BeldarBlog

NYT's margin of permissible untruthfulness

TO:	N.Z. Bear
FROM:	The New York Times
DATE:	Friday, October 29, 2004 1:38 PM

You're right that we screwed up in citing your website for the proposition that the hard-left website known as dKos receives a half-million separate individual viewers daily.  And you're right, of course, that the real number of separate individuals is certainly way, way less than that.  But we're the New York Times, and this fits our agenda.  So to hell with the truth and anyone like you who cares about it — we're not gonna print a correction.  We can get away with telling this much of a baldfaced lie, and there's nothing you can do about it.  Because we're the New York Times, and you — you're just a bear, probably in pajamas.  Nyah-nyah-nyah!

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No, that's not quite a direct quote.  But it's pretty close.  Follow the link to Mr. Bear's website to get the details.  I know that each and every one of my own million separate readers will agree with me that this is outrageous — and that Kos won't.  (Hat-tip InstaPundit.)

BeldarBlog hits one million Sitemeter page views

Woohoo!  A few minutes ago I took this screencap from my Sitemeter stats:

(The 67,485 pre-March 10, 2004 — when I installed the Sitemeter tracking software into my blog pages — is from my hosting service TypePad's own statistics screen, which measures hits in some slightly different way than Sitemeter's "page views" and "visits.")

This is certainly an appropriate occasion to again thank the various bloggers and (much more rare) mainstream media writers who've seen fit to link and discuss my posts on BeldarBlog; the Blogad advertisers (both of them!) and supporters who've thrown a buck or two into my Tip Jar (mostly symbolic but nevertheless much appreciated and highly motivational); and most of all, those of you who've visited to read my longwinded rants and musings.  [Insert heartfelt and gushing Sally Fields-at-the-Oscars impression here.]

I quite expect my traffic to crater after the election, and I'm reconciled to that prospect.  (Heavens forbid a long legal battle over the election results — which would probably be great for my blog traffic, but severely taxing on my mental health!)  But I'm still thrilled to pass this milestone today.  I think it's time for me to find a good bottle of California champagne to celebrate!  Any recommendations?

An argument with which I have no patience, from fools I will not suffer gladly: "We're making more terrorists!"

In my practice of law, it often pays me to suffer fools gladly.  Sometimes they're my clients — fools quite often find themselves in an astonishingly urgent need of good legal help, as it turns out —  and it literally pays me to suffer them patiently, and I'm certainly glad to be paid for it. 

But in politics, however, I'm not so motivated.  And I find myself set off into a short rant this fine fall afternoon by the stupidest argument I've seen floating around lately — one which, to my absolute amazement, I've heard advanced by a few normally very intelligent people as seriously as "scientists" once argued that decaying food spontaneously transmutes itself into flies, or that liver cancer is a sign of excessive quantities of bilious humors in the host's body.

"By invading Iraq," they say, "President Bush has caused more terrorists."  For example, I just saw a  blogad pimping a new book with a blurb from a WaPo review by Richard Clarke that gushes, "[Jonathan] Randal makes a convincing case that the U.S. war on Iraq has needlessly extended the lifetime and ferocity of this generation of terrorists as never before."  I haven't read Mr. Randal's book, and neither do I plan to waste the time or money to do so, because I already understand his "convincing case," and I know what it amounts to:

Rubbish and balderdash. 

Radical Islamic extremists are not like poison ivy — "don't scratch it, it'll only get worse!"  The necessary premise of this argument is, "If we'd only — (choose one or more) — (a) let them alone, (b) treat them with due respect, (c) allow them to drive Israel into the sea, then they wouldn't keep flying airplanes into our buildings, blowing up school busses, kidnapping and beheading civilians, etc."

These folks won't be happy until my two daughters are in burqas and they and I together are under the watchful eyes of thought-and-conduct police who'll correct any deviation from their approved path.  They won't be happy until our civilization is destroyed and replaced with one that they've dictated.

Does it make them angrier when we thwart their plans by liberating and bringing democracy to places like Afghanistan and Iraq?  You're damn right it does.  Does it make them so angry that they stream into enclaves of their fellow terrorists there to fight our military forces?  Damn straight, and bully for that!  That most definitely doesn't "[extend] the lifetime and ferocity of this generation of terrorists" — it puts them directly into the sights of the most effective and lethal military forces on the planet.  As remarked by one of our soldiers of the fayhadeen irregulars who were charging our M1-A1s and Bradleys while firing off light machine guns from the tops of Toyota pickup trucks during the brief toppling of Saddam's armies last year — with inevitable and spectacular failure as the result — "It's the perfect war, because they want to die, and we're glad to give them their wish."

