Bill’s Blog

“Not for the politically correct.”

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DrudgeReport.com

  Osama Still Alive | Pope Favors Saddam | Rocker Wants US to Lose War 
 US Plans to Use Overwhelming Force Against Iraq |  

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U.S. and Pakistani intelligence services are reasonably hopeful that the arrest last Saturday of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, al-Qaeda's military planner, may flush terrorist chief Osama bin Laden out of hiding. For the first time since bin Laden eluded a U.S.-backed siege of his Afghan mountain stronghold of Tora Bora in December 2001, his hunters have been able to establish that he is still alive and probably hiding "somewhere in northern Pakistan"— a notion Islamabad has long been reluctant to admit. As one Pakistani intelligence official in Peshawar said, "We think that bin Laden will break cover after Mohammed's capture, and when he does, we stand a good chance of catching him."

The people of Iraq suffer the embargo because their ruler, Saddam, hasn’t complied with the terms to which he agreed to end the Gulf War. This looks like an underhanded way of supporting Saddam.

VATICAN CITY — Pope John Paul II stepped up his crusade against a looming war in Iraq yesterday, urging the world’s Christians to stage a fast for peace on the same day as his envoy is to meet US President George W. Bush.

The pope said the day of fasting today would remind people of the long years of suffering endured by Iraqi citizens as a result of the international embargo against the country.

The fast will coincide with a meeting today between Bush and the pope’s special envoy, Cardinal Pio Laghi, who the pope has entrusted with a special plea to restrain the US leader from waging war against Iraq.

Chrissie Hynde is part of The Pretenders group.

Between songs, the pugnacious [Chrissie] Hynde, in a classic black T-shirt and jeans, bantered and battled with the crowd. She dedicated "You Know Who Your Friends Are" to "all you junkies and f--," gave a shout-out to the late Joe Strummer, opined that she hopes the United States loses if it goes to war with Iraq ("Bring it on! Give us what we deserve!"), and introduced the song "Fools Must Die" with the self-deprecating quip, "I'll show you how it's done."

This is a sound strategy for a victory with minimal losses. LBJ’s failure to commit overwhelming forces when he introduced American troops to Vietnam was one of his numerous military shortcomings.

The U.S. military is planning a devastating bombing and missile attack on Iraq that will force the capitulation of the Iraqi government in a short period of time, the Pentagon's top general said yesterday.

"If asked to go into conflict in Iraq, what you would like to do is have it be a short conflict," said Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "And the best way to do that would be to have such a shock on the system the Iraqi regime would have to assume early on that the end is inevitable."

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 OpinionJournal.com

 Shakespeare on Iraq War | Madonna Childrens Books Satire | Appeasement Follies 

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An outstanding compilation of Shakespeare passages.

References and my response

A satirical look at politically correct children’s stories such as Little Red Riding Crop.

The Vietnam “anti-war” types argued that the lessons of the 1930s no longer applied as a justification for their own appeasement.

Just as Neville Chamberlain hoped to contain Hitler with "peace in our time," today's chumps march under the banner of "pressure in our time." High fashion at the U.N. has it that if we just keep nagging Saddam, he will lose all interest in germs, gas and nuclear bombs, and apart from the miseries of 24 million Iraqis still living in fear of having their tongues ripped out, all will forevermore be safe and well.

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Let's do the math. To get even a show of forward motion from Saddam, it has taken 17 failed U.N. resolutions, 12,000 pages of pointless documents from Baghdad, umpteen visits to Iraq by Mr. Blix, the concentrated attention for many months of the entire world, plus--and most important--the deployment to the Persian Gulf of six U.S. aircraft carrier groups and 250,000 troops.

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Saddam will not change his stripes. He is a totalitarian dictator, a messianic narcissist on the order of a Stalin or Hitler. Such monsters do not reform; they are incapable of it. Their less virulent kin, the political class known as authoritarian rulers, may from time to time prove more tractable; they tend to commit their atrocities under the handicaps of conscience and more malleable political systems. A Ferdinand Marcos, an Augusto Pinochet, may step aside.

Not so with totalitarian tyrants. In these cases, the only relief comes when they die or are deposed. Communist China could not dream of embarking on reform till Mao was dead; the Soviet state did not abjure the worst of its atrocities till Stalin perished. Hitler, under polite pressure, did not clean up his act; the horrors of Nazi Germany ended only with his defeat in war and his death.

