Another Democrat Attempts to Explain a “Plan” for Iraq
From Hotair.com:
Maryland Senate candidates Lt. Gov. Michael Steele (R) and Rep. Benjamin Cardin (D) faced off on Meet the Press this morning to debate the big issues. Steele crushed Cardin on the congressman’s “plan” for Iraq, just by demanding that Cardin explain it. Steele eventually exposed Cardin for being against funding the war and the troops, something Democrats continually deny in public even while Rep. Charlie Rangel promises to cut off funding the war if the Democrats take the House. Steele confronted Cardin’s plan to bring 10,000 troops home a month, which would leave us with only half our force in Iraq by the end of the year. However, Cardin denied his so-called plan with this response: “Should we have a time schedule? No.”.
A minute into the video Cardin articulates his “plan” for Iraq.
Reuters Fails to Report “Politically Incorrect” Facts
The same Reuters who brought us doctored photos brings us this whitewashed article about Muslims in American politics. Specifically, it fails to mention the ties Keith Ellison has to terrorist supporting front group CAIR.
Who do the Muslim Terrorists Want Elected?
From NewsBusters.org:
Amidst all the MSM reports about this being the deadliest month for US troops in Iraq in a long time, there was a stunning bit of candor today from NBC reporter Richard Engel suggesting this is not mere coincidence, but a conscious effort by the terrorists to elect Democrats.
At the end of his report on this morning’s ‘Today’ on the situation in Iraq, having spoken with US soliders, Engel reported:
“They believe insurgents are intensifying attacks against American soldiers now in an attempt to influence November’s mid-term elections
UPDATE: 10/28/2006 6:00pm
Questioning Democrat’s Judgement not their Patriotism
(hat tip to newsbusters.org)
Check out this footage of President Bush clarifying the distinction between criticizing the Democrat’s judgement not their patriotism.
White House Press Corps
If you ever had a doubt about the White House Press Corps’ antipathy towards the Bush administration this footage 2/3rds of the way into the clip should lay that doubt to rest.
Leftist-Biased Headline of the Day
Reuters had the following howler of a headline on Monday: No solution in sight for U.S. gun violence
Let’s unpack the headline…
No solution in sight
The article implies that there is a problem since they are referring to the lack of a solution for it. We’ll soon see how they define the problem.
for U.S. gun violence
Ah, so according to Reuters “gun violence” is the problem. This is a blatant attempt to portray guns, not the evil perpertrators who use them, as being the problem. This has been pointed out by others, this is like pinning the blame for bank robberies on automobiles since bank robbers commonly use them for their get-away.
French Jihad
Oh those silly “youths” are at it again:
An average of 112 cars a day have been torched across France so far this year and there have been 15 attacks a day on police and emergency services. Nearly 3,000 police officers have been injured in clashes this year. Officers have been badly injured in four ambushes in the Paris outskirts since September. Some police talk of open war with youths who are bent on more than vandalism.
“The thing that has changed over the past month is that they now want to kill us,” said Bruno Beschizza, the leader of Synergie, a union to which 40 per cent of officers belong. Action Police, a hardline union, said: “We are in a civil war, orchestrated by radical Islamists.”
More about this here and here.
UPDATE: 10/26/06 12:30am
Things are looking pretty bad; the French prepare for Muslim riots with 50,000 riot police.
Search Engine Bomb
Senate
Connecticut: Ned Lamont
Maryland: Ben Cardin
Michigan: Debbie Stanbenow
Missouri: Claire McCaskill
Montana: Jon Tester
New Jersey: Bob Menendez
Tennessee: Harold Ford
Virginia: James Webb
Democrat Held Seats
(CO-03): John Salazar
(GA-03): Jim Marshall
(GA-12): John Barrow
(IA-03): Leonard Boswell
(IL-08): Melissa Bean
(IL-17): Phil Hare
(IN-07): Julia Carson
(NC-13): Brad Miller
(PA-12): John Murtha
(WV-01): Alan Mollohan
Republican Held Seats
(AZ-08): Gabrielle Giffords
(CT-04): Diane Farrell
(CT-05): Chris Murphy
(CO-07): Ed Perlmutter
(IA-01): Bruce Braley
(IL-06): Tammy Duckworth
(IN-02): Joe Donnelly
(IN-08): Brad Ellsworth
(IN-09): Baron Hill
(FL-13): Christine Jennings
(FL-16): Tim Mahoney
(FL-22): Ron Klein
(KY-03): John Yarmuth
(NC-01): Heath Shuler
(MN-06): Patty Wetterling
(NM-01): Patricia Madrid
(NY-20): Kirsten Gillibrand
(NY-24): Michael Arcuri
(NY-26): Jack Davis
(OH-15): Mary Jo Kilroy
(OH-18): Zack Space
(PA-06): Lois Murphy
(PA-08): Patrick Murphy
(PA-07): Joe Sestak
(PA-10): Chris Carney
(VA-02): Phil Kellam
(WI-08): Steve Kagen
Congress to Courts: Get out of the war on terror
In Hamdan v. Rumsfeld the Supreme Court asserted that the protections granted under common article III of the Geneva Convention (GC) applied to Muslim terrorists despite them not being, as is pointed out here:
- prisoners of war entitled to the protection of the GC because the GC regulates relationships between states and their soldiers: and Muslim terrorists are NOT soldiers of any state
- entitled to a regular criminal trial because they are NOT American citizens or residents entitled to the protection of the US Constitution.
