Just For The Record

Having watched the liberal take on the hanging of Saddam Hussein, I've noted that liberal pundits and pollsters who are on the news consistently harken back to the fact that Osama bin Laden hasn't been captured or killed. I guess they cite this because they're trying to denigrate the importance of Saddam's execution. It matters not. It is an important event, one that shows that sometimes justice does get served. As for Osama bin Laden, I'm stating once again that....he's dead. What is my proof? It's all circumstantial, I admit. But ask yourself: When was the last time you saw bin Laden on video? Sure, he releases an audiotape ever six or so months. But how come his spiritual leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is always making videos (every month or two, it seems), but bin Laden never does? The CIA claims that these OBL audiotapes are, in fact, bin Laden. But then, how much faith can you put into an intelligence agency that a.) Predicted in 1980 that the USSR had a GDP of 3%-4% a year, which was a greater economic expansion than the U.S. b.) That was wholly surprised by the collapse of the Soviet Union in '91, as well as the crumbling of the Soviet Bloc in '89 c.) Failed to key into the 9/11 attacks, which were three years in the making? The CIA was gutted in the mid-70's, and it has never recovered. Maybe if a guy like James Jesus Angleton were still operating at CIA, I'd have some faith in their analysis. But....he's not.

Osama bin Laden is dead. Until I see his mug on a video, I'm assuming that I'm right. History will bear it out. And if I'm wrong, I'll admit it. Until then, I'm stickin' to my theory.

James Brown

I'm a nominal fan of James Brown, having been introduced to his music in college in the late-80's. I played in a cover band that did "Papa's Got A Brand New Bag" and "Sex Machine", though we were clearly stiff, white, and not particularly funky. (We tried...) That said, one thing that struck me about James Brown's music were the rhythmic off-beats and the hypnotic nature of his songs. It was good stuff musically, and to my mind, in the same way that Frank Sinatra isn't really talked about for his musical ability, ditto goes for James Brown. The image and the public persona overshadowed his innovation, though it shouldn't. He was a grounbreaking songwriter, using drums and horns in ways that nobody had ever used them before. Legend has it that if he had inspiration for his music, even in the middle of the night, he'd call his entire band into the studio on the spot to record. Sometimes he'd do the same while on the road. He'd stop the bus in some town on the way to a gig, find a studio in that town, and lay it down.

I never saw James Brown. I wish I had, and when I had the chance a few years back (he was playing at B.B. King's Club in NYC), the ticket price was pretty stiff ($80), so I passed. In the end, it was my loss.

Saddam Bites The Dust

Not much more to add than what has already been reported widely regarding this event. I do think that David Pryce-Jones (National Review) correctly captures the sentiment well. (Read here.) I can't help but think that, in the same way that every communist apparatchik felt a shock of terror for their own fate as they got wind of Nicolae Ceaucescu's execution, that every Islamic dictator/terrorist in the Middle East feels at least a similar tinge of fright that their fate will be similar. Probably not, but it clearly is in the realm of possibilities for the likes of Ahmedinejad, Assad, or Khadafy. As Churchill so aptly put it, "Dictators ride astride the backs of tigers they dare not dismount, for the tigers are hungry..."

Merry Christmas To All....

....and to all, a good night.

Associated Press Source, "Jamil Hussein" Still Missing

Not reported very much in the mainstream media is the story of Jamil Hussein. As I've written about previously, Jamil Hussein was/is supposedly a Baghdad police officer who Associated Press has quoted in approximately forty published dispatches. He has been protrayed as a "primary source" in all of these stories. The latest dispatch, which claimed that Sunni extremists firebombed a Shiite mosque, burning to death six Shia, has been called into question, as neither CENTCOM nor the Iraqi government has verified that this event happened. Actually, they've said it didn't happen. The writer of the blog Flopping Aces first got suspicious about this story and implored Associated Press to verify the existence of Jamil Hussein and his credibility as a witness. To date, Associated Press has yet to present Jamil Hussein to the skeptics in the blogosphere. Michelle Malkin has joined in with the search. Still no Jamil Hussein.

