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Ammunition That's Cheaper Than Dirt

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I want to thank you for the banner link to the dirt cheap ammo place. I bought some Remington Vipers for my soon-to-arrive Henry AR-7, and as a new gun owner, I had no idea that you could buy 50 bullets for $1.67. Whatta country!

Posted by: Palandine on March 5, 2003 09:57 AM

Just bought a few hundred rounds for my new 1911 from Cheaper Than Dirt. Pretty good prices, and no hassles shipping to Illinois, either (most online vendors either won't or make you jump through hoops). Thanks for the link.

Posted by: Spoons on June 6, 2003 08:02

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day by day - by chris muir

April 14, 2004

Day By Day needs your help to get syndicated. To find out how to get Day By Day into your local newspaper, click here. As the very first outlet to carry Chris Muir's work, I am convinced that this is one of the most important things you can do to help change the leftist tilt of American newsprint. Many more people read the comics than read the editorial pages, and all they find in the funnies are liberal viewpoints, each one further to the left than the last. Take the time to make a difference. Click Here For Conservative Comics.



OT And General Interest

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Latest Comments


April 14, 2004

Odd He Sees So Clearly For Being So Blind

Did I get the war wrong?

If this were Vietnam -- a country alternately incinerated and poisoned by the Americans -- I would want the troops out. If this were occupied Palestine -- a country reduced to sub-Saharan poverty by a cruel and futile Israeli occupation -- I would want the troops out. Iraq is not Vietnam and it is not Palestine.

You've gotten many things wrong, although I will admit you do get a couple of things right in this article. However, I'd just like to point out that two of the things you do get wrong are Vietnam and Palestine, neither of which are - or ever were - what you imagine them to be.

Posted at 12:42 AM, April 14, 2004 | Link | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | Donate

There are so many things wrong with what this limp-brained shill of a so-called "British journalist" wrote that it could be quite thoroughly fisked line-by-line.

The ONLY thing he got right, from what I could see, was his final sentence - and his motivation for THAT was faulty!

What a bozo.


Posted by JB on April 14, 2004 05:47 AM | Link to this comment


Please, Enemies of America, Forgive Us For Standing Up To You: Sincerely, John Kerry

BUSH HANGS TOUGH

April 14, 2004 -- THE purpose of last night's presidential press conference was to show purpose, and rarely has a president seemed quite so purposeful as George W. Bush did last night.

The purpose of the White House press corps was to make the president confess to weakness - to corner him into creating the soundbite of all soundbites, in which Bush would acknowledge his errors as president and thereby give John Kerry all the material he would need for a killer TV ad or two.

They want Bush to whine, if only to distract attention from the past and present of the putative Donk candidate, Johnny Ketchup, whose entire life, philosophy, and ideology has been one long, high-pitched, groveling whine of defeat.

As in so much else lately, they will be disappointed.

Posted at 12:36 AM, April 14, 2004 | Link | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0) | Donate

If there were ever any doubts as to the left-leaning agenda of the so-called "mainstream" media, that Q.&A.; last night should have resolved them.

The funny part is, they apparently expected him to blunder into their stupid attempt at a trap.

Misunderestimation, yet again.


Posted by JB on April 14, 2004 05:55 AM | Link to this comment

If anyone was left with an impression other than, "how did this buffoon become president?" i would be amazed. Every question that was asked was turned into an opportunity for him to quote a sound bite that he had been practicing all week. If the question didn't lead to one of his practiced sound bites, no matter, ignore the question and continue with the idiot blather anyway. Any attempt to answer a question that was not rehersed was generally followed with an uh, uh, uh, sound bite not related to question.
Bush: "They want us to leaf, well we aren't gunna leaf".

The man is an embarrassment.


Posted by thomas on April 14, 2004 08:21 AM | Link to this comment

The above 2 comments demonstrates the wide gulf between the left and right today. It's not even close.

Maybe it's time for the country to split into 2. Lefties go the right, Righties go the left. We'll even give you lefties California (sorry Bill - it would be too expensive for us to clean up).

TV (Harry)


Posted by Inspector Callahan on April 14, 2004 09:11 AM | Link to this comment

Q Mr. President, why are you and the Vice President insisting on appearing together before the 9/11 Commission? And, Mr. President, who will you be handing the Iraqi government over to on June 30th?

THE PRESIDENT: We will find that out soon. That's what Mr. Brahimi is doing; he's figuring out the nature of the entity we'll be handing sovereignty over. And, secondly, because the 9/11 Commission wants to ask us questions, that's why we're meeting. And I look forward to meeting with them and answering their questions.

Q I was asking why you're appearing together, rather than separately, which was their request.

THE PRESIDENT: Because it's a good chance for both of us to answer questions that the 9/11 Commission is looking forward to asking us, and I'm looking forward to answering them.

Let's see --

Q Mr. President --

THE PRESIDENT: Hold on for a minute. Oh, Jim.

Q Thank you, Mr. President.

THE PRESIDENT: I've got some "must calls," I'm sorry.

Honest answer: We are appearing together because I have to consult with the puppeteer before answering any questions.


Posted by thomas on April 14, 2004 10:19 AM | Link to this comment


Any Way You Slice It, It's Still Baloney

Kerry's misery - The Washington Times: Editorials/OP-ED

The original misery index was used by Jimmy Carter during his 1976 campaign against President Ford. Intuitively appealing because it was both simple and easily understandable by all voters, Mr. Carter's misery index represented the sum of the inflation rate and the unemployment rate. Depending on the size of the misery index, either challengers or incumbents consistently cited it during each of the five previous presidential elections involving an incumbent since. With inflation running at nearly 5 percent during 1976 and the unemployment rate averaging nearly 8 percent for that year, Mr. Carter's classic index totaled 12.6 percent, significantly higher than in all previous postwar presidential campaigns. It was a brilliant gambit in 1976, but it backfired on Mr. Carter four years later, when it hit 19.6 percent.

...Clearly, the misery index used since will not suit Mr. Kerry. So, to create his own self-serving Middle-class Misery Index, Mr. Kerry chose his own statistics — median family income (which excludes the 95 percent-plus income tax cut that President Bush pushed through Congress for two-parent, two-child families earning $40,000); college tuition (which has increased in recent years because, according to a Cato Institute study, state spending from 1990 to 2001 rose sharply); health costs (which Mr. Kerry demagogued during the Democratic primaries in his successful bid to defeat Howard Dean); the cost of gasoline (whose federal excise tax Mr. Kerry wanted to increase by 50 cents a gallon during the mid-1990s); bankruptcies (which dramatically increased during the 1990s boom because of widespread abuse of bankruptcy laws, whose reform Senate Democrats blocked last year after bipartisan agreement in the House); the homeownership rate (which is now at a record high); and lagging private-sector job growth.

No matter how stupid the Republicans become, the Donks will always hold the patent on idiocy. Carter invented a "Misery Index" that was, indeed, simple and easy to understand - so simple and easy, in fact, that even his own constituents could figure out that he'd botched the economy, along with everything else, during his single term in office, and blew him right out of the White House.

Now comes John Kerry with a typically liberal "there are never any simple solutions," to create a new "Misery Index" that you need an economics degree to figure out. Of course, what he's hoping is that nobody will realize this new index bears no relationship whatsoever to the old one, and will simply asssume they are one and the same. Maybe he could have gotten away with this sham back in the day when he was pretending that supporting Commies was actually patriotism, but in the new era of the Internet and the blogosphere, I doubt very much if this ruptured duck will fly very far, if it even gets off the ground at all.

Of course, watching Tim Russert pull his patented long face as he belched in the sonorous tones of the wild thumbsucker how much trouble GWB was in after Bush's speech, I do realize that the mainstream liberal media is so solidly in Kerry's corner they may be able to shield the voting public from the truth about Kerry's phony index.

Posted at 12:30 AM, April 14, 2004 | Link | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Donate


WaPo Works For The Wimp

President Is Long On Resolve but Short on Details (washingtonpost.com)

I'm not even going to bother excerpting the reams of partisan, pro-Donk propaganda that follows this WaPo hed. I will, however, point out that Bush's opponent, John Kerry, is not only short on details, but he's an Original Midget when it comes to resolve - about anything.

Johnny Ketchup's never met an issue he couldn't find a way to be on both sides of, and his "will" has always be of the "o'wisp" variety. And the only resolution he's ever demonstrated has been of the "surrender" variety - French-flavored, of course.

Posted at 12:27 AM, April 14, 2004 | Link | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Donate

April 13, 2004

Nutcakes and Moonbats, Oh, My!

CNN.com - Democratic club's ad suggests shooting Rumsfeld - Apr 13, 2004

MIAMI, Florida -- An ad placed in a Florida community newspaper by a city Democratic club attacks President Bush and U.S. policy in Iraq, and threatens Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

The ad says of Rumsfeld, "We should put this S.O.B. up against a wall and say, 'This is one of our bad days,' and pull the trigger."

The ad was placed by the St. Petersburg Democratic Club in last week's issue of The Gabber, a weekly community newspaper based in Gulfport, next to St. Petersburg on Florida's Gulf Coast.

