Leaking As Usual

The old expression was "business as usual", but this seems a better fit for the new/old politics of consensus by leak that seems to predominate these days. The ship of the Iraq Study Group, which has had all the watertight integrity of the Titanic, now gushes, in an arterial way, to the New York Times. "Iraq Panel to Recommend Pullback of Combat Troops" the headline screams.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 29 — The bipartisan Iraq Study Group reached a consensus on Wednesday on a final report that will call for a gradual pullback of the 15 American combat brigades now in Iraq but stop short of setting a firm timetable for their withdrawal, according to people familiar with the panel’s deliberations.

The report, unanimously approved by the 10-member panel, led by James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton, is to be delivered to President Bush next week. It is a compromise between distinct paths that the group has debated since March, avoiding a specific timetable, which has been opposed by Mr. Bush, but making it clear that the American troop commitment should not be open-ended. The recommendations of the group, formed at the request of members of Congress, are nonbinding.

A person who participated in the commission’s debate said that unless the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki believed that Mr. Bush was under pressure to pull back troops in the near future, “there will be zero sense of urgency to reach the political settlement that needs to be reached.”

The report recommends that Mr. Bush make it clear that he intends to start the withdrawal relatively soon, and people familiar with the debate over the final language said the implicit message was that the process should begin sometime next year.

The report leaves unstated whether the 15 combat brigades that are the bulk of American fighting forces in Iraq would be brought home, or simply pulled back to bases in Iraq or in neighboring countries. (A brigade typically consists of 3,000 to 5,000 troops.) From those bases, they would still be responsible for protecting a substantial number of American troops who would remain in Iraq, including 70,000 or more American trainers, logistics experts and members of a rapid reaction force.

As the commission wound up two and a half days of deliberation in Washington, the group said in a public statement only that a consensus had been reached and that the report would be delivered next Wednesday to President Bush, Congress and the American public. Members of the commission were warned by Mr. Baker and Mr. Hamilton not to discuss the contents of the report.

So as not to interfere with the official unofficial leakage, apparently. This is the old, cold warrior, realpolitick "realism" and the old methodology for politics. It never really went away, did it? Politics by trial balloon and leak. And now the terminal leak, where the wisdom of the Baker group is revealed in an officially unofficial way.

I hate this way of doing business. I really do.

All Those Things That Could

I could have been elected president of my high school class. I suppose it would have helped if I had actually run for the office. I could have gotten a date with that really cute and smart girl that sat next to me in chemistry class, too. If I had asked her. I could have won that enormous slot machine jackpot. Without actually going to the casino and playing, I guess not, though. Pierre LeGrand over at The Pink Flamingo Bar points out another "could". Or twelve.

I could hit the Powerball. My wife could stop asking me to remodel the world. My children could stop asking me to buy every single toy on earth. Lots of things could happen. Being a scientist and running around like chicken little is so unseemly. What I want to know is if being a scientist gives you the right to go around yelling fire in the theater? Or more likely does it give journalists the right to distort what scientists are saying to sell their medium? Could be…

Ross Ice Shelf could ‘collapse quickly’

I could get elected god-emperor of the universe next week. But my daughter has already claimed that job, so I guess not.

Anti-Clintites

The Anchoress has a spot on slam of the New York Times over the headline (and the story beneath it) that they printed on a political donation to Rudy Giuliani. What is weird about the headline are the words chosen to lead the story:

From the NY Times, of course: Anti-Clinton Donor Reported as Donor to Giuliani.

Not just a donor to Giuliani but - gasp - an anti-Clinton donor!

The writer, the ever-obsequious Raymond Hernandez has had his head remarkably far up Mrs. Clinton’s backside for years. But this headline, and the story, just cracked me up.

Have you ever read George Soros described as an “anti-Bush donor?” Nah. He was simply a donor! A concerned guy with money! And if he compared Bush to Hitler and stuff - well, that was just politics, right? He didn’t mean nuthin’ by it!

But this fella, Richard Collins…he is much different than Soros, or Jeffrey Epstein or Steve Bing or any of the other profoundly rich people who donated heavy cash to the Democrats specifically because they detested President Bush. They were just making political donations. Collins…he is a nefarious anti-Clinton donor!