At the same time the Supreme Court concluded that Congress has the power to legislate the conditions under which it is permissible to detain and try these people. The legislation that passed recently is the direct result of this ruling and, is as John Yoo points out in his op-ed, a message from Congress to the courts: “Get out of the war on terror”:
The new law is, above all, a stinging rebuke to the Supreme Court. It strips the courts of jurisdiction to hear any habeas corpus claim filed by any alien enemy combatant anywhere in the world. It was passed in response to the effort by a five-justice majority in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld to take control over terrorism policy. That majority extended judicial review to Guantanamo Bay, threw the Bush military commissions into doubt, and tried to extend the protections of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions to al Qaeda and Taliban detainees, overturning the traditional understanding that Geneva does not cover terrorists, who are not signatories nor “combatants” in an internal civil war under Article 3.
Hamdan was an unprecedented attempt by the court to rewrite the law of war and intrude into war policy. The court must have thought its stunning power grab would go unchallenged. After all, it has gotten away with many broad assertions of judicial authority before. This has been because Congress is unwilling to take a clear position on controversial issues (like abortion, religion or race) and instead passes ambiguous laws which breed litigation and leave the power to decide to the federal courts.
Until the Supreme Court began trying to make war policy, the writ of habeas corpus had never been understood to benefit enemy prisoners in war… In Hamdan, the court moved to sweep aside decades of law and practice so as to forge a grand new role for the courts to open their doors to enemy war prisoners.
Blair Dispensing with “Politically Correct” Obfuscation about Islam
What a breath of fresh air:
Progress. Up to this point Blair has been certain that Islam had no problems at all, but that there was just this pesky Tiny Minority of Extremists that had hijacked the religion. Now for him to be asking if “Islam” — not “radical Islam” or “hijacked Islam” — can come to terms with the modern world is momentous. “Prime minister says Britain needs debate about Islam,”
Practical Advice to Combat non-Truths about Islam
A must read by Hugh Fitzgerald:
And have such texts ready when you call your newspaper’s ombudsman, to complain about the nth appearance of some apologetic nonsense. Or use those passages in your own Letter to the Editor, and to letters written by a dozen others you know. Force the lies to stop, or at least force the torrent of lies to be reduced to a rivulet.
And make sure that you manage to get the conversation around to Islam at every gathering, every party, every alumni reunion, every informal meeting — it isn’t hard once you practice. Explain that you’ve been reading steadily about the subject, and then raise one or two or three points, even giving when appropriate the relevant passages. Some may put up initial resistance, but not for long when it is clear what you know and what they don’t know. You will now be arguing not to win over the unwinnable, but for the other audience, that of the curious onlookers and eavesdroppers whose minds are not made up, and are willing to consider the evidence.
What can Non-Muslim Governments do to Win the War?
I just finished reading Robert Spencer’s The Truth About Muhammad: Founder of the World’s Most Intolerant Religion. The last chapter has a must-read section on strategies that non-Muslim governments can implement to more quickly defeat Muslim terrorists and their supporters. Here is the section in its entirety (pp 192-194):
What, then, can non-Muslim governments do? Many things, including:
Stop insisting that Islam is a religion of peace. This is false, and falsehoods are never productive. There is in fact no need for the president of the United States or the prime minister of Great Britain or any Western leader to make any pronouncements about the nature of Islam at all. They would be much wiser to limit themselves to declaring that their foes wish to impose Islamic sharia rule upon their countries and the world, and that they are going to lead, the resistance to that.
