Ray Robison: Pointing out the obvious to the oblivious

Brilliant move of the day!

I was reading about the incident going on at the capital and saw this: www.breitbart.com off of Drudge

Steven Broderick, press spokesperson for Rep. William Delahunt, D- Mass., was in his car in the Rayburn garage Friday morning getting ready to drive his boss to the airport, when he was ordered by a Capitol Police officer to park the car and put his hands on the steering wheel. The officer then told him to run toward an exit where other officers where gathered.

"He just told me to run and don't look back," Broderick said.

Not to disparage the heroes of the Capital Hill police...but... is it really a good idea to send a guy running at another group of officers in a situation like this?

Hastert and the DOJ informant

Bob at Confederateyankee picks up the issue of Speaker of the House Denny Hastert claiming that the DOJ leak was a political reprisal from within DOJ for his stand against the seizure of Congressman Jefferson's effects at his congressional office. Bob thinks Hastert is seeing things, but I think Hastert is close to the mark. 

It seems to me, and this is just opinion as I have no proof, that someone in DOJ is throwing Hastert a brush back, but not for the reason the speaker thinks. I believe a democratic operative in the DOJ has recognized the potential to divide the republican party and smear Hastert in one shot. This informed source within DOJ has to know that Hastert is not under serious investigation. Maybe his name has came up along with the name of every other congressman or congresswoman when the DOJ started looking at ties and communications, so technically, this person is probably accurate when they say he is "in the mix" along with everybody else on the hill. And then Hastert comes out and blasts the President over the Jefferson search and seizure. A perfect chance to leak info on Hastert and make it look like retaliation from the Bush Admin.

Sounds too conspiratorial you say? It really isn't so grandiose a plan. One person with malicious intent could have done it. By definition, a conspiracy involves two or more people. So it is not a conspiracy.

Just too clever you say? Watch the Lindsey Lohan movie Mean Girls some time. A teen age girl would be able to come up with this plan. It is not a brilliant or clever plot, just the wrong person in the wrong place at the right time.

This is not unprecedented either: Washington Post

As the bureau's second- and third-ranking official during a period when the FBI was battling for its independence against the administration of President Richard M. Nixon, Felt had the means and the motive...

One person with means and motive, a political motive. Now to be sure, the mode of attack was more direct in the Felt case, but it is easy to make a comparison. One high official with means and motive leaked information to the press to bring down a President and was regarded as a hero. Doesn't sound so unbelievable now does it?

Pointing out the obvious to the oblivious

Okay, this is gonna be fun. Now that Ken Lay has been found guilty, the brain trust at HufPo are wetting themselves with comments like these:

"Anyone ready to place bets on how soon Chimpy McFlightsuit pardons these bastards? Days? Minutes?"

AND

"Shoemaker has been drunk on rightwing kool-aid, in the ever popular fascist flavor, far too long. Lay was one of Bush's boys when Dubya was pretending to govern Texas, and gave millions to Dubya and other Rethugs so he could go on f---ing over everyone he ever met. To think that Lay was Clinton's boy is to believe that Bush is a good president. "Nuff said."

AND

"These two will be the first of what will become a long list of pardons by bush"

And these little gems of wisdom have been promoted in the comments section of the HufPo column to the "best of" category.

Hey uh, brainiacs, it was the DOJ, part of the executive branch of which President Bush is the chief executive that INVESTIGATED the crimes, ARRESTED the criminals, CHARGED them, TRIED them, and got the CONVICTIONS of ENRON executives! So since you all feel so stongly about corporate corruption, make sure to send the President a THANK YOU note.

Oh, and one more thing. Speaking of pardons: Time

"A VOICE FROM THE PAST (2/28/01 [a.m.]): Former housing secretary Henry Cisneros, who was among those granted last-minute pardons from the former president, tells the Dallas Morning News that Clinton granted his pardon in part to remedy the "extremes" of the independent counsels. Clinton reportedly told Cisneros (who was accused of lying to the FBI about payments he allegedly made to a former mistress) that he suspected the HUD chief was investigated because he was close to Clinton."

So if Libby gets convicted of lying to the FBI, it is only fair that he get a pardon......right?   heh

Juan Cole says chemical weapons are not really WMD

Juan Cole

Wow, I have heard some convoluted reasoning around the old blogosphere, but this is a new level of “irrationalization” (just made that up. Like it? )

Seems Juan has asked his sycophants to explain to the right-wingers how chemical weapons are not really WMD but instead are properly categorized as battlefield weapons.

I don’t know much about Juan, but perhaps he should stick to his field of expertise and this ain’t it:

To start, one of the odd little arrows in the quiver of my critics is that I said that chemical weapons are more properly characterized as battlefield weapons than as "weapons of mass destruction." One of my concerns in saying this is that chemical weapons are in fact difficult to deliver in an attack on another country. I think sweeping them up into "weapons of mass destruction" gives the wrong impression and becomes a blank check for an attack by warmongers on any country that possesses even a small stockpile of them.

My brilliant and obvious response:

Wow this is a bit silly isn't it? A chemical weapon can be a battlefield weapon yet easily falls into the category of Weapon of Mass Destruction. To try to characterize it by one of its capabilities to the exclusion of the others is pretty dim. It can be an area denial weapon to shape a battlefield, an obstacle to an advancing army, or terrorist tool. While it is all of these, there is absolutely no reason not to consider it a Weapon of Mass Destruction because that is exactly what it does:

1) It is an area weapon, killing indiscriminately in the area in which it is deployed.
2) It can wipe out an entire city, i.e. Halabja (several thousands dead and save me the argument that it wasn’t that bad, I have seen the captured Iraqi videos and it is far worse than most Americans can even imagine)
3) There is no protection except with specially designed equipment.
4) It can be persistent in nature lasting for hours depending on weather and type.
5) Its effect is systemic attacking the body as a whole instead of a localized area making it much more difficult to treat.