Okay, even I won't try to pretend that this is representative of the mainstream of the Democratic party. However, it would not be at all out of the ordinary for Democratic Underground or similar websites that represent the more leftwise fringe of "liberal" thinking. And before you start, yes, I'm aware that similar sentiments about John Kerry can be discovered in the more fanatic environs of the right as well. However, I'd be willing to make the case that the nutcake left is more influential in the Democratic party than is the wacked-out right in the Republican.

Well, except for the smut hunters, that is.

Posted at 11:50 PM, April 13, 2004 | Link | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0) | Donate

Up until the start if the primary campaigns, the Dems were doing a fairly decent job of keeping a lid on the foamers, droolers, and barkers in their midst. But once Howlin' Howard showed them how much lunatic steam the Left had build up since 9/11, and how to tap into it, only poor Joe Lieberman had the integrity to resist temptation. So now they've got John Kerry as their candidate: mad as hell and not gonna take it anymore, but not so mad as to make him obviously clinical.

The Dems are now riding a tiger, and I doubt they'll be able to figure out how to get off the enraged beast without being devoured by it.


Posted by Dave D. on April 14, 2004 05:24 AM | Link to this comment

I'm still waiting for a Democratic senator to threaten the president with assassination if he dares to visit a military base in that senator's home state.

Oh wait... that was Jesse Helms. But he wasn't quite as influential as the "St. Petersburg Democratic Club."


Posted by Young Goodman Brown on April 14, 2004 06:15 AM | Link to this comment

YGF - Can I conclude from a thread that runs through your comments that the legality/morality/ethics/value of any action is established by the existence of a similar prior action, preferablly by someone of a different political persuasion? Is that what 'relativism' is all about? Is anything ever simply right or wrong? Both the Right and the Left have their share of visible and vocal idiots, demagogues, fanatics and just plain loonies, but their existence in one camp neither justifies nor excuses their presence in the other.

It is obviously great fun to point out the weird creatures that can be found under the other guy's rock. It does not increase understanding of the issues.

Grandpa will now take a nap.


Posted by Homer Jones on April 14, 2004 07:41 AM | Link to this comment

"Can I conclude from a thread that runs through your comments that the legality/morality/ethics/value of any action is established by the existence of a similar prior action, preferablly by someone of a different political persuasion?"

Politics isn't therapy and politics isn't pretty. The right plays dirty, they sling mud, they attack people personally, and THEY WIN. If it's a political battle, I want to see both sides fighting. I think the ad in the article was tactically stupid (value). As for the ethics and morals of it... well... I'll ask Grover "The estate tax equals the Holocaust and bipartisanship is like date rape" Norquist for his opinion.


Posted by Young Goodman Brown on April 14, 2004 09:04 AM | Link to this comment

Homer,

I think that would be a "Yes" to your question.

TV (Harry)


Posted by Inspector Callahan on April 14, 2004 09:12 AM | Link to this comment

April 12, 2004

A Few Changes - For A While

Gentle readers, for the next few weeks, the servings of free ice cream are going to be a bit skimpier than usual. Other interests are assuming primacy. I'll try to get something up every day, but I may miss on occasion. And you'll probably be seeing less linking and more one-off "thinking" type pieces because, quite frankly, just shooting my mouth off free-style is easier for an old scribbler like me.

Sorry to be so mysterious. I'll explain everything later.

Posted at 01:04 PM, April 12, 2004 | Link | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0) | Donate

You are nothing if not mysterious. Hope all's well.


Posted by Young Goodman Brown on April 12, 2004 01:31 PM | Link to this comment

A) He's been named Condi's deputy. He gets Clarke's old office.

B) He's filling in for James Lileks while he's on vaca.

C) He's spending the week in Vegas with Ann Coulter.

D) Him and Tony Forresta are hanging at a trendy Parisian cafe.

E) One word. Plastics.


Posted by Chuck Simmins on April 12, 2004 08:10 PM | Link to this comment

Nah - I figure Californicatia's finally decided to pull the plug, secede from the other Lower 47, wants to annex Baja and several other Mexican states, and has asked him to become Ambassador Plenipotentiary for the Cyberspace Continuum.


Posted by JB on April 13, 2004 05:22 AM | Link to this comment

Oh, yeah, JB? So, why I wasn't informed?!


Posted by Katherine on April 13, 2004 09:16 AM | Link to this comment

I'll take 'C'. For me, not Bill.


Posted by Hucklebuck on April 13, 2004 09:55 AM | Link to this comment

That's what happens, Katherine, when you're out of the office for awhile and you turn off your cellphone and your pager...


Posted by JB on April 13, 2004 10:09 AM | Link to this comment

Or, a nibble on the Star Trek script????


Posted by Sandy on April 13, 2004 11:11 AM | Link to this comment


In The Nabe

Suspect in slaying of SFPD officer in custody / Bayview 'war zone' site of fatal shooting late Saturday night

Police arrested a suspect Sunday in the shooting of a San Francisco police officer who was killed -- and his partner wounded -- seconds after the officers slowed their unmarked car to question a man walking along a street in the Bayview neighborhood.

Two weeks ago, parked on the street directly behind my patio about ten feet from my back fence, somebody tried to torch a new Mercedes SUV. One of my neighbors smelled the gasoline and called the police, and at the same time frightened the would-be arsonist, who ran away before setting off the gas. When the police and fire arrived, they discovered a dead black man in the back seat, covered with the car's floormats. He'd been shot in the forehead.

I heard the series of shots that killed the policeman in the story above. I heard eight shots, in rapid succession (though not the distinctive chatter of full-auto fire) , sharp pops that sounded to me like pistol or light caliber rifle fire. This is my neighborhood. This is the neighborhood I live in. Most San Franciscans, when they learn where I live, recoil in horror. "You live there?" they gasp. "How can you stand it?"

I smile inwardly. These are the same "good" San Franciscans who marched for civil rights back in the sixties, who would never, ever use the "N" word, who vote for every nanny-state do-gooder program that funnels taxes to black people collectively, who worship at the altar of affirmative action, and who, on occasion, even try their hand at a bit of ebonics, to show how "down with it" they are.

They are appalled at even the thought of living where I do.

And yet, and yet... My neighborhood is about sixty percent black, twenty percent Hispanic, ten percent Asian, and ten white. Some of the worst, most dangerous public housing projects are within five or six blocks of my house. But my neighbors are good people. We are like most other neighbors. We wave at each other, stop and chat, exchange tips on how to encourage the grass on our tiny lawns, bitch about the condo association, worry about our spouses and our kids and our car payments, gripe about the politicians, and in general are indistinguishable from any other group of suburban town-house owning, mortgage carrying, weed-whacker-wielding, backyard-barbecuing denizens you could find anywhere in the U.S.

The "bad part of town," for us, at least, is "over the top of the hill." We don't go there, not if we can help it, none of us black or white, yellow or brown. It's dangerous up there. That's the land of welfare, subsidized housing, entitlement, ghettoization -- and drug wars and gangs and murder at the drop of a hat. Yet even there, the hard core of the hard core - those who do the actual slanging and banging - number less than a hundred. The rest are hangers-on and wannabes, but they aren't killers. Not yet. And everybody else pays the price for the reluctance of the government - for racist reasons or whatever - to pull those hundred off the street, lock them up, and throw away the key.

But we who live here - the home-owning, tax-paying citizens who "play by the rules" don't really feel terrorized. We don't live in fear, the way those poor (in so many ways) people do who live at ground zero, in the war zone. But we don't have to. Our soil is not the malign dirt of the welfare state in which so much evil grows so easily. No, that place is over the hill, over that way. Not where I and my neighbors live.

We've got some of the best weather in San Francisco, some of the best views, the sort of quiet you usually only find in suburbs, the sound of wind in the trees, the smell of the Bay, and the occasional red-tailed hawk soaring high overhead. My roses are about to burst into bloom, and I've been harvesting my own kumquats and oranges for weeks now.

I love my neighborhood. So do my neighbors. We worked hard for it. We own it. We take care of it.

That's the difference.

Posted at 12:41 PM, April 12, 2004 | Link | Comments (10) | TrackBack (1) | Donate
dustbury.com linked with Around the mental block
Excerpt: The other day (well, Sunday, actually) I expressed the opinion that an unnamed Oklahoma City neighborhood was capital-S Scary. Over in San Francisco, Bill Quick lives in a neighborhood that...

Who is going to win the battle in your neighborhood-the good guys or the bad guys?


Posted by Jake on April 12, 2004 06:46 PM | Link to this comment

Are you allowed to carry a firearm for protection in the event that one of the predators nearby breaches your neighborhood comity?

It would seem useful.


Posted by John Moore on April 12, 2004 11:15 PM | Link to this comment

You are a pioneer. Keep it up. Those neighborhoods are goiing to be gold after the Google IPO and subsequent tech reboom. I did/am doing the same thing here in NOLA. Happily, they have razed a number of the projects and are getting serious about putting the thugs away. Not surprisingly, people and businesses are moving back in and property values are on the rise. It also does not hurt to clean one's Mossberg on the porch when said thugs are walking by. Gun control in Louisiana is about sight alignment and trigger control.


