Three Years Later

Three years after three thousand died (including three personal friends), NRO's Victor Davis Hanson takes stock of radical Islam:

The perversion not of religion per se, but of Islam; the singular method of suicide bombing rarely found elsewhere; the frequent resort to the unique grotesquery of beheading; the now-common display of abject incompetence on the battlefield coupled with craven slaughter of the noncombatant and civilian aid worker. At some point, the leaders of the Western world (if there are any left besides George W. Bush and Tony Blair) are going to look at all this madness worldwide and come to the bitter conclusion that there is a disgusting pattern: Not every Muslim is a fascist terrorist, but almost every fascist terrorist is a Muslim.

Hanson also excoriates the terror apologists' excuse "of course the Palestinians (or Chechens or Iraqis) use terror--that's all they have."

If the Estonians can break away from post-Soviet oppression and free themselves from Russian authoritarianism without slaughtering schoolchildren and blowing up airplanes, then the Chechens can as well — but only if they wish to create democracy rather than an Islamic fascist state.

Finally, Hanson shows why even appeasing the radical Muslim demand de jour (more West Bank land, French "insensitivity" to Islamic pride, building a reactor in Iran, a semi-autonomous Chechnya) won't stop terrorism:

[These issues] in theory could be discussed, argued about, and adjudicated through democratic dialogue.

But that is impossible. For you see, the real problem is the democratic dialogue itself — unknown in the Arab Middle East and much of the Islamic world, and a hindrance to both sharia and the pan-Arabist thug with epaulettes and sunglasses.

Read the whole thing.

Fact Checking--Traditional Media Loses the Mandate of Heaven

CBS's Sixty Minutes re-opened the "Bush AWOL at National Guard" story, based on purported newly unearthed documents from the Texas Guard. The memos say Bush was a no-show, but political influence forced the Guard to cover-up. The formerly sensible, but now Kerry fan, Andrew Sullivan pronounced the information "devastating."

Nope--turns out, the papers are forged. Powerline and LGF have the details, including (from Powerline):

UPDATE 12: In the August 18, 1973 memo "discovered" by 60 Minutes, Jerry Killian purportedly writes:

Staudt has obviously pressured Hodges more about Bush. I'm having trouble running interference and doing my job.

But wait! Reader Amar Sarwal, citing Peter Nuss, points out that General Staudt, who thought very highly of Lt. Bush, retired in 1972.

Two points:

1. The media will sacrifice their honor to beat Bush.
2. Dispersed bloggers kick the media's ass.

Tune-out the nets, cancel the newspaper--the mandate of heaven's moved on. Old media's dead; long live blogs.

More:

Mark Steyn provides play-by-play for "the day old media died:"

Unfortunately for CBS, Dan Rather's hairdresser sucks up so much of the budget that there was nothing left for any fact-checking, so the ''60 Minutes'' crew rushed on air with a damning National Guard memo conveniently called ''CYA'' that Bush's commanding officer had written to himself 32 years ago. ''This was too hot not to push,'' one producer told the American Spectator. Hundreds of living Swiftvets who've signed affidavits and are prepared to testify on camera -- that's way too cold to push; we'd want to fact-check that one thoroughly, till, say, midway through John Kerry's second term. But a handful of memos by one dead guy slipped to us by a Kerry campaign operative -- that meets ''basic standards'' and we gotta get it out there right away.

The only problem was the memo. Amazingly, this guy at the Air National Guard base, Lt. Col. Killian, had the only typewriter in Texas in 1973 using a prototype version of the default letter writing program of Microsoft Word, complete with the tiny little superscript thingy that automatically changes July 4th to July 4^th. To do that on most 1973 typewriters, you had to unscrew the keys, grab a hammer and give them a couple of thwacks to make the "t" and "h" squish up all tiny, and even think it looked a bit wonky. You'd think having such a unique typewriter Killian would have used a less easily traceable model for his devastating ''CYA'' memo. Also, he might have chosen a font other than Times New Roman, designed for the Times of London in the 1930s and not licensed to Microsoft by Rupert Murdoch (the Times' owner) until the 1980s.

