From the UK Observer. Note that Allah initially states this is the Sunday version of the UK Guardian, and notes that if you've lost the hard-left socialists, you've lost anyone. A subsequent update makes it clear that while the Observer is the Sunday version of the Guardian, they have different editorial staffs and very different politics.

Still, whoever's saying it, it's spot on.

But even within the bleakest possible analysis of Mr BlairÂ’s foreign policy, it is still simply not true that the West is waging war on Islam. Just as it is not true that the CIA was really behind the 11 September attacks or any other arrant conspiratorial nonsense that enjoys widespread credence in the Middle East and beyond. It is also a logical and moral absurdity to imply, as some critics of British policy have done, that mass murder is somehow less atrocious when it is motivated by an elaborate narrative of political grievance.

If young British Muslims are alienated, that is sad and their anger should be addressed. But anyone whose alienation leads them to want to kill indiscriminately has crossed a line into psychopathic criminality. Policy cannot be dictated by the need to placate such people.

Indeed, as Chris Klein sagely states, we should never placate.

Does anyone else find it a bit unseemly that so-called "moderate" Muslim spokesmen use every incident of completed or thwarted mass-murder by Muslim terrorists as an opportunity to make the precise same demands their terrorist fellow-travellers are?

What the hell is up with that linkage? Shouldn't the immediate reaction be an unstinting condemnation of the terrorists and a demand for all Muslims to rise against it and cooperate with police?

Shouldn't the calls for giving in to the terrorists' demands wait, at the very least, until all the bodies are pulled from the wreckage (or, here, until all the terrorists are caught and imprisoned)?

This terrorist-"moderate" Sister Act is transparent. The terrorists butcher and kill and cause widespread mayhem and economic damage and make demands upon the West, and then, within hours, the "moderates," who supposedly condemn terrorism, make the same demands -- threatening more terrorism if their demands are not appeased.

Posted by: Ace at 01:01 PM | Comments (11)
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They're learning. Slowly.

Explain This Update: Sticky Notes thinks he's found proof the pic is p-shopped, because photos of the newspaper shown in other pictures, held by everyday Cubans, display a color version of the front page, with a big red headline.

I'm not sure this is actually proof of fakery. Is it not the case that pre-run proofs of a newspaper are/may be printed up only in black and white?

If that's the case -- and for some reason, I think it is -- it could just be Castro holding a proof of the paper which would be later printed up with colors.

Posted by: Ace at 12:09 PM | Comments (32)
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Note they say they "believe" they nabbed UK AQ No. 1, so it's not a certainty. Still, if they think that, he must be at least connected to AQ, and pretty high up on the chain.

SECURITY sources believe that a man arrested in last weekÂ’s anti- terror raids in Britain is Al-QaedaÂ’s leader in this country.

Home Office officials say that one of those arrested is suspected not only of masterminding the foiled plot to bring down up to nine transatlantic airliners, but also of involvement in other planned atrocities over the past few years.

They believe that he was instrumental in sending the ringleader of at least one previous British terror plot for training at a camp in Pakistan last year. He is described by counter-terrorist officials at MI5 as the senior figure in a British terror network involving Kashmiri, north African and Iraqi cells.

Scotland Yard believes that the plan to bring down airliners involved up to 20 terrorists who were planning to smuggle liquid bomb components in hand luggage onto nine British and American passenger jets.

...

At least two suspects escaped last Wednesday nightÂ’s police raids. Although they are not thought to be significant players, there remain concerns that they may now be galvanised into taking some form of unspecified action.

Thanks to Craig, who got it from Captain Ed, who supplies some analysis.

Here's my analysis:

He's a smell pirate hooker, and they should send him back to his home on Whore Island.

They should also put in him in a room with a "karate monkey."

Posted by: Ace at 10:06 AM | Comments (22)
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"Three Texas Men," huh?

The "Three Texas Men," as AP so accurately describes them, were:

* Louai Abdelhamied "Jim Bob" Othman,

* Adham Abdelhamid "Billy Ray" Othman, and

* Maruan Awad Muhareb, also known as "Cactus Jack" Muhareb, also known as "Deuce-In-The-Hole" Muhareb.

