You're Amelia!
You're late!
Amelia Pond! You're the little girl!
I'm Amelia, and you're late.

Do You Want Your Possessions Identified?

Explorers find world's deepest hole, plunge to their deaths, only to discover that they were carrying an amulet of life saving all along.

Okay, I made that last bit up.

(Thanks to Rayra on LGF)

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And It Started Out So Well...

Editorial in the Toronto Star:

What do Americans need in their president, post-9/11? Strong leadership, of course. Clear vision. Common sense. And in a dangerous, fast-changing world, the capacity to learn from past mistakes would be helpful.

Senator John Kerry, the Democrat who hopes to elbow President George Bush from office on Nov. 2, promises all of the above and more. But there was little of it on display Monday, when Kerry responded to Bush's challenge to spell out where he stands on the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Fair enough. Kerry is, as always, trying to stand on both sides of the fence.

Rising to Bush's bait, Kerry said he would have cast the same Yes vote in Congress that he did on Oct. 11, 2002, to authorize the president to launch a pre-emptive war that began March 19, 2003, even if Kerry had known that Saddam Hussein had no ties with Al Qaeda terrorists, no weapons of mass destruction and posed no real threat to the world.

Which is something of a flip-flop for Kerry, but we'll leave that alone.

"I believe it's the right authority for a president to have," Kerry now says. Only he would have used that power more "effectively."

Now, the real question here is what would Kerry have done differently? Specifics. We want specifics.

Does the Toronto Star ask this question? No. Instead:

This amounts to a sweeping claim by Kerry that America has carte blanche to make war on even bogus grounds, and in defiance of the United Nations and world opinion, so long as the war is waged effectively.

While Kerry's statement could be taken to mean that, we know where this is really going.

It's depressing from a candidate who has attacked Bush for "misleading" the nation, who promises a better direction and who claims to want to re-engage with the world.

I'd say it's pretty much on form for Kerry, but if the Toronto Star wants to be depressed by Kerry's form, I can't argue.

Kerry's vote in 2002, while misguided, was defensible. Bush had exaggerated Saddam's threat, and had won over 7 in 10 Americans to the view that the Iraq war was justified.

How, exactly, had Bush exaggerated Saddam's thread? Specifics. We want specifics.

But since then, the U.N. has been vindicated. Saddam was contained; there were no ties to the 9/11 terrorists; and Iraq had no nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.

BWEEET! Foul!

Saddam was contained? Only with a permanent force of U.S. and British troops present, and at the expense of the Iraqi people.

No links to the 9/11 terrorists? Saddam has not been tied directly to 9/11, but he has been shown to have had connections with al Qaeda. The links are there.

No nuclear weapons? But not for lack of trying.
No chemical weapons? You mean, except for those Sarin gas artillery shells?

That leaves most Americans feeling misled, or duped.

Unsupported assertion.

They can see the damage to U.S. prestige internationally.

The French don't like America. But then, they never did. All that has changed is that the mask has slipped.

The loss of more than 1,000 American and allied lives, and 16,000 Iraqi lives.

Even if 16,000 Iraqi lives have been lost (and I'd like to see the source for that figure) we can note that these largely fall into two groups:

1. Bad guys. Baathist thugs of all sorts and Islamist militia.
2. Ordinary Iraqis killed by group 1.

And how many people would have been killed by Saddam's regime in the past 15 months if we hadn't invaded?

A $200-billion cost.

Yes. Ballpark.

And they see no easy exit.

They're Americans. And British, and Australians, and Poles, and others. They didn't go in looking for an easy exit.

Unlike some.

All this is baggage Bush should carry to the polls, alone. But Kerry has just re-endorsed his misguided policy, if not its clumsy delivery.

And here come the ad-homs.

No wonder Kerry is struggling to pull ahead in a race with a president who has not delivered promised jobs and who is seen as a friend of the rich and powerful.

There's a kernel of truth in the jobs remark.

But to say that Bush and not Kerry is seen as a friend of the rich and powerful takes a truly amazing level of bias.