It’s one of the things that has fascinated me over the past ten years - the press’ seeming perspective that there are Clintons and Clinton supporters…and then there is the rest of the world, which contains - among other things - anti-Clintites.

Those are very, very bad people, the anti-Clintites. The don’t simply dissent, they actually focus their dissent on the god and goddess in particular. Let them be identified!

All you anti-Clinton people - thou anti-Clintites - come forth, and be so labeled! Your branding will begin after lunch!

I guess I better clear the calendar for my branding. But the funny thing here is the way the headline reads. As The Anchoress points out, when have you ever seen that type of terminology used? Kerry donors were not described as "anti-Bush". (That they might have been best described as "unreasonably optimistic" or "foolish" is beside the point).

This Is Interesting

When bloggers questioned the "green helmet guy" during the Lebanon/Israel war this summer, the Associated Press rushed to his defense and published a mawkish, almost worshipful piece about the man. They did their level best to defuse the criticism directed at them. But in the latest uproar, they simply fall back on the "trusted source" bit.

They ain't producing the "police captain". Possibly with very good reason. Since the Iraqi government is about to announce this guy is not who he says he is.

Even better, a LGF reader has received a email from Centcom confirming that the Iraqi government will announce this Capt as bogus:

From: MNC-I PAO Victory Main JOC
[mailto:MNF-IPAOVictoryMainJOC@iraq.centcom.mil]
Sent: Wednesday, November 29, 2006 9:14 AM
To: [deleted]
Cc: MNC-I PAO Victory Main JOC
Subject: RE: [U] RE: Could you confirm that the letter below was sent
by CENTCOM

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED

Sir:

I have just learned from Mr. Costlow, mentioned below, that Brig. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, the official Ministry of Interior spokesmen, will begin his regularly scheduled press conference at noon tomorrow with a statement that Capt. Jamil Hussein, is not a Baghdad police officer or an MOI employee.

Yesterday, coincidently, the Iraqi Ministry of Interior issued a press release warning of spreading propaganda aimed at broadcasters. The text of this statement follows:

A Statement from the Ministry of Interior

After media became free in Iraq and expressed the will of all without the government interfering, unfortunately, some satellite TV channels began misleading public opinion and disclosing chaos for a particular political agenda, by broadcasting propaganda that harms people and tries to shake the trust in security forces.

Such satellite channels are trying to affect Iraqi unity and claim that information was stated by a security source without mentioning the source. Information sources should be well-known and reliable, and to avoid repeating such unfair actions, MOI warns the media and insists on defending the people’s security and safety. MOI will take all immediate preventive procedures against media that broadcast propaganda, because such media intend to repress the will of Iraqis in fighting terror and crime.

We would like to mention that such procedures we do not consider as chaining true free media, but it is a legal defense for Iraqi security and the safety of our people.

If you have any additional questions, please let us know.

Vr,
LT Dean

Michael B. Dean
Lieutenant, U.S. Navy
MNC-I Joint Operations Center
Public Affairs Officer

michael.dean@iraq.centcom.mil
MNCI-PAO-VictoryMainJOC@iraq.centcom.mil
Multinational Corps - Iraq
Public Affairs Office

Again, good job there AP!

Curt has been all over this one. The AP has a serious credibility problem here. They can either produce this "police captain" or get their butts handed to them. It is pretty much that simple at this point.

Others: Michelle Malkin, Bookworm Room, Mary Katherine Ham, Powerline, Independent Sources, Unrest in the Forest, Patterico's Pontifications, Midnight Blue,  Hang Right Politics, Wizbang, Classical Values, Hot Air, Democracy Project, Little Green Footballs, Dean's World, The Belmont Club, JunkYardBlog, Confederate Yankee , Wake up America,

About That NSA Program

Rick Moran is in full rant mode. For good reason. It appears that the much maligned NSA "warrantless wiretapping" program is nothing - nothing at all - like what the left has painted it. In fact, there are very significant safeguards built in. And the oversight board that Congress authorized for it says so.

I have spent much of the last two years on this site railing against the hysterical, exaggerated, and ultimately dishonest charges made by people like Glenn Greenwald and others that the Bush Administration was tearing apart the Constitution and trying to set up some kind of a dictatorship.