Posted by Alex on April 13, 2004 06:15 AM | Link to this comment

on occasion, even try their hand at a bit of ebonics, to show how "down with it" they are

"down wid it"


Posted by dismal on April 13, 2004 09:44 AM | Link to this comment

All I can say is more power to you. I'm a physician and having that neighborhood just over the hill may not mean big problems in your neighborhood, but from my perspective big problems for the local community. I remembr well the consequences in Chicago of the local knife and gun club to the community, particularly the hospital - no fun.

Just curious - I lived in the East Bay in the mid-80's while in the Navy. What part of SF is your neighborhood.

Best Regards


Posted by John A on April 13, 2004 11:05 AM | Link to this comment

"...I remembr(sic) well the consequences in Chicago of the local knife and gun club to the community, particularly the hospital - no fun."

Curious - are you saying that the presence of a legitimate local knife and gun club in Chicago was supposedly the source for neighborhood problems, or a part of the antidote for such problems?


Posted by JB on April 13, 2004 12:18 PM | Link to this comment
What part of SF is your neighborhood.
Bayview-Hunter's Piont. Where the shipyard is/was. A lot of what is now public housing in the area used to be military housing. In fact, my own townhouse, which is directly across the street from the shipyard itself, in one of the last units of officer family housing to be built, about 21 years old - and quite solid and well done.
Posted by Bill Quick on April 13, 2004 12:23 PM | Link to this comment

JB, are suggesting there is such a thing as a legitimate "knife and gun club" anywhere?

A quick Google search shows 18,000 hits for "rod and gun club" and the first page is full of legitmate sporting clubs.

A Google search for "knife and gun club" shows only 1,760 hits. The top different items are the book, "The Knife and Gun Club: Scenes from an Emergency Room," the lyrics to the song, "Paradise Knife And Gun Club," and the made for TV movie, "The Knife and Gun Club."

I would guess that John A, "a physician," is probably familiar the book, and that the very phrase "knife and gun club" in the title is a play on the phrase "rod and gun club," and has long been used to describe gang-bangers, etc.

If there are any legitimate local organizations that call themseleves a "knife and gun club" they are probably pretty rare.


Posted by Lynxx Pherrett on April 13, 2004 01:17 PM | Link to this comment

Lynxx -

Not being "a physician," myself, I didn't make the connection, if that is what John A. was alluding to - also, I'm not familiar with either the song or the tv movie mentioned.

Only previous experience I have with gun clubs - which also generally involve folks who favor knives, as well - is that they tend to solve local situations of a hostile nature, rather than cause them.


Posted by JB on April 13, 2004 02:18 PM | Link to this comment

"Knife and Gun Club" is ER/Cop Shop slang for gangs.


Posted by Toren on April 13, 2004 10:32 PM | Link to this comment

April 11, 2004

Smoke'Em If You've Got'Em

Have an enjoyable holiday, everybody. See you on Monday.

Posted at 12:27 AM, April 11, 2004 | Link | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Donate

April 10, 2004

This Vague Spit In the Wind Is The Donks' "Smoking Gun?" How Pathetic

FOXNews.com - Top Stories - Raw Data: Text of Released PDB


Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US

Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate Bin Ladin since 1997' has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the US. Bin Ladin implied in US television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and "bring the fighting to America."

After US missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, Bin Ladin told followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington, according to a [deleted text] service. An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told an [deleted text] service at the same time that Bin Ladin was planning to exploit the operative's access to the US to mount a terrorist strike.

The millennium plotting in Canada in 1999 may have been part of Bin Ladin's first serious attempt to implement a terrorist strike in the US. Convicted plotter Ahmed Ressam has told the FBI that he conceived the idea to attack Los Angeles International Airport himself, but that Bin Ladin lieutenant Abu Zubaydah encouraged him and helped facilitate the operation. Ressam also said that in 1998 Abu Zubaydah was planning his own US attack.

Ressam says Bin Ladin was aware of the Los Angeles operation.

Although Bin Ladin has not succeeded, his attacks against the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 demonstrate that he prepares operations years in advance and is not deterred by setbacks. Bin Ladin associates surveilled our Embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam as early as 1993, and some members of the Nairobi cell planning the bombings were arrested and deported in 1997.

Al-Qa'ida members — including some who are US citizens — have resided in or traveled to the US for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks. Two al-Qa'ida members found guilty in the conspiracy to bomb our Embassies in East Africa were US citizens, and a senior EIJ member lived in California in the mid-1990s.

A clandestine source said in 1998 that a Bin Ladin cell in New York was recruiting Muslim-American youth for attacks.

We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a [deleted text] service in 1998 saying that Bin Ladin wanted to hijack a US aircraft to gain the release of "Blind Shaykh" 'Umar' Abd aI-Rahman and other US-held extremists.

Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.

The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the US that it considers Bin Ladin-related. CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our Embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group of Bin Ladin supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives.

Based on this, the Donks and their allies in the partisan liberal mainstream media are contending that GWB "Coulda, shoulda" done "something."

Okay, my question is a simple one.

What?

And what actions would the Donks suggest, based on this PDB, that would have prevented the 9/11 attacks?

(Hat tip: Xrlq for the link).

Posted at 09:35 PM, April 10, 2004 | Link | Comments (24) | TrackBack (0) | Donate

And assuming that the actions were taken, what is the chance that the Democrats would allow them to happen? Bush would be charbroiled for anything useful, like the Patriot Act's reduction of the wall between intelligence and police agencies, the roving wiretaps, etc. Hell, even after 9-11, he has been roasted for it.

And if he had put troops in Afghanistan?

Yeah, right.


Posted by John Moore on April 10, 2004 10:55 PM | Link to this comment

This same information was given to Congress and they failed to act or demand actions from this supposed smoking gun. And yet, now some are saying Bush should have done something, WHEN THEY DID NOTHING AS WELL!!! Sounds like they are all worthless. Want protection? Get a gun!


Posted by jason on April 10, 2004 11:48 PM | Link to this comment

Why, it's sensational. You just have to edit it a little bit:

Bin Ladin...to conduct terrorist attacks in the ... World Trade Center.

After...in Washington...Bin Ladin planning...to mount a terrorist strike.

Bin Ladin cell...able to...hijack a US aircraft.

...time... for hijackings ...investigations throughout the US


Posted by dismal on April 11, 2004 08:31 AM | Link to this comment

In the gaming world it's referred to as "owned/pwned". In this case, Dismal has "MoDowned".


Posted by JohnO on April 11, 2004 10:40 AM | Link to this comment

I believe that Bush didn't want to release the document in order not to display the total inapptitude of american intelligence gathering.
This security briefing is embarassing to the authors.


Posted by marek on April 11, 2004 12:26 PM | Link to this comment

Does seem he had been informed of his families friends the Bin Laden's had a relative planning bad things.

Now either he didn't read it. Or he didn't pick up the phone and have his daddy call Bin Laden's daddy to find out if it was true.

In either case it shows neglect.


Posted by IXLNXS on April 11, 2004 06:41 PM | Link to this comment

Well, I think that would have been a very hard call to make because I think elder Laden is dead.


Posted by Sandy on April 11, 2004 09:17 PM | Link to this comment

Now, I like to think I'm as much a believer in the sloth and incompetence of big government bureaucracy as anyone.

But the view that that the thousands of people in the FAA, INS, FBI, CIA, etc. who were being paid to keep this country safe needed to be told to "worry about hijacking" by the President before taking it seriously is beyond even me.

I think an 8th grader on the internet could have come up with key intelligence insights like "terrorists hijack planes" and "Bin Laden wants to attack the US".

Try picturing Bush reading that PDB and calling up the FAA Red Team to let them in on the new intelligence that "terrorists might hijack planes".


Posted by dismal on April 12, 2004 09:00 AM | Link to this comment

As I understand it, we should have lit our hair on fire, and then run about the fields shaking trees and swatting at flies. Apparently this ritual could have been expected to deliver much anti-terror Cargo.


Posted by Jeff on April 12, 2004 09:21 AM | Link to this comment

Runways, shoulda built the runways... And definitely carved the wooden headphones...


Posted by Jody on April 12, 2004 09:51 AM | Link to this comment

"Based on this, the Donks and their allies in the partisan liberal mainstream media are contending that GWB 'Coulda, shoulda' done 'something.' Okay, my question is a simple one. What?"

Lessee... go golfing? No... Nothing? No... Oh, I know! TRY TO FIND OUT AS MUCH AS YOU CAN!

"If you knew that President Franklin D. Roosevelt had received a memo a month before Pearl Harbor entitled, 'Japanese Determined to Attack the United States in the Pacific,' and that he had done nothing about that information, would that knowledge change your perception of FDR as a wise war leader? Roosevelt received no such memo, of course, but President George W. Bush got a blunt warning five weeks before 9/11 and he did little or nothing. He even presided over a stand- down in preparations, concentrating on other concerns."

But he's another "partisan liberal" so we can just ignore him.