If what we were doing in Iraq was the forcible conversion of Muslims to Christianity and the extinguishment of their own culture, then yes, we could be "breeding more terrorists," just as if we deliberately salted rotting meat with fly eggs we'd be breeding maggots and flies.  But I categorically reject — as racist and bigoted and shortsighted and wrong — the necessary presumption of the "we're making more terrorists" arguers that establishing democracy and freedom equate to that.  If a radical, democracy- and liberty-hating man is capable of being energized into action — into killing and terrorizing — by our spread of democracy and liberty, then by all means let's give him the impetus to pick up his AK-47 and put himself onto the active battleground of our choice, and then let's kill him there.

Are there some numbers of "potential terrorists" who will, through propaganda and hate-filled rhetoric, be persuaded that our establishment of democracy and liberty in Afghanistan and Iraq are instead anti-Islamic?  Yes, certainly — just as there were Japanese soldiers in World War II who sincerely believed they were fighting to thwart Western attempts to unseat their emperor (instead of Western attempts to interfere with their establishment of a brutal, repressive, and exploitative "Greater East Asia Coprosperity Sphere"); if they survived the war, they eventually revised their views, which is why the American embassy in Tokyo isn't beseiged by Japanese fanatics blowing themselves up while shouting "Long live the Emperor!"  That our enemies can use our actions in the meantime — any actions, for even our most passive course of promoting liberty and democracy will not satisfy them — to make converts of the gullible is unfortunate, but fundamentally (pun intended) beyond our control. 

And by far the most effective way of minimizing and, ultimately, eliminating (in one way or the other) the sincere-but-confused terrorist converts will be to finish the jobs that we started in those countries when we toppled their governing regimes.  Cutting and running will do the opposite — it will not only betray the less gullible and freedom- and liberty-loving Muslims (and others) in those countries, but encourage our enemies into believing that we are weak and easily defeated, and worse, lend credence to the deliberately misleading arguments of our enemies that our real motivations were to promote Christianity or serve the Jews of Israel or steal their oil wealth (or whatever).

So if you're all worked up into making this particular argument in my presence, don't be surprised if I snort derisively and wander off to do something more productive — say, clipping my fingernails or cleaning my toilets — instead of debating it with you at length.  You're a fool, and unless you're also a client (and I don't argue politics with my clients anyway), I have no obligation to suffer your foolishness gladly.

Osama bin Laden's invitation to Pres. Kerry to negotiate a truce

O American people, I am speaking to tell you about the ideal way to avoid another Manhattan, about war and its causes and results....

Your security is not in the hands of [Democratic presidential candidate John F.] Kerry or Bush or al Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands, and each state that does not harm our security will remain safe.

So says Osama bin Laden to the American public.  The very perceptive and eloquent Wretchard of Belmont Club has this to say about bin Laden's tape (boldface in original):

It is important to notice what he has stopped saying in this speech. He has stopped talking about the restoration of the Global Caliphate. There is no more mention of the return of Andalusia. There is no more anticipation that Islam will sweep the world. He is no longer boasting that Americans run at the slightest wounds; that they are more cowardly than the Russians. He is not talking about future operations to swathe the world in fire but dwelling on past glories. He is basically saying if you leave us alone we will leave you alone. Though it is couched in his customary orbicular phraseology he is basically asking for time out.

I agree.  But I respectfully disagree, in part, with Wretchard that "[t]he American answer to Osama's proposal will be given on Election Day."  Yes, if Pres. Bush is re-elected, bin Laden will have his answer.  But I don't think that bin Laden's tape is primarily an attempt to influence the course of the American election next Tuesday.  Rather, I think it's a very clear attempt to begin negotiations with a Kerry administration for a "cease-fire" in the Global War on Terror.

Of course, I don't believe for an instant that bin Laden's sincere.  Only a blithering fool would trust him.  But only a blithering fool would —

• have listened to the North Vietnamese/Viet Cong's "seven-point peace plan" during the Vietnam War, and have taken it at face value and endorsed it as the course that America should follow. 

• have believed Daniel Ortega's promises to reform his communist government in Nicaragua if only America would stop funding the contras. 

• have believed that a nuclear freeze and sharp cutbacks in America's military and intellligence programs would placate the Soviet Union and win the Cold War. 