The cornerstone of their bilious rantings has always been that the Administration’s NSA intercept program was, on its face, illegal. In fact, the NSA program has been cited as reason number one to impeach the President and no amount of reasoning by those of us who cautioned against jumping to conclusions about a program that we knew so little about deflected these despicable jackanapes from wailing about our “lost freedoms” and comparing Bush to Hitler.

Well pardon my French, but the only thing I have to say to the gaggle of goofs who have spent much of the last two years in formulating some of the most vile, calumnious, and over the top charges regarding the Administration’s cavalier attitude toward our civil liberties is… BITE ME:

After a delay of more than a year, a government board appointed to guard Americans’ privacy and civil liberties during the war on terror has been told the inner workings of the government’s electronic eavesdropping program.

The briefing for the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board had been delayed because President Bush was concerned—after several media leaks—about widening the circle of people who knew exact details of the secret eavesdropping program.

The board, created by Congress and appointed by Bush, focused on other classified work since it was named in spring 2005, but continued to press for a formal briefing by the National Security Agency.

A breakthrough was reached in recent days, and the five members were briefed by senior officials last week.

Board members said that they were impressed by the safeguards the government has built into the NSA’s monitoring of phone calls and computer transmissions, and that they wished the administration could tell the public more about them to ease distrust.

“If the American public, especially civil libertarians like myself, could be more informed about how careful the government is to protect our privacy while still protecting us from attacks, we’d be more reassured,” said Lanny Davis , a former Clinton White House lawyer who is the board’s lone liberal Democrat.

Now the left will say that Lanny Davis is not left leaning enough, I am quite sure. They will either a)completely ignore this or b) go off on Davis. But this is a very significant report. The NSA program was one of the cornerstones of the left's attacks on Bush.  And like that other cornerstone, the Plame nonsense, it turns out to be be just that. Nonsense. So, how much else of their belief structures are also as deluded?

H/T Doug Ross. Others: Hot Air, Ed Morrisey, STACLU, The Anchoress,

Mystery Unraveled

It has taken 106 years and a lot of very major advances in technology, but a mystery appears to have been solved. The mystery, a heavily corroded, but extremely complex device found in an ancient shipwreck is a very complicated astronomical calculator. Many people have heard of the Antikythera Mechanism which was found by sponge divers in 1900 off the island of Antikythera in the Mediterranean.

Scientists have finally demystified the incredible workings of a 2,000-year-old astronomical calculator built by ancient Greeks.

A new analysis of the Antikythera Mechanism, a clock-like machine consisting of more than 30 precise, hand-cut bronze gears, show it to be more advanced than previously thought—so much so that nothing comparable was built for another thousand years.

"This device is just extraordinary, the only thing of its kind," said study leader Mike Edmunds of Cardiff University in the UK. "The design is beautiful, the astronomy is exactly right…In terms of historical and scarcity value, I have to regard this mechanism as being more valuable than the Mona Lisa."

The researchers used three-dimensional X-ray scanners to reconstruct the workings of the device's gears and high-resolution surface imaging to enhance faded inscriptions on its surface.

Precise astronomy

The new analysis reveals that the device's front dials had pointers for the sun and Moon—called the "golden little sphere" and "little sphere," respectively—and markings which coincided with the zodiac and solar calendars. The back dials, meanwhile, appear to have been used for predicting solar and lunar eclipses.

The researchers also show that the device could mechanically replicate the irregular motions of the Moon, caused by its elliptical orbit around the Earth, using a clever design involving two superimposed gear-wheels, one slightly off-center, that are connected by a pin-and-slot device.

The team was also able to pin down the device's construction date more precisely. Radiocarbon dating suggested it was built around 65 BC, but newly revealed lettering on the machine indicate a slightly older construction date of 150 to 100 BC. The team's reconstruction also involves 37 gear wheels, seven of which are hypothetical.

This kind of paints a little different picture of the ancient world, doesn't it? They could build a device so complex that it took many, many years to replicate. This is an image of the puzzle the scientists managed to put together. There are plans to produce a computer model of the device's operation. That will be very cool.

Cheap In America

John Stossel takes a look at what some people consider the "cheapness" of Americans. People like Jimmy Carter complain because we don't give enough in aid to the world. But Jimmy's definition of giving only includes tax money confiscated from Americans that can be glad-handed out by politicians. Hollywood types and other limousine liberals feel the same way. Stossel dismembers that idea.