That's from former Reagan and Bush I staffer James Pinkerton.

Condi says there was no "silver bullet." Well if that's the standard for when action is appropriate, let's just pack up in Iraq and go the hell home. There's no "silver bullet" there, either. You do what you can. You use every tool you've got. I want a president who will do everything in his or her power to protect our country. Bush has 100% proven that he isn't that guy.


Posted by Young Goodman Brown on April 12, 2004 12:22 PM | Link to this comment
I want a president who will do everything in his or her power to protect our country. Bush has 100% proven that he isn't that guy.
Yeah, it's terrible the way we've had to suffer dozens of major terror attacks since 9/11. What we need is a defeatist, UN-worshipping leftist like John Kerry to apply the "Spanish Socialist Solution" to the matter, so that we can be as safe from attack as Spain has been lately.

Oh, wait a minute....


Posted by Bill Quick on April 12, 2004 12:47 PM | Link to this comment

"I want a president who will do everything in his or her power to protect our country."

Be that as it may, you're probably gonna have to choose between Bush and Kerry.

The warning Kerry ignored


Posted by dismal on April 12, 2004 12:52 PM | Link to this comment

"Yeah, it's terrible the way we've had to suffer dozens of major terror attacks since 9/11."

So you're saying we should give Bush a free pass because he only sat idly by ONCE as a terrorist plot was hatched, resulting in the deaths of over 3,000 Americans?

You know, there have been zero terrorist attacks in Spain since their election. Using your logic, they're the greatest terrorist fighters on the planet.


Posted by Young Goodman Brown on April 12, 2004 01:15 PM | Link to this comment
You know, there have been zero terrorist attacks in Spain since their election.
Those guys who blew themselves up constituted an attack. Whether it was the attack they intended is a different question.

The left is quick to mock the notion that Bush deserves any credit for the fact that there have been no repeats of 9/11 in the U.S. They'd be equally quick to blame him if there had been.

So which is it, lefties? Or does it only depend on whose ox is gored?


Posted by Bill Quick on April 12, 2004 01:48 PM | Link to this comment

"Those guys who blew themselves up constituted an attack."

You mean that successful police action that surrounded the terrorists, cleared the building of civilians, and left the murderers no choice to avoid capture other than self-detonation? That "attack"? OK, we'll "blame" the socialists for that one.

I don't "blame" Bush for 9-11. The chances that he could've stopped the terrorists? I have no idea. It sure would've been nice if he'd tried, though. It's hard to figure out how successful he may have been when he never even got out of the starting blocks. After the August PDB, did he act? He golfed. He cleared brush.

On 9-11, Condi Rice was to give a speech about the threats facing America? No Al-Qaeda. In 9-01, Ashcroft was focused on drugs n' porn, not terrorism. On 9-10, he sent out requests for budget increases for 68 programs. He went 0-for-68, as NONE of these programs were related to counterterrorism.

But at least Cheney had that taskforce working overtime.


Posted by Young Goodman Brown on April 12, 2004 02:36 PM | Link to this comment

"You know, there have been zero terrorist attacks in Spain since their election."

Do not forgot the bomb that was found under the high speed AVE track from Madrid to Seville. That sounds like a terrorist attack to me. Not a successful one but an attack nonetheless.


Posted by Brian on April 12, 2004 02:45 PM | Link to this comment

"So you're saying we should give Bush a free pass because he only sat idly by ONCE as a terrorist plot was hatched, resulting in the deaths of over 3,000 Americans?"

I believe this plot was "hatched" well before Bush took office. You know, during the 90's when everyone was carefree (even though we were attacked time and again). But why let that enter the conversation, right YGB?

The Democrats know that they will lose if the election boils down to National Security. Why do you think this latest attack by democrats is so forceful in trying to pin 9/11 on Bush. It just doesn't wash though. The Democrats controlled the gov't for too many years while we suffered attack after attack, and this latest talking point just doesnt wash with regular folk.


Posted by jacitelli on April 12, 2004 02:51 PM | Link to this comment

YGB

Too bad that your reading of history is incomplete, and your interpretation of the PDB (full text is included here) is faulty.

You say included through to improve the analogy My additions are in square brackets and the deletion uses a strike-through.

If you knew that President Franklin D. Roosevelt had received a memo a month before Pearl Harbor entitled, 'Japanese Have Been Determined to Attack the United States in the Pacific [For the Last Four Years],' and that he had done nothing about that information [in the next few weeks], would that knowledge change your perception of FDR as a wise war leader? Roosevelt received no such memo, of course, but President George W. Bush got a blunt vague warning five weeks before 9/11 and he did little or nothing [since he had already started the process, was expecting the results a few weeks later, and had 70 operations already underway to stop the enemy]. He even presided over a stand- down in preparations, concentrating on other concerns."

First of all, Roosevelt had much better intelligence than that. He actually knew the date, because the ONI cryptographers at, ironically, Pearl Harbor had cracked the Purple Code. When the Japanese ambassador called on Secretary of State Cordell Hull to present the declaration of war, Hull had a copy in his briefcase.

Second, war warnings were sent to Pacific commands a couple of days before Pearl Harbor. This is analogous to the 70 FBI investigations under Bush. Notice that those war warnings didn’t work either.

Third, the administration knew that the Japanese were planning to attack the United States in the Pacific for some time, because our oil and steel embargo left them no choice other than war or abandonment of their aims, and it was obvious they were not going to do the latter. Nobody expected an attack on Pearl Harbor even with all the intelligence.

Finally, unlike now, the Democrats chose to postpone the investigation until after the war and not during a presidential election year. The hearings were held in 1946.

Also, the contender for the presidency in 1944, unlike the treasonous John Kerry and his shameless surrogates who have been viciously attacking Bush, did not make a single criticism of Roosevelt’s war record.

Kerry and his gang have been and are still encouraging our enemies (as Kerry did in the Vietnam War), thus reducing our country’s freedom of action in this war, with full knowledge that they are harming the war effort.


Posted by John Moore on April 12, 2004 06:31 PM | Link to this comment

Did nothing. I keep hearing that. This memo shows he did nothing.

Nothing?

What are "70 full field investigations"? Isn't that the exact opposite of nothing? Doesn't that say, clearly, that the FBI was doing SOMETHING?

Or am I just crazy?


Posted by jack on April 13, 2004 06:06 AM | Link to this comment

No, Jack, you're not crazy.

But the lefty meme is evolving from "Bush did nothing" to "Bush should have done more." Rather clever of them, in a way. That way, no matter what Bush did in combating terrorism in general before 911, they can always fire back that he could've done more. You can see this at work in YGB's comments.

BTW, does anybody have access to Lexis/Nexis? Might be interesting to see what else was going on in the world from the begining to middle of August, '01 that the White House would have had to be paying attention to.


Posted by Chef Mojo on April 13, 2004 07:14 AM | Link to this comment

Today, Attorney General John Ashcroft undertakes the formidable task of defending his lackluster counterterrorism record before the 9/11 Commission.

- Cutting nearly $1 billion dollars from the proposed counterterrorism budget.
- Rejecting multiple requests from the FBI for additional funding and support for counterterrorism efforts.
- Completely removing "counterterrorism" from the annual list of top DoJ priorities.
- Personally refusing to fly commerical airlines as a result of a mid-2001 "threat assessment."

And more.


Posted by Young Goodman Brown on April 13, 2004 10:32 AM | Link to this comment

YGB -

The PDB is a joke. This was in Time Magazine in 1998:

"Intelligence sources tell TIME they have evidence that bin Laden may be planning his boldest move yet--a strike on Washington or possibly New York City in an eye-for-an-eye retaliation. "We've hit his headquarters, now he hits ours," says a State Department aide."

link

At the time of 9-11 the federal counter terrorism budget was over 10 billion dollars per year. Thousands of people in the federal government were being paid every day to fight terrorism. They were professionals who were very aware of the intentions of Bin Laden and the risk that al Qaeda presented and were focused on preventing him.

The FAA had been issuing hijacking warnings with respect to Al qaeda as far back as 1998. There had been 15 FAA advisories in 2001.

In August 2001 the FBI had Zacharias Moussaoui in custody with cooperation from the INS. They had confirmed his membership in Al Qaeda with French intelligence. The FBI had disconnected scraps of information that known and suspected terrorists were taking flight lessons.

Obviously, these efforts failed to prevent the attack. Because of this, there is plenty of room for constructive non-partisan discussion about the failures of the intelligence community. (Much of which has been hapening over the last 2 years)

But the notion that August 6th PDB contained vital information that should have been used to refocus the FBI, FAA, CIA and INS is silly beyond words. It's pure partisan hackery that undermines the possibility of productive discussion.

Democrats should be outraged that their representatives appear to be incapable of serious discussion on this issue.

Worse for Democrats, it's not just bad for the country, it has turned out to be bad politics. This disingenuousness is fairly transparent to the American public. These hearings are improving Bush's poll numbers on pre 9/11 credibility. Richard Ben Veniste is the Bush Administration's political wet dream. Condi Rice has twice the favorability of Richard Clarke.


