One's a parody. One's almost a parody, but is perhaps the most glowing tribute of all.

First, the parody. IowaHawk celebrates "Mr. Happy," the bumbling dolt who put an idiot-smile face on the misery of the 1980's:

Although I never actually voted for him, I think it's really no mystery why we are seeing such a public outpouring of affection for Ronald Reagan," said longtime Washington Post reporter Haynes Johnson. "His rosy, almost narcotic optimism must have provided a needed tonic for the tens of millions of Americans he threw into wretched starvation in the '80s."

Johnson, whose 1983 book On The Brink: Bonzo's Dangerous Bloodlust for Global Armageddon was an early lighthearted look at the Reagan administration, said that the key to Reagan's popularity was his sunny disposition.

"It's really rather remarkable how ordinary Americans were enchanted and beguiled by Ronald Reagan's cheerful attitude and dazzling smile," said Johnson. "It really is amazing how history, for good or evil, can be affected by good dental hygiene."

"Like the rest of the country, we in the press will never forget Ronald Reagan's bright, bouyant affability, especially the happy-go-lucky way he sold his optimistic vision of worldwide nuclear holocaust," said CNN political analyst Bill Schneider.

And now, the almost-parody.

This is probably the greatest tribute to Reagan ever written. It's by an academic at CUNY, obviously a left-liberal, attempting to draft Reagan into the leftist pro-appeasement camp and thereby call him one of their own. The writer attempts to claim that the neocons (bad) were actually the sworn enemy of Ronald Reagan (good, in this morality tale-- can you believe it?):

Almost everywhere in the press one reads that President Bush sounds an awful lot like Ronald Reagan. Commentators and politicians alike have drawn the comparison between Mr. Bush's "muscular" foreign policy and the Reagan doctrine. However macho and aggressive Mr. Bush's foreign policy may be, when it came to the Soviet Union, Mr. Reagan's was anything but.

In 1985, Mr. Reagan sent a long handwritten letter to Mikhail Gorbachev assuring him that he was prepared "to cooperate in any reasonable way to facilitate such a withdrawal" of the Soviets from Afghanistan. "Neither of us," he added, "wants to see offensive weapons, particularly weapons of mass destruction, deployed in space." Mr. Reagan eagerly sought to work with Mr. Gorbachev to rid the world of such weapons and to help the Soviet Union effect peaceful change in Eastern Europe.

This offer was far from the position taken by the neoconservative advisers who now serve under Mr. Bush. ...

Not only did the neocons oppose Mr. Reagan's efforts at rapprochement, they also argued against engaging in personal diplomacy with Soviet leaders. Advisers like Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld, now steering our foreign policy, held that America must escalate to achieve "nuclear dominance" and that we could only deal from a "strategy of strength." Mr. Reagan believed in a strong military, but to reassure the Soviet Union that America had no aggressive intentions, he reminded Leonid Brezhnev of just the opposite. ...

Etcetera.

That should settle the historical debate over Reagan. When left-liberals begin embracing him (even in a cynical and transparent ruse to discredit the current administration), close the book. History's judgment has been rendered.

Republicans use John F. Kennedy's legacy to sell tax cuts. We don't use Jimmy Carter's legacy to sell anything (except by using his legacy as an example to be feared).

So-- who knew? Ronald Reagan was a liberal Democrat after all, a dedicated multilateralist on foreign policy, a gunshy dove on issues of war. The sort of man who'd like nothing better than to spend a quiet weekend at Jacques Chirac's country estate and speak in the only real language of diplomacy, French.

When your enemies start twisting themselves into pretzels to claim some of your legacy, you know you've won.

Congratulations, Mr. President.

Update: Steven den Beste has a long analysis of Diggins' moronic alternative-history fantasy.

Posted by: Ace at 04:24 PM | Comments (3)
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Turn Whitesnake up 11:

The United Nations has determined that Saddam Hussein shipped weapons of mass destruction components as well as medium-range ballistic missiles before, during and after the U.S.-led war against Iraq in 2003.

The UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission briefed the Security Council on new findings that could help trace the whereabouts of Saddam's missile and WMD program.

The briefing contained satellite photographs that demonstrated the speed with which Saddam dismantled his missile and WMD sites before and during the war. Council members were shown photographs of a ballistic missile site outside Baghdad in May 2003, and then saw a satellite image of the same location in February 2004, in which facilities had disappeared.

...

The Baghdad missile site contained a range of WMD and dual-use components, UN officials said. They included missile components, reactor vessel and fermenters – the latter required for the production of chemical and biological warheads.

"It raises the question of what happened to the dual-use equipment, where is it now and what is it being used for," Ewen Buchanan, Perricos's spokesman, said. "You can make all kinds of pharmaceutical and medicinal products with a fermenter. You can also use it to breed anthrax."

...

In April, International Atomic Energy Agency director-general Mohammed El Baradei said material from Iraqi nuclear facilities were being smuggled out of the country.

He said that?

Funny, I don't remember reading about that. I honestly don't.

You'd almost think there was, I don't know, what shall we call it?, some sort of a "liberal media bias" embargoing news that cuts in favor of the War in Iraq.

I know that sounds crazy, but what else can explain it?

The whole article is worth reading, but copyright rules prevent me from "excerpting" it all.

Update: AP's take. El Baradei's mention of nuke-components is, strangely enough, omitted.

Posted by: Ace at 12:31 PM | Comments (19)
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I suppose it should probably just be attributed to Reagan nostalgia and the fact that the press hasn't been able to beat the Abu Ghraib bongos effectively for a week. It's probably ephemeral, and doesn't mean anything.

But Rasmussen Reports is showing a surge for Bush (and congressional Republicans) in just about every measure:

* Head to Head: Bush 47%, Kerry 44% (Bush up two, Kerry down one from yesterday)

* Generic Congressional: Dem 42%, Rep 38% (stubborn Dem lead narrowed by 2)

* 54% prefer Bush on National Defense, highest in two months

* 26% Say Terrorists Winning... Lowest Level in Six Weeks

* 40% Say Economy Getting Better; Highest Since January

* Consumer Confidence Index highest since January

* 43% Say Bush Good or Excellent on Iraq Highest reading in seven weeks

and

* Bush Job Approval at 52%; it's bounced between 50 and 52 of late

So it looks like Bush is rebounding. Partly on the de-escalation of violence in Iraq, partly on the improving economy, which the public is finally starting to register.

It like Joshua Micah Christopher Thomas Steffan Geoffrey Tavington-Cavendish Marshall's semi-prediction of Bush's job approval falling into the thirties was, shockingly enough, hyperpartisan hackery.

"Where's the floor?" Joshy wanted to know.

Well, the floor now looks around 50%.

Posted by: Ace at 11:47 AM | Comments (5)
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Via the indispensible Real Clear Politics, I struck on this link to New England Republican, who catches Tom Brokaw editing out important parts of President Bush's answers.

Pay particular attention to the second part of the transcript, in which Bush mentions al-Zarqawi and Abu Nidal of examples of Saddam's connection to Al Qaeda and terrorism generally, but which Tom Brokaw edits out. And we're only talking ten words here:

"He had Zarkawai in his midst. He had Abu Nadal."

Ten words, which Tom Brokaw apparently felt had to be clipped out. It's not as if this were some long, ponderous aside. It was ten words. Ten words which Brokaw edited out of the President's answer. Ten words which have important bearing on the question of why we went to war in Iraq.

So, let's sum up: Not only does the liberal media refuse to report on Saddam's extensive terrorist connections, they actually delete statements regarding such from the President's answers during interviews.

Oh, that liberal media.

Meanwhile, check out both RCP and for sharp skepticism about the LA Times' poll showing Kerry at 51%.

