Chaos for the Cameras

The President mentioned last night that the terrorist “take innocent lives to create chaos for the cameras”. Would those be the cameras of reporters embedded with the terrorists from the Washington Post, CBS, Pulitzer Prize winning Associated Press Staff ,or others? The reason the MSM is allowing the “insurgents” to use them as a propaganda tool is because they are journalist first and Americans, Brits, etc. second. In his book Over There: From the Bronx to Baghdad Alan Feuer has a “quarrel” with CNN’s Bob Franken that illustrates this perfectly.

His quarrel with Franken had begun the very moment Franken had expressed his horror that Fox News anchors wore American flag lapel pins on the air.

“How can you be a patriot and a journalist?” Franken had asked. “They’re mutually exclusive occupations.” T.R., who considered himself both, had asked why Franken could not love his country, to which had come the answer, “America is not my country. I’m a citizen of the world.”

Jay Rosen at Press Think believes the Newsroom Religion taught at Journalism began with Water Gate. The press is seen as a Forth Estate that can act as another check and balance to the Government. It’s the dream of every journalist to bring down a President, but of course personal beliefs dictate that to a MSM that is mostly liberal the dream is to bring down a Republican President. Add to that the belief that it was a press hostile to the Vietnam war that brought our boys home and condemned millions of Asians to tyranny. What you get is a media that actively paints the worst picture of the Iraqi situation and totally ignores all the good news coming out of Iraq.

The President outlined the failures that the terrorist have endured.

The terrorists, both foreign and Iraqi, failed to stop the transfer of sovereignty. They failed to break our coalition and force a mass withdrawal by our allies. They failed to incite an Iraqi civil war. They failed to prevent free elections. They failed to stop the formation of a democratic Iraqi government that represents all of Iraq's diverse population. And they failed to stop Iraqis from signing up in large numbers with the police forces and the army to defend their new democracy.

The terrorist will not give up. They believe America will eventually cut and run and leave the field to them. Constant negativity by the MSM and defeatist politicians like Ted “where’s my car” Kennedy, Robert Byrd, Dennis Kucinich, Barbara Lee and others make this a possibility but not while GW is in the White House.

Media Bias

This should surprise no one but the same MSM that totally ignored Dick Durbin’s remarks that were delivered on the Senate floor jumped all over Karl Rove’s remarks. From the Washington Times

Major news outlets that largely ignored the controversial comments of the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate last week immediately reported on a fiery speech by White House adviser Karl Rove, giving the story front-page prominence and the lead of newscasts.

Early yesterday morning, NBC's "Today" show, the CBS "Morning Show," and ABC's "Good Morning America" all featured the Democratic outrage over Mr. Rove's comments that after September 11 liberals "wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers" while conservatives "prepared for war."

Each network's nightly newscasts on Thursday also ran stories on Mr. Rove's speech, delivered Wednesday night.

Yet CBS did not broadcast a single story on the Illinois Democrat's comments. "Today" and "Good Morning America" and those networks' nightly news programs didn't air anything about it until the senator apologized after a week of complaints by Republicans, the Anti-Defamation League and veterans groups.

It was Bloggers that opened debate on Derbin’s outrageous comparison of Gitmo’s alleged interrogation techniques to WWII German concentration camps, Soviet Gulags and Pol Pot’s killing fields. It was the Blog storm that resulted in his non-apology apology. Karl Rove's statement that generated such outrage among liberals got plenty of coverage but it’s the Blogs that are demonstrating the truth of his remarks. See Hugh Hewitt’s Blog.

Big-name Democrats have foolishly engaged Karl Rove exactly as he no doubt hoped they would. Ankle-Biting Pundits has it figured out, but the Mehlman statement from the RNC underscores how the rush to condemn Rove for speaking the truth about the Michael Moore/George Soros/MoveOn.org left now obliges those very same people attacking Rove to argue that the evidence produced by Mehlman is either inapplicable or misunderstood.

Which of course they can’t. The left wants to treat terrorism as an illegal act to be handled by our Justice Department. That means giving the terrorist all the rights we afford criminals. Conservatives want to treat the war on terror like, well, A WAR!