Posted by dismal on April 13, 2004 10:45 AM | Link to this comment

YGB,

Funny how you skip these:

-Jamie Gorelick erected a procedureal wall to prevent intelligence agents from pooling information with their law-enforcement counterparts. Gorelick is on the 9-11 commission.

-Former FBI Director Tom Pickard told the Commission in private interviews that he believed the terrorism problem was bigger than law enforcement; that Janet Reno and DAG Gorelick strongly disagreed.

-Louis Freeh even admits that the prior way was dumb. There were two arrest warrants out for bin Laden in the Southern District of New York alone prior to Sept. 11, 2001, Freeh said, those legal documents were not going to deter him from what happened on Sept. 11.

I guess this is one of those "Whose ox is being gored?" moments, huh?

TV (Harry)


Posted by Inspector Callahan on April 13, 2004 10:48 AM | Link to this comment


That's It? That's Fargin' It?

The New York Times > Washington > Pre-9/11 Secret Briefing Said That Qaeda Was Active in U.S.

ASHINGTON, April 10 %u2014 The classified briefing about Al Qaeda that President Bush received a month before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks reported that the terrorist network had maintained an active presence in the United States for years, was suspected of recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York, and could be preparing for domestic hijackings. But the briefing did not point to any specific time or place of attack, and did not warn that planes could be used as missiles.
Okay....
But the page-and-a-quarter-long briefing document showed that Mr. Bush was given more specific and contemporary information about terrorist threats than the White House had previously acknowledged. As recently as Thursday, the White House described the brief only as a "historical" account of Al Qaeda activity.
And what of a nature "more specific and contemperary" to August 10, 2001, did this document contain? Well, this:
The document said that the F.B.I. had detected "patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York."
Okay, sure, that should be enough for the Bush Administration to, uh, uh...hm...do what again, exactly? As for the rest of the "specific, contemporary information," there is this:
Among its citations are statements reportedly made by Mr. Bin Laden in 1998, after American missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan, that he "wanted to retaliate in Washington"; information that Al Qaeda members "have resided in or traveled to the U.S. for years" and that "the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks"; and a report from a clandestine source in 1998 that a Bin Laden cell in New York "was recruiting Muslim-American youth for attacks."

The document said that the C.I.A. had "not been able to corroborate" reporting from 1998 that Mr. Bin Laden wanted to hijack an American airliner to gain the release of Omar Abdul Rahman, the blind Egyptian sheik convicted in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

1998? 1993? Was Bush President then? And finally, this:
The briefing also referred to a telephone warning in May 2001 to the American Embassy in the United Arab Emirates, in which a caller reported that supporters of Osama bin Laden were "in the U.S. planning attacks with explosives."
Uh, right. One phone call to an embassy in the UAE to the effect that al-Qaeda was in the US and planning to use explosives in attacks. You mean as they did against the WTC in 1993? And on the basis of that "specific and contemporary information" President Bush was supposed to do what, exactly, again, on August 10, 2001?

There isn't even a tempest in a teapot here, because the lefty antiwarriors and the Donk power-addicts don't even have so much as a pot to piss in. But you can bet their allies in the liberal mainstream media will keep right on pissing out an endless stream of partisan lies, half-truths, and slanted invective. Starting with this article in the NYT itself.

UPDATE: The White House statement on the President's Daily Briefing.

Has anybody found a link to the complete release yet? If so, post it here, would you? Thanks.

Posted at 06:47 PM, April 10, 2004 | Link | Comments (9) | TrackBack (0) | Donate

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,116766,00.html


Posted by Xrlq on April 10, 2004 07:50 PM | Link to this comment

It really is pretty pathetic that the commission insisted that this be made public.

They forced a precedent damaging the separation of powers.

And the forced the release of a document that was irrelevant - you have to be smoking something pretty strong to believe that this memorandum says anything damning.


Posted by John Moore on April 10, 2004 09:39 PM | Link to this comment

Yeah, but remember how dramatic it was when Ben Veniste got Condi to verbalize the title of the document? He really got her good. Mmhmm. Yeah. And there was applause from the gallery, too. Nirvana.


Posted by E Rey on April 10, 2004 11:31 PM | Link to this comment

"was suspected of recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York"

See! He was specifically warned, and if he'd done something those federal buildings today would be safe and sound, and, umm....


Posted by RonB on April 10, 2004 11:37 PM | Link to this comment

Yeah, but remember how dramatic it was when Ben Veniste got Condi to verbalize the title of the document?

Only if you watched the replay on the usual suspect networks.

If you watched the full testimony, she took him completely apart. He badgered her like a witness before a court, and she withstood it, ignored his demands to "just tell me the title" after he had just asked her two questions, that being one of them. She made him look like the partisan asshole that he is.

But the bastard knew that the leftist media would edit it so that only the sound byte he wanted would be seen. I watched in on CNN later and it would have been shocking if I didn't expect it from the Communist News Network.


Posted by John Moore on April 11, 2004 01:19 AM | Link to this comment

Why isn't anyone talking about the second document that the White House released on Saturday?


Posted by Gen. JC Christian, Patriot on April 11, 2004 01:23 AM | Link to this comment

Fie, general!! Get thee back to Atrios.


Posted by Just Passing Through on April 11, 2004 06:17 AM | Link to this comment

So it was those unilateral American missile strikes on his bases in Afghanistan in 1998 that got Bin Laden and Al Qaeda all stirred up to retaliate in the US? Shall I hold my breath until the left condemns that action? Somehow I think not.


Posted by Swen on April 11, 2004 10:24 AM | Link to this comment

Ramzi Yousef responded to the FBI agent who told him as they were flying by the WTC, see, they're still standing and he replied they won't be in what, 93-94?

And since when was the WTC considered a "federal building?"


Posted by Sandy on April 11, 2004 05:22 PM | Link to this comment


Blogging The Issues: When Blogs Become The Issue

This came in the mail today. It's a Donk accusing Republicans of smearing him because he carries sites like The Daily Kos on his blogroll.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee, in an attempt to censor
open dialogue amongst 2004 voters, issued an attack release on United
States Senate Candidate Congressman Brad Carson of Oklahoma this week..
The NRSC release entitled, "Brad Carson: A-Blogging He Will Go" attacks
the Democratic candidate saying:

*"On Brad Carson’s Campaign Blog, The Candidate Personally Recommends
His Supporters Visit The Websites Of Radicals"
(Brad DeLong, Daily Kos, Juan Cole)
//*

*"CARSON GUIDES GUESTS TO HIS BLOG TO SEARCH OUT BRAD DELONG, A LEFT
WING BERKELEY PROFESSOR WHO ADVOCATES THE IMPEACHMENT OF PRESIDENT BUSH"
*
_Below is an article that appeared in today's (April 10th, 2004) /Tulsa
World/ regarding the attacks

_Stay tuned for an updated blog from Congressman Carson on his website,
www.bradcarson.com/blog, in response to these vicious attacks.

Brad Luna
Carson for Senate

And then there is this:
Coffman for Congress - Taking the seat back!

A Message from Bryan:

The recent internet attacks from Dailykos, indymedia SF and other blog sites are in no way deterring us from moving forward in advertising this campaign.

Ben Chandler's success advertising on sites such as DailyKos, where the site owner blatantly slurred the efforts of the murdered civilians working to protect a food convoy that has raised such a furor recently shows the level the left will stoop to support suppressing ideas other than their own.

Thank you to all who have supported us regarding these attacks.

We must keep the liberal legion from continuing to erode our traditions and values.

Apparently the Democrats aren't above identical tactics. Which is to be expected.

What isn't expected - and I certainly never would have guessed, two and a half years ago, when I started Daily Pundit - is that in such a short time we would see national political figures and parties slamming each other for the blogs they chose to advertise on, or link on their blogroll. Although I'd submit that a blogroll link is intrinsically more of a recommendation than an advertising buy.

Posted at 06:17 PM, April 10, 2004 | Link | Comments (3) | TrackBack (1) | Donate
dustbury.com linked with You are what you link
Excerpt: From the blog of Congressman Brad Carson (D-OK 2), currently running for the Senate seat being vacated by the retiring Don Nickles: Today, some of you may have seen the...

Molt in birds, bugs, or, evidently, the blogosphere, is a time of both growth and danger. When Kos shared his joy at the sight of the BBQ of four Americans in Fallujah, the blogosphere shivered off some marks of juvenilia. The resulting footprint got bigger but will take a while to grow into. Now, stupid blog thoughts are something that could harm by association. Advertisers want to attract people to their product, not repel. As revenue increases, responsibility creeps into editorial decisions. Slipping away are those lazy days when QWERTY flames went unnoticed by all but the faithful.


Posted by Billy Hank on April 11, 2004 10:03 PM | Link to this comment

Right you are, Billy. On the other hand, highly partisan newspapers and magazines still get advertisers, often high-buck advertisers. And there will always be those who don't mind upsetting their advertisers.

Still, there's no question for potential conflict of interest here. Moreover, I've sometimes wondered, now that I accept ads, whether I'm not getting certain advertisers just because I've disturbed people with my rhetoric, my loss of temper a few times, my use of language, etc. There's no getting around it.