• have believed that diplomacy would have gotten Saddam out of Kuwait in the last decade, or out of power in his own country in this one.   

• believe that North Korea will respond more favorably to unilateral negotiations with  the United States than to combined pressure in six-way talks that also involve South Korea, Japan, China, and Russia.

One such blithering fool may be elected President of the United States on Tuesday.  And Osama bin Laden — like Madame Binh, Daniel Ortega, a succession of Soviet dictators, Saddam, and Kim Jong Il before him — has already begun his sly attempts to manipulate that candidate.  So it is that this blithering fool's personal history of enthusiastically swallowing just this kind of bait, hook, line, and sinker — and then trying to base America's course upon it — scares me far more than anything Osama bin Laden could ever say.

Rumor mill buzzing on Kerry's discharge status

Update (Sat Oct. 30 @ 12:50am): This rumor hasn't yet panned out, as acknowledged by its original source, and may or may not ever pan out; see Update #3 below if you want the details.  I'm leaving the original text of this post in the extended entry/archive version, marked with strikethroughs.

If the rumor is not true, of course, it could be definitively proved so were Sen. Kerry to sign Standard Form 180.  That probably isn't going to happen, at least not before the election.  One remains free to draw whatever inferences one thinks are justified based on Sen. Kerry's refusal, but they are, at best, only inferences — in this context, guesses.  — Beldar

-----[original post and numbered updates follow]-----

My email inbox is brimming. 

Yes, I'm aware that there are rumors buzzing about a breaking big story on Sen. Kerry's Navy discharge, about which I last wrote in a post entitled "Was Kerry's original discharge less than honorable?" on October 13th.  My conclusion then was that records analyzed by reporter Thomas Lipscomb in a New York Sun article could support the hypothesis that Sen. Kerry received something other than a full-fledged honorable discharge.  But as you'll see if you read my comments thread, there were lots of contrary arguments as well.  And as I recognized in my last update to that post, there was at least one other plausible contrary inference from the records — equally speculative — that could have explained what seemed to be an odd statutory reference in a page from Kerry's records displayed on his campaign website.

The immediate source of the rumors is a [since-pulled —  see updates below] post by "NavyChief" on the SwiftVets site (but their server is likely to be overwhelmed shortly):

Okay, folks.

We got it finally. We have the Former Secretary of the Navy who stated, "Yes, Kerry did receive an Other Than Honorable Discharge".

Stay tuned for more...

Now to MAKE THE MEDIA AND CONGRESS LISTEN!

Go my brothers and sisters -- spread the news to everyone!!!!

- Chief

PoliPundit, Power Line, and Redstate all have threads up, plus check the Trackback link from Power Line and also the Trackbacks to my post here.

I have no inside info at this point, although I would not be surprised if, as PoliPundit's post suggests, this rumor may refer to something about to be published by Mr. Lipscomb.  I know he's been continuing to work on the story, but I don't know any details. 

I repeat that these are, at this stage, rumors, and I humbly request that anyone linking this post make clear that such is my present opinion. 

Based on my past experience with him and reading of his work, though, like many others, I've found NavyChief — a retired Navy Chief Petty Officer and father of five named Troy Jenkins from San Antonio, who's included (at about the 3-minute, 55-second mark) in the fourth of the SwiftVets' "mini-documentaries" released yesterday, entitled "No Man Left Behind (Pt. 1)" — to be a diligent, bright, and knowledgeable fellow.  Like all of us, he's human, and he's occasionally stumbled in his digging through Kerry's records, but when he's done so, he's acknowledged it quickly.  His new post on the SwiftVets site certainly indicates, however, that this is more than an inference drawn from records — and instead a former Navy Secretary, speaking, one would presume, from personal knowledge.  (See also this very provocative post, from a blogger I'm unacquainted with and hence cannot vouch for even by reputation.)

As they say ... "developing."  If this falls through, I'll be among the first to concede that point.  If it pans out, I admit that I'll be tickled pink.

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Update #1 (Fri Oct 29 @ 2:35pm):  The original thread on the SwiftVets forum has been pulled.  Make of that what you will; I don't know what to make of it, but it would seem to be equally consistent with either (1) a glitch in the story that casts doubt upon it or (2) a desire to release the story in a less haphazard fashion.

