Blogoland

You want to see what real stupidity is? Check out this misinformed rant of a post by Bryan Preston at Hot Air, in which he ascribes all sorts of evil intentions to the Associated Press for a single headline on a story that appeared on Yahoo! He dubs it the "shameless AP journalistic crime of the day," for a garbled headline that seemed to suggest U.S. troops were battling Iraqi troops (though the article's first sentence clearly states to any who might be confused: "U.S. and Iraqi troops battled Sunni insurgents...") But that's all too complicated for Mr. Preston.

And, by the way, Mr. Preston, I have no idea whether the dastardly Kim Gamel wrote that headline. But it's true that writers almost never write their own headlines. But in the future, feel free to attack others based on wild supposition. It only further erodes your credibility.

Finally, wouldn't it be far more likely that the headline writer accidentally left out "with insurgents" from "U.S., Iraqi troops clash in Baghdad?" I know it doesn't further any lame-brained conspiracy theory of yours that the press wants to sabotage our entire war effort, but it might be worthwhile to think these things over before you press the "Publish" button.

Hugh Hewitt:

The senators most likely to rethink their support for such a resolution after the testimony by General Petraeus that such a resolution would be an encouragement to our enemy are Minnesota's Norm Coleman, Maine's Susan Collins and Oregon's Gordon Smith. All three are serious senators and good people...

Dean Barnett writing on Hugh Hewitt's site:

The problem is most of our congressmen don’t look beyond the surface. So when a lightweight like Republican Gordon Smith of Oregon refers to the surge as a “Hail Mary pass,” I’m quite willing to believe that he says such things not out of malice but out of ignorance regarding the tactical sea-change that the surge represents.

Oh, and he's also an "idiot," and further:

Frankly, there’s a greater likelihood of unicorns flying out of my ass this afternoon than Gordon Smith demonstrating a comprehensive understanding of anything.

So what did we learn from the intellectual heavyweights at HughHewitt.com? That the Senator from Oregon is a good and serious lightweight idiot-man.

Anyone home?

What else is there to say about this "Pledge" that the Hugh Hewitt wants -- I guess -- people to sign and then send to their Republican Senators.

If the United States Senate passes a resolution, non-binding or otherwise, that criticizes the commitment of additional troops to Iraq that General Petraeus has asked for and that the president has pledged, and if the Senate does so after the testimony of General Petraeus on January 23 that such a resolution will be an encouragement to the enemy, I will not contribute to any Republican senator who voted for the resolution. Further, if any Republican senator who votes for such a resolution is a candidate for re-election in 2008, I will not contribute to the National Republican Senatorial Committee unless the Chairman of that Committee, Senator Ensign, commits in writing that none of the funds of the NRSC will go to support the re-election of any senator supporting the non-binding resolution.

Don't criticize the president or we whack you. He really is a parody of himself.

Ya get what you pay for.

"Live-blogging" anything, especially, the President's State of the Union, is an exceptionally lame endeavor. Especially if you have nothing to say, other than incisive comments like

Pelosi rockets to her feet...

Or

No Pelosi applause...

Or

Nancy Pelosi quickly started applause.

Please, bloggers, spare yourself embarrassment Just don't do it.

Here, he's a scold against "single-sourcing" stories. Though, to be fair to AP, I think we can chalk up the Obama-is-a-Sleeper-Cell-of-one tale to the "making shit up" wing of sourcing. And no word from the Captain on whether we can trust as a "single source" the U.S. Armed Services or the President or a spokesman for a big corporation.

Still, one wonders how the Captain felt about such things in February 2004?

Surprise!

Who's Covering for Kerry?

Power Line notes late tonight that the Sun in Britain is reporting that a major US
television network is suppressing an interview Kerry's alleged paramour gave detailing their relationship

Ah, to be young and gullible.

Bryan Preston has just returned from his trip to Iraq with Michelle Malkin. What did he learn?

Michelle and I spent four days patrolling the environs around Forward Operating Base Justice in north and west Baghdad last week. FOB Justice is near one functional neighborhood, Khadimiyah, one mostly recovered neighborhood, Al Salam, one dysfunctional neighborhood, Al Hurriyah, and an al Qaeda-influenced area the name of which I never learned.

So Bryan went to Iraq to report on the situation there, was taken to several neighborhoods by the military, and then acknowledges in the first paragraph that he was too lazy, incurious or incompetent to learn the name of the neighborhood he reported from. Calling or emailing a Public Affiars Officer to you know, find out, was apparently out of the question.

Later, he excoriates the "mainstream media" for employing methods that "feed the insurgency’s propaganda needs and damage our efforts to win" in Iraq. Mr. Preston also informs us that:

The media is incurious.

