The left's new Abu Ghraib?

NEW YORK (AP) - A U.S. Marine shot and killed a wounded and apparently unarmed Iraqi prisoner in a mosque in the former insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, according to dramatic pool television pictures broadcast Monday. A Marine spokesman in Washington said the shooting was under investigation.

The shooting Saturday was videotaped by pool correspondent Kevin Sites of NBC television, who said three other previously wounded prisoners in the mosque apparently also had been shot again by the Marines inside the mosque.

...

On the video as the camera moved into the mosque during the Saturday incident, a Marine can be heard shouting obscenities in the background, yelling that one of the men was only pretending to be dead.

The video then showed a Marine raising his rifle toward a prisoner laying on the floor of the mosque but neither NBC nor CNN showed the bullet hitting the man. At that moment the video was blacked out but the report of the rifle could be heard.

The blacked out portion of the video tape, provided later to Associated Press Television News and other members of the network pool, showed the bullet striking the man in the upper body, possibly the head. His blood splatters on the wall behind him and his body goes limp.

Sites reported a Marine in the same unit had been killed just a day earlier when he tended to the booby-trapped dead body of an insurgent.

Will Andrew Sullivan and the others be able to maintain interest outside of the superheated environment of a presidential election?

It will be harder, of course. This guy wasn't being directly supervised at the moment, and seemed to act completely spontaneously.

It also has to be noted that these guys have played dead before. And that "playing dead" is not surrendering. And that if you're not surrendering, you're a legitimate target.

Posted by: Ace at 07:54 PM | Comments (34)
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I invoke my Fifth Amendment right to refuse to testify.

Cheese off, copper. I'll give you nuttin'. I can do a contempt of Congress pinch standin' on my head. You'll get no names from me.

Except, maybe, to mention that Dominique Bouche is a seriously underrated talent.

Thanks, appropriately enough, to Deep Stoat.

Posted by: Ace at 01:45 PM | Comments (17)
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Dawn Eden, Petite Powerhouse, has the story:

"The Hollywood community is incredibly distraught about the election results," said Vanessa Taylor, co-creator and co-executive producer of the WB's "Jack & Bobby."

"I'd say we're in a state of shocked disappointment."

One bit about Dawn's story that especially interests me is the shock that creative types feel when they learn they may have to shape their product to appeal to an audience. They seem to have this notion that an artist should be utterly free to "explore" whatever he likes, the audience be damned.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 01:43 PM | Comments (12)
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Is it a joke? Is it for real?

I hope it's the former.

It's For Real: So say SeanM and Atomic Amish. They say the've seen this guy on TV before. Maybe it's a put-on, but he's been at it for a long time.

If you're doing a put-on for several years running, it sort of stops being a put-on, I think.

And, just to weird everyone out even more, this guy is also looking for sex.

From dolphins, it turns out.

But only female dolphins, mind you. He doesn't have sex with male dolphins; that would be gay.

Posted by: Ace at 01:19 PM | Comments (30)
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"Apology accepted" say these fine folks. So everything's copacetic now.

From EvasiveCowboy.

Posted by: Ace at 12:14 PM | Comments (5)
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Only saw this on Free Republic. I have no idea if it's true. Can anyone confirm?

Confirmation: Demure Thoughts/Temple of Jennifer says it happened, and I believe her.

A Very Brief Fisking of a News Report on the Self-Immolating Protestor: The story:

A witness told WTOP Radio the man was "fully engulfed in flames." Other witnesses said they heard the man screaming in pain.

Well, no duh.

Another Brief Fisking: Regarding another story:

The man, who appeared to suffer from a burn to his right hand, groaned and repeatedly shouted "Allah", as guards held him on the ground.

Well, derrr. It was either "Allah" or "Full Voting Rights for Orang-Utans, Now!" One or the other. Maybe both.

Possible Blog-Related Theory Update: BlueDevils doesn't think this was a political protest-- just a big fan of Allah Pundit's, distraught that he hasn't posted since the Yankees lost the ALCS.

Makes sense to me.

Posted by: Ace at 10:07 AM | Comments (14)
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Okay, they're calling it a 747 armed with an airborn laser, but we all know it's a Y-Wing:

The United States has reported a successful ground-based test of an airborne laser meant to intercept ballistic missiles.

The Missile Defense Agency said the megawatt-class laser underwent a successful test on Nov. 10. The Pentagon agency said the laser was operated in a ground-based demonstration at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.

Officials said this marked the first time that a directed energy weapon meant for use in a Boeing 747 aircraft has been demonstrated.

The test, which lasted a fraction of a second, involved the simultaneous firing of all six laser modules and associated optics that comprise the Chemical Oxygen Iodine Laser. Officials said the modules,built by Northrop Grumman, performed as expected.

Officials said the test was conducted in the framework of the Airborne Laser project. "It was the first time that multiple modules of the powerful laser had ever been fired while linked together as a single unit," the Missile Defense Agency said in a statement on Nov. 10. "In the test, the laser light produced by the six modules was fired into a wall of metal called a calorimeter or beam dump. The temperature rise of the metal was used to validate that laser power was generated."

It's pretty unbelievable when you think about it. We're actually building a flying megawatt-laser platform.