Of course, this doesn't mean that those who don't accept ads are any more pure. Indeed, they may be less pure. For example, Kos would be no more or less trustworthy without all its high-buck advertisers: the guy's still a professional partisan hack. It's what he does for a living.


Posted by Dean Esmay on April 12, 2004 05:46 AM | Link to this comment

I would expect an advertising marketplace to develop containing a wide variety of niches just as newspapers and magazines covering a wide spectrum still get their share of ad dollars.

I would not expect blogs spouting obnoxious and foul-mouthed nonsense on a consistent basis to attract many ads.


Posted by Dean Douthat on April 12, 2004 07:49 AM | Link to this comment


Not Again

Headline news from Sky News - FALLUJAH CEASEFIRE AGREED

American forces and Iraqi militia have agreed to a 12-hour ceasefire in Fallujah starting at 6am on Sunday, according to an Iraqi mediator.

The ceasefire will reportedly pave the way for US Marines to leave the city.

"They want to see US forces pull out to something like three miles outside the city," Qahtan al-Rubaie, a spokesman for the Iraqi Islamic Party, said earlier.

"No ceasefire can take place while the U.S. forces keep pounding Fallujah."

I'd be very disappointed if this turns out to be true. Anything less than utterly crushing the murderers, thugs, Islamofascists, and Iranian and Syrian surrogates who initiated these terror attacks will be viewed - and rightfully so - as weakness on the part of America and the coalition, and will only guarantee further, and bloodier, attacks in the future.

You'd think we would learn. But we don't. This isn't a game, GWB. You'd better start playing to win one of these days. The other side sure as hell is.

UPDATE: President Bush Discusses Iraq in Saturday Morning Radio Address

Coalition forces are conducting a multi-city offensive. In Fallujah, Marines of Operation Vigilant Resolve are taking control of the city, block by block. Further south, troops of Operation Resolute Sword have taken the initiative from al-Sadr's militia. Our coalition's quick reaction forces are finding and engaging the enemy. Prisoners are being taken, and intelligence is being gathered. Our decisive actions will continue until these enemies of democracy are dealt with.
Really? Is it just me, or does there seem to be some, ah, cognitive dissonance here?

Posted at 02:00 PM, April 10, 2004 | Link | Comments (19) | TrackBack (1) | Donate
The Inscrutable American linked with Fallujah
Excerpt: There are two perspectives to the ceasefire in Fallujah- on one side is Bill Quick, who is saying that it is not a good idea since this will show weakness and embolden the terrorists trying to stop the formation of...

DEBKAfile is extremely pessimistic about the situation right now. I have the link in my latest post, together with the latest example of State Department idiocy.


Posted by Allah on April 10, 2004 02:09 PM | Link to this comment

Sure seems like the Marines want to do the right thing. I particularly appreciated this: "'What is coming is the destruction of anti-coalition forces in Fallujah ... they have two choices: Submit or die,' he told reporters."


Posted by jsmith on April 10, 2004 02:44 PM | Link to this comment

Sure seems like the Marines want to do the right thing. I particularly appreciated this: "'What is coming is the destruction of anti-coalition forces in Fallujah ... they have two choices: Submit or die,' he told reporters."


Posted by jsmith on April 10, 2004 02:45 PM | Link to this comment

NOW this is another Viet Nam. No willingness to win. The liberals have taken over (State Department). Fuck this.....


Posted by Howard Veit on April 10, 2004 02:54 PM | Link to this comment

Howard,
Since when have the liberals NOT controlled the state department?


Posted by John Moore on April 10, 2004 06:04 PM | Link to this comment

How far can our tanks shoot???

I'm thinking airlift food and meds - no cars in or out, checkpoints and surround it w/tanks.


Posted by Sandy on April 10, 2004 06:19 PM | Link to this comment

I don't know about tanks, but
the standard US Army howitzer
has a typical range of a bit under 14 miles.

As I understand it, the foreign competition is comparable and this explains why the Israelis are so touchy about the Golan Heights. (Height gives distance to artillery.)


Posted by Andy Freeman on April 10, 2004 07:14 PM | Link to this comment

I think the current rule is cars can go out, but no mailes of military age can leave. About 60,000 people have fled Fallujah.

It is already surrounded by forces that will keep just about anyone from sneaking in or out. There are also aircraft with night vision in use, and at least sometimes there is the awesome AC-130 gunship, which has thermal imaging, can strike targets with very rapid fire 40mm explosive rounds and also pinpoint 105 artillery. Different varians can fire many thousands of rounds per minue of 7.62 mm bullets, again, with precision.

I think what is going to happen in Fallujah is that the regime remnants will make unacceptable demands, the Marines will go back to taking territory building by building, and killing lots of bad guys. In the process, many non-combatants will be killed, as the Baathists have no qualms about hiding behind civilians.

At some point, I suspect the Baathists will give up with some sort of negotiated settlement that we can accept - which would require total disarmament of the population of Fallujah, capture of any one involved in the original atrocity, and capture of many of the Baathist leaders.

If there are enough Al Qaeda in there, they may force the Baathists to fight to the death (like they did with the Taliban), but I doubt there are enough of them.

The M1A1 tank main gun can engage targets out to about 4 kilometers.


Posted by John Moore on April 10, 2004 07:20 PM | Link to this comment

Howard you sound like a 6 year old sometimes with your impatience.

Every day the soliders and their commanders make hundreds of decisions.

Maybe tomorrow they will make another one to change strategy or retool a little bit, and then you can stop getting a marble wall memorial ready for the Vietnam-esque body count.

Or just keep thinking its over, have fun with that blood pressure.


Posted by michael on April 10, 2004 07:35 PM | Link to this comment

FYI, it wasn't a cease fire offer, it was an offer for the "insurgents" to surrender peacefully during a lull in battle. The US forces have made no offer to allow the insurgents to go their own way peacefully, the options on the table are surrender or die.


Posted by Robin Goodfellow on April 11, 2004 09:10 AM | Link to this comment

Robin,
As far as I know, it was merely a cease-fire, not a truce. The purpose was presumably to allow non-combatants to leave, and to let the Governing Council in to talk to the combatants.

Unless political measures interfere (and hey, they do a lot), the Marines will clean out the nest of rats. I predict that many of those, if they can surrender, will. I also suspect that many cannot surrender because the enemy is using Al Qaeda and Baathist thugs to prevent individual surrenders. The Taliban used Al Qaeda to prevent surrenders by their soldiers. In the past, the Baath has had special units to execute deserters and people trying to surrender.

This will be a lot harder to do in urban fighting, because if they want to be effective their forces have to spread out - otherwise a rocket or grenade into a room can take out a bunch of them. And once spread out, it becomes easier to surrender.

It will be interesting to see.

BTW, in Baghdad the baddies shot down an Apache and killed the crew. I'm beginning to think that Apaches are only good for their original mission, which is to kill tanks from behind the Forward Edge of Battle.


Posted by John Moore on April 11, 2004 12:12 PM | Link to this comment

Looks like our surrender is well under way...could the U.N. do it any better? George "Bring 'em on!" Bush and co. seem to be the same Bush and co. that let al-Sadr build his militia and Iranian infiltrators overrun the country. Here are some snippets from Fox:


A fragile cease-fire held between Sunni insurgents and Marines on Sunday in the besieged city of Fallujah. Also, the military suggested it's open to a negotiated solution in its showdown with a radical Shiite cleric in the south.

The military has warned it may resume an all-out assault against Sunni insurgents if negotiations focused on extending the ceasefire and restoring police control of the city fall through.
President Bush…said the United States was "open to suggestions" about resolving the siege, referring to negotiations between Iraqi politicians and Fallujah city officials that continued Sunday.

Governing Council members were holding discussions with followers of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr…(who) largely controls three southern cities, Karbala, Kufa and Najaf.

U.S. commanders have said they would delay any action against al-Sadr until after the (al-Arbaeen religious festival) ceremonies, which ended Sunday.

But U.S. officials for the first time suggested there were open to a nonmilitary solution to the confrontation.

U.S. coalition spokesman Dan Senor would not comment on Iraqi talks with al-Sadr's followers but added, "I would say that our goal is to minimize bloodshed and to head off any sort of conflict."

"We don't see it as a necessary requirement that any military action has to occur in Najaf," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt told reporters.

"There are many ways for the town of Najaf to come back under legitimate control of the Iraqi government, coalition provisions authority and that don't involve any fighting at all," Kimmitt said.


Posted by Somalia Forever on April 11, 2004 04:17 PM | Link to this comment

The last comment conflates the situation in Fallujah with the situaiton with Al Sadr. They are radically different.

In Fallujah, we are fighting a dangerous group of relatively well trained Baathists - probably many former Special Republican Guards. There may also be a bunch of Al Qaeda in there. I doubt we will come to any terms with them that will leave them any sort of a threat. If I was negotiating, I would offer that they would not be given a death sentence in future prosecutions if they surrendered by a certain deadline and cooperated well with interrogators.

The alternative would be death by combat.