Kaus can't help but note that the LA Times also showed Gray Davis in a dead-heat with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Update! Gee, what are the odds? Brokaw also edited out Bush trumpeting the surging jobs-creation.

When the nation is losing jobs, it gets wall-to-wall play. When we're creating jobs, it's such a boring topic that Brokaw feels he needs to delete the President's comments about it in order not to antagonize his audience.

Posted by: Ace at 11:15 AM | Comments (1)
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Not that we're all big fans of al-Sadr. But this would seem further evidence of al-Sadr's political isolation (and military defeat).

Radical Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr has reportedly backed for the first time US moves to gradually hand powers over to an interim Iraqi government.
The change of heart came in a sermon at Friday prayers in the town of Kufa, two weeks after the government was formed.

Mr Sadr, a firebrand whose militia has fought US forces since March, called for a new start and an end to conflict, according to witnesses.

But his supporters clashed with members of a pro-US faction in nearby Najaf.

Stones and shoes were thrown in the clash at the shrine of Imam Ali leaving several people injured and forcing the cancellation of Friday prayers.

Mr Sadr called upon the interim government to work to end the occupation according to a timetable set by Iraqi officials, reported a correspondent for Voice of Mujahidin radio present at the sermon.

Mr Sadr added that the formation of the government was a good opportunity to bury past differences and "forge ahead toward the building of a unified Iraq".

There has not been any official reaction to Mr Sadr's conciliatory speech in Kufa, where he delivers fiery Friday sermons at the main mosque every week.

Posted by: Ace at 10:47 AM | Comments (7)
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A lot of bloggers post pictures of their cats. Finally, someone's posting pictures of a dog.

Here's Ginger:

Cue ominous music. Here's the shot of Ginger they'll use when they run negative ads against her:

Posted by: Ace at 09:38 AM | Comments (8)
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Seems... like... old... times.

But honestly, the Pentagon can't have every single light it wants on its tree.

Highlights:

As Congress moves ahead with a huge new defense bill, lawmakers are making only modest changes in the Pentagon's plans to spend well over $1 trillion in the next decade on an arsenal of futuristic planes, ships and weapons with little direct connection to the Iraq war or the global war on terrorism.

House and Senate versions of the 2005 defense authorization measure contain a record $68 billion for research and development -- 20 percent above the peak levels of President Ronald Reagan's historic defense buildup. Tens of billions more out of a proposed $76 billion hardware account will go for big-ticket weapons systems to combat some as-yet-unknown adversary comparable to the former Soviet Union.

Yeah. We wouldn't want to plan for the unknown. If 9-11 taught us anything, it's that the world is a nice, safe place where arms are made for huggin'.

On the Pentagon's wish list are such revolutionary weapons as a fighter plane that can land on an aircraft carrier or descend vertically to the ground;

Erfff... is that really "revolutionary"? Do any of these defense reporters know what they're talking about?

Harriers and any other VTOL aircraft can both "land on an aircraft carrier or descend veritcally to the ground."

I assume this dope is talking about the JSF, which will come in three versions, one for the AF, one carrier-ready for the Navy, and a VTOL model for the Marines. But this dummy doesn't get that the same plane will not be serving all three missions. Three variants of the same design, yes.

a radar-evading destroyer that can wallow low in the waves like a submarine while aiming precise rounds at enemy targets 200 miles inland;

This is cool. It looks just like the one in that James Bond movie.

Everything cool winds up looking like Darth Vader's helmet.

and a compact "isomer" weapon that could tap the metallic chemical element hafnium to release 10,000 times as much energy per gram as TNT.

That's interesting. That's really interesting. Our cruise missiles are limited by the small amount of explosives they can carry. Obviously, we'd like more potent explosives for missiles (at the very least).

So far this year, the debate in Congress over the defense bill has largely skirted the budgetary or strategic implications of this buildup, largely because Republican and Democratic politicians are unwilling to appear weak on defense after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"In the public mind there is clearly a present danger, so we can't trim back the defense budget in any manner even though counterterrorism spending only accounts for a small part of it," said Carl Conetta, co-director of the Project on Defense Alternatives.

