Surging:

The US military has captured the leaders of a car-bombing ring blamed for killing hundreds of Iraqis.

The news came as the departing US ambassador said Americans are in ongoing talks with insurgent representatives to try to persuade them to turn against al-Qaeda.

The US command said one of the car-bombers, Haitham al-Shimari, was suspected in the "planning and execution of the majority of car bombs which have killed hundreds of Iraqi citizens in Sadr City," a Shi'ite enclave of Baghdad.

Another, identified as Haidar al-Jafar, was second-in-command of a cell that killed some 900 "innocent" Iraqis and wounded almost 2,000, the military said. Three other men believed connected to that cell also were in custody.

The suspected bombers were rounded up last week by American forces during continuing security sweeps in Azamiyah, the Sunni stronghold in northern Baghdad, the military statement said.

Jules Crittendon notes that some "Sunni insurgents have advanced beyond the Democratic congressional leadership in their thinking:"

Khalilzad said the talks have shifted from “unreasonable demands” by the groups for a US withdrawal to forming an alliance against al-Qaeda. He said the effort has gained support among tribal leaders and even some insurgents.

“Iraqis are uniting against al-Qaeda,” he said.

Pelosi and Murtha are more anti-American than many Sunni insurgents actually fighting them, but don't question their patriotism.

Posted by: Ace at 09:15 AM | Comments (10)
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A "different phase" defined at the moment as something less than "extreme diplomatic action, such as expelling Iranian diplomats" and does not of course mean military action.

Still it does seem to indicate the Brits are getting more serious, but still, as is their wont, reluctant to "escalate" things.

Efforts to secure the release of 15 Royal Navy personnel held by Iran will enter a "different phase" if diplomatic moves fail, Tony Blair has said.

Downing Street said the UK could end up releasing evidence proving the group had not ventured into Iranian waters.

...

The prime minister's official spokesman said Mr Blair's remarks about a "different phase" did not refer to any extreme diplomatic action, such as expelling Iranian diplomats from Britain or military action.

"We have been clearly stating that we are utterly certain that the personnel were in Iraqi waters.

"We so far have not made explicit why we know that, because we don't want to escalate this."

Britain's former ambassador to Iran, Sir Richard Dalton, said "different phase" could mean generating pressure on Iran from the international community.

"I expect he means that we shall have to step up criticism and generate additional international pressures on Iran," he said.

Yeah, that'll do the trick.

"It could be that they think that by dramatising the fact that these people were taken on an international mission while in Iraqi waters even further, will give Iran pause and give them a chance to rethink."

...

"These people have to be released," the prime minister told GMTV.

"What we are trying to do at the moment is to pursue this through the diplomatic channels and make the Iranian government understand these people have to be released and that there is absolutely no justification whatever for holding them.

"I hope we manage to get them to realise they have to release them. If not, then this will move into a different phase."

...

"In the end, it is a question really for the Iranian government as to whether they want to abide by international law or not," he said.

Tough call for the Iranians, that.

Although I'm being sarcastic, I don't think it's time for Blair to start threatening military action, and his cautious phrasing is probably for the best. And the Iranians will, I think, release the sailors and marines, having made their "point," whatever that is.

Posted by: Ace at 09:03 AM | Comments (58)
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Wish him well:

The colon cancer that Tony Snow successfully battled two years ago has returned and spread to the presidential spokesman's liver, the White House said Tuesday.

President Bush, making a brief statement to reporters in the Rose Garden, struck an optimistic tone that echoed how aides said Snow was feeling. The president spoke with Snow early Tuesday, and said he looks forward to the day that his spokesman "comes back to the White House and briefs the press corps on the decisions that I'm making."

"His attitude is, one, that he is not going to let this whip him, and he's upbeat. My attitude is that we need to pray for him, and for his family," Bush said. "And so my message to Tony is, 'Stay strong; a lot of people love you and care for you and will pray for you.' "

Snow, 51, had his entire colon removed in 2005 and underwent six months of chemotherapy after being diagnosed with colon cancer. A small growth was discovered last year in his lower right pelvic area and, after months of monitoring, tests showed that it had grown slightly. It was removed Monday.

Doctors determined the growth was cancerous, and also found during the surgery that his cancer had metastasized, or spread, to his liver, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.

She said Snow is comfortable and feeling fine after his surgery and has pledged to aggressively fight the disease with an as-yet-to-be- determined chemotherapy treatment course. He will be in the hospital recovering from the surgery, a major procedure, for about a week.

Posted by: Ace at 08:54 AM | Comments (25)
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It's distressing that I've seen so many of these.

