Theo Van Gogh is surely spinning in his Islamofascist-dug grave:

Two European films shown at the 34th Rotterdam international film festival caused quite a stir among cinema critics and the audience.

Reason? Presenting anti-western attacks by extremists as a retaliation for the mounting hate and persecution campaigns targeting Muslims in the West in the wake of the 9/11 attacks......

He maintained that cinema remains “the strongest means in exposing the unjust and repressive practices by some Western governments against their Muslim communities”.

Posted by: Ace at 11:26 AM | Comments (8)
Post contains 96 words, total size 1 kb.

Kurtz goes after East Jordan with a wet kiss (registration required).

Kaus goes after Kurtz with a vengeance.

Echoing Dan Rather, Kurtz plays the conservative card:

Kurtz says Jordan's remarks triggered "widespread denunciations ... by conservative bloggers." That's true. But Barney Frank isn't a conservative, and neither is Dodd. (And neither, I'd say, is kausfiles, but we can argue about that offline.) Kurtz's "conservative blogger" paragraph is a dog whistle to WaPo readers telling them "Don't worry. It's just some right-wing Web kooks on the warpath."

The "Collateral Damage" Canard: Eason's big defense goes as follows:

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who attended the World Economic Forum panel at which Jordan spoke, recalled yesterday that Jordan said he knew of 12 journalists who were killed by coalition forces in Iraq. At first, said Frank, "it sounded like he was saying it was official military policy to take out journalists." But Jordan later "modified" his remarks to say some U.S. soldiers did this "maybe knowing they were killing journalists, out of anger. . . . He did say he was talking about cases of deliberate killing," Frank said.

Jordan denied that last night, saying he had been responding to Frank's comment that the 63 journalists who have been killed in Iraq were "collateral damage" in the war. "I was trying to make a distinction between 'collateral damage' and people who got killed in other ways," Jordan said last night. "I have never once in my life thought anyone from the U.S. military tried to kill a journalist. Never meant to suggest that. Obviously I wasn't as clear as I should have been on that panel."

That is of course pure bullsh*t. (Hopefully that asterisk will help me get unblocked by the Pentagon.)

Until now, there have only been two sorts of deliberately-caused deaths in war: deliberate targeting of known or beleived enemies, and collateral damage (including friendly fire kills). Eason Jordan is now claiming he merely was attempting to create a third category, a category which isn't quite "deliberate targeting" but isn't quite the "accidental targeting" of collateral damage.

What on earth could this "Third Way" of death in war possibly be?

If a squad of Marines are on patrol in a terrorist-held block, and suddenly a figure pops up and they shoot on that figure and kill it, and then it turns out to be a civilian woman, obviously they both 1) deliberately engaged the target and 2) "scored" a collateral damage kill. The woman's death is collateral damage, as they obviously would not have shot at her had they had complete information about her identity; they shot at her because she surprised them in a threat-heavy environment.

Eason Jordan's ridiculous defense is that he thinks, apparently, that shouldn't be counted as "collateral damage," and that is all he claims he was saying about the deaths of journalists.

But of course when innocents are killed in war, it is generally due to "deliberately targeting" them-- their identity as innocents, however, is not known at the time of the killing. When a bomb is deliberately but erroneously dropped on a home believed to contain terrorists (but actually containing civilians), that is again a case of deliberate (but tragically wrong) targeting, and a case of collateral damage.

There is no "third category" Eason Jordan was trying to establish. There are enough witnesses on record who are quite clear that he was talking about the US deliberately -- and knowingly -- targeting (and torturing!) journalists.

His claim about trying to say the journalists weren't quite deliberately targeted, and yet weren't quite not deliberately targeted, is a bit of after-the-fact spin which Howie Kurtz, desperate to keep his high-profile, high-paying CNN gig, is only to happy to credit as plausible.