Practical politics undoubtedly prompted Kerry's reply.

Perhaps.

He is loath to admit he cast a foolish vote in 2002.

Or possibly he doesn't consider it a foolish vote?

Well, who the heck knows what Kerry thinks anyway.

He does not want to alienate voters who were similarly duped

Duped? About what? By whom? Specifics, please.

and who are not keen to be reminded of it. And he must not be seen as "soft" on Saddam.

Well, I should bloody well hope not!

Saddam Hussein was one of the bloodiest tyrants of the last few decades. He oversaw a regime of murder, rape and torture. He used poison gas on his own people, massacring entire villages. No-one sane would want to be seen as "soft" on Saddam.

But Kerry comes off looking like "Bush lite" on Iraq, rather than as a candidate with better values and a sounder program. He seems weak. Muddled.

True.

Has he learned nothing from a slew of American investigations that have exposed the sloppiness of U.S. intelligence and the shabbiness of the rationale for war?

Has the rest of the world entirely lost its moral compass?

Yes, the intelligence was not up to scratch. But the moral foundations of the war are absolutely unshakeable.

This is a letdown for American voters who yearn for a real alternative, and a healthier direction. It is not good news for the world, either.

I agree that the failure of the Democratic Party to come up with a viable candidate is bad for America and bad for the world. But a truly viable candidate would have views on the Iraq war closer to Bush's than to Kerry's. Which is not, I think, what the Toronto Star is looking for. And in any case, Joe Lieberman did not get the nomination.

What they want to do is to go back to the holiday from history we enjoyed from 1993 to 2000. But that world is gone, never to return, and we are at war. It's not a war we started, but it's a war we must finish. And the hapless bleatings of dying newspapers like the Toronto Star* cannot be allowed to weaken our resolve.

(And worst of all, Debbye Stratigacos of Being American in T.O. should be doing this, but she hasn't posted in over a month. If anyone has heard from Debbye, please drop us a line.)

* "Buy the Saturday Star and get Sunday to Friday FREE!"

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No Shit, There I Was...

The Liberal Case Against John Kerry by Matt Taibbi.

After listening to John Kerry's acceptance address last week, I did a little experiment. I decided to remove everything that was bullshit and see what was left. I invite New York Press readers to follow me on this journey, step by step.

Read the whole thing.

For those slackers who don't have time to read it, here's his final analysis of Kerry's speech: more...

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Just Thinking Out Loud

A few months back, I was called by a political polling organisation. I was rather busy at the time* and anyway I hate political polls because they are, frankly, full of shit. So I told the nice young lady on the phone that I wasn't interested in taking part in her charming poll and hung up.

Now, I'm not exactly normal, but I can't be the only one to do this. So I'm just wondering how many people might be telling the pollsters to, well, shove it, and what the distribution thereof might be.

* Sleeping. It was a Saturday, and that's what I do on Saturdays.

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Bushisms

"Rarely is the question asked, is our children learning?" Let us analyze that sentence for a moment. If you're a stickler, you probably think the singular verb "is" should have been the plural "are," but if you read it closely, you'll see I'm using the intransitive plural subjunctive tense. So the word "is" are correct.

In my sentences I go where no man has gone before...I am a boon to the English language.

(More here)

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Tell Me Again Why I Need You, Karl

Damned if I know.

You might have already seen the ad produced by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. On its face, it's pretty damning for Kerry. I can't speak to the truth of the allegations, but the accusations do not sound out of place, nor do the accusers seem to be unreliable.

There are a number of ways you could respond to this: Release all your military records (which Kerry refuses to do); bring out witnesses to counter the allegations; try to smear the veterans; simply state that there is no truth to it.

But having your lawyers send threatening and misleading letters to radio stations instructing them that they should not play the ad seems, somehow, counter-productive. Not to mention, tone-deaf to nuance. Isn't Kerry supposed to be the nuance candidate?