Yeeeee-had!

When are we finally going to get serious about "Texas Men" and their inclinations to commit terrorism?

(Dennis Miller h/t on the "Yee-had" thing.)

Texas

The Lone Crescent State.

Correction: Readers point out that Jim Bob isn't hypenated, and "Cletus" isn't a Texas name, which I actually knew, but I couldn't think of anything else. Thanks for correcting me on the facts.

Posted by: Ace at 09:38 AM | Comments (55)
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No, I'm not kidding.

Here's where I'm kidding: He "questioned the timing" of his own crash nuke program as a "distraction" from the Lamont victory.

Here's where I'm not kidding again:

"Do you think that the U.S. and Israeli intention and goal by attacking Lebanon is pulling the trigger for another world war?" the president asks visitors to the site, offering them the choice to vote 'yes' or 'no'.

Kidding: Also opines that N'Sync should really be called "N'Stink."

Not kidding again:

Ahmadinejad describes how in the first grade at school -- for those aged about seven -- he read newspapers with the help of adults about how the then shah of Iran gave Americans living in Iran immunity from prosecution under Iranian laws.

"I realized that Mohammad Reza (Shah) attempted to add another page to the vicious case history which was the humiliation and indignity of the Iranian people versus Americans," he said.

He describes listening ardently to the speeches of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the shah's vociferous critic and later leader of the 1979 Islamic revolution that overthrew the monarchy.

He also discusses Iran's bloody 1980-1988 war with Iraq, in which Ahmadinejad fought as a Revolutionary Guard.

But he admitted his opening blog, which runs to more than 2,300 words in the English version, was too long. "From now onwards, I will try to make it simpler and shorter," he wrote.

Yeah, I've promised that myself. Good luck with that.

The article is, as we've come to expect, pretty sympathetic towards this plucky, opinionated ant-Bush blogger, dwelling on his early days as a blacksmith's son and one of the bastards that took the American embassy staff hostage.

Kidding again. Of course Reuters would never mention that.

Thanks to Lisa.

Update: As usual, Allah has doubts. He's a doubter.

I'm not sure if this is much of a doubt, though. The blog's domain name is registered out of Teheran. Allah thinks it's "unlikely" that this guy, or whatever functionary is actually writing the thing, would use a gmail address. Why is that? Because the Iranian government has government addresses?

Well, fine, but... he's playing to Americans, right?

Allah also thinks it's suspicious that the name "Ahmandinejad" is rendered as the Western media do, instead of how the Iranians usually do, as "Ahmadi-Nezad."

Again -- if he's playing to the American left, which I think he is, why not adopt the spelling common in America?

The fact that this is registered out of Teheran suggests it's real -- or virtually real, i.e., as real as the "George Clooney" posts on Arianna Huffington. Done with Ahmadinejad's permission.

If this were a spoof, it would attack Ahmadinejad, not support him, and furthermore, it would be a one way ticket to the gallows.

Posted by: Ace at 09:35 AM | Comments (16)
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Ehhh... kinda childish all the way around.

But I know from personal experience people act pretty childishly when they're angry.

HANNITY: Once and for all you need to be challenged. You want to call our vice president a terrorist - fine. You want to talk about stoning people to death, say it on my program. If you want to be irresponsible and call our president a mass murderer while he's at war leading troops in harm's way ...

BALDWIN: And what are you gonna do about it, Sean Hannity?

HANNITY: You don't have the courage to answer questions.

BALDWIN: And what are you gonna do? And what are you going to do about it, Sean Hannity. If I come on your program, what are you going to do?

LEVIN: He's going to show that you have a two digit IQ - that's what he's gonna do.

BALWIN: What are you going to do?

LEVIN: I just told you - you've got a two digit IQ.

BALDWIN: And who's that - who's your little cabin boy there with you.

LEVIN: I'm not a cabin boy, butt-boy.

BALDWIN: What are you doing there, cabin boy? ... I now dub you Sean Hannity's cabin boy.

LEVIN: And you know what you are? You're "Brokeback" Alec. [END EXCERPT]

I mean, sure, it gets good when Levin asks Baldwin "What are you now, fifty, sixty pounds overweight?" and why Kim Bassinger hates him so much (alluding to complaints that he hit her), but it does nothing to elevate the discourse or...