Maybe. But I bet they find out the name of that neighborhood they went to on their four-day reporting trip.

Dean Barnett is a rising star in Right Wingistan. He's essentially a co-blogger on Hugh Hewitt's site and his debut Townhall column features this white-knuckle lede: "Oh, dear. They're back." On a recent post he gave the big thumb's up for "savagery" in war (see also, Haditha, yay!), and then unleashed this stirring bit of rhetoric:

Yes, it’s sad that we find ourselves once again in a situation where we’ll have to be savage. But denying the present-day reality along with all relevant historic precedents is pointless and obtuse. These are the challenges of our day. Let’s ride out to meet them.

Let's ride out to meet them?

Let's ride out to meet them?

Now where have we heard this before?

Théoden: "So much death. What can men do against such reckless hate?"

Aragorn: "Ride out with me."

[Théoden turns to face Aragorn.]

Aragorn: "Ride out and meet them."

Théoden: "For death and glory?"

Aragorn: "For Rohan. For your people."

Gimli: "The sun is rising."

So this is what it's come to. Invoking movie versions of children's fantasy books. I guess it was a natural progression for the Keyboard Kommandos.

P.S. Credit goes to the commenter on Hewitt's blog who drily noted: "Yeah I mean that worked in Lord of the Rings right?"

Somebody's to blame for our failures in Iraq. Helpfully, the estimable classicist Victor Davis Hanson provides some answers on who:

Two things then happened, in that first brief lost window [of April to July, 2003]: the political, economic, and social reform necessary to starve the nascent insurgency of
popular support in and outside of Iraq stalled, and second, we turned to reactive policing, under the glare of the international media, rather than ruthlessly killing the terrorists — and so insidiously lost the fear and respect from our enemies gained in the war. In a war imbued with symbolism withdrawing from Fallujah or giving Sadr a reprieve was nearly fatal to the notion of Western lethality.

You really have to give Hanson props for this. First our efforts "stalled." Somehow. Why is that? Maybe it was because we had absolutely no plan whatsoever once we militarily seized Baghdad, as Thomas Ricks so ably demonstrates in his book, Fiasco.

No, no, no, silly one. It's because the U.S. was operating under the glare of the horrid, terrorist-loving International Media. Oh, if only we could have somehow expelled those wretched scribblers and naysayers, then - Then! - we could have created Shangri-la on the Tigris and Euphrates. Oh it'd be grand. By ruthlessly killing, you know, the terrorists.

Except we didn't know exactly who the terrorists were. So we just rounded up everyone (see, Maj. Gen. Odierno, 4th I.D.), threw them in Abu Ghraib, tortured and humiliated them, and created even more terrorists and terrorist-supporters. But those ham-handed tactics wouldn't be good enough for the likes of Prof. Hanson, whose brilliant solution appears to be: just kill them all. After all, we're at war, stupid! To make an omelette sometimes you have to ruthlessly exterminate a few innocent Iraqis.

And woe betide the man who advocated "reactive policing." I assume it was a liberal pantywaist General who did so. But as Maj. Gen. Petraeus showed us in Mosul, the "Kill Them All" approach or "Everyone's a Potential Terrorist, so Shoot at Will" wasn't really the answer at all.

But don't tell Prof. Hanson about that.

So many burning questions, so much self-inflicted stupidity.

Is Jamil Hussein a real person? Why yes, yes he is.

Is Ayatollah Khamenei still, in fact, alive? Why yes, yes he is.

Was John Kerry snubbed by soldiers in Iraq? Why no, no he was not.

Ah, well, Greenwald beat me to it. But my headline is better.

Genocide as national policy:

FRED BARNES: And I don't think, and we see it in the media, in particular, that the Sunnis should be treated as some abused minority. They have accepted no guilt, no responsibility for Saddam's crimes . . . They have mounted the insurgency, and those who weren't a part of it allowed it. They provided the ocean that allowed these insurgents to swim in. . . .

I'm not worried about harmony. What I'm worried about is crushing the Sunni insurgency, because nothing good can happen until then. There's no offer that can be made that somebody can accept. First you have to have security. You can't have this level of violence there caused mostly by the Sunni insurgency. They're the ones who are carrying out all the suicide bombings, and they can get mad about it because they think it wasn't a dignified execution, I say so what.

It's especially instructive to see how Barnes mixes up everyday Sunnis who may or may not sympathize with the insurgency with the full-out fighters. In his world, conducting a sham of an execution that inflames the entire Sunni population matters little. You know, because they're bad people and they started it all!