Bill's Bites -- 2006.09.27
Contributed by Bill Faith
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Destitute Dog -- Please read this and help if you can.
Bill's Bites -- 2006.09.28
The Late, Great, '98
Greyhawk
According to the just released National Intelligence Estimate (pdf), US actions in Iraq inspire terrorism. For a second - and earlier - opinion on the topic, here's Osama bin Laden: [...]
Those comments are from February, 1998 - but they aren't the first (see bin Laden's 1996 Fatwa, for example) or last words from that source on that subject. In fact, in May, 1998 bin Laden answered questions posed to him by some of his followers and ABC news reporter John Miller. [...]
Bin Laden's 1998 comments can be read in the broader context of that year's events here. ...
German opera to be reinstated?
Peace in our time? Amid all the issues that divide Germany and its Muslims - from women’s rights to the teaching of Islam in schools - there was one point on which all 30 participants in a landmark Islamic conference held here Wednesday could agree, according to its organizer.
They would like to see the Deutsche Oper of Berlin reinstate the Mozart opera it canceled this week after receiving an anonymous threat that the production, which features a scene with the severed head of the Prophet Muhammad, could put the opera house at risk. ...
Poll: U.S. support for UN drops 13% in two years
31-45, favorable/unfavorable. 50-50 among women, two to one unfavorable among men.
Hugo Chavez’s ratings among Americans? Unfavorable by a margin of … 58-10. 23-64 favorable/unfavorable for his speech last week. ...
The color purple: Senate races trending Democratic
Top of the screen on Drudge right now is tomorrow’s NY Times lead story on the Senate, which is looking less red and more blue by the moment. ...
Chutzpah award of the day
Michelle Malkin
The Windbag from Massachusetts wins hands down today. John Hinderaker at Power Line nails him: The Democrats evidently aren't happy with the release of the "key judgments" of the National Intelligence Estimate on global terrorism, because now they've demanded that the White House release the entire report.
That will get them what they're looking for, i.e., headlines like this one: "White House refuses to release full NIE." The Democrats knew, obviously, that the administration can't release the entire document without both endangering agents and compromising the ability of intelligence analysts to write candid assessments without worrying that their work product will wind up in the newspaper. But for now, at least, they can change the subject.
Ted Kennedy weighed in with the most surreal attack: ...
Ramadan riots in Europe
What you're not reading about in the dhimmi MSM.
I did a search on Yahoo! News for photos and--surprise--nothing comes up.
More blog coverage: ...
Video: “This terrorism isn’t our fault”
The Brit papers are in raptures this morning over Blair’s speech to the annual Labour Party conference yesterday. It was his last as prime minister, which perhaps emboldened him to challenge certain liberal pieties. Not that he’s shied away from that before, but the beginning of this clip cuts to the heart of things in a way politicians, particularly on the left, seldom do. ...
Magazine, citing abortion policy,
won’t let Catholic League reprint KP’s column
Remember, they’re a big tent and they deeply respect religion.
This is the same magazine, mind you, from which Brendan Nyhan resigned a few weeks ago after his editor complained that his blog posts were insufficiently anti-conservative.
Video:
Michelle slams Dems for leak double standards on “The Big Story”
How come an NIE circulated in April wasn’t published until this week? Why do Democrats seem to think some leaks are okay and others not? Should Bush start locking leakers up? And is Jane Harman really “a nice lady”? ...
The next outrage: Muslims offended by new Harvey Keitel film
Remember when the only thing you had to worry about in a Harvey Keitel movie was whether he’d take out his schwanz? An Italian film has sparked a debate in the Muslim community for its representation of Islam. ‘Il mercante di pietre’ (The Stone Merchant) by Italian filmmaker Renzo Martinelli “brings back to mind Nazi propaganda against the Jews,” accuses Dacia Valent, the spokesperson of the Islamic Anti-Defamation League, an Italian group. Her view is shared by the association of Young Muslims of Italy whose forum is full of messages comparing the movie to Nazi anti-Jewish propaganda…
The movie is controversial as all the Muslims it portrays are terrorists.
Hey, how’s that peace deal
between Pakistan and the jihadis working out?
Really super. Every bit as well as could be expected.
Musharraf had the stones to present it this way at his press conference with the president last week: This deal is with the tribal elders of north Waziristan agency. And the deal has three bottom lines, which we fixed for ourselves. And this is very important, which I explained to the President.