Yes, Carl. But only "in the public mind." Not in reality, certainly.

But as Congress comes under new pressures to fund the war in Iraq, provide better physical protection for troops in the field, help financially strapped military families and defend U.S. shores, some lawmakers in both parties say Congress and the Pentagon must begin to choose among competing defense priorities.

"We are in a massive train wreck financially," Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) recently told members of the House Armed Services subcommittee on tactical air and land forces, which he chairs. "The time has come to be tough about the way we are spending money on programs that we cannot see the ability to fund" in later years.

War costs and modernization are expected to drive defense spending to nearly $500 billion in 2005, above the inflation-adjusted Cold War average, and $50 billion above 2004. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the long-term price tag for all the planes, ships and weapons the military services want will be at least $770 billion above what the Bush administration's long-term defense plan calls for.

In a major speech last week, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, called for cutting back funding for a national missile defense system -- a priority of the Bush administration -- to pay for increasing the size of the active-duty Army.

Great idea. And when North Korea threatens us with a nuclear-tipped missile, we can just send our extra two divisions of troops to erect an enormous human pyramid in order to block the attack.

ther lawmakers are concerned that a defense budget that gives the Pentagon the resources to challenge adversaries in the air, sea and on land throughout the world for the next half-century will inevitably further skew the nation's foreign policy toward military intervention.

This is always liberals' fear. They claim they're worried about our boys getting killed; they're not. They're worried about our boys killing their boys. They don't care about our casualties; they always care only about our enemies' casualties.

This is why they were so ashen-faced after Desert Storm, Afghanistan, and the Fall of Baghdad. Because they understood that the more powerful our nation is, the more it might be willing to use that power. And they can't stand that. They, like the French, want a weaker America, because a weaker America won't be so keen to engage in "illegal war-making" on innocent genocidal tyrants.

They're loving the current problems in Iraq-- they like that our boys are dying. Because the more of our boys die, the less likely Bush will be to blockade North Korea or bomb Iran.

I can prove this pretty easily.

If they're so concerned about American casualties of war, why did they deride the near-perfect Gulf War as a "push-button" war? If they're so concerned about our boys' safety, shouldn't they be happy about a "push-button" war?

[Yes, I know the war wasn't "push-button." But they claim it is. It was undeniably a very low-casualty war, push-button or not.]

So, we've had one almost-flawless military victory with just over 100 American deaths.

They hated that. They called it a "push-button" war.

We've had one almost-flawless military victory in Afghanistan with even fewer American deaths.

They hated that, too. They didn't call it a "push-button" war, but they whine that we made a lot of use of indiginous fighters to win that war.

We had one almost-flawless military victory in Iraq-- the war phase, I mean now.

They hated that especially. Peter, Dan, and Tom's faces were all frozen in a grim rictus of death. Or rather, a grim rictus of too few deaths.

And now we've had one painful, costly, bloody insurgency-war costing some 650 American battle deaths.

They claim to hate this one, too, but inside they're ecstatic. They whoop and cheer with the French: Finally, America's nose has been bloodied and she understands she can't just throw her weight around.

So, there's the proof. If the left was really chiefly concerned about American battle deaths, why didn't they cheer the first Gulf War? Why didn't they cheer Afghanistan? Why didn't they cheer the war phase of the current Iraq action?

Posted by: Ace at 12:16 AM | Comments (8)
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The Washingon Times fleshes the story out. Wouldn't it be great if there was more than one newspaper covering stories in Iraq other than Abu Ghraib?

Iraq's new president, seeking to calm tensions between his nation's Shi'ites and Kurds, pledged yesterday that promises of Kurdish autonomy in the country's interim constitution will be honored.