Killian is no longer around to confirm his extraordinary Magic Typewriter, but his son denied the stuff was written by his dad, and his widow said her late husband never typed. So, on the one hand, we have hundreds of living veterans with chapter and verse on Kerry's fantasy Christmas in Cambodia, and, on the other hand, we have a guy who's been dead 20 years but is still capable of operating Windows XP. It took the savvy chappies at the Powerline Web site and Charles Johnson of ''Little Green Footballs'' about 20 minutes to spot the eerily 2004 look of the 1972 memo.

Instapundit calls it "Ra^therGate." Hugh Hewett summarizes the flood of forgery evidence; Charles Johnson drives nails into CBS's coffin with a .gif image comparing the purportedly typewritten 1972 letter with the same content on Microsoft Word; a similar comparison (by an LGF reader) is here. Headlines the LA Times: No Disputing It: Blogs Are Major Players."

"If the font needed time travel, you must fire Dan Rather."

Media: Selectively Biased

The NY Times reports John Kerry "enlisted more Clinton advisers to help shape his strategy and message for the remainder of the campaign. . . Among the better-known former Clinton aides who are expected to play an increasingly prominent role are James Carville, Paul Begala and Stanley Greenberg." The catch? "Mr. Begala . . . said he would remain a CNN commentator."

Pretty sweet gig--counselor to the candidate by day; neutral newsman at night. Clearly a win-win for cable and campaign alike--flawless recollection and wide dissemination of sound-bites dashed off during commercials; withering critiques of campaign initiatives invented elsewhere; always-accurate insider gossip. Kinda like those late night TV ads: "That's right--the new Begala's a floor wax AND a desert topping!" Or even a reality show: "The Two Begalas." Tune in to see if Begala can "upgrade" Begala from the press bus. Or whether campaign finance laws let him buy his own lunch. The spellbinding finale solves an ancient paradox: can a journalist quote himself anonymously? (Joe Klein doesn't count)

Sorry to be a kill-joy, but Begala's new part-time job raises obvious questions:

1. WTF? How can Begala counsel Kerry's campaign and cover it for CNN? Quite a conflict of interest.



2. How come almost no one's complained? Hedgehog Report and Worldmagblog flag the issue, and Ramesh Ponnuru supplies appropriate irony at The Corner. But, where's the outrage?



3. Why do Dems dodge denunciation for conduct that induces indignation for Republicans? Didn't 38 Congressmen just denounce cable channels with "a deliberate bias in favor of, and often serves as an extension of, [a political party's] policies and ideology." Ah, but the Congressmen were whining about Fox News. If the press played fair, they'd call the same 38 Reps for a follow-up/reaction quote about Begala and CNN.
   
   (Please, hold the cards and letters about George Will's debate prep for Reagan in 1980. That was similarly sleazy, and Will was widely excoriated by the press. Where's the tsunami today?)
   
   More recently, Bush's outside lawyer, Ben Ginsberg, resigned following a media firestorm because he also counseled the Swiftboat group. (Note: I've occasionally worked with Ben.) The Dems said sharing outside counsel was evidence of impermissible "coordination" between the campaign and independent advocacy groups. But Ben did nothing wrong, because--among other reasons--legal ethics prohibit lawyers sharing confidences between clients, much less coordinating. To its credit, the Washington Post agreed. Nevertheless, by this point in the Ginsberg news-cycle, Ben was long gone.



4. Does anyone still believe there's a "professional" press? CNN and Begala are outrageous and immoral. But journalistic "ethics" see, to protect the media, not the public. Some watchdogs. Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Mass media reduced the costs of collecting and distributing information. Yet, somewhere on the path from Trivium to town crier to tabloid, media selectivity and skew started upping the price of truth. Which might inhibit our ability to scrutinize government officials.

Or some of them anyway. Big media is liberal media, as both New York Times and Newsweek's Managing Editor recently conceded. Indeed, according to the Times, it's no contest:

When asked who would be a better president, the journalists from outside the Beltway picked Mr. Kerry 3 to 1, and the ones from Washington favored him 12 to 1. Those results jibe with previous surveys over the past two decades showing that journalists tend to be Democrats, especially the ones based in Washington. Some surveys have found that more than 80 percent of the Beltway press corps votes Democratic.

