Still Think Outlawing Lead Is A Good Idea?

You might knot when all your gadgets break.

I don’t know what all the fuss about lead is, anyway. Once you’re old enough to not stick random things in your mouth it ceases to be much of a threat.

Was Haditha an al Qaeda Op?

There is evidence that it was. And that AQI could, as usual, count on our own “news” media as allies.

The prosecutors in the case against eight Marines charged with murder and cover up at Haditha still maintain the besieged infantrymen acted solely out of malice and poor judgment when they killed 24 Iraqis there. The prosecution’s investigation was launched after a story by Time magazine reporter Tim McGirk on March 6, 2006 accused the Marines of cold blooded murder in retaliation for the death of a brother Marine.

McGirk received his video “evidence” and contacts from two known Iraqi insurgent operatives already under observation by Marine Corps counter intelligence teams. One of the Iraqi witnesses McGirk relied on had just been released from almost six months captivity for insurgent activities and the other witness was considered a useful intelligence tool by Marines listening to him talk on his cell phone. McGirk never interviewed the Marines, who ironically had prepared a similar intelligence summary in anticipation of his canceled visit.

Child Abuse Watch

I don’t know how Hamas can sink any lower in ways it finds to abuse the children of “Palestine”.

They’ll find a way, though.

Al Gore vs. Algore

See how far one man can slide into moonbattery between 1992 and 2007. Back before he became Algore, High Priest of Knowing What’s Good For You, the hypocrite was criticizing Bush for ignoring Iraq’s ties to terrorism.

Science and Islam

A physics professor from Pakistan laments the lack of scientific progress in the Islamic world.

Where his points are about science, they are well-taken.

Science finds every soil barren in which miracles are taken literally and seriously and revelation is considered to provide authentic knowledge of the physical world. If the scientific method is trashed, no amount of resources or loud declarations of intent to develop science can compensate. In those circumstances, scientific research becomes, at best, a kind of cataloging or “butterfly-collecting” activity. It cannot be a creative process of genuine inquiry in which bold hypotheses are made and checked.

Followed by a pot shot at the West.

Religious fundamentalism is always bad news for science. But what explains its meteoric rise in Islam over the past half century? In the mid-1950s all Muslim leaders were secular, and secularism in Islam was growing. What changed? Here the West must accept its share of responsibility for reversing the trend. Iran under Mohammed Mossadeq, Indonesia under Ahmed Sukarno, and Egypt under Gamal Abdel Nasser are examples of secular but nationalist governments that wanted to protect their national wealth. Western imperial greed, however, subverted and overthrew them. At the same time, conservative oil-rich Arab states—such as Saudi Arabia—that exported extreme versions of Islam were US clients. The fundamentalist Hamas organization was helped by Israel in its fight against the secular Palestine Liberation Organization as part of a deliberate Israeli strategy in the 1980s. Perhaps most important, following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the US Central Intelligence Agency armed the fiercest and most ideologically charged Islamic fighters and brought them from distant Muslim countries into Afghanistan, thus helping to create an extensive globalized jihad network. Today, as secularism continues to retreat, Islamic fundamentalism fills the vacuum.

There may have been undesireable consequences to some foreign policy decisions, but that hardly explains why his campus at Islamabad “has three mosques with a fourth one planned, but no bookstore.” When he holds up the EU as a shining example of how to do things right it’s tempting to dismiss him. But the article raises many good points, and the best part about it is that his article’s very existence is a sign of reform in Islam.

And that can come none too soon.

AQI Sitrep

The Long War Journal has an interesting post about the state of al Qaeda in Iraq. That high-value target recently popped near the Syrian border has unearthed a lot of interesting nuggets.

Bergner said several documents were found in Muthanna’s custody, including a list of 500 al Qaeda fighters from “a range of foreign countries that included Libya, Morocco, Syria, Algeria, Oman, Yemen, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Belgium, France and the United Kingdom.”

How long before America makes that list?

Other documents found in Muthanna’s possession include a “pledge of a martyr,” which is signed by foreign fighters inside Syria. and an expense report. The pledge signed by the recruited suicide bomber requires the terrorist provide a photograph and passport, and states the recruit must enroll in a “security course” in Syria. The expense report is tallied in US dollars, Syrian lira, and Iraqi dinars, includes items such as clothing, food, fuel, mobile phone cards, weapons, salaries, “sheep purchased,” furniture, spare parts for vehicles and other items.

Mobile phone cards and sheep. Footfall indeed. And I cheered at this bit of good news: We killed the barbarian who led the savage attack on the Yazidis in northern Iraq.

Don’t Judge a Book by Its Cover

This bearded man from Reno may surprise you.

All I can say is, “Way to go.”

OAK Apologizes

Good for them.

There will be people watching to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Fred Blows Another One

He toured an ethanol plant and then did an about-face on subsidies.

“I have voted against subsidies in the Senate,” said Thompson. “But I think it’s a matter now of national security and we’ve got to avail ourselves of a lot of different resources, and I think renewable has to be a part of that picture.”

The ethanol scam is the worst of all the idiotic bio-fuel options. It’s going to be hard to work up any enthusiasm for someone who thinks it’s a good idea. And for anybody who likes subsidizing specific industries.

Dang. Looks like once again I will have nobody to vote for for president, just someone to vote against. I wonder if there’ll be someone I can vote for before I die.

WWN Legacy Watch

Another agency filling in for the dear, departed Weekly World News uncritically reports what one phone call, or an ounce of common sense, would tell them is absolute codswollop.

OAK vs the Corps

This has been in the news today.

I’ve got half a mind to go down to the airport and let the TSA goons know that the lot of them together aren’t worthy of licking the boots of any one of the Marines they have disrespected this way.

But maybe I’ll calm down and go straight to the airport management.

Soldiers Hand Out Newspapers And Rice

Totten doesn’t think that’s much of a headline. If you know the context, though, it’s just fine.

The Pro-Defeat Lobby in the MSM will be glad to know that they’re having an effect on troop morale:

“Are you going to bash us or what?” he finally said.

“I didn’t come all the way out here in August just to bash you guys,” I said. I felt some sympathy for his complaint, but was at the same time tired of hearing it. “I write what I see and hear, good and bad. You won’t get bad press from me unless you act badly.”

“Thank you,” he said. “You’ll be the first.”

I’m hardly the first. I know several journalists, political liberals as well as conservatives, who write it straight and don’t wallow in soldier-bashing. But the soldier-bashing that’s also out there sure does make an impression. Every journalist who embeds in Iraq must hear these complaints as often as I did, and I heard it daily.

Big Companies Doing Stupid Things, Chapter 86

AT&T has cleverly revised its Terms of Service.

I wonder if it’s a TOS violation to post that.