I think this is a bad idea.

First of all, any postponement will be seen as a victory for the terrorists. Which of course it is.

Second, at some point it has to be the Iraqis fighting for Iraq. There must be a purely Iraqi face leading Iraq. We are committed to winning in Iraq, but this committment cannot be absolute. We cannot do for the Iraqis what they will not or cannot do for themselves indefinitely.

We have already paid a high price in blood and treasure to secure the future of Iraq. Our resources are not infinite.

Posted by: Ace at 10:29 AM | Comments (8)
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Great piece on his October 29th video threat. We were all so busy examining the political ramifications at the time, we hardly noticed what he as actually saying.

Turns out he's in disbelief that we won't roll over and appease him. I think we need to provide him with more such disbelief:

   ''This is the message which I sought to communicate to you in word and deed, repeatedly, for years before September 11th,'' the fugitive al-Qaida leader said in a videotape aired around the world Oct. 29. ''But I am amazed at you. Even though we are in the fourth year after the events of September 11th . . . the reasons are still there for a repeat of what occurred.''

   Eight years after issuing a written declaration of war against the United States, the theme of bin Laden's speech was disbelief that he had failed to make his point with the American people, even after the deaths of nearly 3,000 people on U.S. soil and a succession of bombings [and other terrorist acts.]

Posted by: Ace at 08:43 AM | Comments (14)
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"Someone" says this is the best Thanksgiving post ever, courtesy of Charles Krauthammer. Who am I to argue?

Posted by: Ace at 12:09 PM | Comments (2)
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More due to hubris, hackery, and liberal arrogance than bloggers, but still.

Meanwhile, Pundit Guy suggests that Dan Rather move to the job he's always wanted-- DNC Chairman.

Makes sense to me.

Out of Here Update: Gotta catch that train. Happy Thanksgiving to you and everyone important to you.

Posted by: Ace at 01:13 PM | Comments (6)
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Thank you Madfish Willie!

Okay, they don't seem to completely work-- the "remember me" function still isn't working, but at least you can write your name on the post now.

Thanks so much, Madfish!

Posted by: Ace at 01:08 PM | Comments (9)
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I'm not quite done here yet, but most of you are either gone or going soon. I hope you all have terrific Thanksgivings. We should all be grateful for what we have.

Blogging will be light but I hope to do at least some blogging Thursday and Friday. I'm going away, but I will have occasional access to a computer. The only thing standing between me and blogging extravaganza is tryptophan.

Travel safely and love your family and friends.

Posted by: Ace at 11:55 AM | Comments (9)
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Great piece:

When Senator John Kerry finally came out of hiding on Friday, Nov. 19, and posted a new message on his Presidential campaign Web site, who was holding their breath?

An army of barefoot, pajama-wearing bloggers—and their general, the host of MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann.

...

The bespectacled newsman has dedicated numerous broadcasts and copious blogging hours to "voting irregularities" since Nov. 8—every scrap of evidence or even feeble insinuation was kindling for a burning obsession that has largely been dismissed elsewhere in TV-land. Nowadays, Countdown is Recountdown.

...

Nineteen months into his latest TV incarnation—having gone from disgruntled ESPN guy to disgruntled NBC News guy to disgruntled Fox Sports guy and back to NBC—the 45-year-old Mr. Olbermann is going Watergate on the Ohio recount, making his show a major-media beachhead for dozens of lefty quasi-conspiracy theorists who clearly wanted to one-up the guys who hog-tied Dan Rather over the summer.

These bloggers, said Mr. Olbermann, were his allies: They "can go places I can’t go. They are my minions—like an unpaid research staff."

A former sportscaster with a Letterman-era sense of irony—a suppressed smarty-pants smirk that hasn’t exactly captured the imagination of the masses—Mr. Olbermann shares with these folks a baseball-card collector’s penchant for obscure data and a sometimes tedious if highly principled interest in below-the-radar minutiae.

Highly principled? Okay, he lost me there.

...

Mr. OlbermannÂ’s fixation on the vote-count story was stoked again on Monday evening, when the Ohio Democratic Party announced that it would join with the Green and Libertarian parties in pursuing a recount in the state of Ohio, offering the remote possibility of a reversal in the outcome of the 2004 Presidential election. At 7:12 p.m. that day, Mr. Olbermann e-mailed to say, "I think it kinda just went mainstream."

But it kinda just didnÂ’t. ...

