Let's face it, that's what these panels are paid to do-- make a story go away:

Investigators probing the Oil-for-Food program in Iraq said Tuesday there was not enough evidence to show that U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan knew of a controversial contract bid by his son's employer.

But the report criticized the U.N. chief for not determining the exact nature of his son's relationship with the Swiss firm. The conclusion in the report, released Tuesday by Paul Volcker, was not the clear vindication the United Nations chief had wanted.

Thank God for small favors, eh?

I can't wait for Volcker's report on those Jordanian peace-keepers/child-rapists/goat-sodomizers. My sources tell me he'll mildly criticize the Jordanian "soldiers" for not having the common courtesy to give the goats the "reach-around" mandated by the Geneva Conventions.

Posted by: Ace at 08:27 AM | Comments (8)
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The guys get shirts. The guys get shirts. That's just. The fucking. Way. It is. We're not going to be a strong as our weakest link. The guys get shirts.

That is, if you want shirts. What did I say? T-SHIRTS!

The gals get little baby-t's too, if they're so inclined.

Update: Largest size in a baby t fits a 40-42 chest. Non baby women's t's now available in larger sizes.
more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:28 PM | Comments (56)
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It's a Vietnam cliche, but is there light at the end of the tunnel?:

In the privacy of their E-ring offices, senior Pentagon officials have begun to entertain thoughts that were unimaginable a year ago: Iraq is turning the corner.

Military officials and analysts say the clearing out of enemy-infested Fallujah in November, the Jan. 30 elections and the increasing willingness of Iraqis to fight and die for a democratic country are contributing to the momentum.

"This is still a tough fight. We don't want anyone to think that it is not," said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney, a military analyst who strongly supports Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. "But the momentum is in our direction."

...

A military source in Iraq declined to give raw number of attacks, but said, "There has been a decided downward trend in the number and lethality of attacks since the January 30 elections."

A Pentagon official said the more that intelligence agencies analyze the insurgency, the clearer it becomes that a large part is criminal, not nationalistic.

Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein released tens of thousands of hardened criminals, including murderers, before the March 2003 invasion, meaning that as the ex-convicts are recaptured, insurgent leaders might have an increasingly smaller pool from which to recruit attackers.

...

An analysis by Reuters shows that U.S. combat deaths in March so far have averaged barely one per day, the lowest figure since February 2004. All told, 1,520 U.S. personnel have died in Iraq, including 1,164 killed in action.

Nice of Reuters to notice, but the blogosphere noticed first.

And Kronology also notes that even the unabasedly lefty and anti-war Guardian UK is kinda-sorta admitting that things are going well... or badly, depending on whom you're rooting for.

Update: 10 Fingers 6 Strings has noted this previously as well, and has stats and analysis.

Posted by: Ace at 09:58 PM | Comments (8)
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Another 2,000 Bug Out, Chanting "Just Keep Timothy Haag Away From Us!"

Don't let the door hit ya where the good Lord split ya:

BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) - Two thousand more Syrian troops have left Lebanon, lowering Syria's military presence to 8,000 soldiers, the smallest deployment it's had here since the second year of the country's 1975-90 civil war, a military official said.

...

At the time of Hariri's assassination, about 14,000 Syrian troops were in Lebanon. About 4,000 soldiers left in the first phase of a withdrawal that was completed March 17.

The Syrian army's presence made Damascus the power broker of Lebanese politics. The Lebanese opposition strongly resented Syria's domination, but the pro-Syrian government said Syrian troops were necessary for the country's stability.

Posted by: Ace at 09:14 PM | Comments (3)
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I'm hopeful, but obviously we've heard this song before, and it doesn't get better with repeated listenings.

That said:

Iraqi security forces have surrounded Iraq's most-wanted terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the country's interior minister announced. We have not arrested al-Zarqawi, Interior Minister Falah al-Nakib said during a news conference. He is surrounded in a certain area, and we hope for the best. This operation is ongoing.

The lack of quotation marks is from the original, which doesn't inspire confidence either. If you can't capture a direct quote in quote marks, how ya gonna capture al-Zarqawi?

Still. There it is.

Posted by: Ace at 07:20 PM | Comments (8)
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Maybe they got a less-threatening translation which speaks only of "boncentrantion bamps:"

Turkey's government Monday played down soaring sales of Adolf Hitler's anti-Semitic book "Mein Kampf" ("My Struggle") and said there were no racists in the large Muslim country.