I just avoided seeing the number 2 worst-reviewed movie, Alone in the Dark. Which rung in with one percent positive reviews, 99% negative. I rented it on PPV. The movie began with one of those "What Hath Come Before" title-pages describing some preposterous and overly-detailed backstory bullshit. Like I need that in a silly monsters-jumping-out-of-shadows horror movie, but whatever, fine. One page of Scary-Important Prior History, all right.

Fade to black.

And then another page of written backstory appeared.

This began to worry me. We're not talking about some complicated real-world event here, like the Spanish Civil War. (And even movies about such topics get by with a brief, paragraph-length set-up.) Again, this is a cheesy action horror movie based on a videogame -- why am I reading so much? Do I care about this silly fantasy history lesson?

Fade to black. Okay, fine. At least now they can begin the movie.

No they can't.

Because now appears a third page of backstory text.

And now I'm flabbergasted. Do these idiots imagine I'm interested in a novelization of a cheesy videogame? If not, where are the actual moving pictures? Why am I reading on and on about this stupid fantasy world instead of seeing some vampire aliens?

Was this director absent they day they taught "moving pictures" in Moving Pictures School?

But fade to black, now we're ready for some gratuitous gore and silly CGI monsters.

No we're not, because here comes more printed backstory.

At this point I had a choice. I could quickly cancel my PPV order within that five minute window, or I could settle in for what would be, I was sure, one of the worst movies ever made. When a director so thoroughly angers and baffles you before he's even gotten to the main titles, you know he's gone so egregiously wrong that you may be watching a disaster of near-epic proportions, and perhaps one worth watching, simply to exult in the baroque incompetence of it all.

But I took the path of wisdom instead and just cancelled the movie. I'd seen about 50 seconds of it, and not a single image of actual cinematic photography, but already I'd decided it was one of the worst movies I'd ever seen.

I still want to see that some day.

I'd've done a much better job on the backstory title-cards. Here's my quickie effort:

It is the year 2016.

The world has changed.

Did you see Aliens? Well everything's pretty much like that, minus the spaceships, and a little cheaper looking.

PS, in the future, all tough guys look like Christian Slater and all elite biomolecular scientists look like Tara Reid, so don't laugh. It's the future, like I said. Things are different, see? Like, there's radiation or nanomutations or, I don't know. Something. Just accept it and stop being such a total dick.

I think that sums it up.

Meanwhile, the number one worst-reviewed movie ever -- Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever -- wasn't horrible. If nothing else, it did have two terrific stunts I replayed multiple times. One of them was a falling gag with the stuntman on a (digitally erased) descending wire, but the cool thing was you could see him fall all the way from the thirtieth floor to crash upon a parked car on the street with no cuts at all. You don't see that too often.

Another one was double cars-jumping-into-the-air-and-barrel-rolling stunt. No CGI, just two cars flyin' into the air like they were in a Synchronized Dance exhibition.

Eh.

It was better than a lot of movies. Right there you made back your $4.95, plus profit.

Hollywood Family Values Update: The Will Ferrell movie Blades of Glory already looked pretty funny (even if it is somewhat cribbed from a funny episode of Just Shoot Me), but now I find out that Ferrell's & Heder's nemeses are played by Will "GOB" Arnett and his wife, Amy Poehler, which strikes me as a good thing.

Jenna "Pam from The Office Fischer is never going to really get naked, but here she teases dorks everywhere who are attracted by her "Illusion of Obtainability" cuteness level by pretending to get naked for Wired.

She's married to James Gunn, by the way, who wrote the Dawn of the Dead remake and also, I think, either one or both of those, um, surprisingly decent Scooby-Doo movies. So until his career tanks, forget it.

Not sure how I know this, but Pam's romantic rival on the show, the really cute chick Jim is dating now, is Quincy Jones' daughter.

No Illusion of Obtainability on that one, alas. She could be so much more attractive if she just had a hare-lip or something.

Thanks to yls.

Posted by: Ace at 02:31 PM | Comments (266)
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Great Vent about the coming (?) major offensive on the Al Qaeda-controlled city of Diyala and its environs.

Petraeus' recent request of 3000 additional troops is apparently impelled precisely by his desire -- or rather his believed need -- to deal with this terrorist stronghold decisively.

Posted by: Ace at 12:50 PM | Comments (27)
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Pajamas Media has the round-up.