...aww, who am I kidding. It's funny.

Thanks to see-dub.

Posted by: Ace at 10:23 PM | Comments (77)
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Terrorist "Holy Warriors" Crying At Police Treatment

They 've got one playbook that works for them and damnit, if they aren't creatures of habit.

The lawyer for two of the suspects rounded up in a possible plot to bring down as many as 10 trans-Atlantic flights on Saturday criticized their treatment at the hands of British police.

In an exclusive CNN interview, attorney Mudassar Irani listed a series of complaints, including the allegation that one of her clients had not received food and water for 26 hours.

...

The men told her they are being held in cold cells and that requests for blankets were refused.

Irani said she was able to brief the men only on events surrounding their arrests and the legal process.

One of the men alleged that police pushed him and targeted him with racial abuse, the lawyer said.

Let's run down the checklist of obligatory claims:

-- denied food and water? Check.

-- cold cells? Check.

-- "racial abuse"? Check.

Now we just need one these guys to claim a Buxom British Bobby forced him to have sex with her and they've hit for the cycle.

CNN has been unable to corroborate Irani's allegations. The Metropolitan Police tell CNN they have not been made aware of any official complaint about the detainees' treatment.

Irani said that the men were upset and had been crying.

Brave Jihadi Holy Warriors. Or mewling psychopathic pussyboys. You make the call.

She said her clients are shocked at what is happening....

I'm shocked they're shocked. What did they expect? Oh, right. A victory parade.

In related news, Andrew Sullivan just called the UK a "rogue nation" that had squandered the world's sympathy it would have had if it had simply let the terrorist action continue to a successful conclusion.

Thanks to Drew.

Posted by: Ace at 09:46 PM | Comments (45)
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i have been working in lebanon since all this started, and seeing the behavior of many of the lebanese wire service photographers has been a bit unsettling. while hajj has garnered a lot of attention for his doctoring of images digitally, whether guilty or not, i have been witness to the daily practice of directed shots, one case where a group of wire photogs were choreographing the unearthing of bodies, directing emergency workers here and there, asking them to position bodies just so, even remove bodies that have already been put in graves so that they can photograph them in peoples arms. these photographers have come away with powerful shots, that required no manipulation digitally, but instead, manipulation on a human level, and this itself is a bigger ethical problem.

whatever the case is—lack of training, a personal drive as a photographer to show what is happening to your country in as powerful a way as possible, or all out competitiveness, i think that the onus is on the wire services themselves, because they act as the employer/filter of their photogs work. standards should be in place or else the rest of us end up paying the price. and i’m not against the idea of local wire photographers, but after seeing it over and over for the past month, i think it is something that is worth addressing. while i walk away from a situation like that, one wire shooter sets up a situation, and the rest of them follow.......

Now LGF is simply out of control.

The guy in question should know. He's a photographer, posting on a forum for professional photographers, whose work has been published in the New York Times.

Thanks to Allah, but really, he should be thanking me, because I've been gmailing him that LGF is on fire.

I just wrote to Confederate Yankee that he might want to pull back on accusations of planting bodies and the like.

Timing, huh?

PS: Sorry, Charles, to swipe the heart of your post. Hey, just linked you a bunch of times. This is so big I just really, really need it on my site.

'Sides, they still have to click to you to get the link for the actual posting.

Caution: If this is Bryan Denton, this is a serious, meltdown level scandal for the media, who have all along connived with the propagandists to do their work for him.

The only reservation is we do not yet have confirmation it was Bryan Denton writing this post. It's possible that someone spoofed his monicker or the like.

I don't think that's the case. It seems to me very few people but professional photographers know about this inside-baseball forum; so I think the likelihood this is Denton is fairly high.

But it is not yet confirmed.

Confirmed?: Charles informs me Bryan Denton is registered at that forum and even has a bio page there.

The odds of a pure spoof just went from slim to virtually none.