Initiate a full-scale Manhattan Project to find new energy sources. During World War II, the United States invested millions and set the brightest scientific minds in the world on the atomic bomb project. A similar effort must be made today to end the Western dependence on oil from the Islamic worlda dependence that deforms the foreign policies of Western nations, preventing them from taking all the steps that they must take in order to defend themselves from the jihad that Muhammad preached. , $ Make Western aid contingent upon renunciation of the jihad ideology. If Western states acknowledge~ the existence of a global imperialist Islamic imperative, they could make aid to states like Egypt and Pakistan-in which secular governments generally tolerate the proliferation of jihadist teachings in mosques and Islamic schools-contingent upon the active rejection of those teachings and positive steps against them by the governments of each state. These countries and others profess to reject the contemporary jihad of Osama bin Laden and like-minded mujahedin; let them make good on their rejection, if it is sincere, by developing programs for Islamic schools that explain why Muhammad’s exhortations to war-fare and supremacism no longer have any merit in today’s world or in the future.
Call upon American Muslim advocacy groups to work against the jihad ideology. Instead of endorsements of the u.s. Constitution and American values, Islamic institutions in the United States are filled with jihadist propaganda against Jews and Christians. A 2005 report by the Freedom House Center for Religious Freedom found material in American mosques teaching hatred of non-Muslims and stating that apostates from Islam should be killed, in accord with Muhammad’s directive. Here again, American Muslim organizations profess to reject the jihad of Osama bin Laden, but have been slow to back up their words with deeds. Five years after September 11 there are still no organized, comprehensive programs in American mosques and schools to teach against the jihad ideology or confront the elements of Muhammad’s life that today fuel jihadist violence and subversion. This is not surprising given the pedigrees of such groups (the Council on American-Islamic Relations, for example, emerged from the Islamic Association of Palestine, a Hamas front) and the centrality of jihad in Islamic theology, but government officials and the mainstream media nevertheless generally treat these groups as moderate. Courageous officials and politicians, if any exist today, should challenge these groups to put up or shut up-to produce genuinely moderate and reformist initiatives that teach against Muhammad’s warlike example, or to stop posing as moderate groups. And government and law enforcement officials should accordingly stop regarding these groups as trustworthy, loyal moderates who accept Western pluralism without reservation.
Revise immigration policies with the jihad ideology in view. Western nations should develop immigration applications that ask hard questions about the applicant’s views on pluralistic societies, religious freedom, women’s rights, and other features of Western societies challenged by elements of Muhammad’s teachings and Islamic law. Of course, savvy intelligence officials would not expect honest answers in all cases, but the very presence of such questions would make it clear that those who hope ultimately to transform Western republics into sharia autocracies are not welcome in those . republics, and those who are found in them will be prosecuted and expelled. The need for immigration policies with such a focus has been obscured by fears of “racism,” but this is not a racial issue. Muhammad’s teachings are available to all races, and people of all races adhere to them.
If no Western politicians can be found who are courageous enough to grasp this nettle, Western countries will eventually pay a stiff price, when the jihadists they have admitted carry out successful jihad attacks, or inspire native-born Muslims to do so-or when they advance sharia provisions by peaceful means, as in the campaign in the United Nations and several European countries for the adoption ofIslamic blasphemy laws in the wake of the Muhammad cartoon riots. The words and deeds of Muhammad have been moving Muslims to commit acts of violence for fourteen hundred years now. They are not going to disappear in our lifetimes; nor can they be negotiated away. The best thing that Western governments can do is recognize their character and move to limit their influence within their countries and around the world, calling upon Muslims who call themselves moderate to renounce definitively these elements of Islam, and formulate their policies bearing in mind that most Muslims will continue to regard Muhammad as “an excellent example of conduct.” The sooner this is done, the safer we all will be. But as long as this manifold problem continues to be ignored, Muhammad will continue to inspire his followers to wield the sword in his name.
Tu Quoque: a Common Logical Fallacy
I have encountered the tu quoque logical fallacy so frequently during debate that it is worth dedicating a post to it. In the last few months the most common example of this fallacy that I have encountered is typically in response to my drawing attention to the fact that Muslim terrorists and their supporters are from all appearances logically using Islam’s founding documents to do so. After pointing this out my debating opponent usually retorts by claiming that Christians committed abominable deeds during the Inquisition. Little does the opponent realize that by responding in this way they have implicitly admitted that they agree with my initial contention that Muslim terrorists appear to logically be justifying their acts on Islamic grounds.
As a side note if you are ever in the situation where someone responds in this fashion you can point out that they are going back hundreds of years to find even a remote resemblance to the number of atrocities committed by Muslims today. Also point out that you can find no counterpart to the following in Christianity:
