Confirmation? See Update below.

Michael Ledeen posts on NRO's Corner:

I've just received a call from a usually reliable person saying that there was an assassination attempt in Iran against President Ahmadi Nezhad, who was in a car. His driver and guards were killed, and he is in the hospital, apparently likely to survive.

This is unconfirmed, remember. It's just a phone call from a "usually reliable person."

But maybe the sanity-clock just moved ahead an hour or so.

For a long time our Iran policy has been simply hoping that the discontented, and growingly secular and Western-friendly, majority of Iran would rise up or otherwise check the power of the mullahs. That seemed much less likely with the fraudulent elections there last go 'round (many moderate candidates were simply struck from the ballot), and the elevation of a terrorist hostage-taker to President.

But perhaps there is some sanity there yet. Maybe even enough to thwart the weapons-grade crazy running the country.

Thanks to rls.

Confirmation? From Iran Focus, an outfit I've never heard of so I cannot vouch it:

One of the bodyguards of IranÂ’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was killed and another wounded when an attempt to ambush the presidential motorcade was thwarted in the southeastern province of Sistan and Baluchestan, according to a semi-official newspaper and local residents.

“At 6:50 pm on Thursday, the lead car in the presidential motorcade confronted armed bandits and trouble-makers on the Zabol-Saravan highway”, the semi-official Jomhouri Islami reported on Saturday.

“In the ensuing armed clash, the driver of the vehicle, who was an indigenous member of the security services, and one of the president’s bodyguards died, while another bodyguard was wounded”, the newspaper, which was founded by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, wrote.

Ahmadinejad traveled to the restive province, where ethnic Baluchis have been fighting for years for autonomy, on Wednesday and returned to Tehran on Friday afternoon. Tehran often refers to anti-government activists and political opponents of the Islamist regime as “bandits” and “trouble-makers”.

The newspaper report made no mention of AhmadinejadÂ’s whereabouts during the attack on his bodyguardsÂ’ vehicle, but Zabol residents reached by telephone said there were rumors in the town that the hard-line president himself was the target of the attack, which took place near Zabol.

“Many people have been rounded up for questioning after the attack and the authorities here were clearly shaken by the incident”, a Zabol resident told Iran Focus.

The Sunni Baluchis have faced years of religious and racial discrimination under IranÂ’s Shiite clergy-dominated government.

H/t My Pet Jawa, thanks for the tip to Allah.

Posted by: Ace at 09:47 AM | Comments (65)
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Iran is such a depressing topic for me I haven't blogged about it much. Iran is mere months away from developing a bomb, their hardline lunatic leadership is quite forthright about their desire to wipe Israel off the map, and they would have few qualms about delivering a bomb to Al Qaeda.

I'd like to do the military-bluster thing and start advocating airstrikes on all their nuclear facilities, command and control sites, even their oil wells. But I don't think that will actually solve things. Their uranium enrichment program is hidden, probably underground, and almost certainly well-dispersed. We could not end their atomic ambitions through mere airstrikes.

For those of you counting on Israel to end this problem for us-- forget it. The comparison to Iraq's reactor is inapposite. That was a big identifiable target. The Iranian sites are largely unknown, even by the vaunted Israeli intelligence organizations.

We're not going to invade. We don't have the troops and the nation doesn't have the stomach.

Which means that Iran will have a bomb soon.

WunderKraut has come to similar conclusions.

And, like me, he thinks that the ultimate solution may be the unthinkable one-- a full-scale genocidal nuclear attack on Iran. Unthinkable, that is, until these bastards actually use the bomb.

It is time for Bush to spell out clearly what our nuclear policy is in regard to nuclear-armed rogue states. And this is not the time for diplomatic nicety. Bush must announce, clearly and solemnly, that any nuclear-armed nation invites a nuclear attack, and that a nuclear attack by such a nation will be met with the complete destruction of that nation by nuclear fire.

The fundamentalist religious crazies thuggishly ruling Iran may have little fear of that. They will consider giving up their own lives to strike a mighty nuclear blow for Allah a small sacrifice for greater Islamist glory.