The New York Times and Washington Post editorialize about America's "stinginess." Former President Jimmy Carter says when it comes to helping others, "The rich states don't give a damn." Standing outside the White House, the singer Bono told the press that America doesn't do enough to help the needy:

"It's the crumbs off our tables that we offer these countries."

It seems obvious to Bono and President Carter that America offers "crumbs" because the governments of most other wealthy countries distribute a larger percentage of their nations' wealth in foreign aid. Yes, the U.S. government gave out $20 billion last year, much more than other countries give, but that's only because we are so stupendously wealthy. If you calculate foreign aid as a percentage of our wealth, the United States gives much less than others.

….

Jolie could look to herself as an example of the generous American. She gives weeks of her time and millions of her own dollars to charities. America is 300 million private individuals, and their contributions far exceed what government gives. When you include those, America is anything but cheap.

After the Asian Tsunami two years ago, the U.S. government pledged $900 million to tsunami relief. American individuals donated $2 billion — three times what government gave — in food, clothing, and cash. Private charities could barely keep up with the donations.

Americans' preference for voluntary contributions over forced giving through government is one way in which Americans differ from other people. (Don't think it's forced? See what happens if you don't pay your taxes.)

Syracuse University professor Arthur Brooks's new book, "Who Really Cares", points out that Americans give more than the citizens of any other country. Individually, Americans give seven times more money than people in Germany and 14 times more than Italians give. We also volunteer more.

Stossel has the astonishing figures. The American government gave away $20 billion in aid last year. Private American citizens gave $260 billion. Who you calling cheap, Jimmy? 

“Your Pal, Mahmoud”

That closing is about the only thing missing from a letter just sent to all Americans by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In it, he reiterates just about left wing talking point available. He also achieves much unintentional hilarity with his windy prose.

Noble Americans,

Our nation has always extended its hand of friendship to all other nations of the world.

Hundreds of thousands of my Iranian compatriots are living amongst you in friendship and peace, and are contributing positively to your society. Our people have been in contact with you over the past many years and have maintained these contacts despite the unnecessary restrictions of US authorities.

As mentioned, we have common concerns, face similar challenges, and are pained by the sufferings and afflictions in the world.

That would be these extended hands? Or this friendly gesture? Yeah, these must be the ones. The whole thing is a waste of time to read. Basically, if you've read the New York Times in the past year you've heard all of this stuff.

UPDATE: thers, Greg Tinti, YACRWB, 7.62mm Justice, Iowa Voice, Jihad Watch,

Fiji Edging Closer To Coup

It appears that Fiji is getting closer to show time for a coup by the defense forces. Australian forces have begun voluntary evacuations of the families of Australian High Commission members. The Australians had an accident with a helicopter and have suffered one killed and one missing in the mishap.

AUSTRALIA last night began a voluntary evacuation of the families of Australian high commission staff in Suva as Fijian troops in battle gear locked down the capital in a show of force.

The Fijian military launched a barrage of artillery illumination flares into the sea near the entrance to Suva harbour.

It was a move designed to warn Australia and other states not to back a military intervention in the crisis over a threatened coup by defence force chief Commodore Frank Bainimarama.

Military spokesman Major Neumi Leweni announced the military "exercise" yesterday afternoon at about 2.30pm (1.30pm AEST) saying it was to prepare for foreign forces entering the country.

Major Leweni told The Australian the army would do what it needed to defend Fiji's sovereignty. He did not detail any specific threat.

However, a meeting of Pacific nations in Sydney on Friday could possibly recommend intervention after a request from Fiji's elected Government under the Biketawa Agreement.

Intervention is something that Fijian Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase has not ruled out.

"Other people will say they haven't really ruled out any foreign intervention and that's an appropriate measure and any military would prepare itself for this sort of intervention," Major Leweni said.

Shortly before 11pm, Fijiian troops started moving out of the Queen Elizabeth Barracks in the suburb of Nabua. Four lorries, each containing 15 fully-armed troops in battle dress, left the barracks and headed into Suva, beginning the transport of troops to secure strategic sites in the city by midnight.

They were due back in barracks by 3am. The artillery barrage was due to be conducted at the same time.

The shells will be targeted around the island where 2000 coup leader George Speight and some of his fellow plotters are being held in prison.