And so down the wormhole he went.

It didnÂ’t bother Mr. Olbermann that most of his cheerleaders were Web-based Democrats. He said he read a number of blogs, including the left-wing Daily Kos and the right-wing National Debate. ...

For his part, he’s invited vote-fraud pooh-poohers on the air and let them have their say—fair and balanced. And if Mr. Olbermann was angry, he didn’t show it. But he did say that if he’d stayed at NBC in the late 1990’s instead of departing for Fox Sports, he would now have the same ratings as Mr. O’Reilly—over 2 million a night, or close to it. "If I hadn’t left," he said, "we’d be doing about as well as O’Reilly is now."

That may have been Mr. OlbermannÂ’s nuttiest theory yet.

Posted by: Ace at 11:40 AM | Comments (7)
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It seems this is the first gun-confiscation program that the Europeans don't like:

NEAR FALLUJA, Iraq (Reuters) - Arab militants and insurgents who ruled the volatile city of Falluja before a U.S.-led offensive this month had enough weapons to take over all of Iraq, Marine officers said on Wednesday.

"We found enough weapons in Falluja for the insurgency to take over the whole country," Lieutenant Colonel Dan Wilson told a news conference at a U.S. base near the western city.

...

Wilson said the Marines were surprised by the number and range of weapons, from home-made flame throwers to surface-to-air missiles, found in a city that was seen as the backbone of a relentless insurgency.

But few dare call it victory.

Thanks to Tanker.

Posted by: Ace at 11:24 AM | Comments (6)
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I'll give you a moment to retrieve your jaws from your lap. "What's that, you say?" you're befuddling. "Are you saying that Oliver Stone has failed yet again to capture the cinematic magic of The Doors or Salvador?"

This guy's best work remains the writing/rewriting he did for Conan the Barbarian.

On to the reviews. I guess we should be grateful Stone's served us up anonther ginormous turkey just in time for Thanksgiving:

The Washington Post:

If you played a word-association game with "Alexander the Great," you'd probably come up with "conqueror," "king," "warrior," "legend," "despot," "wastrel" or "killer." Unfortunately, Oliver Stone has chosen to build his epic of the Macedonian military genius around a word highly unlikely to make the list: "crybaby."

In Stone's view, this is a highly neurotic young man whose emotions, far from being repressed or disciplined as one would expect of a great soldier of the 4th century B.C., are worn on his sleeve, except, of course, that he doesn't have sleeves, the shirt still being two millennia down the road. So he wears them on his wrist -- and it's a limp one.
...

That's the weirdest aspect of the extremely weird, if absurdly expensive, movie. Stone gives himself much credit of "telling the truth" about Alexander's bisexuality as if it's some progressive badge of honor, but at the same time he can't get away from the cruelest, least imaginative stereotyping: His Alexander, as expressed through the weepy histrionics of Colin Farrell, is more like a desperate housewife than a soldier. He's always crying, his voice trembles, his eyes fill with tears. He's much less interesting, except as a basket case, than Richard Burton's Alexander of far less enlightened times -- 1956 -- in Robert Rossen's "Alexander the Great." Burton got Alexander's dissipation, but also his martial spirit; this was, after all, one of the great light-cavalry commanders of all time and a general who fought by leading his troops, sword in hand, not directing them from some safe hill. But in this one you think: Teri Hatcher could kick this twerp's butt.

Stone's never been subtle. I'm surprised that Willem Dafoe's crucifixion-pose death scene wasn't underscored with the words "Christ Figure! Christ Figure!" flashing on the screen, just in case you missed it.

The NY Post's Podhoertz checks in over at The Corner:

Oliver Stone's Alexander, which opens today, isn't just bad. It's Springtime for Hitler bad. I haven't guffawed this hard since I saw Airplane for the first time 24 years ago. This is one of the colossal catastrophes of all time. At a screening on Monday night, during the death scene of Alexander's lover Hephaiston, people were screaming with laughter as Alexander made a big speech while, behind him in soft focus, Hephaiston went into a conniption fit and croaked.

Of course there's more.

Posted by: Ace at 08:53 AM | Comments (11)
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If it's not the Great or Little Satan doing the war-crime, it's just not that important.

Little Green Footballs thinks that maybe people should pay attention.

As does the Jawa Report.

And John Donovan, too.

Posted by: Ace at 07:55 AM | Add Comment
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