We have to put the fear of God Himself into those who value life more than seventy-two viriginal whores in the afterlife. The Iranian citizens, the generals, the scientists building the doomsday devices.

We have to be clear on our response to such an attack, and we have to be resolved about carrying it out with clinical, murderous deadliness.

And we need to inform the world, and Iran of course, of all of this in advance. We need to be quite clear on our policy, so that the world will know that Iran was forewarned.

Limited retaliatory strikes are counterproductive against a nuclear-armed lunatic theofascist state. Such limited strikes will only give the mullahs the pretext for further nuclear attacks. These not on Tel Aviv (probably the first city to go), but New York, the bomb smuggled in in parts by Iranian intelligence officers and Al Qaeda confederates.

There is simply no other way to restrain them. Even such a horrifying promise of nuclear holocaust might not be enough. But we no longer have any other options.

Tens of millions of perfectly-innocent Iranians will be killed. But we are confronted with the choice of their innocents being killed, or ours.

I've always imagined the problem to be like two clocks. One, the clock ticking down when a radical Islamist state would get the bomb. The other, the clock ticking down to when stability and sanity finally came to such a state.

The latter clock was recently set back an hour and a half and stands at 9:30, or earlier. The first clock is now one minute to midnight. Our hopes have always been that the one clock would strike midnight before the other, but our hopes are now revealed as naive.

I really don't think America can simply execute a nuclear first-strike on Iran, and no matter how satisfying it might be to bluster along those lines, it's just not going to happen. We can, however, promise a final strike, a strike that will render the entire ancient land of Persia a radioactive desert of gleaming irradiated glass.

It is monstrous to contemplate. But we are dealing, after all, with monsters, monsters soon to be armed with the most deadly technology the world has ever known.

Posted by: Ace at 08:57 AM | Comments (66)
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Good. It's time to give up on the futile "uniter" crap. If the Disloyal Opposition wants a political war, well, we're capable of fighting on two fronts:

President Bush said Saturday he personally has authorized a secret eavesdropping program in the U.S. more than 30 times since the Sept. 11 attacks and he lashed out at those involved in publicly revealing the program. "This is a highly classified program that is crucial to our national security," he said in a radio address delivered live from the White House's Roosevelt Room.

I was so tired of Bush's Silent Cal act. It left him open to charges of secrecy and chicanery, and it let the Disloyal Opposition rip into him without defense or counterpunch.

This heartens me.

"This authorization is a vital tool in our war against the terrorists. It is critical to saving American lives. The American people expect me to do everything in my power, under our laws and Constitution, to protect them and their civil liberties and that is exactly what I will continue to do as long as I am president of the United States," Bush said.

Angry members of Congress have demanded an explanation of the program, first revealed in Friday's New York Times and whether the monitoring by the National Security Agency violates civil liberties.

Defending the program, Bush said in his address that it is used only to intercept the international communications of people inside the United States who have been determined to have "a clear link" to al- Qaida or related terrorist organizations.

He said the program is reviewed every 45 days, using fresh threat assessments, legal reviews by the Justice Department, White House counsel and others, and information from previous activities under the program.

Without identifying specific lawmakers, Bush said congressional leaders have been briefed more than a dozen times on the program's activities.

It's time to identify them. Let the country know these people were kept in the loop and did not voice objections. And then, for purely political reasons, at the expense of sabotaging our nation's security, they attacked the President for doing what they acquiesced in, or let their confederates do the dirty work for them.

There are real questions about civil liberties and national security and the necessary tradeoffs each requires. But no genuine debate can be had with the Disloyal Opposition engaging in such dishonestly partisan sniping at every turn.

Posted by: Ace at 08:40 AM | Comments (75)
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If Democrats take back the House in 2006, there would be a "solid case" to bring articles of impeachment against Bush for "misleading" the country about prewar intelligence, the National Journal's Hotline quoted Kerry as saying.

He says he was only "joking," but I don't see the punchline there.

Please explain how a declaration of that -- which pleases the base and doubtless tickles Kerry too -- is a "joke."

Thinking about sitting 2006 out? Maybe you should think again.