Let's get to the media bias. Irene F'ing Irene asked if anyone agreed that this story is being reported in a rather disinterested, reluctant, desultory way by the MSM. Well, I don't watch the nightly newscasts, so I can't say much about them, but the fact that you can very easily avoid this story on the Internet if that's your druthers tells me the MSM isn't giving it "flood the zone" coverage, or even "trickle into the zone" coverage. You can barely escape the absurdist Gonzalez/Fired 8 story, but you have to do a bit of hunting to find out that Iran kidnapped eight British sailors, shortly after intelligence indicated they'd start kidnapping Western soldiers. The MSM definitely isn't signalling to the world that this is an Important Story you should Read Up On, as it does with, say, Al Gore's messianic appearance before the Senate.

But to the extent it is a story, the MSM must be vigilant to insure that no one mistakes this act of war for a, well, act of war, and no one gets the idea that Iran might just be an aggressive, dangerous, and psychopathic regime which will have to be dealt with in some serious fashion at some approaching date certain.

Enter Time Magazine, previously quite invested in the proposition that the Palestinian government had no control over its terrorists, so it would be meanspirited and counterproductive to punish the government for its terrorists, and now selling us the same soft soap about Iran:

The most ominous detail about Iran's seizure of 15 British Royal Marines in the Shatt-al-Arab waterway on Friday morning is that the servicemen were reportedly taken into custody by the navy of the Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The IRGC is a powerful, separate branch of the Iranian armed forces. Soaked with nationalist ideology, it has grown into a state within a state in Iran, with its own naval, air and ground forces, parallel to official government institutions. The IRGC is directly controlled by Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, the ultimate font of religious and political power in Iran. The IRGC also has its own intelligence arm and commands irregular forces such as the basij — a voluntary paramilitary group affiliated with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — and the Quds force, which has been accused by the U.S. of supplying material to Iraqi insurgents bent on killing American soldiers. The IRGC is also known for its clandestine activities including logistical support for militant organizations like Lebanon's Hizballah, which it helped to set up in the 1980s, and several Shi'a militia groups in Iraq. The IRGC's activities are often a thorn in the side of Iran's Foreign Ministry, which is forced to repair the ruptures in Tehran's diplomatic relations with countries the Guard has inflamed with its self-directed adventures. Nevertheless, it has been one of Iran's main instruments in projecting power and influence over the last few decades.

Because the IRGC's actions are always interwoven with the religious-nationalist ideology of Iran's hardliners, extricating the British may be complicated.

I feel so bad for the Iranian Minister of State and all those other moderates in the government working so hard to achieve peace and stability! If only it weren't for these few bad apples, the world would be right as rain!

Michael Ledeen doesn't quite buy this claim of Iran, effectively, itself held hostage by its rogue hardliners:

Time would have us believe that the IRGC are something other than the regime—look at all the heartburn they create for those poor diplomats at the Foreign Ministry. And unlike the rest of the government, the Revolutionary Guards are tied in to the wackos, the “religious-nationalist…hardliners.”

One should ask TimeÂ’s journalists just what exactly they believe this regime is, if not a bunch of religious fanatics. Religious fanaticism is what the Islamic Republic of Iran is all about, and has been since its creation by that great Islamic Fascist, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The IRGC was created in order to protect the regime from anyone who might prefer freedom to Islamic Fascism, and to extend the domain of the Islamic Republic outside IranÂ’s borders.

The IRGC IS the regime, not some aberration.

No government is ever to be blamed for its actions, except if the government in question is that of the United States or Israel. All other governments, especially those which are declared enemies of the United States or Israel, always mean well but are either "misunderstood" by clueless warmongers in the US or Israel, or have their good intentions undermined by A Few Rogue Trouble-Makers Who Are In No Way Representative Of The Goverment As A Whole So Don't You Get Any Crazy Ideas About Military Responses, Buster.

If the Iranian government was as, um, "surprised" and "blindsided" by all this as Time Magazine contends -- well, it's been four or five days now. Isn't the time for "shock" passed, and can they now not order the Revotionary Guards to release the soldiers?

No?

Then they either support the Guards or the Guards are the government of Iran. Either/or.

Sorry, MSM, you'll have to do a little bit better than this.

Bonus! Rosie O'Donnell posits that the crafty British (Jewish?) sailors tricked the Iranians into taking them hostage and beating "confessions" out of them.

It's pathetic when the stupid and ignorant mistake themselves for perceptive and well-informed.

Also Via PJM: The Madness Behind The Mullah's Methods? Opinion Journal:

Given the Iranian regime's past success with hostage-taking--whether with U.S. diplomats in Tehran in 1979 or Westerners in Beirut in the 1980s--they may also figure that Prime Minister Tony Blair is willing to pay a steep price to secure release of the sailors before he leaves office later this year. Or perhaps the Iranians want to bargain with Mr. Blair's successor, presumably Chancellor Gordon Brown, whom they might suspect would take a softer line at the U.N. They may also be trying to create a rift between the U.S. and U.K. by offering to trade the British troops for Iranians the U.S. has recently detained inside Iraq.