Flashback: The Video The MSM Doesn't Want You To See:

Bryan Denton Softens... Without Retracting:

hi all,

sorry to have not been specific. just to make this clear. i was not in qana and am not referring to the massacre that took place there. i have been covering beirut, and it was at numerous protest, evacuations as well as the israeli strikes in chiyeh, which unfortunately did not get that much coverage in the media—where i saw this behavior occur. i have also heard from friends of mine in lebanon, respected photographers, that this was not an isolated incident.

unfortunately in each of these cases, it was the lebanese wire photographers that started these situations. that said, i am not trying to make generalizations. i know that there are a number of dedicated and brilliant lebanese photographers here who are putting themselves in extremely dangerous situations in order to document what is happening here in their country, and in hindsight, i realize it was irresponsible for me to post the previous statement because it was not specific enough. however, this has been something iÂ’ve noticed happening here, more than any other place iÂ’ve worked previously.

i agree that there is a lot of pressure, particularly on stringers (i myself am a freelancer), due to cost cutting and how the big image banks pay their non-staff photographers, and while unfortunate events like qana and chiyeh require the utmost responsiblity, seeing it happen for things like protests and evacuations is equally as disturbing and doesnÂ’t bode well.

again, i am terribly sorry for rattling the saber so hardÂ….re-reading my words I too should have been a bit more responsible.

He's sorry for making generalizations, he's sorry for casting aspersions on too many photographers without specifying he meant Lebanese stringers and not all of them, he's sorry for "rattling the saber too hard"...

But he is not sorry for his allegation, nor is he now denying it.

In fact, he notes that he's been told by others that what he witnessed is NOT an "isolated incident."

He's sorry he's been forced to say this -- but not sorry for actually having said it.

Thanks to Drew.

Support For Bryan: Bryan, unfortunately, by telling the truth that the media doesn't want the public to know, you have now opened yourself to a smear campaign which will be ferocious and ugly.

If you're telling the truth -- and I believe you are -- you will ultimately wind up a hero, and your dishonest critics thoroughly discredted and exposed as liars.

This may get bumpy. But remember, the truth is on your side, and it's a fearsome ally.

Update: Allah adds posts of pictures taken in areas Denton covered.

Think those are going to be closely scrutinized in the next week?

One word you're looking to Google Images search is Chiyeh or “Chiyah.”

Distributed investigation journalism. Catch the fever.

A Suspicious Photo From "Chiah"?: Another alternate spelling, Donnah tells me.

Click here for a suspicious picture. CONTENT WARNING: Macabre content.

Fresh bodies don't smell, dude. What's with the surgical mask/makeshift air filter? Are you afraid the body is insulated with asbestos?

And why is the body being shown tightly wrapped? These people like to show the gore, generally. They want you to see the dead faces.

Via Donnah.

Could be something. Could be nothing. Could be jumping the gun.

Kinda wonder why he's wearing the mask, though. Don't you?

I wouldn't have any suspicions about this at all, except that Bryan Denton just reported the Lebanese are actually digging up bodies from graves to show off to the media.

Apologies... To anyone who found the picture I had posted here too graphic. I didn't think it was graphic; the body was wrapped in a shroud, and, furthermore, we've been inundated with these photos for a month.

Maybe I've become jaded. I've been looking at pictues like this day in, day out.

As some people seem to object to the picture, I've tucked it into a link.

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LA Times' knee-jerk lefty Tim Rutten actually asks hard questions about the media's complicity in Hezbollah propaganda, and suggests a systematic, thorough reexamination of reliance on foreign stringers -- either cowed by, or active supports of, Hezbollah -- must be undertaken.

Some of the West's generous donations to Pakistan's quake victims wound up in the hands of "Muslim charities," which then wired that money to the UK for use in the Sky Bombing Terror Plot.

Not another dime. Not another dime.

Yet another Muslim "moderate" makes veiled threats, yet again using the opportunity of Muslim terrorism (this time thwarted) to demand the west give in to the terrorists' demands-- or else, he promises, there will be a lot more terrorism.

Reading into this too much? Well, consider the source-- it's the same guy who used a Reuters computer (when he was a Retuers "moderate Muslim" columnist) to write to Johnson, "I can't wait until all you Zionist pigs have your throats cut."

So he's not above a threat now, is he?