Had a nice little T-storm as the cool front came through, it took me forever to get back online after I shut down while there was lightning in the area. 
Triumph Forsaken
Contributed by Bill Faith
... An accomplished young historian offers a revisionist view of one of the United States’ most reviled conflicts
More than thirty years after the United States pulled its last military forces out of Vietnam it is safe to say that the majority of historians, political figures, and citizens view the United States’ decades long involvement in the Vietnam War as misguided. Given the benefit of hindsight, many have interpreted the war as a vain Cold War-era conflict fruitlessly fought during a time of great anti-Communist paranoia and leading to the needless deaths of tens of thousands of Americans and countless Vietnamese. The prevailing attitude about these assumptions has not changed much in recent years, even as the Vietnam War continues to drift further into the past. If nothing else, the orthodox view has strengthened with the passage of time. ...
Pre-rally SITREP
Contributed by Zero Ponsdorf
Needed to write this down for myself and figured to lay it out in case someone sees something I've missed.
Hotel reservations with confirmation number -done.
Cameras - video and still. Spare batteries, cables, manuals, tripod, spare recording media. A bag to carry all (except the folding tripod) in. ...
Pipes-"Intimidating the West"
Contributed by John Werntz
JWR reproduces today a useful summary and analysis by Daniel Pipes of six instances of riots in Muslim countries instigated around free expression in the Western World. They range in date from the 1989 issuance by Khomeini of a fatwah against Salman Rushie and the 1997 riots precipitated by CAIR's complaint regarding a representation of Mohammed the Lawgiver on the facade of the SCOTUS building, on up to Newsweek's 2005 "Koran-flushing" canard, and culminating in the cartoon riots in February and the Benedict XVI riots in September of the current year. With the single exception of the 1997 events, all resulted in numerous killings. ...
Bilal Hussein's congresswoman
The Associated (with terrorists) Press thinks it's news that a Democrat congresswoman is recycling the suppressed-news organization's talking points about Bilal Hussein, the AP photographer who was discovered by American troops in a Ramadi apartment with an alleged al Qaeda leader and a weapons cache, and who tested positive for explosives: A Democratic congresswoman cited the case of an Iraqi Associated Press photographer imprisoned by the U.S. military during debate Wednesday on a new prisoner treatment bill that she considers too harsh. ...
7-11 pulls plug on Citgo
Michelle Malkin
Thanks to all the readers e-mailing the story. I'm glad to hear it, but it's not quite clear to me that Chavez's unhingedness at the U.N. had anything to do with it. Looks to me from the news stories that this had been in the works for a while: 7-Eleven spokesman Margaret Chabris said that, "Regardless of politics, we sympathize with many Americans' concern over derogatory comments about our country and its leadership recently made by Venezuela's president Hugo Chavez." ...
Video:
Vandy profs’ 9/11 panel behaves exactly the way you’d expect it to
It’s all there — doubts about the official story, sadness that America has squandered its moral advantage, anger that America never had any moral advantage to squander, etc. But most of the fireworks comes from James Lawson, visiting professor of divinity and former aide to Martin Luther King. A sampler: ...
Estimating our national intelligence
By Jules Crittenden
The events of the last few days have created some misunderstandings regarding U.S. intelligence in the War on Terrorism, its appropriate uses and interpretation, and the role of politicians and the press in that process.
It started over the weekend when the New York Times, based on fragmentary information leaked to them by unnamed sources, reported that U.S. intelligence agencies have agreed that the Iraq war is fueling global jihad. The Associated Press amplified that the next day in a story that devoted its first 10 inches or so to Democrats bashing the Bush administration and calling for a pullout in Iraq, while burying the suggestions of Republicans and administration officials that there might be other things in the report worth noting.
Coverage of the issue has not improved much since, despite the release of the National Intelligence Estimate’s "key judgments."The document is worth close scrutiny. But before we get to that, here are a couple of you might want to bear in mind:
1.In time of war, the nation’s classified intelligence analysis of the enemy’s capabilities is none of our, the public’s, business. It is not the New York Times’ business. It is the business of those who are prosecuting this war. They use it to determine strategy and tactics for defeating that enemy.
2. ...
Video: U.S. troops abandon private contractors under fire in Iraq?
Allahpundit
Can it be? America’s bravest reduced to a Kosian “screw them”?
The article’s here; they’re running the vid tonight on World News and Nightline. Click the image to watch. ...