You know what other country had no racists? Nazi Germany. David Irving says so.

Booksellers say "Mein Kampf," or "Kavgam" in Turkish, has featured among the top 10 bestsellers in the past two months, to the dismay of the country's small Jewish community and of the German embassy in Ankara.

...

"We have never had such an attitude in our culture, nor in our history, and we do not have it now ... It's not possible for people to choose their races ... Turkish society's idea about this issue is clear. There is no racism in this country," [said a government flack].

Of course not, darling. Just a lot of Turks who are really interested in Hitler's ideas about restructuring post-WWI reparations debt, I guess.

PS, the headline lied for effect. Mein Kampf is not, in fact, #1 on the bestseller list. Want to know what is?

The current No. 1 bestseller in Turkey, ahead of "Mein Kampf," is "Metal Storm," which depicts a U.S. invasion of the country. The Turkish hero avenges his homeland by destroying Washington with a nuclear device.

As ever, anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism: Perfect Together.

Thanks to GregS.

Posted by: Ace at 01:28 PM | Comments (56)
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Guy jumps out of a helicopter and glides towards a snowy peak on flying-fox style membranes under his arms and between his legs.

Only disappointment: he pulls a parachute at the end. I was really hoping he had the balls enough to try to land off the glide, maybe on skis or something.

I have a feeling the James Bond people will be calling this guy in the next week.

Via The Full of Hate Brothers.

Posted by: Ace at 11:01 AM | Comments (10)
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Give it up, MSM. It's fake.

You were snookered again. Jeepers, why does this keep happening to you, with all your vaunted fact-checking?

Could it possibly be that your are politically biased and inclined to accept uncritically any "document" which is facially damaging to Republicans passed to you by Democrats?

Rathergate is of course all over this like ricotta cheese on Michael Moore's scraggly shit-beard. Just keep scrolling, as the man says.

Posted by: Ace at 10:25 AM | Comments (14)
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One poster writes, "Too bad only PayPal is accepted for payment."

This is a big misconception. You don't need a PayPal account to buy stuff, or to donate. You only need PayPay to receive money.

PayPal is how money gets put into my pocket, and into the pocket of RockNClothing. All you need to purchase via PayPal is a credit card.

You can also send a "e-check." Not sure how that works, but I've gotten donations via check in the past. The PayPal ordering screen should allow you that option under some drop-down menu. I think you just type in your bank's routing number and account number (the numbers at the bottom of your check) as well as the check number you intend to use and then hit "send." The electronic version of your check works just like a paper check. (Of course you have to void the specific check whose number you're using-- that check will be used, in electronic form. You can't use that specific check again, just like you can't use the same paper check twice.)

PayPal is like any other form of internet purchasing-- you just type in your credit card number and billing information and buy. Or donate. It's just an easy way for a small vendor, like myself, to accept credit-card payments or donations without having to subscribe to a credit-card merchant service or buy one of those credit-card-checking modem thingees.

It's no different than ordering from Amazon. Except whereas Amazon handles its own credit-card receipts of payments, I don't. PayPal handles them for me.

Just click the first payment type box -- the one that says you don't have a PayPal account -- and it will ask you for your billing address and credit card information. No PayPal account necessary and no PayPal account created.

Might as well pimp the shirt again. I'm worse than Suzanne Sommers. Click the pic to see the tee:

Posted by: Ace at 09:57 AM | Comments (22)
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Well, this certainly makes me feel less dorky:

The metric is what the person has to contribute, not the person's rank, age, or level of experience. If they have the answer, I want the answer. When I post a question on my blog, I expect the person with the answer to post back. I do not expect the person with the answer to run it through you, your OIC, the branch chief, the exec, the Division Chief and then get the garbled answer back before he or she posts it for me. The Napoleonic Code and Netcentric Collaboration cannot exist in the same space and time. It's YOUR job to make sure I get my answers and then if they get it wrong or they could have got it righter, then you guide them toward a better way... but do not get in their way.

JAMES E. CARTWRIGHT
General, USMC
Commander, USSTRATCOM

Emphasis added. You can't access the blog, because it's on restricted servers, of course.

However, I'm told that when the general isn't seeking answers about orders of battle and full-spectrum joint-branch integrated operations, he "lightens things up" by posting his all-time Top Ten Make-Out Songs and stuff about dating and cats.

He also talks smack about Oliver Willis.

Posted by: Ace at 09:39 AM | Comments (15)
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