Ace of Spades HQ

November 19, 2006

Kissinger Tells BBC: Win In Iraq Impossible, Unless We Negotiate With Iran
— Ace

Yes, I'm sure the people who are funding, arming, training and occasionally sending troops to directly particpate in the insurgency will be very helpful in stabilizing Iraq. We just have to ask them sweetly.

Sounds like a good, realistic plan to me:

Military victory is no longer possible in Iraq, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said in a television interview broadcast Sunday.
Kissinger presented a bleak vision of Iraq, saying the U.S. government must enter into dialogue with Iraq's regional neighbors -- including Iran -- if progress is to be made in the region.
"If you mean by 'military victory' an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible," he told the British Broadcasting Corp.
But Kissinger, an architect of the Vietnam war who has advised President Bush about Iraq, warned against a rapid withdrawal of coalition troops, saying it could destabilize Iraq's neighbors and cause a long-lasting conflict.
"A dramatic collapse of Iraq --whatever we think about how the situation was created --would have disastrous consequences for which we would pay for many years and which would bring us back, one way or another, into the region," he said.

This seems idiotic to me. What Iran would want in exchange for helping to "stabilize" Iraq would be for the US to accept, and help impose, that Iraq should be a client state of Iran's, a terror-sponsoring state aligned against the US.

This "stabilizes" Iraq, yes -- in precisely the way we don't want it stabilized.

I'd rather see Iraq in civil war for ten years to have it "stabilize" as a wealthy funder and trainer of anti-US terrorists. Not that that would be my first preference; but if the choice is between an Iraq at war with itself and an Iraq joining with Iran in perpetual terrorist war against the US, I'd choose the former.

But this guy is just about the "stability." At all costs.

The Baker commission sought his advice, so there's a preview of the great ideas coming.

This is akin to Frist's suggestion that we bring the Taiban into the Afghan government in order to bring "peace" to that country. In both cases, "stability" and "peace" for those countries is elevated over the actual US national interest.

Do I want peace in Afghanistan? Sure -- on terms acceptable to the US. Giving Afghanistan back over to the killers is not acceptable.

They say "better a bad peace than a good war." Not in this case. In this case, it's "better a bad war than a good peace." Because there's no such thing as a "good peace" with these people.

They are prisoners of pre-9/11 thinking, Cold War thinking. But this is not a second Cold War. This is a hot war, and will remain such until the Islamists and their soft-supporters are humilitated, marginalized, or simply killed.

All of these morons assume these people are, pace Clausewitz, using war as yet another means to pursue other political goals. If we satisfy those other political goals through appeasement, then the war goes away.

But their assumption is wrong. War against us is not means to achieve some other end. War against us is the end in and of itself -- the ultimate goal.

They can't be bought off with carrots they prize more highly than killing Americans, because there is nothing at all they prize more highly than that.

Posted by: Ace at 09:30 AM | Comments (70)
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Judith Regan To Publish More "If I..." Titles
— Ace

Funny post at Conservative Cat.

If I'd Faked an Injury to Get Sent Home From Vietnam by John F. Kerry and other titles are planned.

Thanks to Larwyn.

Posted by: Ace at 09:09 AM | Comments (26)
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"Web Rage:" Blog, Internet Insulting Leads To Vengeance Attack With Pickaxe & Machete
— Ace

As CraigC. says, you knew it was going to happen eventually:

The first person to be charged with a "web rage" attack was jailed for two and a half years today.
Tempers flared after Paul Gibbons, 47, and John Jones, 43, exchanged insults in an Internet chatroom, an Old Bailey judge was told.
After tracing Mr Jones to his home address in Clacton, Gibbons armed himself with a pickaxe handle and, accompanied by a man with a machete, travelled 70 miles to the Essex seaside town in December 2005.
When they arrived, Mr Jones, whose girlfriend and three children were in the house, opened the door holding a knife for protection.
A fight broke out in which Mr Jones was disarmed and then beaten with the pickaxe handle and cut with his own knife.
Gibbons fled after Mr Jones's girlfriend called for help. Mr Jones suffered cuts to his head, neck and hands.

But what possible topic of contention could lead to such an assault?