Major Leweni said any civilians in the city at that time would be safe and that staff at the strategic sites had no reason to worry.

This is not looking really hopeful to avoid the coup at this minute. If surrounding nations do decide to intervene preemptively, they may head it off.

The Tale Of The Giant Rat…..

…..Of Gambia. (You thought I was going to say Sumatra, didn't you?) While that is the title of arguably the most famous Sherlock Holmes story never written, this is not a work of fiction. Giant Gambian rats are running wild on Grassy Key, and island off the coast of Florida. And these rats are suspected of carrying monkeypox.

As the rising sun danced across Florida's coastal waters, government workers in shorts and T-shirts knelt in a grassy island field and plucked wriggling rats from traps laid the night before. These weren't just any rats. They were 3-pound, 35-inch-long African behemoths. They squirmed as the workers, wearing protective gloves, removed green radio collars that had been tracking the rodents' movements.

All 18 of the animals were carted away for research.

Darin Carroll kept a watchful eye on that dawn mission at Florida's Grassy Key Island. Carroll is no ordinary G-man. He's a disease hunter determined to stop the next outbreak.

Carroll works for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and for three years he has painstakingly tracked the journey of Gambian rats from their African homeland, through the exotic pet trade, and to U.S. homes.

His quest is to prove what many scientists suspect: that African rodents imported as pets caused a monkeypox outbreak in the Midwest in 2003 that sickened dozens of adults and children with a virus related to smallpox. Scientists suspect Gambian rats may play a role.

Similar outbreaks have occurred in Africa.

While no one died from the U.S. outbreak, it sent warning alarms about the potential dangers of importing exotic pets captured in the wild.

Florida and U.S. officials are trying to raise enough money to kill off the Gambian rats that have proliferated on Grassy Key Island, just a few miles from the coast of one of the country's most populous states. The rats were imported to the island a few years ago.

I think a 35-inch long rat would be enough to stop my heart. I do not like rats. At all. Why anyone would keep one as a pet is completely beyond me. These exotic species are a real problem, and the problems seem to be getting worse of late.

Camouflaged Carnivores For Christmas

The New York City police department appears to have stumbled on the next tactic the Animal Uprising plans to use for sneak attacks through the holiday season. We told you about alligators baiting traps with newspapers. We gave timely warnings about alligators disguising themselves as doormats. We've even warned about the deer pretending to be volleyball nets. But this trick is even more insidious.

The carnivorous critters are now gift wrapping themselves and waiting for people to tear open the "present".

On Tuesday, police responding to a 911 call in Starrett City, a public housing complex in Brooklyn, found a two-foot caiman (Spanish for anything "crocodilian," according to one Internet site) in a cardboard box, with a shoelace firmly tied around its jaw.

Not requiring outside help, the 75th Precinct cops gathered up the croc-in-the-box and turned it over to Animal Care & Control, a privately funded organization that handles all manner of animals, wild or domestic, that are lost, injured or in distress.

In this case, "the caiman was cold, and we had to warm it up," said Richard Gentles, director of administration for AC&C. But whoever left it in the box was concerned that nobody got hurt, he said. "It was pretty feisty. The shoestring was double-knotted for safety, like a running shoe."

Gentles said the caiman would be turned over to a licensed wildlife care center on Long Island or in New Jersey that specializes in rehabilitation of reptiles and eventually returned to a natural habitat.

This one is really evil. Who suspects a Christmas present will suddenly eat them? Personally, we here at Blue Crab Boulevard strongly recommend people not open any presents at all this Christmas unless they have been thoroughly checked by a specially trained professional. Oddly enough, we can recommend one! The Blue Crab Inspection Service, LLC just opened for business. Is that fortuitous or what? So send us all those packages and we'll check them for fierce reptile cargo. We'll return them just as soon as we're sure they're safe. It may take quite a while to be sure really valuable presents are perfectly safe. Sorry for the inconvenience. 

A Weird Moment

Jacques Chirac says he agrees with the US that there is no point in talking to Syria. As in the president of France.

France and the United States agree there is no point in talking to Syria because the conditions for an honest dialogue do not exist, French President Jacques Chirac said Wednesday.

Chirac's comments come a day after U.S. National Security Adviser Steven Hadley said that there was no point in Israel holding negotiations with Syria as long as Damascus continues to support and facilitate terrorism.

