is that Broadway Joe Wilson was not a courageous whistleblower, but an errand boy for an intelligence agency that wanted to spike data supporting war. The CIA suddenly found it had underestimated the enemy's potential and worked to cover its butt - Saddamite Iraq was trying to build nuclear weapons and the CIA, Joe Wilson, and his wife Valerie Plame were fighting against US interests on this matter.

And they accuse Bush of politicizing intelligence?

Remember Fallujah?

Remember Fallujah? It was the biggest base for Iraq-based terrorists fighting Allied forces in 2004. Needing to wait until after the election to take it down (and it says a lot about the integrity of the Democratic Party and their Main-Stream Media allies that he had to), George W. Bush promptly did so in November 2004, and the war against Islamo-Arab redoubts in Iraq has steadily gone better for Allied forces since.

Well it's been a while since we heard about Fallujah, as the above-mentioned MSM continues to focus on car bombings and the like while living up to George Orwell's observation about propaganda being what gets left out - such as this look at Fallujah in rebuilding.

Then there is Baghdad, where there are still bombings but also continued rebuilding and a steady return to normality, such as resumption of intercity air travel.

Let's You And Him Fight, Kevin and Greg

Following the Chicago BGN 300, Greg Biffle exploded at race winner Kevin Harvick, calling him a punk etc., over supposedly blocking him off at varied points of the race. Harvick answered in kind, and it reminded me of something - I root for the Petty team precisely because the Petty team doesn't have this kind of low-class buffoonery. Occassionally Kyle Petty gets into a spat, notably at P.J. Jones at Sears Point, and Jeff Green had his spat with Michael Waltrip, but such outbursts are rare.

For Harvick and Biffle, this kind of nastiness is par for the course. Of course given Harvick's status at RCR in their Goodwrench car, the sponsor's low-class legacy has to be upheld (don't forget that Harvick is still the only driver at the Winston Cup level to be suspended for a race for rough driving in the last several years), so Harvick's mouthiness is to be expected.

Biffle's mouthiness has become more of an issue, as the always unlikeable Northwest native has been running his mouth a lot this year. Of course he's been winning a lot as well. That he benefitted the most from NASCAR's ill-advised low downforce changes is something Jack Roush readily admitted during the Chicago weekend, so The Biffster can thank NASCAR for what had been a less than productive career until they started cutting downforce.

So Kevin Harvick and Greg Biffle can kill each other in victory circle for all I care about them.

Fact - Iraq and Al Qaida Were Allies In Aggression

Remember in the 1990s how the Clinton Administration cited Iraqi aid to Al Qaida in justifying pinprick air strikes on Iraq and also the Iraq Liberation Act? Well George W. Bush remembered - and he cited the fact that Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaida were allies in aggression in his recent speech on the Iraq war.

Predictably, liberals moaned, even though Bush is right. That liberals keep moaning when the fact of Iraqi-Al Qaida cooperation is cited brings to mind the real reason they do so - because if Iraq was involved with Al Qaida, then the entire counterterrorism policy of the Clinton era was a failure.

But then the escalation of Islamo-Arab acts of war against the US during that time should have shown that already.

Say No To Quitting In Iraq

Amid continued whining about setting timetables for a withdrawal from Iraq, we get a reminder that the only viable Iraq option is victory while we also get a reminder about Saddam Hussein's nuclear-chemical-biological weapons, the ones the Left keeps pretending we didn't find.

The Nonsense Of "Multiculturalism" Re: The Arab World

Kudos to Winds Of Change for their insight into the real world, such as this look at the Arab mind.

Liveshot's Lameness Still There

During the 2000 NFL season Terrell Owens, then of the 49ers, scored a touchdown in Dallas, then stood mockingly on the Cowboys' star, which eventually led to a confrontation with a Cowboys player. Keith Olbermann, then host of his own late-night FOX Sports highlight show (and showing how grossly out of place he is doing hard news instead of sports), summed it up thusly: "And this is sportsmanship from a team that's won one of its last fourteen games. Sit down and shut up!"

I am reminded of this in reading the latest pontifications from the junior senator from my home state of Massachusetts, pontifications published in Wayne Woodlief's June 6 syndicated column. Officially he is John Forbes Kerry, but his "real" name is Liveshot, and Liveshot's lameness as a senator shows again in some of his comments. Kerry worries about pending choices for the Supreme Court, and says he wants candidates "with a reasonable construction of the Constitution based on the Constitution, not on ideology." Of course we never get such from Court candidates Kerry and his fellow liberals prefer, so we thus have the question of what Liveshot is talking about here.

He also claims the Democrats "have to be a big-tent party" and laments how the Republican Congress "votes so monolithic." Now I can't recall the last time the Democrats were a true "big tent" party with genuine disagreements on substantive issues - perhaps in the 1960s. One certainly cannot find such today in a Democratic Party so rigidly ideological; their 2004 bash at the Fleet Center certainly didn't entail a big tent approach.