Supreme Socialist Court

The story is as old as mankind. The land was the King's and the people serfs. The people were in effect renters, if the King needed that land away you went. Finally the people revolted, for many reasons but one important reason was that a man's property was his own and could not be legally taken without due process. It could not be taken from him just because a more powerful man coveted it. That principle just changed today with a 5-4 ruling by the Supreme Court. If a rich developer wants your house the local Government can seize it, pay you what they think it's worth, and give or sell it to the developer. In this case it was Pfizer Corp. who was seeking to expand its' research center with an adjoining riverfront hotel, health club and offices that would attract tourists to the Thames riverfront. The "little people" who did not want to sell their homes, some of which had been in the family for generations, for the betterment of the State were hit with eminent domain power to seize private property if the land is for public use. This of course means for roads, dams, railways, White Sands Missile Range, etc. But how is a private company considered "public use"? Because it will bring in more taxes.

What American would bow to the rich and powerful at the expense of middle-class Americans. Damn Republicans? Actually the Judges who voted for this were liberal judges John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer, as well as Anthony Kennedy, AKA "Reagan's greatest mistake". Why would these "champions of the common man" vote for large corporate interests? Because it is a vote for large government's interests, namely tax revenue. The founding fathers who were opposed to unrestrained search and seizure are rolling in their graves.


Update:

Jay777 at Stop the ACLU! has a petition up that has two goals:

#1 --Support Supreme Court and lower court judicial nominees who
will uphold the Constitution and thereby defend public
faith and the unborn.
#2 --Ensure that President Bush’s nominees receive an up-or-down
vote in the U.S. Senate.

Garbanzo Toons got this E-mail from an anonymous source. Pass it on, people won't be hearing this from the MSM.

Marine Capt. Brian R. Chontosh received the Navy Cross Medal from the Commandant of the United States Marine Corps, Gen. Michael W. Hagee, during an awards ceremony Thursday at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Training Center, Twentynine Palms, Calif. Photo by: Cpl. Jeremy Vought

This will make you proud!

Those of you who might not know, the man on the left is the Commandant of the Marine Corps, and he is proud to know the man on the right.

Maybe you'd like to hear about a real American, somebody who honored the uniform he wears.
Meet Brian Chontosh.
Churchville-Chili Central School class of 1991.
Proud graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology.
Husband and about-to-be father. First lieutenant (now Captain) in the United States Marine Corps.
And a genuine hero.
The secretary of the Navy said so yesterday.
At 29 Palms in California Brian Chontosh was presented with the Navy Cross, the second highest award for combat bravery the United States can bestow. That's a big deal.
But you won't see it on the network news tonight, and all you read in Brian's hometown newspaper was two paragraphs of nothing.
The odd fact about the American media in this war is that it's not covering the American military.
The most plugged-in nation in the world is receiving virtually no true information about what its warriors are doing. Oh, sure, there's a body count. We know how many Americans have fallen.
And we see those same casket pictures day in and day out. And we're almost on a first-name basis with the jerks who abused the Iraqi prisoners.
And we know all about improvised explosive devices and how we lost Fallujah and what Arab public-opinion polls say about us and how the world hates us. We get a non-stop feed of gloom and doom.
But we don't hear about the heroes. The incredibly brave GIs who honorably do their duty. The ones our grandparents would have carried on their shoulders down Fifth Avenue. The ones we completely ignore. Like Brian Chontosh.
It was a year ago on the march into Baghdad. Brian Chontosh was a platoon leader rolling up Highway 1 in a humvee. When all hell broke loose. Ambush city. The young Marines were being cut to ribbons. Mortars, machine guns, rocket propelled grenades. And the kid out of Churchville was in charge. It was do or die and it was up to him. So he moved to the side of his column, looking for a way to lead his men to safety. As he tried to poke a hole through the Iraqi line his humvee came under direct enemy machine gun fire. It was fish in a barrel and the Marines were the fish. And Brian Chontosh gave the order to attack.
He told his driver to floor the humvee directly at the machine gun emplacement that was firing at them. And he had the guy on top with the 50 cal unload on them. Within moments there were Iraqis slumped across the machine gun and Chontosh was still advancing, ordering his driver now to take the humvee directly into the Iraqi trench that was attacking his Marines. Over into the battlement the humvee went and out the door Brian Chontosh bailed, carrying an M16 and a Beretta and 228 years of Marine Corps pride. And he ran down the trench.
With its mortars and riflemen, machineguns and grenadiers. And he killed them all. He fought with the M16 until it was out of ammo. Then he fought with the Beretta until it was out of ammo. Then he picked up a dead man's AK47 and fought with that until it was out of ammo. Then he picked up another dead man's AK47 and fought with that until it was out of ammo.