U.S. President George W. Bush is under strong domestic pressure to talk to Syria and Iran in an effort to reduce sectarian violence and avert civil war in Iraq.

Speaking after a NATO summit in Latvia, Chirac said he was always in favour of dialogue in principle provided it led to results and was based on honesty and a commitment to carry out what was agreed.

"In the current state of affairs, this is not exactly the characteristic of the dialogue which some European countries have started with Syria. I deplore that," Chirac said.

"I understand that the American president's position is exactly the same as France's," Chirac said.

No, I am not putting too much stock in this just yet. France, and Chirac in particular, have a long record of double dealing and perfidious behavior. Still, it's a jolt to see Chirac acting as if actually understands reality on the ground as opposed to his usual behavior of believing in his wishes rather than fact.

Man-Eating Seals On The March

The Associated Press, late to the party as usual, finally gets around to noticing the Animal Uprising™ in California and the recent wave of seal terrorism there. They do report one thing I had not found earlier, though.

Now a series of sea-lion attacks on people in recent months has led experts to warn that the animals are not as cute and cuddly as they appear.

"People should understand these animals are out there not to attack people or humans. But they're out there to survive for themselves," said Jim Oswald, a spokesman for the Marine Mammal Center across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco.

In the most frightening of the recent episodes, a rogue sea lion bit 14 swimmers this month and chased 10 more out of the water at San Francisco's Aquatic Park, a sheltered lagoon near the bay. At least one victim suffered puncture wounds.

Some scientists speculate that the animals' aggressive behavior is being caused by eating fish contaminated by toxic algae, or by a shortage of food off the coast. But wildlife experts say even healthy sea lions are best left alone.

In Southern California in June, a sea lion charged several people on Manhattan Beach and bit a man before waddling into the water and swimming away. In Berkeley, a woman was hospitalized last spring after a sea lion took a chunk out of her leg.

Last year, a group of sea lions took over a Newport Beach marina and caused a vintage 50-foot yacht to capsize when they boarded it. And a lifeguard in Santa Barbara was bitten three times while swimming off El Capitan State Beach.

You realize what this means, don't you? The sea lions have discovered a new hobby. The sea lion version of cow tipping: yacht tipping! And lifeguards are going to have to learn to deal with the fact that life is not like Baywatch for them any longer. It's more like  Blue plate special watch.

The Enlightenment, Sold Cheap

Victor Davis Hanson has a long essay in the Opinion Journal today examining the cultural malaise that is selling out the hard-won victories for all of mankind that The Enlightenment provided. It is a painful examination.

Note also the constant subtext in this new self-censorship of our supposedly liberal age: the fear of radical Islam and its gruesome methods of beheadings, suicide bombings, improvised explosive devices, barbaric fatwas, riotous youth, petrodollar-acquired nuclear weapons, oil boycotts and price hikes, and fist-shaking mobs, as the seventh century is compressed into the twenty-first.

In contrast, almost daily in Europe, "brave" artists caricature Christians and Americans with impunity. And we know what explains the radical difference in attitudes to such freewheeling and "candid" expression–indeed, that hypocrisy of false bravado, of silence before fascists and slander before liberals is both the truth we are silent about, and the lie we promulgate.

There is, in fact, a long list of reasons, among them most surely the assurance that cruel critics of things Western rant without being killed. Such cowards puff out their chests when trashing an ill Oriana Fallaci or a comatose Ariel Sharon or beleaguered George W. Bush in the most demonic of tones, but they prove sunken and sullen when threatened by a thuggish Dr. Zawahiri or a grand mufti of some obscure mosque.

Second, almost every genre of artistic and intellectual expression has come under assault: music, satire, the novel, films, academic exegesis, and education. Somehow Europeans have ever so insidiously given up the promise of the Enlightenment that welcomed free thought of all kinds, the more provocative the better.

Yes, the present generation of Europeans really is heretical, made up of traitors of a sort. They themselves, not just their consensual governments, or the now-demonized American Patriot Act and Guantanamo detention center, or some invader across the Mediterranean, have endangered their centuries-won freedoms of expression–and out of worries over oil, or appearing as illiberal apostates of the new secular religion of multiculturalism, or another London or Madrid bombing. We can understand why outnumbered Venetians surrendered Cyprus to the Ottomans, and were summarily executed, or perhaps why the 16th-century French did not show up at Lepanto, but why this vacillation of present-day Europeans to defend the promise of the West, who are protected by statute and have not experienced war or hunger?