It's also possible, as Walid Phares of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies points out, that the Iranian leadership may be seeking to draw Britain (and the U.S.) into limited military skirmishes that they think could shore up domestic support against widening popular discontent.

Another possibility: sufficiently bloodying Coalition forces in Iraq to hasten their withdrawal. The mullahs might even hope any fighting would embolden Democrats to do Tehran's bidding by passing legislation that forbids the Administration from attacking Iran without prior Congressional permission. Such a plank was contained in the supplemental war spending bill that passed the House last week until cooler heads removed it.

This gambit has a possible downside, however:

It is worth recalling, however, that Iran was at its most diplomatically pliant after the United States sank much of Tehran's navy after Iran tried to disrupt oil traffic in the Persian Gulf in the late 1980s. Regimes that resort to force the way Iran does tend to be respecters of it. It is also far from certain that Western military strikes against Revolutionary Guards would move the Iranian people to rally to their side: Iranians know only too well what their self-anointed leaders are capable of.

Going after the Revolutionary Guards directly is a major escalation, one that I'm not in a hurry to get towards, but if push comes to shove -- destroy the entire apparatus of state control and coercion and let a thousand insurrections bloom.

Why, we might even get to see lots of footage of rioters stealing urns from Iranian museums of antiquities. And that would be pretty cool.

Posted by: Ace at 12:27 PM | Comments (36)
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...in order to pave the way for growing human-compatible organs within sheep for transplantation into humans.

It sounds like a good idea, but I can't help but hearing Bill Murray (?) from one of his movies: "I think we're getting into a weird area, here."

I'd like to link Brando in The Island of Dr. Moreau here, but YouTube doesn't have a good clip. So how about this Moreauvian classic?

Posted by: Ace at 11:26 AM | Comments (48)
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More and more, news organizations' true mission is to suppress, not report, the news. Or at least suppress any news that interferes with its "storytelling" metanarrative.

As the BBC is almost entirely funded by state-compelled TV "licenses" and direct subsidy, it's spending taxpayer money to keep a taxpayer-funded report away from the eyes of actual taxpayers.

Nice work if you can get it.

The BBC has been accused of "shameful hypocrisy" over its decision to spend £200,000 blocking a freedom of information request about its reporting in the Middle East.

The corporation, which has itself made extensive use of FOI requests in its journalism, is refusing to release papers about an internal inquiry into whether its reporting has been biased towards Palestine.

BBC chiefs have been accused of wasting thousands of pounds of licence fee payers money trying to cover-up the findings of the so called Balen Report into its journalism in the region, despite the fact that the corporation is funded by the British public.

The corporation is fighting a landmark High Court action, which starts next week, in a bid to prevent the public finding out what is in the review, which is believed to be critical of the BBC's coverage in the region.

BBC bosses have faced repeated claims that is coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict has been skewed by a pro-Palestianian bias.

...

The BBC's decision to carry on pursuing the case, despite the fact than the Information Tribunal said it should make the report public, has sparked fury as it flies in the face of claims by BBC chiefs that it is trying to make the corporation more open and transparent.

Politicians have branded the BBC's decision to carry on spending money, hiring the one of the country's top public law barrister in the process, as "absolutely indefensible".

They claim its publication is clearly in the public interest.

The BBC's determination to bury the report has led to speculation that the report was damning in its assessment of the BBC's coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict that the BBC wants to keep it under wraps at all costs.
...

The BBC's own website boasts of 69 stories that it says it has broken with the help of the Freedom of Information Act.

If the BBC loses the High Court case next week it could appeal again and again until the case reaches the European Court in Strasbourg.

...

Steven Sugar, who said he was prepared to take the case all the way to European court, said: "What I would like to see is the disclosure of an important document which will give us an insight into what the BBC itself thinks of its own performance.

"I would like to see the BBC facing up to its professed interest in transparency and openness."

And I'd like to see a pill that really can improve male "performance," but I think I'm going to just have to wait.

Posted by: Ace at 11:12 AM | Comments (16)
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...a gun registered to Webb.

A felony, it should be noted. The staffer's name hasn't been mentioned yet.

Just a tip. Pretty sure it's solid, not sure if it's terribly important.

More: John Lott explains that Senators and Congressmen are legally permitted to carry guns as they please, but regular folk, including their staffers, ain't.

Posted by: Ace at 10:56 AM | Comments (33)
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Swiped from Hot Air.

Posted by: Ace at 09:36 AM | Comments (13)
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