"As much as we overestimated WMD, it appears we underestimated [Saddam Hussein's] support for transregional terrorists," says one intelligence official.

I've sort of grown frustrated by Steven Hayes' reporting on these issues. He seems on the verge of establishing something big, but it never pans out. And if he's right about all this, why doesn't the Administration say something about it? Why leave it all to a single reporter working at the Weekly Standard? If there was any there there, why not scream it from the mountains?

But maybe something will finally pan out:

THE FORMER IRAQI REGIME OF Saddam Hussein trained thousands of radical Islamic terrorists from the region at camps in Iraq over the four years immediately preceding the U.S. invasion, according to documents and photographs recovered by the U.S. military in postwar Iraq. The existence and character of these documents has been confirmed to THE WEEKLY STANDARD by eleven U.S. government officials.

The secret training took place primarily at three camps--in Samarra, Ramadi, and Salman Pak--and was directed by elite Iraqi military units. Interviews by U.S. government interrogators with Iraqi regime officials and military leaders corroborate the documentary evidence. Many of the fighters were drawn from terrorist groups in northern Africa with close ties to al Qaeda, chief among them Algeria's GSPC and the Sudanese Islamic Army. Some 2,000 terrorists were trained at these Iraqi camps each year from 1999 to 2002, putting the total number at or above 8,000. Intelligence officials believe that some of these terrorists returned to Iraq and are responsible for attacks against Americans and Iraqis. According to three officials with knowledge of the intelligence on Iraqi training camps, White House and National Security Council officials were briefed on these findings in May 2005; senior Defense Department officials subsequently received the same briefing.

There are some 2 million Iraqi documents captured; only around 50,000 have been translated and analyzed. Some in the Administration have been pushing to simply release them all to the public and press, and let the world analyze them; others have been resistant to that idea, thinking that the New York Times or Washington Post would seize on one or two documents "proving" Saddam was a saint and thereby embarrass the Bush Administration.

Supposedly, most of those against the Biggest Document Dump Ever are now on board with it, and we should, hopefully, get these documents into the public's hands soon.

And maybe some bloggers and blog-readers who read Arabic can assist with the effort.

Posted by: Ace at 08:21 PM | Comments (18)
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A reporter tries to do a video report as soldiers burn a field of pot all around him.

There's a lot of pot smoke in the air. Etc. Danzo says it's from a British comedy show called "Drop the Dead Donkey."

Loose Shit: This was passed to me without a note that it was fake and I watched it... without sound. That laugh track is sort of a tip-off that it's fake, huh?

I guess I should have watched it first. Oh, well. I guess I pulled another "boner"!

Posted by: Ace at 07:51 PM | Comments (11)
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Nope, that's not really me talking, that's my interpretation of a Reuters article.

Improvements in emergency battlefield medicine are keeping soldiers alive who'd've died just a few years before.

Sounds like good news, albeit good news about an essentially grim subject, right?

Not to Reuters:

Number of badly wounded soldiers on rise in Iraq

SAN ANTONIO, Texas (Reuters) - Military medical advances are keeping more soldiers alive in the Iraq War but also creating a growing pool of badly wounded veterans who will need expensive, long-term medical care, the U.S. secretary of Veteran Affairs said on Friday.

It's true that this is a good news/bad news story. While many badly wounded men are being saved, they are, largely, going to suffer from serious medical problems for the rest of their lives.

So why not give it a good news/bad news headline, like:

Medical Improvements Save Many Soldiers, Resulting In Rise in Number of Badly Wounded Casualties of War

Nope. To Reuters, apparently, saving the life of a badly wounded soldier is unambiguously bad news.

Of course, were new weapons (like some frangible super-bullet) killing more soldiers outright, Reuters wouldn't have run a headline like New Ultra-lethal Iraqi Weaponry Saves American Taxpayers Cost of Long-Term Veterans' Medical Care.

But then again, who knows? This is Reuters after all. Maybe they would headline the article exactly that way.

Thanks to the A-Man.

Posted by: Ace at 07:44 PM | Comments (12)
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Amanpour, dubbed a "War Slut" by Andrea Peyser for her resume-building airdrops into war zones, may have had some of her calls intercepted by the NSA, at least according to a question asked on NBC based on a unconfirmed rumor.

The left is quite sure that this is evidence that the administration is spying on journalists.

There is, apparently, no chance at all that Amanpour has some contacts in the Middle East on the NSA's watch list, and that they may have called her.

No chance of that.

And of course there's no chance at all that this unsubstantiated rumor is complete horseshit.

This is getting ri-goddamned-diculous. These people are worse than Boston Red Sox fans, because every other week for them is the "season where they'll win the series," and every other week their widdle hearts are broken again.

And at least the Red Sox won one world series in the past 80 years.

Eh. Seriously, guys, this is your season. The team's looking really good this year. Amanapour-- she'll be your ace. You'll finally beat the Yankees.*

* This whole analogy really would have worked a lot better two years ago.

Posted by: Ace at 07:30 PM | Comments (15)
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A chick in a bikini brandishing a lightsaber.

Warning: Video shows a chick in bikini. Brandishing a lighsaber. With some stripperesque moves.

I feel a strange disturbance... in my pants.

Thanks to Asher.

Posted by: Ace at 06:12 PM | Comments (40)
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Drudge says:

Democrats hope to tie Alito to Concerned Alumni of Princeton (CAP).

Alito will testify that he joined CAP as a protest over Princeton policy that would not allow the ROTC on campus.

THE DRUDGE REPORT has obtained a Summer 1982 article from CAP’s PROSPECT magazine titled “Smearing The Class Of 1957” that key Senate Democrats believe could thwart his nomination!