So the multi-headed Mr. Begala's probably safe. At least "according to a recent poll of journalists. . ."

Still press bias might have a silver lining should Kerry win. True, our President will be an emperor without any clothes. But the clothes should be easy to find--they'll be scattered across the liberal media's bedroom floor.

Pick a Doctrine

I've always said November's a referendum on foreign policy. Indepundit (Citizen Smash) makes comparison easy, by reducing the "Bush Doctrine" to four principles:

1. We will fight for freedom. We reject moral relativism.


2. The friends of our enemies are also our enemies.


3. We reserve the right to hit our enemies before they strike us.


4. We will not negotiate with those who continue to support terrorism.

John Kerry's acceptance speech articulated the opposite:

And as President, I will bring back this nation's time-honored tradition: the United States of America never goes to war because we want to, we only go to war because we have to.

Bush's vision saved thousands in Afghanistan and Iraq. Kerry favors foregoing force until it's nearly futile. Actions have obvious consequences. So does failure to act, though that's tougher to quantify. The U.S. didn't have to wage war in the developing world a decade ago--unfortunately for the people of Rwanda and Burundi; luckily for those in Haiti and Kosovo. England and France didn't have to go to war in central Europe 65 years ago--but delaying the dispute doomed not only Austrians, Czechs and Poles, but hundreds of thousands of Brits and Frogs.

The ideal is impossible; everything is "compared to what." Preemption may not be perfect, but Bush's strategy is a sensible reaction to the scope and shape of terrorism today. In contrast, Kerry's alternative is premised on the preposterous presumption that peace is promoted by an a priori allegiance to indecision and inaction. Which foreign policy best safeguards your home and family?

Beyond Cambodia

According to the liberal media, the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth are liars. For example, this week's Time magazine called the anti-Kerry Swiftboat ads "sabotage". Yet the Swifties showed that Kerry's long-standing claim to have infiltrated Cambodia was fantasy, as the campaign later conceded. Only a biased press could confuse truth and sabotage.

And new revelations may follow, now that the conservative group Judicial Watch asked the Pentagon to review Kerry's Silver Star commendation. The future Senator's commendation was signed by former Navy Secretary John Lehman. Yet Lehman was appointed by President Ronald Reagan, and held that job in the early 1980s, long after Kerry's stint in the Navy. Moreover, Mr Lehman denies all knowledge of the commendation. "It's a total mystery to me," he said last week. "I never saw it, I never signed it and I never approved it."

Kerry originally was awarded the medal for action on February 28, 1969. Kerry's current citation is dated March 1981 (typo corrected), a full 12 years later. Yet, as the Bandit shows, Kerry's Silver Star citation was amended twice--there are three different versions! Overall, the second and third version eliminated many of the events cited as original justification for Kerry's medal. Moreover, Kerry's website contains a Navy record listing his Silver Star with a "V" for Valor--a designation that does not exist. The campaign says the "V" was a "typo."

All this is irregular, to say the least. More twisting facts to suit his electoral ambitions. Clearly, Kerry has tons of influence and insider help--anything but the "common man" he now claims to be. It reeks of apple polishing politics at its worst.

Kerry's own hagiography historian Douglas Brinkley admits the investigation could be trouble for Kerry:

[If it] turns up evidence of "purposeful" deception, it could spell doom for the top Democrat's White House bid.

Praising reporter Thomas Lipscomb, who broke news of the Navy investigation on Friday, Brinkley told WABC Radio's Steve Malzberg, "Journalists are going to have to see whether there's a discrepancy on [the citations posted to Kerry's] Web site - whether there's something wrong that's said there or not."

John Kerry whines that fact-checking his record is an excessive "personal" attack. Nonsense, says Mark Steyn:

Americans should be free to call Bush a moron, a liar, a fraud, a deserter, an agent of the House of Saud, a mass murderer, a mass rapist (according to the speaker at a National Organization for Women rally last week) and the new Hitler (according to just about everyone). But how dare anyone be so impertinent as to insult John Kerry! No one has the right to insult Kerry. . .

Sorry, man, that's not the way it works. And if he thinks it does, he's even further removed from the realities of democratic politics than he was from the interior of Cambodia.