We didn't let the non-combatants out of the city just for the heck of it. We let them out so there are fewer for the bastards to hide behind when we open up with MBT guns, iron bombs and AC-130 40mm and 105mm weapons, A-10 30mm gattling guns and guided missiles, and heavy artillery automatically aimed by counter-battery radar (not to mention whatever else the Marines have up their sleeves).

We have the power to kill everyone in the city, and they know it. We also have reduced the number of civilians that they can hide behind. And they know that too. Furthermore, the Baathists, unlike Al Qaeda or religious fanatics, really don't want to die. These are not suicide warriors, they are corrupt and pampered Saddamites.

Al Sadr will, I suspect, be taken care of by other Shia in their own way. It may be very quiet, but I don't think anyone exccept the Iranians wants that bastard around in the future.

And then there's Iran. Check my blog or Roger Simon's for comments on that.


Posted by John Moore on April 12, 2004 01:03 AM | Link to this comment

"If I was negotiating, I would offer that they would not be given a death sentence in future prosecutions if they surrendered by a certain deadline and cooperated well with interrogators."

One problem, John, is that you or someone like you isn't doing the negotiating. If you were, you wouldn't have negotiated at all... just gone ahead and finished the job, killing every enemy combatant in Fallujah that didn't come out with his hands up and kicking down al-Sadr's door at this very moment. By contrast, the Bush program has been an endless series of half-measures and non-measures.

Will we fight to win? Consider what happened recently in Pakistan:
Step 1 - U.S. forces join Pakistani army in joint operation against enemy stronghold.
Step 2 - suddenly, operations stop. Negotiations begin.
Step 3 - that's the last time we hear anything. Why? Probably, because for us there was no outcome. Everyone went home.

Our prototypical mideast military operation is Tora Bora: one big zero.



Posted by Somalia Forever on April 12, 2004 08:28 AM | Link to this comment

IMHO, we are seeing the political maturation of the Governing Council and some clerics in Iraq. Falluja itself may be a lost cause but the GC interventions there are a very good learning and growth experience for them. Similarly, it's beginning to look like al Sadr is retreating in the South mostly from political pressure from other Shia leadership. I think it would take very little additional pressure to turn the al Sadr "insurrection" into a full-scale rout.

If I'm reading these signs correctly, we should seriously consider moving the July 1 handover deadline by 30 days to June 1.


Posted by Dean Douthat on April 12, 2004 08:33 AM | Link to this comment

Somalia Forever:

We're not fighting a normal war, especially in Iraq. The political objectives are much more delicate than usual. In Iraq, we are trying to "nation-build" but in a new and different sense than was meant prior to 9/11. The use of Marines in a hit/pause/hit/pause... pattern is, IMHO, aimed at discrediting tribalism. It will likely not succeed in Falluja but it will remain as a parable for others.

In Afghanistan/Pakistan, there are a different set of problems. Capturing bin Laden is a third level priority or lower. Higher priorities are, at a minimum, keeping tabs on Paki nukes and keeping Musharif in power.


Posted by Dean Douthat on April 12, 2004 08:42 AM | Link to this comment

Dean, our problem is that we have become highly nuanced, triangulating on every issue, as exquisitely sensitive as the princess feeling the pea through 20 mattresses. Important goals like keeping Musharif in power, defeating militias in Iraq, winning support from Iraqis, keeping our allies on side, and winning the war on terror all hinge on one single factor - smashing our enemies from one end of the middle east to the other. The more butt we kick, the less butt we will eventually have to kick and the safer we will be. There's a time to fight, and it's now.

If we are the strong horse the new regime in Iraq will want to keep onside with us, and their enemies will fear them. But if we keep getting all nice and Bushy we will not only fail to win friends, our enemies will not only hate us but, even worse be emboldened because the view us with contempt.

I know I'm preaching to the choir, but let's keep our eye on the ball.


Posted by Somalia Forever on April 12, 2004 11:11 AM | Link to this comment
We're not fighting a normal war, especially in Iraq. The political objectives are much more delicate than usual. In Iraq, we are trying to "nation-build" but in a new and different sense than was meant prior to 9/11.
Screw "nation building." At least for now. Den Beste's much proclaimed goal of setting up Iraq as an example is fine for the long term. But we are in a war here, and the first thing you have to do in a war is to win the damned thing before you can rebuild the nation.

The two most important reasons for being in Iraq remain: first, to remove the Hussein regime as a supporter and instigator of terror, and two, to use the country as a base for our military in the middle east, so as to be able to take any necessary military action against our remaining enemies there, Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. If we lose sight of that in this welter of "nation building," then we will lose the war on terror.

Turkey is often derided in the West as being a dictatorship, but compared to the rest of the Islamic Sharia-ized world, it's not a bad solution for the time being. If that's the sort of setup it takes to control Iraq and pursue our larger objectives, so be it.

I, personally, am more and more convinced that Sharia and democracy cannot co-exist, at least without a mailed democratic fist to guarantee that democracy itself can survive. And at the moment, and for the foreseeable future, we are the only mailed fist in the region that can get the job done. If we're willing to get the job done.


Posted by Bill Quick on April 12, 2004 12:59 PM | Link to this comment

Editorial from the NY Post

link


Posted by Somalia Forever on April 12, 2004 10:42 PM | Link to this comment


Equal Opportunity Idiocy for the Multicults Down on the Old Donk Plantations

Contra Costa Times | 04/10/2004 | Al Franken reportedly to broadcast on two Bay Area stations

Air America Radio, the liberal talk radio network, featuring Al Franken, Janeane Garofalo, Chuck D. and others, has found two Bay Area outlets, the San Jose Mercury News reported, though no startup date has been announced.

The Mercury News, citing a company press release, said the new radio network would air on two stations that currently offer Asian-language programming -- San Francisco's KVTO-AM 1400 and San Jose's KVVN-AM 1430.

First al-Franken and Co. kick blacks to the curb, and now Asians. But who cares? What are they going to do? Vote Republican?

Posted at 01:40 PM, April 10, 2004 | Link | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | Donate

He is replacing shows with no ratings. The stations are taking a shot with programming they are NOT paying for. The real story line here should be: is Liberal Radio giving their product away at less than cost? That is a violation and the FTC should be on it.

With the political clout of the Liberals there is probably lots going on under the table.


Posted by Howard Veit on April 11, 2004 07:57 AM | Link to this comment


Floating Around the Net

What we have to look forward to if the terrorists really do win.

Posted at 01:34 PM, April 10, 2004 | Link | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0) | Donate

No, I think they'll probably just burn it down and build something else.


Posted by Patrick Chester on April 11, 2004 12:42 AM | Link to this comment

"What we have to look forward to if the terrorists really do win."

So you think it is an improvement?


Posted by Cal Ulmann on April 14, 2004 10:30 AM | Link to this comment


Snake Oil

NEWS.com.au | Concern over Iraq 'private armies' (April 10, 2004)

THIRTEEN of the most powerful opposition US senators today released a letter to US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld asking to explain the role of civilian contractors in Iraq.

The letter follows the killing and mutilation of four US security contractors in Fallujah, Iraq, on March 31.

In a letter to Rumsfeld dated April 8 - but released today - the senators expressed concern about "private armies operating outside the control of governmental authority".

The letter also questioned if there were adequate numbers of US troops in Iraq.

Signers included Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, former first lady Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy from Massachusetts, as well as Carl Levin of Illinois.

Crocodile tears from the Muqtada al-Kerry sect of Shia Donks. Private bodyguards are a booming business because Islamofascist lunatics are targeting American (and other) businessmen everywhere in the world. These bozos should try traveling without their own private armies sometime - maybe they wouldn't be condemning the actions others take to protect themselves.

Oh, wait a minute. These are Donks. Thay don't want anybody to be able to provide for their own protection. Except themselves, of course.

Posted at 01:18 PM, April 10, 2004 | Link | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0) | Donate

" ...if there were adequate numbers of US troops in Iraq."

"Signers included Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, former first lady Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy from Massachusetts, as well as Carl Levin of Illinois."

i guess this means the dems are ready to reinstall the draft ?


Posted by l.j. on April 10, 2004 04:23 PM | Link to this comment

Nice reporting. I hate to admit it but Carl Levin is from my state, Michigan, not Illinois.


Posted by Dean Douthat on April 10, 2004 05:26 PM | Link to this comment

"...asking to explain the role of civilian contractors in Iraq."

Well, let's see...Deliver food and medical supplies. Build/repair schools and/or hospitals. Rebuild/repair power generation and distribution systems. Repair and rebuild bridges. Renovate and operate clean water systems. Rebuild and assist in operation of oil extraction and shipping systems.

What else?

Oh, yes...Stay alive in a combat zone. That's what the guns and the body armor are for.

Congresscritters ARE such clueless fools, all too often.


Posted by JB on April 13, 2004 07:46 AM | Link to this comment


You Told Us So?

Guardian Unlimited | Columnists | It's time to judge the pundits

A year ago today, with the toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue in Baghdad, the pro-war commentators couldn't stop crowing about the ease with which the coalition forces had won a swift and righteous victory. In the immediate aftermath, their triumphalist verdict was: the war had been won; the dictator was overthrown; resistance was crumbling; Iraq was assured of a benevolent, democratic future.