"Iraq will be a free and democratic federal country. Federalism has been accepted by all Iraqis," Ghazi Mashal Ajil al-Yawer said during his first visit to Washington since being named to the largely ceremonial post last week.

"The Kurdish demands are for federalism," he said at a press conference. "Federalism brings two pieces of a country and glues them together. This is what our brethren, the Kurds, want and we have to respect that. We're going to abide by" the interim constitution approved in March.

Kurdish leaders threatened this week to pull out of the new Iraqi government if their hopes for autonomy are thwarted. But Mr. al-Yawer insisted that reports of strife within the government were "baseless."

He insisted that reports of strife within the government were "baseless"?

Baseless?

One-third of the country threatens to secede and he calls that "baseless"?

This is an obvious lie designed to hide serious problems within the government from the Iraqi people via deceptive media relations.

And this comes just a week after they pandered to the illegal militias by promising them high-paying, cushy government jobs.

You know, I think the Iraqis are getting the hang of this "democracy" thing after all.

Now, we just need a high-level sex scandal. When that happens, you know: This Iraqi Project is going to work.

Posted by: Ace at 11:53 PM | Comments (2)
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"Maverick," "Straight-Shooting" Senator Is the Last to Realize He's a Liberal

Well, brace yourselves. McCain is preparing the rhetorical and PR glide-path that will bring him to Kerry's ticket as Vice President:

Despite McCain's public demurrals, he has been privately deliberating how things might work if he ever did agree to run as Kerry's vice presidential candidate. The bitter political divide in America worries McCain, especially when the nation is at war. He knows that for many Americans, he has become a symbol of a bipartisanship that could overcome these divisions -- and bring Red and Blue America closer together. That call to duty is powerful for McCain. He'll be 68 later this summer, and he knows that his time to shape American public life is now.

The Kerry camp has made overtures, and McCain has taken them seriously. He has tried to imagine the details of how such a partnership would work in practice.

In related news, another Senator who bravely takes on his own party -- Georgia's Zell Miller -- can't get Aaron Brown to return his phone calls.

For some reason, turning against the Democratic party dogma isn't "maverick" or "straight-shooting" in the eyes of the media. I can only speculate as to why that might be the case.

Update: Newsmax, citing an AP report, says that McCain personally declined Kerry's offer last month.

Posted by: Ace at 11:41 PM | Comments (8)
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One of the biggest problems confronting Iraq is the Kurdish question. Basically, the Kurds want strong minority rights and a great deal of autonomy over their own local affairs. The majority Shi'ites, quite selflishly, want to provide very little in this regard, and to put the Kurds into the position of a dominated and fairly powerless minority.

After 50 years of being dominated by another ethnic minority, the Shi'ites apparently feel that now it's their turn to start oppressing.

Obviously, because America is torn between two critical goals. On the one hand, we have to appease the majority Shi'as if there's ever going to be a stable, unified Iraq at all. On the other hand, we can't just sell out the Kurds in the interests of stability. We can't take a very large minority group and make them less free and less Western-liberal than they were under Saddam by putting them under the Shi'a yoke.

And the Kurds won't have any of that anyway-- they're threatening to secede if their interests are not formally recognized, which might actually be a great solution as far as Iraq itself goes, but of course the Turks and Syrians and Iranians are dead-set against that.

This is the one big problem that actually makes me wonder about the ultimate success of the Iraqi project.

Fortunately, the new Iraqi government says that it's reached a compromise with the Kurds on the question of federalism:

Allawi said he had sorted out the autonomy dispute in talks with Kurdish leaders, but gave no details.

"This issue has been resolved," he told reporters.

Obviously, I don't know what this means. I hope that the Shi'as understand that they can't simply have full power over the day-to-day lives of the Kurds, and I hope that the Kurds are willing to accept some diminishment of autonomy for the sake of peace.

Oh, and, by the way: Butt-sex, weiners, homos, and poopie-stinkies.

Posted by: Ace at 02:22 PM | Comments (8)
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