David Gergen-- Witness for the Defense? Kurtz also casts David Gergen as a rebuttal witness, although his remarks have previously been interpreted as evidence that Jordan said and meant just what he's reported to have said and meant. See, for example, Michelle Malkin's interview with Gergen:

First, Gergen confirmed that Eason Jordan did in fact initially assert that journalists in Iraq had been targeted by military "on both sides." Gergen, who has known Jordan for some 20 years, told me Jordan "realized as soon as the words had left his mouth that he had gone too far" and "walked himself back." Gergen said as soon as he heard the assertion that journalists had been deliberately targeted, "I was startled. It's contrary to history, which is so far the other way. Our troops have gone out of their way to protect and rescue journalists."

Gergen mentioned that Jordan had just returned from Iraq and was "caught up in the tension of what was happening there. It's a raw, emotional wound for him."

Gergen said he asked Jordan point blank whether he believed the policy of the U.S. military was to sanction the targeting of journalists. Gergen said Jordan answered no, but then proceeded to speculate about a few incidents involving journalists killed in the Middle East--a discussion which Gergen decided to close down because "the military and the government weren't there to defend themselves."

It seems that Jordan did attempt to "walk back" his Al Jazeera-esque charges, but he then went on to walk back the walkback.

In any event, Gergen still says that Jordan did make the charges, fairly clearly-- even if he then did attempt to kinda-sorta take them back without quite taking them back.

Kurtz takes this narrative as exonerating Jordan-- and the only narrative you should really put stock in:

Two other panelists backed Jordan's account. David Gergen, editor at large at U.S. News & World Report, said he "sort of gasped" when Jordan spoke of journalists being "deliberately killed," but that Jordan "realized, as soon as he said it, he'd gone too far" and "walked it back."

[The other panelist is a BBC reporter, who repeats and endorses Jordan's odd claim of an intermediate stage between deliberate, knowing killing of a target and collateral damage.]

Kurtz concludes with Gergen's "give the guy a break" plea:

Gergen said Jordan had just returned from Baghdad and was still "deeply distraught" over the journalists who have died in Iraq. "This was a guy caught up in the tension of the moment," Gergen said. "He deserves the benefit of the doubt."

Ahhhh... giving one side the last word. A classic.

But that is all Gergen's opinion as to what scorn, or lack thereof, we should hold Jordan in. It says nothing about the actual fact of whether he made these outlandish and near-seditious charges before a foreign audience (consisting of many Arabs and Muslims). What the hell is this statement doing here at all?

Before we decide whether or not to forgive, we first have to establish if there's been a transgression in the first place, and Kurtz' deliberately-deceptive piece tries to make that initial inquiry as difficult for the reader as possible.

So: According to Kurtz, we should forgive his beloved boss, and just skip over trying to figure out if he committed an egregrious journalistic breach in claiming, without evidence, that the US military deliberately and knowingly targets journalists in Iraq.

Reader Richard Sees a Pattern: And suggests that we ought not forget the Tailwind story.

Lawyering Up: It seems to me the word "deliberately" is a bit vague in this situation.

Lawyers differentiate between willful behavior -- i.e., you meant to do what you did; it wasn't a muscle spasm or something done while sleepwalking or having a seizure or something -- and knowing behavior -- i.e., you had full knowledge of what you were doing and the likely consequences of your actions.

Collateral damage kills may be be both non-willful and non-knowing -- i.e., purely accidental -- and willful but non-knowing -- i.e., you intend to target a figure, but you don't know that figure is actually a non-combatant.

True "deliberate" targeting requires both willfullness and knowingness.

Eason Jordan is attempting to slice the baloney very thin by suggesting that one typical case of collateral damage kill -- the willful but non-knowing case -- is actually not collateral damage at all, but some heretofore unnamed category ("collateral damage deliberately inflicted," perhaps?)

Again, this just doesn't make any sense. We have not previously distinguished between purely accidental collateral kills and collateral kills in which the target was intentionally targeted, but without complete knowledge that the target was innocent.

But, much like Clinton's nonsensical legal parsing over whether one can simultaneously be "alone" and "not alone" with someone giving you fellatio, the semantics (while clearly nonsensical as urged by Jordan) get a bit hard to untangle and the hope of the double-talker is that people will just give up trying to follow the discussion at all.

And then of course they will MoveOn (TM).