This story is an even bigger story than the Dan Rather faked memos ("Memogate") story because Associated Press is the biggest news agency in the world. Check any paper in America, and you're sure to find more than a few stories that say "From AP" or "AP Dispatch" at the end of them. This is true of even the biggest newspapers in America, such as the New York Times and the Washington Post. If all newspapers in America get their news from AP, at least partially, what does that say about the quality and veracity of American journalism if the largest news agency in the world is perpetuating a fraud? Dan Rather took down CBS News with his vicious prevarication. This Associated Press story, if Jamil Hussein cannot be produced, can potentially take down the entire American journalism industry.

Time Magazine's "Person of the Year"...

....is you!

Feel honored? Next year, it might be this person.

Another Notable Passing

“Kirkpatski! Kirkpatski! I have so wanted to meet you and thank you in person. Your name is known in all the Gulag.”

--Andrei Sakharov, Soviet Dissident

I filched that quote from Jay Nordlinger's latest NRO column, but it matters not. "Kirkpatski" was actually Jeanne Kirkpatrick, the former Ambassador to the United Nations who served under Reagan. Kirkpatrick passed away on December 7th of this year, aged 80. She was a tireless advocate for international human rights, having read out loud, on the floor of the United Nations, the names of actual Soviet dissidents then under arrest or imprisoned. She well understood the Soviet communist mind, as well as the sick left-wingers who sympathized with it and its nefarious machinations. Quoth Kirkpatrick, "When Marxist dictators shoot their way into power in Central America, the San Francisco Democrats don't blame the guerrillas and their Soviet allies. They blame United States policies of 100 years ago. But then they always blame America first." True in the 80's...and true now. (Witness the present-day leftist love affair with Hugo Chavez.) She also understood the United Nations as it really was (and continues to be today): "As I watched the behavior of the nations of the U.N. (including our own), I found no reasonable ground to expect any one of those governments to transcend permanently their own national interests for those of another country."

Rest in peace, Jeane Kirkpatrick.

Noteable Passing

Milton Friedman, free market economist, Nobel laureate, and pre-eminent scholar, passed about a week ago, aged 91. His book, Free To Choose, was proof of the power of the written word and how it can change the world. His free-market philosophies were instrumental in shaping the policies of Ronald Reagan, which subsequently led to an American economic renaissance. (Reference a chart of the Dow Jones Industrial Average going back ninety years, and you'll see what I mean. The Dow was unable to break 1000 for three-plus decades; after 1982, it broke 1000 and never looked back.) Additionally, nations that espoused his economic philosophies like Estonia, Chile, and Iceland have prospered accordingly, and have put themselves in a considerably more competitive position than their socialist counterparts.

All Americans owe him a debt of gratitude....even left-wing ones. (Although hell will freeze over before they do that!)

Still Nonplussed....

...about this story regarding Princess Diana and the U.S. Secret Service bugging her.

Murder Inc.

On the heels of the mushy, compromising Iraqi Study Group report, the great Victor Davis Hanson puts it all in perspective:

In this new realist push, amid constant reminders that we once talked to the Soviet Union, Ronald Reagan is often evoked-but not the Ronald Reagan who in a high-stakes effort, fraught with risk, pushed the Soviet Union to the brink, or bombed Tripoli to remind Khadafi of the consequences of his terror, but apparently the Ronald Reagan who abruptly left Lebanon and allowed surrogates to talk with Iran to trade arms for hostages.

So the new revisionist image is perhaps that Reagan was a sort of realist who accepted the world as it was, and avoided the zealotry associated with the sweeping Axis of Evil rhetoric of George Bush. But I remember another "evil empire" Reagan who sought to address bluntly wrong as he saw it. And I was reminded of that when glancing at old news accounts such as the following 1985 New York Times piece that started, "President Reagan today characterized Iran, Libya, North Korea, Cuba and Nicaragua as ''a confederation of terrorist states'' that had carried out ''outright acts of war'' against the United States. The President said the five nations were ''a new, international version of Murder Inc.''