....What all these commentators shared was a certainty that the defeat of Saddam's forces was enough in itself to transform Iraq. The main job had been achieved, and democracy would follow naturally. They were equally convinced that those who had opposed the war had done so for all the wrong reasons, conveniently overlooking that many of them had used the Vietnam analogy specifically because of the intense anti-American feeling within Iraq. Journalism and propaganda should be separate, of course. Try telling that to the crew quoted above!

The al-Ghardian tries its hand at a bit of schadenfreude. It doesn't do it very well, but I'll make a note of this nasty little piece, and ram it back down their throats in a month or two. What's funniest about this heaping serving of tripe is the author:
Roy Greenslade is author of Press Gang: How Newspapers Make Profits From Propaganda
Uh, yeah, whatever.

Posted at 12:29 PM, April 10, 2004 | Link | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | Donate

Maybe The Guardian's editors read Greenslade's book and decided to get in on some of those profits from propaganda.


Posted by JB on April 13, 2004 12:30 PM | Link to this comment


Criminal Classes

Boston.com / News / Boston Globe / Opinion / Op-ed / A shadow party in hot pursuit of soft money

ONE OF THE MOST striking political stories of the year -- aside from Howard Dean's magnificent flameout -- is the amusing conversion of the GOP to the cause of campaign finance reform.

This week the Republican National Party and the Bush-Cheney campaign filed an FEC complaint seeking to stamp out the new, Democratic-leaning "527 groups" on the grounds that they violate important campaign finance laws. Given the GOP's historic hostility to fund-raising regulation, this is good evidence that a true political phenomenon is afoot.

Typical liberal logic. The Donks pass a campaign finance "reform" bill with no intention whatsoever of abiding by it, but when the Republicans attempt to hold the Donks to the law they passed, who gets the blame?

Republicans, of course. It's just more of that liberal-left double standard, you know. No objective, honest person would expect Donks to behave as anything but liars, crooks, and morons, so attempting to treat them as honest citizens is just another example of Republican unfairness.

Posted at 12:15 PM, April 10, 2004 | Link | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0) | Donate

There must be something in the Dean name.

John Dean, Watergate snitch extraorinaire, has called the Bush administration worse than Nixon's watergate (Fox interview by Kasich). When asked why, he said nobody died in Watergate.

Nobody died? Watergate, a combination of a presidential oops and a donk coup was the final straw in losing the Vietnam War, which led to the loss of hundreds of thousands of live in Vietnam, and millions in Cambodia.

Dean is really, really bad news. Oh, and of course he is seeking to make a lot of money by trashing the President with his new book, which calls for the impeachment of Bush.


Posted by John Moore on April 10, 2004 06:09 PM | Link to this comment

Dean must be trying to fast fund his 401K. He ties Nixon's ghost to the bumper of his 72 BelAir and tries to raise a cloud of stink around Bush. Geez, I'd even forgot he was still alive. Dean's a perfect example of someone, like BenVeniste, whose 15 minutes were over long ago. Trying to cling to the limelight of ingenue days, the harsh glare shows only old whores. I guess he wants to see "That Seventies Show" in reruns.


Posted by Billy Hank on April 11, 2004 10:26 PM | Link to this comment


The Geriatrics Division

ARNIE SAYS GOODBYE AT MASTERS

While Jack Nicklaus was arriving at the 16th green, Arnold Palmer, playing in his 50th consecutive - and final - Masters, had just stuck his tee shot to within five feet of the flag on the sixth green to the delight of the throng of fans packed into the area.

Then, as Nicklaus was surveying his 30-foot birdie putt on the 16th green, Palmer was silhouetted against the afternoon sun as he walked over the top of the hill and headed down toward the sixth green. Nicklaus, now watching Palmer, removed his cap and lifted it in the air in honor of the King and then gave him the thumbs up, a customary Palmer gesture.

I dunno, I've got nothing against Arnie, but I'm not sure how you can call golf a sport when even 75 year old guys are (moderately) competitive. Of course, I'm not a golfer, so what the hell do I know?

Posted at 12:09 PM, April 10, 2004 | Link | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0) | Donate

Arnie hasn't been competitive, i.e., made the cut, at the Master's for almost 40 years. Arnie stopped playing PGA Tour events a long time ago. But he's there because The Master's allows all former champions to come back and play forever, unlike most tournaments which allow for 5 or 10 year exemptions, though recently I think they have amended the rules somewhat to keep some older players off the course.

Everybody, including Arnie, knows he's there out of sentimentality. Why is that so bad?

But to complain that it's not a sport is to really misunderstand golf. Golf is not a game that requires great strength or speed. However, incredible hand to eye coordination, the ability to concentrate and think on your feet are invaluable. It's not a strenuous sport like football or basketball, but it is a sport, and we do keep score.


Posted by charles austin on April 11, 2004 04:40 PM | Link to this comment

Sorry, I'm an idiot. Arnie has made the cut as recently as 21 years ago, but he hasn't finished in the top 10 for almost 40 years. The rest stands.


Posted by charles austin on April 11, 2004 04:41 PM | Link to this comment

I'm more of a flogger myself but I sure appreciated seeing Arnie take that fairway walk. If we play sport to learn about life, golf is a sport. I forget who, Updike, Plimpton, said the quality of writing about a sport increased in inverse proportion to the size of the ball. That's why there are few good basketball books.

I think of Arnie as the Seabiscuit of golf. His finishing charges from far behind to victory at the final hole just as television turned to golf caught the national imagination.

This 2004 Master's will go down as one of the great ones, the supreme transition. Palmer and Nicklaus, the last two giant links to Jones and Hogan, Nelson and Sarazen playing their final rounds. And at the end, Mickleson curls that putt almost 360 degrees around the cup to break his own long jinx. Perfect.


Posted by Billy Hank on April 11, 2004 10:48 PM | Link to this comment


Ain't No Terrorists Around Here Nohow - It's All A Damned Conservative Plot

The Declining Terrorist Threat

WASHINGTON -- Judging from news reports and the portrayal of villains in our popular entertainment, Americans are bedeviled by fantasies about terrorism. They seem to believe that terrorism is the greatest threat to the United States and that it is becoming more widespread and lethal. They are likely to think that the United States is the most popular target of terrorists. And they almost certainly have the impression that extremist Islamic groups cause most terrorism.

None of these beliefs are based in fact.

This is the line that was being pushed in the august NYT editorial pages on July 10, 2001, two months before the non-existent terror threat flew airliners into the WTC and the Pentagon, and at exactly the time the liberal mainstream media, led by the howler monkeys at the NYT, are now proclaiming that the Bush administration should have been concentrating with every bit of its resources on the threat from al-Qaeda.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. The logic of the left is that it knows its constituents, and even its leadership, just aren't very bright, so you can never blame the left for its stumble-footed stupidities. The left also knows that conservatives are much more competent, intelligent, and effective, and so it is perfectly all right to blame the right for mistakes the left would never accept responsibilty for.

After all, GWB should have known he should have done precisely the opposite of what the liberal left was recommending be done about terrorism at the time.

And, you know, given the left's pathetic and ineffective track record in regards to fighting terrorism and protecting the United States from it, there is a great deal of truth to that notion.

Posted at 12:03 PM, April 10, 2004 | Link | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0) | Donate

no no no

they're right.
terrorism isn't the biggest threat to america.
liberals are


Posted by l.j. on April 10, 2004 04:32 PM | Link to this comment

One is reminded that the author of that piece; a Mr.
Larry Johnson, who did once serve on the CTC; although his experience was from Central American
operations (as one can guess from comments:
related to BBC roundtable on intelligence operations;
who was one of the first to surface the TWA 800 as
terrorist act (while MSNBC identified as State
Department) who has been one of the most consistent nags on the Plame brouhaha;


Posted by narciso on April 10, 2004 07:05 PM | Link to this comment


Working Together Against America? Nahhh, No More Than The Left Itself Is

North Korea says standoff with US at "brink of nuclear war"

North Korea said Friday the standoff over its atomic ambitions was on the brink of nuclear war as US Vice President Dick Cheney headed to the region for talks with key Asian allies.

The Stalinist state's official news agency accused Washington of "driving the military situation on the Korean peninsula to the brink of a nuclear war" with plans for a pre-emptive strike on North Korea

I'm sure the morons of the antiwar, anti-American left will be amazed to learn that there might be a connection between the actions of this member of the Axis of Evil, and the actions of a second member of the Axis, Iran, which is currently fomenting a "rebellion" inside the former third member of the axis, Iraq.

They probably think it's all just coincidence. Of course, the left isn't very bright. I imagine their solution to all this is a phone call to the UN, or Interpol.

Posted at 11:40 AM, April 10, 2004 | Link | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | Donate

This logic in this article is hilarious.

The reason they need to keep their nuclear program is that we're going to pre-emptively nuke due to their nuclear program.


Posted by dismal on April 10, 2004 02:38 PM | Link to this comment