….

Consider some of the recent rabid outbursts by once sober, old-guard politicians of the Democratic Party. West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller insists that the world would be better off if Saddam were still running Iraq. Congressman John Murtha, of Pennsylvania, rushed to announce that our Marines were guilty of killing Iraqis in "cold blood" before they were tried. Illinois Senator Richard Durbin has compared our interrogators at Guantanamo Bay to Nazis and mass murderers, while Massachusetts Senator John Kerry said our soldiers have "terrorized" Iraqi women and children. The same John Kerry warned young Americans to study or they would end up in the volunteer army in Iraq–even though today's soldiers have higher educational levels than does the general public. But furor as well as fear, not logic, drives us in West to seek blame among the humane among us rather than the savagery of our enemies.

Billionaire leftist philanthropists seem to be confused about the nature of American society and politics that gave them everything they so sumptuously enjoy. Ted Turner of CNN fame and fortune said he resented President Bush asking Americans, after 9/11, to take sides in our war against Islamic terrorists. George Soros claimed that President Bush had improved on Nazi propaganda methods. Dreaming of killing an elected president, not a mass-murdering Osama Bin Laden, is a new national pastime. That is the theme of both a recent docudrama film and an Alfred Knopf book.

What are the proximate causes here in America that send liberal criticism over the edge into pathological hysteria? Is it only that George Bush is a singular polarizing figure of Christian and Texan demeanor? Or is the current left-wing savagery also a legacy of the tribal 1960s, when out-of-power protestors felt that expressions of speaking bluntly, even crudely, were at least preferable to "artificial" cultural restraint?

Or does the anger stem from the fact, that until last week, the Democrats had not elected congressional majorities in 12 years, and they've occupied the White House in only eight of the last 26 years. The left's current unruliness seems a way of scapegoating others for a more elemental frustration–that without scandal or an unpopular war they cannot so easily gain a national majority based on European-based beliefs. More entitlements, higher taxes to pay for them, gay marriage, de facto quotas in affirmative action, open borders, abortion on demand, and radical secularism–these liberal issues, at least for the moment, still don't tend to resonate with most Americans and so must be masked by opponents' scandals or overshadowed by a controversial war.

It is a long essay, but well worth taking the time to read and reflect upon it. There is a sickness upon the West right now that is self-inflicted. The enemies understand that and exploit it. Certain elements within our midst cooperate with that exploitation because of the sickness. It becomes a positive feedback loop, amplifying the effects of barbarous behavior from a relatively small group of people.

A Man Called Goat

I think every country on earth has a certain population of people that are, quite frankly, simply stupid. These are the people who appear to be completely unable to think through their actions and envision the consequences. An example of this would be the guy in Mahopac, New York who decided to celebrate Thanksgiving by spray painting some goats.

MAHOPAC, N.Y. - A man broke into a barn on Thanksgiving morning, spray-painted three pet goats and scattered pages of pornographic magazines on the floor, apparently to harass the property owner, police said Tuesday.

Drew Gagnon, 37, of Mahopac, was arrested the next day and was charged with burglary, criminal trespass and animal cruelty, said Lt. Brian Karst, of the Carmel police force, which covers Mahopac. The man who drove Gagnon to the barn, Douglas Bisio, 34, of Mahopac, was charged with criminal facilitation, police said.

"Obviously it's not an occurrence you see every day," Karst said. "I think it was a situation where this harassment got out of hand."

He would not elaborate on past instances of harassment or what the feud involved but said the suspects were known to the property owner.

Gail Fiero, owner of the property on Croton Falls Road, about 50 miles north of midtown Manhattan, said of the goats, "They're our pets. We just want to put this behind us."

Karst said he did not know specifically how the goats were harmed, but The Journal News reported on its Web site that a veterinarian said the goats became sick after eating the magazine pages. The vet, Stacey Dallas, also said the orange paint was on their genitals and described the act as torture.

The offenders face up to a year in jail on each of the various charges against them. I rather doubt their jail time will be made easier once the other inmates understand what they were imprisoned for.