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FrontPageMag.com

Iranians Boycott Municipal Elections | Feckless UN | Islamic Terror Denunciation Deception
 Leftist Hypocrisy on Free Speech | Inconsistency of Bush Israel Policy
 Leftist Hypocrisy on Free Speech | Islamic Persecution of Iraqi Christians

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Axis of Appeasement

THE LATEST, clearest, example of willful blindness on the part of the pro-Saddam left comes from the New York Times editorial page, which professes to believe "more time is warranted to determine whether Iraq’s dismantlement of missiles is a signal that Mr. Hussein is reconsidering his stubborn defiance of the United Nations."

It’s hard to imagine that such a statement could be sincere. Do the Times editorialists really think that after a lifetime of thuggery and butchery, followed by four months of continued deceit despite staring down the barrel of a gun, Hussein might suddenly have become an international man of peace?

On the day of his arrest the Cox News Service reported that professor Al-Arian made the following statement: "I'm against targeting any civilian of any faith and any background. My opposition (to this) is strong on ethical, moral and political grounds and whoever does it -- Islamic Jihad, Hamas -- I condemn that and I would never accept that."

Does this sound like a man who is involved in terrorist activities? To many of his supporters it does not. And that is the point.

Dr. Al-Arian’s statement is structured deliberately so as to appear condemnatory. If he were truly sincere, however, he would not have focused solely on "that" – the act of targeting civilians. Instead, he would have excoriated "them" – the Islamist terror groups that target or make no effort to avoid killing innocents. He utilizes a deceptive strategy that is constrained only by the desire to support implicitly and covertly the Islamist agenda. In other words, Dr. Al-Arian continues to lie to a point short of openly condemning PIJ and Hamas. His mendacity serves to dispel any notion that he is a terrorist devotee, while he remains faithful to the agents who are responsible for these ignoble means.

It is unfortunately the case that there are many other Muslim-Americans who share Dr. Al-Arian’s visceral sympathy for Islamists and who employ similar linguistic tactics to mask their loyalties.

Mentions the American Muslim Council and the Muslim Public Affairs Council.

Deconstructing an apparently anti-terrorist statement.

When a politician acts inconsistently, it usually signals an attempt to please opposed constituencies. In this case, President Bush feels pressure from the Republican voters who put him in office to help Israel protect itself. A Gallup poll last month showed 80 percent of Republicans holding a favorable opinion of Israel, and no politician ignores a number like that.

But the pressure for a Palestinian state is no less impressive, coming from a wide range of influential forces, ranging from Secretary of State Colin Powell to the Democrats in Congress and beyond them to British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Arab leaders.

Observing these contradictions through two years of the Bush administration leads me to one main conclusion: In key ways - sympathy for Israel's plight, diplomatic support, providing arms - Bush tends to ignore his own Palestinian-state rhetoric and stand solidly with Israel. His statements demanding this from Israel and promising that to the Palestinians appear to be a sop to outside pressure, not operational policy.

Those who believe the Left’s propaganda that it has consistently been supportive of free speech are sorely mistaken. While the Left has fought for some speakers – among them socialists, communists, Nazis, anarchists. labor leaders and war protestors – its vaunted reputation as a defender of the First Amendment is ill deserved. The fact is that the Left’s supposed fealty to free speech has always been rooted, not in the principle that Americans have the inalienable right to speak freely, but rather in the issue-specific social ends that the Left sought to advance.

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The concept of "hate speech" was spawned from the racist rant of the Left’s Critical Legal Studies’ academics.

In Tabari – the renowned 10^th century Muslim scholars – we read that before the Islamic conquest, Iraq was inhabited by the two Peoples of the Book. In Islamic parlance it designates Jews and Christians. Jews have lived in Iraq-Assyria – which constituted a province of the Persian Empire – since their exile there by Nebuchadnezzar (586 BC). Christianity spread among the inhabitants through those ancient Jewish communities. They lived side by side in the same villages. Today there are hardly any Jews left from the numerous diaspora of antique lineage. As for Assyrian Christianity, it has declined considerably from the time of Arab-Islamic invasion, and particularly in the past half century.

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Jewish World Review.com

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By now, you've probably heard about People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals' new PR campaign comparing dead Jews to hamburger meat. At the Web site, www.masskillings.com, PETA juxtaposes the dead or half-dead emaciated corpses of Jews in Nazi concentration camps alongside images of cows, pigs and chickens in factory farms. It's all part of its "Holocaust on your plate" campaign.

