Compare, contrast, vomit.

Our 27 months of hell
By Joseph C. Wilson IV
October 29, 2005

The attacks on Valerie and me were upsetting, disruptive and vicious. They amounted to character assassination. Senior administration officials used the power of the White House to make our lives hell for the last 27 months.

. . .

It was payback — cheap political payback by the administration for an article I had written contradicting an assertion President Bush made in his 2003 State of the Union address. Payback not just to punish me but to intimidate other critics as well.

Who Exposed Secret Agent Plame?
Clifford D. May
July 15, 2005

The first reference to Plame being a secret agent appears in The Nation, in an article by David Corn published July 16, 2003, just two days after Novak’s column appeared. It carried this lead: “Did Bush officials blow the cover of a U.S. intelligence officer working covertly in a field of vital importance to national security — and break the law — in order to strike at a Bush administration critic and intimidate others?”

Since Novak did not report that Plame was “working covertly” how did Corn know that’s what she had been doing?

Apparently this is more a case of “character suicide” than “character assasination”. Valerie Plame’s exposure has more to do with Joe Wilson not being able to control his petty partisan urges and love of the limelight than anything else. And if you want to get really cynical, based on how quickly David Corn sprang forth with his premature accusation it’s easy to believe Wilson orchestrated or at least desired the exposure, whether to satisfy a martyr complex or in a premeditated attempt to cause problems for the Bush administration. Wilson hasn’t been “attacked”. His pain has been caused by his own lies and his wife’s nepotism coming to light. How is that “payback”? He should be grateful. What’s happened to him is nothing at all like the kind of inane ad hominem attacks the left often uses against their opponents.

And for a guy who spent some time in Africa you’d expect Joe to have some perspective on what “hell” is really like. Unless of course he spent all his time over there on a plantation sipping tea on a chaise lounge.

The Left is desperate. They can’t get what they want democratically so they resort to “any means necessary”. They denounce their opponents as extremists while they themselves stoop to unprecedented lows of decency and decorum. Now that they are out of power all the tools and methods of power are revealed as corrupt. LBJ is cussing up a storm somewhere.

We had a referendum on the Iraq war last November. In spite of the best propaganda efforts of the mainstream media the Global Test candidate and his Quisling Party lost. But the MoveOn’ers just can’t seem to move on. The t r u t h o u t crowd only wants their version of the truth out. The same people who got indignant about Clinton being hounded by a Vast Rightwing Conspiracy see nothing wrong with advancing their Iraq War agenda via special prosecutor proxy. “Please oh please I hope THIS will sink Bush”.

The party whose very name invokes democracy increasingly relies on their control of the judiciary to override the will of the people. Their foreign policy drumbeat of defeat and retreat, which threatened for a while to become a self-fulfilling prophecy, has become absurdly disconnected from reality. They criticized the first vote in Iraq because the Sunnis sat out, the second because it wasn’t unanimous. They celebrate “grim milestones” and convict political opponents in their own private kangaroo court, the press.

They love Joe Wilson regardless of his lies. They hate Bush therefore he lies. The outing of an obscure CIA bureacrat drives them insane with righteous patriotic rage, meanwhile they deliberately damage far more important assets in far more significant ways. The president is a “loser”. Gitmo is a “Gulag”. Iraq is a “quagmire”. In addition to having no sense of decency or fairness they have no sense of perspective or proportion. They see racism, corruption, and religious fanaticism everywhere. Everywhere except where it really exists.

Another compare and contrast exercise.

Dan Simpson: Invade Syria? Insane
U.S. forces have started fighting Syrians at Iraq’s border. Can anybody say ‘Cambodia’?
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

As I suspected six months ago, U.S. military and Bush administration civilian officials confirmed last week that U.S. forces have invaded Syria and engaged in combat with Syrian forces.

An unknown number of Syrians are acknowledged to have been killed; the number of Americans — if any — who have died in Syria so far has not yet been revealed by the U.S. sources, who by the way insist on remaining faceless and nameless.

The parallel with the Vietnam War, where a Nixon administration deeply involved in a losing war expanded the conflict — fruitlessly in the event — to neighboring Cambodia, is obvious. The end result was not changed in Vietnam; Cambodia itself was plunged into dangerous chaos, which climaxed in the killing fields, where an estimated 1 million Cambodians died as a result of internal conflict.

The End of the Beginning
Wretchard
The Belmont Club
October 15, 2005

(Speculation alert) I think most rational observers, however anti-American, must have by now come to the grudging conclusion that the insurgency is a lost cause in Iraq. As Athena at Terrorism Unveiled and Dan Darling pointed out in their analysis of the captured letter from Zawahiri to Zarqawi, the insurgency’s terror tactics have been a huge mistake from Day One. Athena puts summarizes Zawahiri’s message to Zarqawi eloquently. “His cowboy ways aren’t winning him any strategic alliances. And on the sectarian strife among Sunni Muslims, Zawahiri is basically saying ‘Drop it.’ “

. . .

While the situation in Iraq seemed doubtful, the US could not credibly address the Syrian issue because its Iraqi commitments precluded any action against Damascus. Now the Assad regime knows that US forces will not long be occupied in Iraq they are sweating bullets. Ironically the availability of US forces means that they will probably not have to be used in Syria. Newsweek Magazine claims that the US had considered launching cross-border operations against Iraqi insurgent targets Syria on October 1 — another publicly released telltale that US policy is ready to come out of the closet — but were dissuaded by Condoleeza Rice who argued that “diplomatic isolation is working against al-Assad, especially on the eve of a U.N. report that may blame Syria for the murder of Lebanese politician Rafik Hariri”. Diplomacy would not have been enough while the insurgency tied down America. With the insurgency fading fast, diplomacy may be enough.

Nobody knows what the future holds, but how can two opinions vary so dramatically about what’s going on right now? Hint: one opinion comes from a hopelessly biased political partisan.

Russians help Iran with missile threat to Europe
By Con Coughlin
(Filed: 16/10/2005)

Former members of the Russian military have been secretly helping Iran to acquire technology needed to produce missiles capable of striking European capitals.

The Russians are acting as go-betweens with North Korea as part of a multi-million pound deal they negotiated between Teheran and Pyongyang in 2003. It has enabled Teheran to receive regular clandestine shipments of top secret missile technology, believed to be channelled through Russia.

Western intelligence officials believe that the technology will enable Iran to complete development of a missile with a range of 2,200 miles, capable of hitting much of Europe. It is designed to carry a 1.2-ton payload, sufficient for a basic nuclear device.

Iran puts radicals in charge of nuclear programme
By Philip Sherwell in Washington
(Filed: 09/10/2005)

Iran’s new hardline president has placed his country’s nuclear programme under the control of militant commanders of the Revolutionary Guards, the military’s most committed wing.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has launched a purge of moderates in national and provincial government since his election two months ago, has drafted in fellow radical revolutionaries to top administrative posts – a move that will heighten Western fears over Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Many of the new power-brokers are veterans of the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds (Jerusalem) Force, in which Mr Ahmadinejad held the rank of brigadier general. The unit is linked to a series of international terrorist attacks and the main backer of Hezbollah in Lebanon.

I suppose the Iranians will be needing those missles to dispose of the radioactive waste from their nuclear breeder power plants. You know, the ones they need because they don’t have enough oil, gas, or coal.

Could the Ruskies really be so short sighted? The same missles that can reach Paris or Berlin can also reach Moscow. What part of Beslan and Nalchik did they not understand?