This is a dumb question, but, hey, that's what I do here. If we can build a laser powerful enough to kill a missile, can't we build one powerful enough to kill a man? Targeting should be a snap; a man is only an order of magnitude smaller than a missile, and men don't tend to move at 3000 mph.

Seems to me that in most cases it's not really missiles which are the "root cause" of our problems.

Can't we increase the temperature of Kim Jong-Il's head to several thousand degrees the next time he observes his goofy jumping-jack soldiers on parade?

Posted by: Ace at 09:50 AM | Comments (26)
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So says Al-Jazeera, which isn't exactly the gold standard for truthfulness and accuracy.

Still, if true, it sort of undermines that pesky theory that we have to make nice-nice with killers and animals in order to influence their behavior.

Seems like several thousand Marines, soldiers, and intelligence officers make for pretty effective negotiators.

Kilroy Is Here, And He's Staying a While Update: GregS sends this photo:

AP'S CAPTION: A US Marine of the 1st Division writes the words 'Dark Horse' on a beam of the bridge western Fallujah, Iraq, where the bodies of two American contractors killed by militants were strung up in March, sparking the earlier U.S. siege, Sunday, Nov. 14, 2004. An earlier message left by soldiers reads: 'This is for the Americans of Blackwater that were murdered here in 2004, Semper Fidelis 3/5.' (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)

Hmm... It's that Anja Niedringhaus again. I don't know how she let this morale-boosting photo slip through.

CNN Report: Just a little bit from CNN that's worth mentioning. The "fighters" in Fallujah are mostly being killed, not captured.

Perfect.

"Nuts" Update: Turns out there's a little bit more to that message than Anja is comfortable reporting.

Thanks, Capp.

Posted by: Ace at 09:38 AM | Comments (7)
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Powerline reports that they're finally taking out the trash at the CIA:

The White House has ordered the new CIA director, Porter Goss, to purge the agency of officers believed to have been disloyal to President George W. Bush or of leaking damaging information to the media about the conduct of the Iraq war and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, according to knowledgeable sources.

"The agency is being purged on instructions from the White House," said a former senior CIA official who maintains close ties to both the agency and to the White House. "Goss was given instructions ... to get rid of those soft leakers and liberal Democrats. The CIA is looked on by the White House as a hotbed of liberals and people who have been obstructing the president's agenda."

Fabulous news. I've long thought (and written) that the CIA was politicized, Clintonized, and determined to undermine any foreign policy it disagrees with. Trouble is, the CIA is not charged with making policy; it is charged with reporting facts to the President and other executive employees who themselves make policy. Too many times liberals in the CIA have sought to change the facts to further their own political ends; how many times do we need to read some anonymous liberal CIA analyst stating, in his opinion, that an offer from Saddam Hussein to sponsor and host Al Qaeda does not in fact constitute an attempt at cooperation between the two?

You can have your own opinions, but you can't have your own facts. Too many Clintonoid CIA liberals want just that, and I'm thrilled that Goss (and Bush) have the courage to can them.

The purge will of course be portrayed as a horrible politically-motivated sacking of our best and brightest. But many of these folks violated their oaths -- and occasionally federal law -- to leak to the press and to friendly liberal Democrats.

Political appointees serve at the pleasure of the President. Bush's move is of course political, but so was their nonstop spoonfeeding of classified information to Seymore Hersh. You can't take the politics out of politics, after all, but you can take serial leakers out of sensitive positions.

Good riddance to bad rubbish. They'll be happier working for the liberal media as advisors and on-screen experts, anyway.

Must-read Update: Steve sends along this terrific Q-and-O link. The lefties are in a lather (what else is new?), but it seems Clinton did something similar.

There weren't any blogs then, of course, but I doubt that these newfound admirers of the adversarial-model of the CIA weren't as upset by the Clinton Purges.

Posted by: Ace at 09:32 AM | Comments (15)
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Yeahp, that sounds about right:

The key to a successful burglary? Try the French police

PARIS (AFP) - A swindler posing as the owner of a jewelery store outside Paris managed to steal a set of luxury pens and watches with the unwitting help of local police and a locksmith, police said on Saturday.

Claiming to be the owner of a jewelery store a few blocks away, a 30-year-old man called in at the police station in Enghien-les-Bains, a small town northwest of Paris, at around midnight on Saturday last week.

The man, identified only as Yves, told the officers he had lost his keys and needed their help to get into the shop. They kindly obliged, calling in a locksmith to pry open the door.

The locksmith became suspicious, however, after the man reached for the shop's display counters, grabbing a handful of fountain pens and watches -- among them a Rolex.

He then fled carrying 10,000 in stolen Euros, but police raided his apartment the next day.

Okay, now I see how the Oil For Food scandal happened.

One question: What kind of imbecile was this guy? The police are obviously stupid, yes; but then, this was so brazen-- actually asking for their help to break in-- that you could kind of imagine them just assuming the guy was legit.

But once the police have let you inside, why would you immediately begin looting the place, with them watching? Shouldn't you just say, "Gee, it's cold in here, let me adjust the thermostat; would you fellas like something to drink?" and then rob the place after they've left?

This guy was 99% of the way to a perfect crime. Only two sorts of people would even think to try this: an ultra-cool intuitive genius with brotosaurus-balls, or a total moron. He's obviously the latter.

GregS, again. At this point I should just call this site GregS HQ.

Posted by: Ace at 01:05 PM | Comments (6)
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