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There was a poster that read, in a bold headline, "Ban the Gay Rodeo!" Underneath a picture of a (presumably gay) cowboy on a bucking bronco was a long diatribe explaining how animals are equal members of the "Coalition of the Oppressed" alongside blacks, gays, Jews, Latinos, women, bisexuals, the handicapped, et al.

Somehow, I don't think Jews would make that list today. I'm not alone. Todd Gitlin, one of the most respected left-wing intellectuals around, wrote a devastating essay for Mother Jones magazine last summer in which he declared, "Wicked anti-Semitism is back. The worst crackpot notions that circulate through the violent Middle East are also roaming around America, and if that wasn't bad enough, students are spreading the gibberish."

Gitlin lists examples from around the world of leading "progressives" whose dislike for Jews is a bedrock faith. Perhaps more troubling: Some of his own students thought it might be worth investigating whether Jews had advanced notice about the World Trade Center attack ---the numerous Jewish names on the roster of the dead weren't evidence enough.

One of the events that set Gitlin off was a pro-Israel rally at San Francisco State University where Jewish students were surrounded by Palestinian students and sympathizers who shouted such peace-loving niceties as, "Get out or we will kill you" and "Hitler did not finish the job."

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While anti-Semitism continues to die out on the right (conservative evangelical Christians are often more philo-Semitic than most Jews), it's gaining ground on the left. There are many reasons for this. Obviously, legitimate disagreements over Israeli policy toward the Palestinians is part of the equation. But there are other factors.

The comparison of commercial agriculture with concentration camps is absurd. Concentration camps are intended to impose harsh punishment on race- or class- enemies. Those who are incarcerated in concentration camps are starved, not fattened.

 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
 (Subscription Site)

Number of Medically Uninsured Grows | Contraceptive Sponge Returns
Bicyclist Assaults Sacramento Women | War Fears Don’t Phase Mardi Gras
 Social Security Sets Up Fraud Unit | Nuclear North Korea | Italian Red Brigades Member Captured
  Greek Terrorist Admits ‘Political Responsibility’ | St Louis Hindu Temple Firebombed

 Leg Bans Blue and Green Lights on Arkansas Cars
 Rape Victim Recants, Accused Wants Clemency | State Revenues Exceed Estimate
Clinton Library Legal Dispute | Ex-mayor of Ozark Sentenced
Lobbyist Preston Bynum Misleads State Senator | Alltel Chairman Paid Over $8 Million
JC Watts on Dillards Board

Thus explaining the banner across Markham Street in the River Market district I saw today.

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ArkDemocrat

Recalling the classic Seinfeld episode.

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ArkDemocrat

I had thought the Italian Red Brigades had went out in the Seventies. There’s a chance they might have connections with Middle Eastern terrorists.

I didn’t know that St. Louis had a Hindu temple.

Gov. Mike Huckabee is weighing whether to commute the sentence of a convicted sex offender who sought executive clemency soon after the victim recanted her allegations.

The victim was 12 years old and living in Miller County when she told police she was sexually assaulted by Charles Alton. Alton pleaded guilty on Aug. 25, 1997, to three counts of first-degree sexual abuse in exchange for a three 10-year prison terms to be served consecutively.

But the victim recanted her statements in an affidavit she gave Alton’s attorney, Craig Lambert of Little Rock.

A big legal mess. If he didn’t do it, he shouldn’t have confessed. This raises the question of whether the police used coercive interrogation techniques. Also, was a rape kit prepared?

We count on our criminal justice system to make accurate determinations of innocence or guilt, but they fail to do so.

Raising the question of whether the so-called budget crisis is just a ploy to raise taxes.

This is over the cleanup costs of underground storage tanks. Since the city used eminent domain to obtain the land it is unfair for the former landowner to pay for costs associated with the library.

The lobbyist was Preston Bynum.

Rev. Sharpton made his first appearance on the national stage in 1985 during the trial of Bernie Goetz, who allegedly shot four unarmed black men on the New York subway. Goetz was indicted on a murder charge but acquitted on all but minor gun charges.

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Sharpton's career is recounted in his 1996 autobiography, Go and Tell Pharaoh.

The “men” were described as “teenagers” in contemporary accounts. They could more accurately be described as “hoodlums.”

They accosted Goetz, giving every indication that they were planning to mug him.

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