Slate introduces the George Allen Insult Generator;
Update: Is Sidarth a student of Sabato’s?
Moronic, yet hilarious. The “bad breath” one had me in stitches.
Righties continue the pushback today against Larry Sabato and his N-word allegations, the lowlight being John Miller’s feeble tu quoque at NRO and the highlight being See-Dubya outing himself as a redneck so cartoonish he’d be rejected as too broad for a role on the Dukes of Hazzard: ...
Video: Morris says Clintons are ready to fight dirty with press
We’ve got one more day of Clinton-bashing before the shelf life on that Wallace interview expires, I think. So here’s video of Dick Morris on Hannity & Colmes last night reading an awful lot into a short quote. I hope he’s right — aside from a new Olberdouche “special comment,” I can’t think of anything more darkly enjoyable than Billary and the media flinging shinola at each other. ...
OperaRage: Idomeneo and Islam
Michelle Malkin
The first thing to remember when reading about the cancellation of Mozart's Idomeneo in Germany and the opera house Deutsche Oper's kowtowing to Islamic bullies is that jihadists hate Western art and music.
They hate love songs.
They hate Muslim female pop stars.
They hate church frescos. And poems. And illustrations of poems. And, uh, you know how they feel about cartoons.
So it doesn't take much to get them worked up.
The now-cancelled production of Mozart's opera, directed by provocateur Hans Neuenfels, includes a scene in which King Idomeneo is shown staggering on stage next to the severed heads of Buddha, Jesus, Poseidon and the Prophet Mohammad, which sit on chairs. It was an equal-opportunity insult of religions. But it doesn't matter. When Mohammed is insulted, you know the consequences.
The dhimmi opera house director reports that Berlin's top police official had phoned her in mid-August and warned her of dire consequences if the opera house proceeded with its plan to show "Idomeneo." Needless to say, the dire consequences did not involve Buddhists and Christians and admirers of Poseidon threatening to behead the opera singers. ...
Photos: Mohammed gets the Danny Pearl treatment
Allahpundit
The boss has a new post up this morning about the Mozart opera that’s been cancelled due to fears of jihad in Germany. Here are two shots taken during a 2003 production and published today in the Times and Spiegel, respectively. Click for full size: ...
Fat Lady Sings For Berlin Opera That Depicts Mohammed
How does the West lose the war against radical Islamists? One small surrender at a time. The lastest retreat comes from Germany's Deutsche Oper Berlin, which cancelled a performance of a Mozart opera due to its depiction of the decapitated heads of Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammed. Guess which one caused the furor ...
*** 11:54 Who is Paul Pillar?
Michelle Malkin
In its original report leaking details of the National Intelligence Estimate on the Iraq war, the New York Times relied on anonymous, unnamed leakers to spin its contents and embarrass the White House.
Today, the Times includes comments from some named sources. Pay attention to this one: What was most remarkable about the intelligence estimate, several experts said, was the unremarkable nature of its conclusions.
“At one level it is unsurprising stuff,’’ said Paul Pillar, who was the national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia on the intelligence council until last year. “But there is definitely much there that you haven’t heard the president say,’’ he added, “including the role that Iraq has played’’ in inspiring disaffected Muslims to join an anti-American jihadist movement.
Tim Sumner at Stop the NYTimes has some pointed questions about Pillar: ...
Wasted Dog
Got a major Cold, up till about 5:00 this morning arguing with The GIMP; I think I won but the battle left me exhausted. If I'm up to it later I'll show you some fruits of my labor.
Report: 7-11 dumps Citgo (Update: Dropped before)
WFLA of Orlando, FL is reporting: BHL has obtained a copy of a letter from Janey Carpenter, Manager of Consumer Affairs that states 7-11 Stores are ending their 20-year supply agreement with CITGO Petroleum Corp. According to Carpenter, the contract ends next week and 7-11 is now making the switch to its own branded gasoline. ...
Video:
Jon Stewart asks Musharraf who would win, Bush or Bin Laden?
In a hypothetical election in Pakistan, that is. More specifically, a hypothetical mayoral election; there are no presidential elections in that country, an unpleasant fact that Stewart was surely aware of but went out of his way to avoid.
I wonder how many people in his audience are aware of it. And how many of them know that Musharraf’s answer to Stewart’s question is a lie. ...
The Clinton Legacy
Bill's Bites -- 2006.09.26
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