At one point he even fired a discarded Iraqi RPG into an enemy cluster, sending attackers flying with its grenade explosion. When he was done Brian Chontosh had cleared 200 yards of entrenched Iraqis from his platoon's flank. He had killed more than 20 and wounded at least as many more. But that's probably not how he would tell it. He would probably merely say that his Marines were in trouble, and he got them out of trouble. Hoo-ah, and drive on.
"By his outstanding display of decisive leadership, unlimited courage in the face of heavy enemy fire, and utmost devotion to duty, 1st Lt. Chontosh reflected great credit upon himself and upheld the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and the United States Naval Service."

That's what the citation says. And that's what nobody will hear. That's what doesn't seem to be making the evening news. Accounts of American valor are dismissed by the press as propaganda, yet accounts of American difficulties are heralded as objectivity. It makes you wonder if the role of the media is to inform or to depress - to report or to deride. To tell the truth, or to feed us lies. But I guess it doesn't matter. We're going to turn out all right. As long as men like Brian Chontosh wear our uniform. If you are as proud of this Marine as I am, then send this to EVERYONE YOU KNOW !!

Minuteman

Tom Clancy’s new book The Teeth of the Tiger has four groups consisting of four Jihadists each entering the United States to commit acts of terror. While airport security is frisking your grandmother these guys take a short walk across the border into New Mexico. After 9/11 everyone was saying "we never considered terrorists would hijack a plane and fly it into a building", Clancy had already written a novel where that happened. He is probably equally prescient in the border crossing scenario. But everyone knows this, at a time when we are at war our borders are practically unguarded. Overwhelmed Border Patrol agents apprehended 1.1 million illegal immigrants last year, but untold hundreds of thousands slip through. Most of these are of course hard working immigrants that are vital to the American economy. But how many are terrorist or smugglers? We have no way of knowing and apparently our government doesn’t care.

I’ve just become a Minuteman. The Minuteman Project that highlighted the problem on the Arizona border has expanded and they need our help. In October the Minuteman organization will monitor the borders of New Mexico, Texas, Arizona and California. They will observe and report any crossings to the border patrol. They will not make contact with anyone, will not be armed, will not trespass, will not make arrests. In effect they will be a neighborhood watch program the type of which have helped law enforcement all over America.

But they are not wanted by the Border Patrol, at least not officially.

U.S. Border Patrol agents have been ordered not to arrest illegal aliens along the section of the Arizona border where protesters patrolled last month because an increase in apprehensions there would prove the effectiveness of Minuteman volunteers, The Washington Times has learned.

They are not wanted by our governor.

"The Minutemen should not feel that they need to come to New Mexico. We've got the Border Patrol. We've got New Mexico law enforcement,'' Gov. Bill Richardson said Friday. "We can enforce our laws.''

No we can’t Governor. For a man that is considering running for President that is an idiotic thing to say. For anyone that can read that is an idiotic thing to say. Tens of thousands cross into the U.S. a year through New Mexico alone. Senator Bingaman says;

"What we need are an adequate number of highly trained Border Patrol agents securing the border, not untrained volunteers."

I can’t argue with that except to say that we don’t have an adequate number of highly trained Border Patrol agents securing the border.

"I don't know that a Minutemen organization is the best solution to the rampant illegal immigration problems on our border, but I can clearly understand the mounting frustration in the region."

So says Senator Domenici. I’m sure it’s not the best solution but doing nothing is worse and that frustration is my motivation for joining in this effort to at least draw attention to the problem. The senators and Rep. Steve Pearce, R-N.M., sent a letter Wednesday to Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Robert Bonner asking that security be increased along New Mexico's border. The letter said New Mexicans have growing concerns about their safety and the security of their property. "Daily, our constituents along New Mexico's southern border deal with illegal aliens who travel across their land, cutting their fences and damaging their property," the letter states. "Our constituents who have first-hand knowledge of the situation believe hundreds of illegal aliens cross into New Mexico this way every day."

I believe in legal immigration. My Grandparents were legal immigrants. We should vastly increase the number of legal immigrants who wish to enter the U.S. Our local labor force can’t fill all the jobs our economy creates, the low unemployment rates of around 5% show that even with massive illegal immigration we are close to full employment. But we have to have control of who we allow in and that means control of our borders. Hopefully the Minuteman project will point out that need before Clancy’s terrorists.

Iranian "elections"

Iranian elections for president will be held on June 17th and the Mullahs are hoping for a large turnout. Before you think anything approaching Democracy exist in Iran understand that the power of the president to accomplish anything is dependent on the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the Council of Guardians. All legislation goes through the council whose members are chosen by Khamenei. In fact the council has to approve the candidates for election. Out of 1014 who registered as candidates 8 have been allowed to run. Blog Iran is calling for a boycott of the sham elections but the opposition is split on whether or not to vote.