Howie Kurtz has done the best he could to muddy the issue on behalf of his embattled boss.

Congrats, Howie. Your job, at least at CNN, is safe.

Posted by: Ace at 10:59 AM | Comments (6)
Post contains 1483 words, total size 10 kb.

Supposedly Woodward & Bernstein will reveal DT's name only when he dies, and he's gravely ill now:

We'll all know one day very soon, however. Bob Woodward, a reporter on the team that covered the Watergate story, has advised his executive editor at the Washington Post that Throat is ill. And Ben Bradlee, former executive editor of the Post and one of the few people to whom Woodward confided his source's identity, has publicly acknowledged that he has written Throat's obituary.

Over at NRO's Corner, they link to a piece suggesting that Chief Justice William Rehnquist might be Throat.

Now, I realize this is in somewhat bad taste -- the man being so ill -- but the theory is as good as any of the other Throat theories I've read. (The piece also mentions Woodward & Scott Armstrong's book The Brethren, about the Supreme Court; the suggestion being that Woodward got his access for that book because he'd already cultivated Rehnquist as a source earlier.)

And I don't know of any other high-level Nixon officials who are currently very sick.

Posted by: Ace at 08:21 PM | Comments (16)
Post contains 188 words, total size 1 kb.

Just got a tip that the Pentagon has blocked this site as being Mature/Adult content.

For crying out loud.

Anyone know how to get me off of the Pentagon's blocked list?

This sucks. I don't know if this is just the Pentagon or a ban from all military servers, but suddenly I'm not seeing .mil and .af extensions in my referral lists.

Update: I am seeing army.mil and af.mil and navy.mil extensions in my referrals, so hopefully this banning is just restricted to the offices of the Joint Chiefs.

Posted by: Ace at 07:25 PM | Comments (18)
Post contains 97 words, total size 1 kb.

Classic Ann -- video, too! -- at Glenn Reynolds' MSNBC column/blog.

Meanwhile, a defensive Howie Kurtz tries to explain his long silence on the scandal to Mickey Kaus, and promises a story... tomorrow.

We'll see. I have a feeling he'll just merely mention the story, and then talk up the partisan "catfight" that has erupted over it, while avoiding any conclusions as to whether it is ethical or prudent for a high-ranking CNN executive to traffic in unsubstantiated Al Jazeera conspiracy theories.

Posted by: Ace at 07:14 PM | Comments (11)
Post contains 108 words, total size 1 kb.

The SOTU had something to do with it, but more important were the successful elections in Iraq:

The Iraqi elections that went "better than expected" produced a bump in President Bush's approval rating, according to the latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll.

Between January 14 and 16, 51 percent of survey participants expressed approval of Bush's performance as president. But 57 percent of the 1,010 respondents during the February 4 thru 6 poll stated that they approved of how the he does his job.

...

While the responses to some questions -- like how the president is handling the economy and Social Security --- remained within the margin of error or unchanged from a January 7 poll to the one last week -- the most significant changes appeared on issues related to Iraq.

In the January 7 survey, 42 percent of respondents said they approved of how Bush is handling the situation in Iraq, and 56 percent expressed dissatisfaction. But, last week Bush gained 8 percentage points in his approval rating, with 50 percent giving him a nod and 48 percent disapproving.

On the question of whether sending U.S. troops to Iraq was a mistake, 52 percent said "yes" and 47 percent said "no" during the week of January 14. But last week, the numbers flipped with 45 percent saying "yes" and 55 percent saying "no."

Obviously, a lot of hard work remains to be done. But it is comforting the public is paying enough attention to know who was right and who was wrong at least on the one discrete issue of elections in Iraq.

Posted by: Ace at 02:23 PM | Comments (13)
Post contains 282 words, total size 2 kb.

Two Minute Offense says of course they can-- because they've done so time and time again before.

Then again, that was before blogs. Not to be all blog-triumphalist, but blogs have been fairly effective at pushing some stories that the MSM would rather not cover on to their (middle) pages, from time to time.