But the big whopper not eaten in Burger King was that President Bush and color alerts on terrorism: "You see any of those color alerts since the election?" Is Liveshot accusing the President of fabricating terrorist alerts for political purposes? Of course such is in keeping with liberal ideology - the bogus October Surprise of 1980 was a long time liberal staple and this mindset is to be found in all those whines about the Iraq war.

This is why liberals are not qualified for President - Kerry is clearly not taking the role of fighting enemy terrorism seriously when he's questioning the integrity of terrorist alerts. Of course the last Democratic President didn't take Islamo-Arab terrorism seriously either, hence Bill Clinton's serial campaign of doing nothing in the face of multiple attacks on embassies, the World Trade Center in 1993, ships, the Khobar barracks (where persecuting the commanding general, Terry Schwalier, for not following physically impossible standards of security consumed more of the government's effort than actually going after the terrorists responsible), and so forth.

Senator Kerry, sit down and shut up.

Are NASCAR Drivers Pansies Now?

Recently I reads a comment from Greg Biffle about the World 600, where he said that NASCAR needs one endurance-type race to test the drivers' stamina and the stamina of the cars, but that other events are too long - he singled out Pocono, saying it would be a better television package if the race was shorter.

This is just the latest example of the decreasing toughness of NASCAR drivers. Whenever drivers mention the SAFER barrier they gush over it and the supposed improvement in safety it brings - never mind that Indianapolis saw Buddy Rice knocked out of the race after crashing into the SAFER, never mind a very serious injury a couple of years ago to Craig Dollansky in an Indy Pro Series race after he hit the SAFER.

Drivers used to never be concerned whether they hit "unprotected" concrete; now they act as if they're going to die even if they so much as brush a concrete wall. It isn't that the SAFER isn't useful, it's the attitude drivers now have that is of concern to me.

It shows most graphically whenever drivers gripe about restrictor plate racing. They always cite "the big one," but that's not what worries them about this kind of racing, because they know it's never the "big" ones that cause injury, but the small wrecks at "safer" tracks that hurt more. What really worries drivers is that in plate racing they have to actually race each other without letup for the entirety of the race. This is by far the most stressful kind of racing there is, and is by far the most competitive.

Whenever drivers criticize something as "too long" or "too competitive," they're giving away a lack of toughness on their part that is reprehensible. They are in much better shape as race drivers when they have to run these 500-mile marathons and they are made to be much better racers when they have to actually fight for the win for 500 miles. 500 miles of nonstop combat for the win is by far the best test of machinery and driving in motorsports.

Pocono says no to shorter races, and they are to be commended for that. Drivers need to get back the toughness they need for this sport.

Why Is Anyone Upset Over Winning A War?

Democrats, Amnesty International, Hollywood types (usually all one and the same), all have vented a lot of spleen because the US is fighting in Iraq, and steadily winning, as shown by recent offensives in Iraq's western desert regions toward Syria made possible by the insertion of "indigs" into towns to keep terrorists out and thus free up American forces for bigger game.

Yet liberals in general have been upset over the war. Of course all of what are now liberal cliches about the war get regurgitated - the US didn't find WMDs in Iraq (the use of the term Weapons of Mass Destruction is a curious holdover term from Soviet Russia), Bush lied about the Iraq threat, etc. It's all tiresome and as is usual with liberals, inaccurate, as any close reading of what the US actually found in Iraq with regard to unconventional weapons indicates - namely that Iraq was streamlining its programs precisely to make people believe it didn't have unconventional weapons. In other words, classic military deception, feigning weakness to hide strength.

Liberals also scream about how the threat of international terrorism has supposedly increased with the war, which is a baffling argument given how suddenly international terrorist groups are seeing their leadership arrested, funding cut, and so forth around the world, two of their largest sanctuaries and armers (Iraq and Afghanistan) are now in Allied hands, and attacks against the West simply haven't happened to the same degree as in the 1990s, when the US demonstrated the refusal to fight back depressingly common to the 20th century.

A big part of the reason (perhaps the primary reason) for liberal angst about the war lies in a quote of an anonymous Bush Administration official in Stephen Hayes' book on Iraq and Al Qaida (this isn't an exact quote on my part, I'm citing this by memory) - "If Iraq was backing Al Qaida.......then the whole counterterrorism policy of the 1990s was a failure." Indeed, what the war has shown is that the whole approach to fighting Islamo-Arab aggression in the 1990s was a failure, and the "failure" to find unconventional weapons points to a larger insecurity with the left - if Iraq was successfully hiding unconventional weapon programs, making it look like they had none, then not only was the whole UN inspection regime a failure, but that regime was NEVER going to succeed no matter what.

Thus is the cherished conceit that an international predator can be "managed" into benevolent behavior taking a severe beating in Iraq. It exposes the left as being fools about such matters and betrays the backward quality of those cherished bumper stickers - War Is Not The Answer? It Is Against Saddam.