Akbar Ganji, a dissident journalist, has just been release on sick leave from prison. As Michael Ledeen explains these releases are part of the torture regimen employed by Iran.

The cheerless creatures who rule the Islamic republic of Iran have developed a particularly wicked use of torture. Not only do they use the full panoply of physical and psychological horrors on their captives, but they then send the victims back into their homes and neighborhoods for brief periods of "parole" or "medical leave," so that their friends and families can see with their own eyes the brutal effects of the torture.

Despite the fact that he faces being arrested again Ganji is urging voters to stay away. But the leader of Freedom Movement Ibrahim Yazdi wants voters to support Mostafa Moein at the polls. You can catch the debate at
Free Thoughts on Iran.

One pro-boycott argument is that a large turnout legitimizes the elections. The anti-boycott argument is that any democratic exercise should be supported and voting for Moein, a reformer, sends a message to the Mullahs that the Iranian people want change. My thinking is that no amount of voter turnout can legitimize this election except in the minds of idiots like Juan Cole. But the outgoing President was a reformer and the Council shot down any attempts to change the status quo that he tried. So why bother, why vote or even run for that matter? I do hope that our State Department and Bush explain to the American people that what they are hearing about elections in Iran are a farce that will change nothing.

Update:

Charles over at LGF gives us a heads up that the moonbats are ready to hype this charade.

Did you know that Sean Penn is now visiting the Islamic dictatorship of Iran, to report on their "elections" for the San Francisco Chronicle? Getty Images has photos of Spicoli grooving on the Friday prayers at Tehran University. (Hat tip: sharona.)

Prisoner #1387

What should our foreign policy be towards Egypt? The problems we confront in Egypt include a 53 year old military dictatorship, supported by the U.S., religious persecution of Copts and Christians, a bloated bureaucracy littered with corruption, and an extremist Islamic Brotherhood waiting in the wings.

What do Egyptians want of us? A recent Middle East poll showed that most Middle Easterners want more aid and less interference. Can Egypt, a society civilized for more than 5000 years, really believe we can settle for that. The earliest markets were based on the maxim 'you can't get something for nothing'. Many Egyptians aren’t even very enthusiastic for Democracy, fearing it would be a one man, one vote, one time affair leaving the MB in charge. They would rather wait until a more secular opposition develops.

Which brings us to Ayman Nour, prisoner #1387. Under the Egyptian Constitution 50 members are required to form a viable political party. Nour had over 5000 special powers of attorney to verify the 50 member requirement. So in 2004 the Tomorrow Party was born. 89 days later Nour was arrested for allegedly forging some of those documents. Safely assuming he did not forge 4951 of them one has to ask why forge any? Especially those of his father's, his wife’s, and his own. Egyptians understand that the charges were ridiculous to the point of making the government look foolish. That he was set up Mr. Nour knows, what he doesn't is why. In a letter from prison he speculates:

But no one, including myself, is sure why precisely I've been jailed. Many pointed to a brief meeting I had with Madeleine Albright a few hours before my arrest. Am I counted as a U.S. agent for brushing shoulders with a foreign dignitary who is out of office? Some sarcastically say that the Egyptian government "fired" me for being too ambitious. Could the government not bear my calls for constitutional reforms? Yet another line of speculation ties my arrest to an interview I gave to Al Horra TV, in which I declared that my party would run in parliamentary elections in 2005; I also called for a constitutional amendment to allow any Egyptian to run for president. Did I take democracy too seriously?

Should the U.S. pressure Egypt to right this wrong? On the face of it the answer is obvious. If we really support Democratic movements as George Bush has stated numerous times then we must support Ayman Nour. But this is the Middle East. When Codoleezza Rice expressed "deep concerns about Nour's detention some of his supporters bristled at American interference. As today’s only Super Power any action we take will be seen as heavy handed and arrogant, regardless of how many secretly support our actions. So what others 'feel' about us should be of no great concern to us but any actions we take vis-a-vis Mr. Nour has to take into account how it affects him. We do after all want to help not hinder him. I ask my Egyptian Blogger friends what do they believe we should do for Mr. Nour and for Egypt overall. Should we make some of the billions of dollars in aid contingent on Mr. Nour being freed? Contingent on Democratic or economic reforms? Or should we shut up and just give more money?. Before choosing one of those two choices I will remind my Egyptian friends of a third and increasingly popular choice, popular at least in America. We keep our money and let Egypt fend for itself.

Mark Felt Deep Throat

NRO K-lo asks 'Why do "we" love Mark Felt and hate Linda Tripp?'