An earlier hearing was told that Gibbons, from Southwark, south London, and Mr Jones had encountered each other in a chatroom called Islam 10 because they both had an interest in the Muslim faith.

Ah.

Det Sgt Jean-Marc Bazzoni, of Essex Police, said that the case demonstrated the importance of protecting one's identity on the Internet.

You're preaching to the converted, buddy.

Posted by: Ace at 09:01 AM | Comments (14)
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Get Your Picks In For The Pool
— Ace

Only an hour left.

Posted by: Ace at 08:49 AM | Comments (17)
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November 18, 2006

Planned Outrages
— Pixy Misa

Hi everyone.

This server will be going offline for up to two hours on Tuesday 21 November, between 5am and 7am CST, while our hosting company works on their power distribution.

Also, I have now transferred all DNS functions away from our old hosting company to the new servers. I think some people are still having problems with our old DNS setup, and hopefully this will fix that. There was a brief glitch while I was setting this up, and if you caught that glitch you might not be able to reach New Comments Thingy for a couple of hours, but after that it should automatically resolve itself.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:30 PM | Comments (79)
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Thanksgiving Advice
— LauraW.

From Dave in Texas.

More Thanksgiving advice:

*Storebought pies are of the debbil. Don't do that. Pies are ridiculously easy to make, and the house smells so good when they're baking.

*If you have a full house and need to set up a separate table for the kiddies, try to orient it so that you can reach the back of the worst kid's head with a spatula. That way you won't have to get up during the meal.

*Put a long-handled spatula next to your plate.

*Give the turkey enough time to thaw. Your relatives don't want to see you desperately shoving a blowtorch inside Mr. Turkey on Thursday morning.

*If you can manage it, cooking the turkey breast-side down for much of the cooking time does help keep the breast meat moist.

*Seat your weird red-haired cousins in another room and shut the door.

*If their mother objects, put her in there too. She'll come back without them in three minutes. She'll keep her yap shut for the rest of the meal as a bonus.

*If livingroom seating is inadequate, throw something soft on the floor that the kids can lounge on during the football game, while the adults are sleeping.

I'm sure all you guys have other great ideas and helpful hints.

Posted by: LauraW. at 01:31 PM | Comments (136)
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Terrific News
— LauraW.

Newfangled European passports meant to deter terrorism and crime may be easily clonable by savvy criminals. Yaay!

But is this really credible? Would criminals or terrorists really go to such lengths? Ross Anderson, professor of security engineering at the University of Cambridge computer laboratory, believes they would. "The point is that once you have extracted the data from the chip you can have a forged passport that contains not just forged physical stuff," he says. "You also have the digital bit-stream so the digital signature of the passport checks out. That makes it possible to travel through borders with it.
"What concerns me is that this demonstrates bad design on the part of the Home Office, and we know that government IT projects have a habit of going terribly wrong. There is a lack of security in what we can see - so what about the 90% of the iceberg in the system that we can't see?

Emphasis mine.
These investigators should be praised for their curiosity, and for identifying these weaknesses. Hopefully in advance of the bad guys (but I wouldn't count on it).
Kind of difficult to keep an eye on suspected terrorists (or their helpers) if they can slip the system altogether.
Hey, Home Office: IT isn't supposed to stand for Identity Theft, m'kay?
Thanks to tipster Man Of Substance, whose wife devours the souls of baby animals. Not to survive on.
Hobby.

Posted by: LauraW. at 11:42 AM | Comments (19)
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November 17, 2006

"One Never Knows When A Homosexual Is About... He May Appear Normal"
— Ace

Remember, this was a public information film from the 1940's, before the great advancements made in WWII in Gaydar technology were generally available to the public.

This is the shorter version of the clip.

The longer version is here."

Thanks to Del, who just made several "off-color jokes" to me. But I didn't mind. I've heard such jokes before, and it made me feel big to so quickly win the confidence of an older person.

Posted by: Ace at 04:19 PM | Comments (94)
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Cool Ish, Yo
— Ace

Okay, I still think the PS3 is way too pricey, and a dumb attempt to leverage the PS3's popularity into establishing Blu-Ray as the preferred format for high-def video, but this is pretty cool.

In case you don't know -- and I can't imagine any of you dorks don't -- this is the big game that's exclusive to the PS3.