Guys-- we're not getting off this story. The longer you refuse to cover something that is plainly newsworthy and interesting (and scandalous!), while your supposed inferiors cover it with the attention it merits, the shabbier you all look.

Cut your losses. Print the story. Now.

Thanks to JimW.

Posted by: Ace at 02:19 PM | Comments (6)
Post contains 112 words, total size 1 kb.

Strange but (maybe) true: GI confesses slipping Goering the deadly dose that allowed him to escape the trial at Nuremberg via self-induced poisoning.

Why did he do so?

Because a pretty girl flirted with him and then asked him to take some "medicine" to the Nazi.

"I never saw Mona [the pretty Nazi agent in this tale] again. I guess she used me," Stivers said.

He guesses she used him. Sort of like I guess that that stripper was using me when she told me she was just stripping to pay for vetrinary school and that it would really help calm her down for her exams if I bought her a $150 half-bottle of cheap Mexican champagne.

Men. Sometimes we're just plain embarassing, aren't we?

Posted by: Ace at 01:51 PM | Comments (12)
Post contains 128 words, total size 1 kb.

Ukraine's New Government Turns Aggressively To Investigate Illicit Arms Sales

Maybe there's something to this "freedom" schtick of Bush's after all:

The newly-appointed government of Ukraine is wasting no time turning its attention to allegations of corruption and dangerous weapons deals under the previous administration.

The moves come shortly after Ukraine's parliament unanimously approved Yulia Tymoshenko, a nationalist and frequent critic of Russia, as prime minister to lead the country's new pro-Western government.

Recently-elected President Viktor Yushchenko told lawmakers his government would fight corruption though he knew that "that may seem like a fantasy in Ukraine."

...

Last week Grigory Omelchenko, a politician and ally of the country's new leadership claimed that Ukraine sold six air-to-ground cruise to Iran and six to China in 1999-2001.

In a letter Omelchenko, who is deputy head of a parliamentary committee on organized crime, urged the president to investigate the matter.

At least six arrests of arms dealers have been reported.

The U.S. earlier claimed that Ukraine had sold sophisticated radar equipment to Saddam Hussein despite a U.N. arms embargo against Iraq. The government of former President Leonid Kuchma denied the allegations.

Who's going to argue with Yulia?

A Photo Album: See-Dub sends along this link to pics showing fair Yulia looking very dishy indeed.

And not just dishy-- she seems to favor slightly period/sci-fi get-ups and a quasi-Princess-Leia hairdoo.

The Thinking Man's Cheesecake? Definitely the Dorking Man's Cheesecake.

Hotter Still: Not only does she have her own eponymous political party, but she is known as a "firebrand."

I'm getting as moist as a snack cake, as Jerri Blank would say.

Posted by: Ace at 01:33 PM | Comments (28)
Post contains 275 words, total size 2 kb.

Surely there's nothing at all seditious about openly calling for further mass-murdering terrorist attacks on what is ostensibly one's own country.

A professor who likened World Trade Center victims to a notorious Nazi suggested to a magazine that more terror attacks may be necessary to radicalize Americans to fight the misuse of U.S. power.

In an interview Ward Churchill gave with Satya magazine, he was asked about the effectiveness of protests of U.S. policies and the Iraq war, and responded: "One of the things I've suggested is that it may be that more 9/11s are necessary."

...

"I don't believe I owe an apology," Churchill said Friday on CNN's "Paula Zahn Now" program — his first public comments since the University of Colorado began a review that could lead to his dismissal.

...

"I don't know if the people of 9-11 specifically wanted to kill everybody that was killed," he told Zahn. "It was just worth it to them in order to do whatever it was they decided it was necessary to do that bystanders be killed. And that essentially is the same mentality, the same rubric."

In an interview published Saturday in the Rocky Mountain News, Churchill added, "This was a gut response opinion speech written in about four hours. It's not completely reasoned and thought through."

Churchill said his speech had been misinterpreted. "I never called for the deaths of millions of Americans," he said.

No, not millions. Merely thousands.

Posted by: Ace at 11:57 AM | Comments (18)
Post contains 254 words, total size 2 kb.