CAIR perhaps taught Adnan Hajj the ropes in the Fauxtography game, crudely photoshopping a head-scarf on to a Muslim woman at a press conference last year who dared to go without out. Check it out-- it's laughably crude. Adnan Hajj seems to have learned much; CAIR makes Adnan Hajj look like the Michaelangelo of doctored photos.

And the AP spins wildly for Mr. Green Helmet, asking, basically, "What's so wrong about the Lebanese wanting the world to see the victims of Israeli aggression?"

Ummm... there's nothing wrong with the Lebanese wanting that. There is somnething seriously wrong with supposedly objective Western news agencies being willling participants in a propaganda campaign.

And, you'll not be shocked to know -- no mention of the smoking-gun video of Mr. Green Helmet giving directorial orders to the "independent media" videotaping and photographing the Qana Corpse Cavalcade.

Follow up by Dan Riehl -- if Mr. Green Helmet is not a Hezbollah propagandist, why did he claim there were so many more bodies recovered from the wreckage than there actually were?

He was there. Supposedly "digging" the bodies out, in between blocking dramatic shots for the "independent media." Shouldn't he have known how many bodies were actually removed?

Why was he so far off?

And why does the media continue to uncritically parrot Lebanese officials' claims of "15 dead" or "40 dead" when they now have an official Lebanese Civil Defense official/budding amateur filmmaker caught so wildly overestimating the number of dead in a recovery operation he personally oversaw?

If he inflates body counts by 50 to 100%, what on earth is the media doing reporting the claims of local Lebanese police uncritically, without any fact-checking?

Correction: Allah, who knows all, informs me that that LGF headscarf photo is a flashback from last year, not a new pic. I have rewritten to correctly report this.

Despite this correction, and the fact that the one item is "old," LGF currently remains on f'n fire. There will be no retraction on that score.

Clarification: Allah also says it was never proven that Bunglawala was actually behind the message. Well, I take it as being more or less proved. But in the interests of fairness, you be the judge:

After bringing the threat to the attention of Reuters, Johnson was told by the news organization's Global Head of Communications, Ed
Williams: "I can confirm that an employee has been suspended pending further investigation. The individual was not an employee of Reuters' news division."

In an additional twist, Johnson traced the movements of the sender of the threat, and found direct parallels between the internet locations of the sender and Inayat Bunglawala, Media Secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain.

Bunglawala, who contirbuted an editorial to the Guardian website, has attracted negative attention in the past after making anti-Semitic outbursts, and has declared that the British media was "Zionist-controlled."

In the comment section of the Guardian, underneath his own editorial, Bunglawala denied sending the threat, blaming "Zionists" instead.

"That was not me! Methinks some Zionists are up to mischief," he wrote.

"There is strong circumstantial evidence connecting Bunglawala to the threat, but there is no way for me to verify this for certain. Only a Reuters network administrator would have access to the necessary records," Johnson said.

Him? Or not him?

No one's saying so for sure.

Eh. Maybe he's right. Maybe it was just some "Zionists... up to mischief."

It should be also be noted the "Zionist michief" comment was left in a thread devoted to attacking Bunglawala's idiotic Guardian column.

I suppose, like Glenn Greenwald, he just has a troupe of cabana boys living with him, and working out of his office, who sometimes post impassioned defenses of him on rightwing websites.

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The shock isn't that they feel this way; we've long known.

The shock is that the media has been so sympathetic to this position that liberals finally feel comfortable enough to admit it.

Fox asked, “Regardless of how you voted in the presidential election, would you say you want President Bush to succeed or not?” 51% of Democrats answered “No” to that question. 40% answered yes, and 9%, who are still apparently trying to determine just how deranged they are by their Bush hatred, answered “I don’t know.”

Let me quote again Gary Kamiya, writing in Salon, after the Fall of Baghdad, ca. April 9, 2003. He titles, or teases, the second page of this hateful screed with the words Those of us who opposed the war have been driven to moral schizophrenia. Schizophrenia or psychopathy?

I have a confession: I have at times, as the war has unfolded, secretly wished for things to go wrong. Wished for the Iraqis to be more nationalistic, to resist longer. Wished for the Arab world to rise up in rage. Wished for all the things we feared would happen. I'm not alone: A number of serious, intelligent, morally sensitive people who oppose the war have told me they have had identical feelings.