"Murder Incorporated" then sounded a lot like "Axis of Evil" does now.

And re: Iraq. I remember as well the old conventional wisdom that Iraq under Saddam Hussein was a terrorist haven. As far back as 1990, Congressman Broomfield, for example, inserted the following into the Congressional Record, " New reports reveal that in the past few months, the Iraqi leader has built a network of old and new terrorist allies who could be called upon to conduct terrorist operations against American interests. Among Saddam's new friends are notorious terrorists Abu Nidal, Abu Abbas, and Abu Iyad—all star performers in the sordid world of international terrorism. As many as 1,400 terrorist operatives may now be living in Iraq as guests of Saddam Hussein. Iraqi involvement with terrorist groups is so extensive that the Department of State recently put Iraq back on the list of countries that support terrorism."

More Fakery In The Mainstream Media

For those of you who read this blog, I feel it necessary to communicate or pass along stories that I come across through my internet reading. I'm fairly certain that the majority of you are not aware of this story, as it has only been percolating in the blogosphere and nowhere else. For the last few years, there's been an Associated Press source by the name of Jamil Hussein, who allegedly is a member of the Iraqi Police Force. Mr. Hussein has consistently handed over stories to AP regarding acts of terrorism, sectarian violence, and things of this nature. Recently, Mr. Hussein told AP (which AP communicated through its media tentacles) of six Sunnis were burned to death in a mosque by Shia terrorists. There's one problem with this story: the Iraqi police and U.S. forces in Iraq say it never happened. Worse than that, the Iraqi police claim that Mr. Hussein is not on the Iraqi Police Force (as AP claimed), and frankly, don't even know if this person exists. AP, of course, stands by their story. This comes on the heels of another AP scandal involving a source, named Bilal Hussein. This particular Mr. Hussein, a photographer and reporter, seemed to have a strange way of being in or around al Qaeda types. He was inevitably arrested in Fallujah in a bomb factory, with a known al Qaeda bomb-maker, and had traces of explosive material on his clothes and hands. Nice. You can read all about it here.

The conclusion? It is becoming readily apparent that the Islamo-terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere had a willing propaganda arm in the Associated Press. This is extraordinarily disturbing, as a major international news organization, perhaps the largest, is knowingly printing unverified stories of atrocities from shady (if not non-existent) sources, and also printing pictures taken by known terrorist sympathizers (as is the case of Bilal Hussein). What is really happening on the ground in Iraq? Hard to say, but the best I can advise to anyone reading this blog on a regular basis is to not trust anything printed by the Associated Press, the New York Times, Reuters, or the BBC. All of the aforementioned have been found guilty of trafficking in leaked stories compromising U.S. war efforts, communicating terrorist propaganda, and knowingly printing fake and/or staged photos (as was the case during the brief Israeli/Hezbollah conflagration).

There was a time when I was in college (and green as a blade of grass) when I aspired to be a journalist, specifically one that would go to dangerous, far-away locations and dodge bullets in pursuit of a story. It sounded dashing and romantic at the time, and on some level, it still does. But given the real state of western journalism, I thank my lucky stars that I didn't. Western journalists aren't truth seekers. It is apparent now that they are haters of the West, specifically America and Israel, and feel a duty to communicate propaganda, publish photoshopped pics, print stories of dubious veracity, and splatter leaked government anti-terrorist actions onto their front pages....and compromise the safety of Americans in the process. Western journalists appear to want to save the world from American and Israeli hegemony, and will bed down with the worst bloodthirty gutterspines in the world to do it. (Kind of like Jimmy Carter...)

For shame.

More Woes For The New York Times

Whilst "Pinch" Sulzberger, the baby-boomer snot who lucked out by being born into the Times-owning family who's name he bears, runs the brand into the ground, the Wall Street wolves are gathering outside the house of the Old Grey Lady. This time, it's not just Morgan Stanley Asset Management that is agitating to knock off the boy-king, but now Hank Greenberg, the erstwhile CEO of AIG, is champing at the bit. Read about it here.