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Update #2 (Fri Oct 29 @ 2:52pm):  This thread suggests that NavyChief's post was pulled because it represented his personal statement rather than something that the SwiftVets organization is yet ready to be identified with:

We have been advised that material was recently posted to this forum referencing the nature of John Kerry's discharge from the military service. That material has been deleted from this forum.

Please be advised that posts made to this forum express the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Swift Vets and POWs for Truth.

That strikes me as prudent at this point, regardless of whether the rumor turns out to be well-founded or not.  This is still just a rumor.

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Update #3 (Sat Oct 30 @ 12:50am):  From a post on the SwiftVets forums from NavyChief:

New information has developed on Kerry's Discharge. We have been proven correct in our assertions, however without the proper folks coming forward this will not be public until after the elections.

- Chief

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Update #4 (Sat Oct 30 @ 3:18am):  D'oh!  A sharp-eyed reader emailed me to note that the link just above is a very old one going back to Thursday, Oct. 28th.  Mea culpa maxima.  I'm not sure what the current status of efforts/research is, but we still seem to be somewhere in the rumors stage.

Lessons from Afghanistan already forgotten

One factor working against Pres. Bush's reelection is the American public's notoriously short attention span and lack of historical perspective.  But Charles Krauthammer hasn't forgotten Afghanistan:

Within days of Sept. 11, the clueless airhead president that inhabits Michael Moore's films and Tina Brown's dinner parties had done this: forced Pakistan into alliance with us, isolated the Taliban, secured military cooperation from Afghanistan's northern neighbors, and authorized a radical war plan involving just a handful of Americans on the ground, using high technology and local militias to utterly rout the Taliban.

President Bush put in place a military campaign that did in two months what everyone had said was impossible: defeat an entrenched, fanatical, ruthless regime in a territory that had forced the great British and Soviet empires into ignominious retreat. Bush followed that by creating in less than three years a fledgling pro-American democracy in a land that had no history of democratic culture and was just emerging from 25 years of civil war.

Bush could have rested on his laurels, left Saddam "in his box," and probably cruised to reelection — if he was motivated by polls and personal gain.  If he'd done so, Sen. Kerry doubtless would be carping now that the Bush administration was ignoring the grave and gathering threat in Iraq.  But what conclusions can we draw about their relative fitness to lead the Global War on Terrorism just from Afghanistan?  Concludes Mr. Krauthammer,

This election comes down to a choice between one man's evolution and the other man's resolution. With his endlessly repeated Tora Bora charges, Kerry has made Afghanistan a major campaign issue. So be it. Whom do you want as president? The man who conceived the Afghan campaign, carried it through without flinching when it was being called a "quagmire" during its second week and has seen it through to Afghanistan's transition to democracy? Or the retroactive genius, who always knows what needs to be done after it has already happened — who would have done "everything" differently in Iraq, yet in Afghanistan would have replicated Bush's every correct, courageous, radical and risky decision — except one. Which, of course, he would have done differently. He says. Now.

John Kerry, neatly summed up in three words, nine letters, two punctuation marks:  "He says.  Now."

France vs. U.S. military

I don't usually blog about polls — I think they're all basically witchcraft and they have a pernicious effect on politics, the quantum mechanics principle that "observation changes a system" writ large and ugly.  But I'm bemused to find that members of the French public supposedly support Sen. Kerry by almost the same margin by which American military personnel support Pres. Bush.  (Hat-tip John J. Miller on The Corner.)

I'm also amused by the banner ad running atop Gerald Baker's provocative London Times essay that's republished in the Weekly Standard, entitled "Bush's Enemies: They are the reason he deserves reelection."  The ad?  "Become fluent ... in French! German! Italian! Spanish! ... with Champs-Elysées Audiomagazines!"

Best title I've read in a while

I think the scenario he paints is extremely improbable, but I'm hugely amused by Mark Moller's essay in Slate entitled "I Know What You Did Last Recess." 

Birth

I'm watching Nicole Kidman on "The Charlie Rose Show" promoting her upcoming new movie, Birth.  I'm fairly infatuated with her anyway, and the movie looks like lotsa fun (although there's apparently a very controversial bath scene).  Plus the movie has Lauren Bacall — I adore her.  Seeing Ms. Kidman in the movie clips with short, short hair is kind of shocking, but she's still hot.  And oooooh — I love hearing her responding to Charlie's questions in her native Australian accent (which she so effectively suppresses in her movies to be "in character," but which I find absolutely compelling).