These are all characteristics of WMD.

And then there is this bizarre little statement:

“One of my concerns in saying this is that chemical weapons are in fact difficult to deliver in an attack on another country.”

Says who? By what standard? The same delivery systems that use conventional warheads can often be converted to unconventional use. Therefore it is no more difficult than delivering a conventional weapon. If you are saying it is difficult to fire a chemical warhead into Washington DC from Tehran, yes it is. But the reality is that there are other deliver vehicles, water supply, spray from aircraft that can be done fairly easily if the chemical is smuggled into the foreign country. And the fact is that “ease of use” has nothing to do with whether a weapon system is a WMD. It is pretty hard to build and deliver a nuclear bomb. Does that mean it isn’t a WMD?

Madeleine Albright criticizes President Bush

CNN off Drudge

"Some of his language is really quite over the top," Albright told Reuters on Sunday during a trip to London to promote her book. "When he says 'God is on our side', it's very different from (former U.S. President Abraham) Lincoln saying 'We have to be on God's side.'"

AND

The 69-year-old, who worked for Carter in the late 1970s and was Clinton's secretary of state from 1997-2001, says the war in Iraq "may eventually rank among the worst foreign policy disasters in U.S. history."

She describes it as arguably worse than the Vietnam War -- not in terms of the number of people killed but because the Middle East is a more volatile region than southeast Asia.

Of course, Albright is a great judge of Presidential character: CNN

Clinton did meet this morning with his Cabinet and afterward, his appointees voiced their support. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said, "I believe the allegations are completely untrue."

Hillary Blames Republicans for Rise in Abortions- Again

Okay, so yesterday Senator Clinton was blaming Republicans for a rise in abortion rates. She has done this before. The really rotton thing is that NO ONE ever calls her on it. They may argue about her reasoning, but they never go after the real issue, it is a lie in the first place. Don't believe me, check out this article from the last time Hillary made this same claim: Biography of a Bad Statistic (factcheck.org)

Clinton : But unfortunately, in the last few years, while we are engaged in an ideological debate instead of one that uses facts and evidence and common sense, the rate of abortion is on the rise in some states . In the three years since President Bush took office, 8 states saw an increase in abortion rates (14.6% average increase), and four saw a decrease (4.3% average), so we have a lot of work still ahead of us.

Factcheck.org:

Politicians from Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Howard Dean have recently contended that abortions have increased since George W. Bush took office in 2001.

This claim is false. It's based on an an opinion piece that used data from only 16 states. A study by the Alan Guttmacher Institute of 43 states found that abortions have actually decreased. Update, May 26: The author of the original claim now concedes that the Guttmacher study is "significantly better" than his own.

Is it too much to ask that one news organization look at the data to show the very foundation of her argument is wrong?

Alabama Democrat a racist

Newsday via drudge report; from the party of tolerence....

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- A Democratic candidate for Alabama attorney general denies the Holocaust occurred and said Friday he will speak this weekend in New Jersey to a "pro-white" organization that is widely viewed as being racist.

Larry Darby concedes his views are radical, but he said they should help him win wide support among Alabama voters as he tries to "reawaken white racial awareness" with his campaign against Mobile County District Attorney John Tyson.

As a current Alabaman and a conservative republican let me just say how disgusted I am by this. There is no place in any party for this type of mindset.

Ryan Mauro interview with General Ali Ibrahim al-Tikriti

Hi all, been away for awhile wheeling and dealing working up the book and a very special project that I hope to announce in the next week.

Here is a great interview with an Iraqi General done by Ryan Mauro...must see this video and read this interview. 

Thanks to all the great comments I haven't been able to reply to individually.

I am going out on a limb here to do a little prediction. I believe that the President's support has bottomed out. But that is about to change. I believe a lot of people who criticized Bush will go mute very soon and we will see a huge turn around in his support. Stand by for an announcement  in the next week. Thanks all.

Announcement

Due to constraints on my time, I will be blogging less for the next few months at least. We will continue to provide original translations of the Iraq documents as we can, but our focus is shifting to another project related to the documents. We have only begun the process of taking these documents to a book form, but the early indicators are very positive. It is our intent to publish a book within six months if possible. The project will involve me, Sammi, another leading translator  Jveritas (Joseph), and a coworker of mine who is a former MI army officer.

I will try to stay in touch with the wonderful people who make this site work by contributing. Make sure you stop by daily to check for new translations. That effort will be in parallel with the book project as it involves some of the same work. And if there is anything in the news I just have to sound off about, it will be here.

It is our desire to publish a book that will provide overwhelming evidence to any reasonable person that Saddam was a clear and imminent threat. We all believe that evidence is available and only needs to be mass marketed to ensure that moderate America will realize that President Bush did not lie. And with that realization, we hope to provide reason for the country to unite (as much as possible) behind the President and show the enemies of our great nation that any hope they had of stealing a military victory by American disunity will fail.

BTW, as we prepare to take our proposal to the publishers, it would be a help if we could show your comments of interest and support to the project in the comments section of this post. This may be the first time that the blogosphere creates a "petition" to prove a books marketability. So if you want to have the book to show your liberal friends when they say "Bush Lied, People Died" then sound off here for the publisher and tell them you will buy it. Thanks again to The American Thinker, Confederate Yankee, Free Republic, Pajamas Media, RBT, Sammi, Joseph, Mark, Scott, the two Jeffs and others who keep this blog interesting (sorry if I forgot you- in a hurry).