Posted by: Ace at 03:02 PM | Comments (57)
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Heartbroken but still warm-hearted:

The ring came in a box topped with a white bow. A note with it read: “Merry Christmas. Thank you for leaving your car door unlocked. Instead of stealing your car I gave you a present. Hopefully this will land in the hands of someone you love, for my love is gone now.”

Awww. Geeze, even I find that poignant and sweet.

That clicking noise you hear is the sound of the words "FADE IN" being written in 10,000 screenplays about this premise.

I see the story moving simultaneously in two tracks. One, uncovering the mystery of the original owner and his lost love, and two, the woman receiving it and the handsome but roguish detective she's hired to look into the ring slowly falling in love. After annoying each other for the first forty minutes, of course.

And then hopefully some hot man-on-man action with Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhallenhyllenhallenhaal.

Thanks to Michael.

Posted by: Ace at 01:59 PM | Comments (27)
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...and used a hypnotized woman to find a downed plane.

Well, it was the seventies, I guess.

Co-host Karol can't believe this guy was actually a President. Some of us were actually alive then, and we're having trouble believing it ourselves.

Posted by: Ace at 01:53 PM | Comments (31)
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Allah once again:

Kong's Thursday night box-office falls 35%.

Now, yes, the previous night was the premiere, so some drop-off might be expected... but it's not a standard premiere night (like a Friday or a major holiday), so... we shouldn't have that much of a drop off, should we? I mean, this is just one inconvenient weekday night after another.

For comparison's sake, Narnia only dropped off 3.7% Wednesday to Thursday.

Allah might owe Hugh Hewitt an apology. King Kong's box-office is definitely not a solid B+.

Greenlight This Immediately Update: Kelly thinks of a way to combine two current Hollywood obsessions--

How about a movie about two giant gay gorillas with a forbidden love?

Call it Silverback Mountain.

Posted by: Ace at 12:51 PM | Comments (52)
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Allah didn't predict this, but really, he should have. Duh.

By a link simply reading "KAUS AND GAYS: Some further reflections here," he directs traffic to this post, titled:

Mickey Kaus Loves the Ladies, Really!

and which includes the snarky line:

Kaus doesn't want to see [Brokeback Mountain] because he's straight straight straight.

It's so childish. This is what Andrew Sullivan considers link-worthy? The age-old silly gay taunt that if you're not willing to roll with a little man-on-man action, you must be gay?

Makes sense: There are two sorts of men in the world. Men who are into gay sex, who are gay, and men who are not into gay sex, who are also gay. Hey, if they were comfortable enough in their masculinity to be attracted to other men, they'd be homosexuals, and, therefore, actually heterosexuals, who are of course really homosexuals because, in the words of Kurt Cobain, "Everyone is gay."

Posted by: Ace at 12:46 PM | Comments (20)
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Once again classified information is leaked to the New York Times, and yet no calls yet for an investigation.

As Powerline notes:

he administration specifically asked the Times not to publish this article, on the ground that such publication would damage the country's security:

The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article, arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. After meeting with senior administration officials to hear their concerns, the newspaper delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting. Some information that administration officials argued could be useful to terrorists has been omitted.

The Times believes that it should be the arbiter of what will and will not help the terrorists and thus impair our national security. I don't agree. Under the Plame precedent, this case is a no-brainer. The intelligence officials who leaked to the Times should be identified, criminally prosecuted, and sent to prison. Under the Pentagon Papers case, the reporters and editors at the Times who published the leaked story can't be criminally prosecuted. Perhaps the Supreme Court should revisit that precedent when the opportunity arises.

My emphasis on the word "some." I think Michelle Malkin hit that point as well.

Via Instapundit.

Posted by: Ace at 12:31 PM | Comments (37)
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I'm being slagged for having so much gay-sex stuff here, so, just to switch gears, study claims women are aroused by monkey-sex.

You dirty, dirty things you.

Don't blame me. Blame Allah. He sends me this filth.

Oh, and video of girls in bikinis teaching you calculus. Not quite safe for work, as it discusses "differentiating x."

And that filth is from John.

Posted by: Ace at 12:23 PM | Comments (19)
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