There's an easy way to resolve the issue: Senator Kerry should sign a "Form 180" waiving service record confidentiality, authorizing the Navy to release his (non-classified) service records to the public. But John Kerry's balked--and lied, according to the WaPo:

Although Kerry campaign officials insist that they have published Kerry's full military records on their Web site (with the exception of medical records shown briefly to reporters earlier this year), they have not permitted independent access to his original Navy records. A Freedom of Information Act request by The Post for Kerry's records produced six pages of information. A spokesman for the Navy Personnel Command, Mike McClellan, said he was not authorized to release the full file, which consists of at least a hundred pages.

Civil libertarian author/editor Nat Hentoff hints at a cover-up:

What is in these 100-plus pages? Since the centerpiece of Mr. Kerry's presidential campaign is not his 20-year Senate career, but what he did in Vietnam, including his medals, aren't voters entitled to look at the entire record? If not, why? . . .

The Post story continues: "The Kerry campaign has refused to make available Kerry's journals and other writings to The Washington Post, saying the senator remains bound by an exclusivity agreement with [Kerry biographer Douglas] Brinkley." [Mr Brinkley's book has been published and is available for purchase.]. . .

What I find strange is that Mr. Dobbs writes that "Kerry himself was the only surviving skipper on the river then who declined a request for an interview." Why did more than 250 Vietnam veterans testifying in Mr. O'Neill's "Unfit for Command" make themselves vulnerable to a libel suit by Mr. Kerry, which, if they lost, could do great damage to their careers and incomes? After all, in such a suit, both sides would have to testify under oath. Are they all liars for Mr. Bush?

Would Mr. Kerry then really release all of his original Vietnam records to be scrutinized in the lawsuit's depositions? In a challenge to Mr. Kerry, Mr. O'Neill says, "Sue me!"

A post-Vietnam fog of war does indeed hover over the Kerry candidacy. And why has most of the mainstream media not followed up on this smoking gun about Mr. Kerry's failure to release all of his Vietnam documents?

No surprise then that recent polls give President Bush a double digit lead, including key states. The Swifties are partly responsible for Kerry's eclipse, but not by sabotage. If there's a saboteur, it's Senator Kerry himself--of his own campaign.

More:

Bandit and River Rat analyze all the Kerry medals. (via Captain's Quarters)

Some M's are T's; All T's are M's

Well argued logic and self criticism from Abdel Rahman al-Rashed, general manager of Al- Arabiya news channel, in today's Telegraph (UK):

It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims.

The hostage-takers of children in Beslan, North Ossetia, were Muslims. The other hostage-takers and subsequent murderers of the Nepalese chefs and workers in Iraq were also Muslims. Those involved in rape and murder in Darfur, Sudan, are Muslims, with other Muslims chosen to be their victims.

Those responsible for the attacks on residential towers in Riyadh and Khobar were Muslims. The two women who crashed two airliners last week were also Muslims.

Bin Laden is a Muslim. The majority of those who manned the suicide bombings against buses, vehicles, schools, houses and buildings, all over the world, were Muslim.

What a pathetic record. What an abominable "achievement". Does all this tell us anything about ourselves, our societies and our culture?

These images, when put together, or taken separately, are shameful and degrading. But let us start with putting an end to a history of denial. . .

We cannot clear our names unless we own up to the shameful fact that terrorism has become an Islamic enterprise; an almost exclusive monopoly, implemented by Muslim men and women.

Islam isn't the enemy. Perverted, radical Islam is. And it's not just after George Bush--the target is Western Civilization as a whole. As folk singer (and liberal lion) Pete Seeger asked, "which side are you on, boys?" (via LGF)

I'm Back

After a one-week trip to liberal land--Northern California. I'll write it up. Until then, here's Mark Steyn in the Chicago Sun-Times. Here's the final para:

I remember a couple of days after Sept. 11 writing that weepy candlelight vigils were a cop-out: the issue wasn't whether you were sad about the dead people but whether you wanted to do something about it. Three years on, the two conventions drew the same distinction. If you want passivity and wallowing in victim culture, the Dems will do. If you want to win this thing, Bush is the only guy running.

Read the whole thing.