Tommy Franks on the missing Iraq explosives

I haven't blogged about the missing explosives in Iraq because I don't have any particular expertise on the topic and because others have done a fine job of sorting through the wildly varying press accounts.  But here's something on topic from someone who does have some expertise — Gen. Tommy Franks, at a Bush campaign rally today in Westlake, Ohio:

George W. Bush is a leader who knew that Saddam Hussein was a threat to the world and to the United States of America, and removed him from power. (Applause.) George W. Bush is a leader who knows that our troops, as of right now, have cleared 10,000 ammunition and weapons sites in Iraq. He knows that they have destroyed 240,000 tons of munitions in Iraq. He knows that they have under control — (applause) — he knows that they have under control another 162,000 tons of munitions in Iraq. We're talking about George W. Bush who knows, who understands that we do not yet have all the facts about 380 tons of munitions in Iraq. And he is a President who will look at you and say, we don't yet have the facts, but we will get the facts. George W. Bush. (Applause.)

In George W. Bush, you're talking about a leader who does not step out every day of his life and make more wild accusations. You're talking about a leader who actually cares about our troops, about their families, and about our veterans. You're talking about a leader who actually respects all those who serve our country with dignity and with honor. You're talking about George W. Bush. (Applause.)

Sen. Kerry has the luxury of not actually being the President and therefore not having to worry about his wild speculations and accusations directly affecting international affairs in the way that comments from a sitting President might.  However, he is responsible for the effect his comments and advertisements and spin may have on military morale — and voters can and should take that into account next Tuesday.

Here's Sen. Kerry responding to questioning tonight on the topic from Tom Brokaw (elipses in original):

Brokaw: This week you've been very critical of the president because of the missing explosives in Iraq.The fact is, senator, we still don't know what happened to those explosives. How many for sure that were there. Who might have gotten away with them? Is it unfair to the president, just as you believe he's been unfair to you, to blame him for that?

Kerry: No. It's not unfair. Because what we do know, from the commanders on the ground, is that they went there, as they marched to Baghdad. We even read stories today that they broke locks off of the doors, took photographs of materials in there. There were materials. And they left.

Brokaw: The flip side of that is that if you had been president, Saddam Hussein would still be in power. Because you...

Kerry: Not necessarily at all.

Brokaw: But you have said you wouldn't go to war against him...

Kerry: That's not true. Because under the inspection process, Saddam Hussein was required to destroy those kinds of materials and weapons.

Brokaw: But he wasn't destroying them...

Kerry: But that's what you have inspectors for. And that's why I voted for the threat of force. Because he only does things when you have a legitimate threat of force. It's absolutely impossible and irresponsible to suggest that if I were president, he wouldn't necessarily be gone. He might be gone. Because if he hadn't complied, we might have had to go to war. And we might have gone to war. But if we did, I'll tell you this, Tom. We'd have gone to war with allies in a way that the American people weren't carrying the burden. And the entire world would have understood why we were doing it.

Brokaw had the poise not to snicker and say "Yeah, right."  He lacked the integrity, though, to ask, "So how many more years of violating the U.N. resolutions, how many more resolutions without effect would you have required, and name one country that would have joined us with boots on the ground after another two years and ten more resolutions?"  In the meantime, I'm still waiting for Sen. Kerry (or any of my targeted lefty bloggers) to respond to my post entitled "How would Saddam 'not necessarily be in power' if Kerry'd been President?"  Not even my Kerry-supporting readers had the temerity to posit a plausible scenario in which a President Kerry would have accomplished an Iraqi regime change during the last four years.

The whole Brokaw interview is pretty interesting (don't miss Sen. Kerry defending his comment about the Veep's daughter by gratutously invading the familial privacy of another one of his former opponents), but I especially liked this snarly bit on a different topic than the missing munitions (boldface added):

Brokaw: Someone has analyzed the President's military aptitude tests and yours, and concluded that he has a higher IQ than you do.

Kerry: That's great. More power. I don't know how they've done it, because my record is not public. So I don't know where you're getting that from.

"My record is not public": another exaggeration.  We know your Senate record, Senator.  We know your public statements.  We just don't know your secrets, due to the effectiveness of your stonewalling — and boy, do you have a lot of them.  (About which, more later — maybe tomorrow.)

Bravo to Brokaw for having the stones to ask Kerry about his IQ.  But jeers for missing the world's biggest opportunity, at the best time in history, to ask Kerry:  "Why won't you sign Standard Form 180, Senator?"