Some of this is merely the result of pettiness -- ignoble resentment, partisan hackdom, the desire to be proved right and to prove the likes of Rumsfeld wrong, irritation with the sanitizing, myth-making American media. That part of it I feel guilty about, and disavow. But some of it is something trickier: It's a kind of moral bet-hedging, based on a pessimism not easy to discount, in which one's head and one's heart are at odds.

Many antiwar commentators have argued that once the war started, even those who oppose it must now wish for the quickest, least bloody victory followed by the maximum possible liberation of the Iraqi people. But there is one argument against this: What if you are convinced that an easy victory will ultimately result in a larger moral negative -- four more years of Bush, for example, with attendant disastrous policies, or the betrayal of the Palestinians to eternal occupation, or more imperialist meddling in the Middle East or elsewhere?

Wishing for things to go wrong is the logical corollary of the postulate that the better things go for Bush, the worse they will go for America and the rest of the world. It is based on the belief that every apparent good will turn into its opposite. If this is true, then it would be better for bad things to happen to Bush.

Emphasis added.

Well, when that disgusting, shameful confession was printed, there were two main sorts of respones by liberals: Honest responses by liberals, praising him for his "courage" in writing what many of them felt, and dishonest responses by liberals, claiming this is just One Lone Nut who doesn't speak for the majority of the Demcoratic Party.

51%. Fifty. Fucking. One. Percent.

Are they going to still claim this is a "fringe" voice?

How many of them secretly wished the mass bombing of planes had actually worked, and killed up to 3000 people, just to avoid the "greater moral negative" of Bush seeming to be successful in thwarting terrorism?

Think that's crazy? Well, look back at the quote above. There's Kamiya admitting he'd hoped for greater American military casualties just to keep Bush from garnering too much political capital from the war.

Thanks to Allah, who notes the Rove Confabulated Fake Terror Scare is already working, with Connecticut voters losing enthusiasm for Mr. Jane Hamsher, I mean, Ned Lamont, and that 23 episodes of Penn & Teller's Bullshit! are now available, in their entirety, at Google videos.

He recommends the PETA episode. So do I. And the bottled water/health scare episode? Watch that too.

PS: When I say "Dishonest liberals claim" that this is just "One Lone Nut," that's what I mean. I don't mean to imply that all liberals want the War on Terror to fail just so they can get a President in the White House. I've personally witnessed liberals -- even left-liberals -- arguing quite heatedly with fellow liberals on similar points. I suspect the heat there was partly due to how incredbily political damaging this sort of talk is for the left, but there was genuine revulsion over the sentiment itself.

However: Those liberals who have for so longed claimed this was merely a "fringe" position, having nothing to do with mainstream liberals or the Democratic Party, only a phenomenon of the fringe anarchist ultraleft?

You are liars. You always have been. You've heard your fellow liberals say just this sort of thing, frequently. 51% of Democrats -- not even just liberals! -- cop to believing this. It is simply not credible that you don't encounter such people frequently, or that you have somehow managed to be out of earshot when they were declaring these vile wishes.

You are liars. Period. End of sentence, end of line, end of file.

Update: Jonathan Schnell, another "lone nut," in The Nation:

Or take Jonathan Schell, writing in the Sept. 22 issue of the Nation: "[Democratic Senator Joe] Biden says we must win the war. This is precisely wrong. The United States must learn to lose this war a harder task, in many ways, than winning, for it requires admitting mistakes and relinquishing attractive fantasies. This is the true moral mission of our time."

There's a book out now the liberals like called "The One Percent Doctrine," which is taken, I think, from Cheney's formulation that we must act vigorously against terrorism when there is even a one percent chance of it. (That's the gist, but I may have the details wrong.)

Obviously the book isn't high on the One Percent Doctrine. That's why liberals love it so.

Let me suggest a new doctrine: The Fifty One Percent Doctrine. We must not allow a party to regain power when fifty-one percent of its members admit to wishing for American defeat in battles and misery in economic recession simply to get their candidates in office.

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