In the article written by then PROSPECT editor Frederick Foote, Foote writes: “The facts show that, for whatever reasons, whites today are more intelligent than blacks.”

Senate Democrats expect excerpts like this written by other Princeton graduates will be enough to torpedo the Alito nomination.

"Stick a fork in Scalito, he's done," one Dem hack says.

But Drudge says it will be some nitwit lefty journalist named Dujack leading the charge against Alito as star witness. But NRO's Bench Memos blog says he's already confirmed he's off the witness list, because he's a PETA freak who thinks that chicken-farms are the same as Holocaust genocide factories.

It really doesn't matter if Dujack is the witness or not. The Dem Senators can introduce the article themselves.

But-- so what? Joining an organization for one purpose does not tie you into every statement one of its members may make (admittedly, here, a prominent member wrote the offensive statement).

I'm having a hard time believing that Princeton was a hotbed of racism and sexism even back when Alito graduated.

And of course, no one much wants to get into this on either side, but when you're debating affirmative action in any context, you sort of have to acknowlege, unless you're just avoiding the issue, that there is an acheivement gap between whites and blacks, for whatever reason. If there weren't, we wouldn't need "plus factors" for blacks and other minorities. We could just admit students without any racial considerations whatsoever and expect a representive mix of the races.

I have no idea what the complete statement was, or if it were caveated, etc. And without a doubt, saying blacks are "not as smart" as whites is probably the least sensitive way you can discuss the achievement gap.

But still-- is this all there is? This is what they're pinning their hopes on? Affirmative action in the form of quotas and "plus factors" is neither especially popular nor very productive as policy, and I can't imagine that America is going to be horrified at someone who was a member of a group opposed to it. Even most of those who support the policy have a bit of queasiness at the expressly racially-based "plus factors" awarded to candidates based on the color of their skin.

It does, however, open the door to vigorous questioning as to Alito's beliefs on the constitutionality of plus factors and quotas, which he'll be hard-pressed to duck. Either way he answers, he'll be making enemies.

Posted by: Ace at 04:36 PM | Comments (21)
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...even after deducting for debts and funeral expenses.

I'm drawing a blank-- is there any reason an estate can't be sued for wrongful deaths by the decedent? The money is supposed to go to this monster's family.

Thanks to the A-Man.

Posted by: Ace at 03:52 PM | Comments (11)
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...in the wake of a Herpes-infected mohel passing the disease on to a child, leading to the child's death.

They say sucking the blood from a circumscision wound "cleans it."

This is weird. This is the first time I ever heard of this. Sucking the blood from a baby's wee-wee after a circumcision? Is this really necessary? Who the hell thought of this? And, more importantly, who was the second guy to say, "Yeah, I think that's a really great idea!"

Also being hotly debated: the age-old custom of giving an infant an "around-the-world" circumcision for an extra $50.

Thanks to the A-Man. Sort of. I did not need to read about this.

Posted by: Ace at 02:18 PM | Comments (34)
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In case you missed it, there's a running argument about whether Thomas Jefferson uttered the (very famous) quote "Free speech is quite overrated." Although Dave From Texas has been pretty thorough in providing search-terms for Jersey to Google in order to find this famous quote, Jersey hasn't found it yet, leading him to conclude, very unfairly, that Dave is lying about the whole thing.

JERSEY:

Oh, and Dave...by now, even your buddies know your Jefferson quote was total bullshit (although they'll never admit it, much like our president), but here's a question for little ol' you:

Why don't you have the balls to admit you were lying through your teeth...if you actually have teeth?

You can't possibly be that gutless.

DAVE:

You still can't find it Jersey?

Wow. I would have thought it would be pretty easy. I don't have an online reference, but if I get some time later today I'll see what I can find. I actually copied it out of one of my college history books, Stuff Jefferson Said, 3rd. edition. You might be able to find it on Amazon. Here, try "www.amazon.com" and search on "Stuff Jefferson Said".

I'll bet there's a newer version in publication now, so leave out "3rd edition."

I can attest that I have a copy of Stuff Jefferson Said, 4th Edition (Revised), which I bought from a second-hand book-dealer a couple of years back. I'm now turned to page 112, and here I find the quote I think Dave means.

It's not exactly as Dave reported, which might be causing all the difficulty in finding it. The quote reads:

"Of all the Necessities of a Prudent & Effective Government, the Virtue & Wisdom of the People is paramount. Free Speech is Nice & Everything, but really, it's No Big Shakes in the Greater Scheme of Things." -- Thomas Jefferson

(Capitalizations and ampersands per original text.)

Apparently it's from a letter he wrote to Governeur Morris in the weeks before the Constitutional convention. Governeur Morris wrote back, simply, "Eh, I'm not all that exercised about it either way, truth be told. But what about quartering troops in people's homes? We should probably say something definitive about that." He then made a reference to being "PWNd," which might be some sort of Masonic acronym (according to the volume's annotations).

I hope this finally settles the matter once and for all.

Posted by: Ace at 01:22 PM | Comments (170)
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A few days ago I scoffed at the idea that the house contained anything but terrorists. There may have been reasons to target the suspect house -- but they hit the wrong one, 65 feet away, killing six family members and wounding three more.

Seems like this wasn't a diplomatic thing to say in an admission of error:

The bomb had "successful effects against the insurgents," the statement added.

Yes, I'm sure that their ears are still ringing from the blast that killed the family down the street.

Mistakes happen, but that is a really stupid thing to write when you've committed a tragic error.

Posted by: Ace at 01:16 PM | Comments (6)
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