More at Roger Simon and Instapundit and, I suspect, a hundred other blogs. Ace of Spades has more, Patriot Paradox has a note about John McCain's views, and Physics Geek notes another Democratic Party attempt to stifle dissent that is sure to backfire.

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Waste Not, Lest You In Turn...

I was just over at Q&O, and in checking my recollection of the history of Charles Martel, I realised something:

In the time since the American War of Independence - since when the United States has had a single, continuous government (setting aside that unpleasantness in the 19th century, which didn't really represent a break in that continuity anyway); in the time since Australia was settled by the British - since when Australia has moved peacefully from being a colony under a British-appointed governor to being an independent, democratic nation; in just over two hundred years France has burned its way through two kingdoms, two empires, an occupation government, and four republics.

Seems wasteful to me.

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In the Continent of the Blind

A fascinating look at Europe's view of America: Hating America.

Unfortunately, at some point the article encountered some piece of Microsoftware and was effectively moronized. If you can get past all? the ?random? question?marks, though, you?ll do fine.

Update: Rob points out that if you change the encoding in your browser to Western / ISO 8859-1, the article looks much nicer. From the menu, choose View->Encoding->Western European in IE, or View->Character Encoding->Wester (ISO 8859-1) in Mozilla. This is supposed to work automagically, but in this case, doesn't.

(Via Ghost of a Flea)

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Noam Chomsky Sleeps Furiously

While they didn't use my brilliant title, the book I wanted is out:

The Anti-Chomsky Reader does not seek to deprogram members of the Chomsky cult. But it does offer a response and antidote to the millions of words Noam Chomsky has emitted over the last 35 years, and tries to explain to those who do not yet accept him as their rinpoche what he has stood for during that time. Some of the ideas on his intellectual curriculum vitae that are discussed in the following pages—his defense of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge; his support of holocaust revisionism—may surprise those who know Chomsky only generally as a critic of U.S. foreign policy. Other of his commitments—the assertion that the U.S. as a world power is continuing the program of Nazi Germany and his fierce hatred of Israel—will, unfortunately, be more familiar. But either way, as Chomskyism continues to grow at home and abroad, it is clearly time for a reckoning.

A snip at just $10 too! (It will probably be $39.95 by the time it reaches Australia.)

Meanwhile, busy busy time is over, so I'll be back starting tomorrow.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:25 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Eeek?

Update:

Iraq's Interior Ministry dismissed as "stupid" a report in a local newspaper on Wednesday that said three nuclear missiles had been found near the town of Tikrit.

A senior U.S. military official told reporters he had no information on the report in the newspaper al-Sabah. He said officials were checking the report.

Asked by Reuters about the report, a spokesman at the Interior Ministry said: "It's stupid."

---

I doubt this story is true, but if it is, I have two responses:

1. Eeeeek!

2. We have at most twenty-four hours of grace before being told by the Left that WMDs were never the issue.

Iraqi security reportedly discovered three missiles carrying nuclear heads concealed in a concrete trench northwest of Baghdad, official sources said Wednesday.

The official daily al-Sabah quoted the sources as saying the missiles were discovered in trenches near the city of Tikrit, the hometown of ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

"The three missiles were discovered by chance when the Iraqi security forces captured former Baath party official Khoder al-Douri who revealed during interrogation the location of the missiles saying they carried nuclear heads," the sources said.

I suspect that they may have found missiles, but with conventional or possibly chemical warheads. Or likely the whole think is bunk. But...

If it does pan out, where the hell did he get nuclear warheads from? We know he never got close to making them himself. The only country in the Middle East with nukes is Israel, and I somehow doubt that is the source. North Korea might have one or two, but would they sell their ace-in-the-hole? India and Pakistan are more worried about each other than about bringing in a few bucks. The US and UK we can rule out. One would certainly hope we can rule out France, and China hasn't been acting that stupid lately. So, did the Russians lose track of some of theirs? If so, we have a hell of a problem.

Probably jumping at shadows. Probably.

(California Yankee via Evil Glenn)

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