An eh interview. The interviewer just treated this all as a silly internet lark and had no interest in it beyond that.

Also, somehow the man known around the world as "Islamist Rage Boy" became merely "Rage Boy" according to NPR.

I wonder if NPR asked Snapped Shot to specifically avoid using his proper first name.

To be sensitive to religious fanatics.

Posted by: Ace at 03:44 PM | Comments (6)
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DP sent me this link, but didn't quote what was in the diary. "Guess this guy doesn't support the troops," he said, under the subject line "DKos Poster Bashes the Troops."

Well, it must have been a real tour-de-force of troop hatred, because the Stalinists at DKos deleted it.

However, we can still savor the rich creamy velvety nuance of the article's subject tags:

Military Murders, Serial Killers, Mass Murderers, Jeffrey Dahmer, Charles Whitman, Son of Sam, Iraq War (all tags)

Hmmm.... I'm sure he must have been saying our troops are completely unlike mass murderers such as Jeffrey Dahmer, Charles Whitman, or the Son of Sam.

I'm sure we could get a taste of the article from the 151 comments that followed, but, alas, they are now inaccessible too.

Posted by: Ace at 03:16 PM | Comments (8)
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But so far they say it looks solid.

Which is, you know, exactly how Stephen Glass' stories looked the first few times they looked into them.

Whenever anybody levels serious accusations against a piece published in our magazine, we take those charges seriously. Indeed, we're in the process of investigating them. I've spoken extensively with the author of the piece and have communicated with other soldiers who witnessed the events described in the diarist. Thus far, these conversations have done nothing to undermine--and much to corroborate--the author's descriptions. I will let you know more after we complete our investigation.

There are other soldiers who witnessed these events? That's surprising to me, but, assuming it's true (which, alas, I do) it does tend to clear TNR of the charges of allowing a new Stephen Glass to write for them.

Doesn't mean what this guy is saying is true -- but it does at least mean they have something besides his say-so for the stories.

I have to say, though, that there's a lot of wiggle-room in that claim. Corroboration is claimed, but not what specifically has been corroborated. That he was based where he says he was based? That hardly means his specific claims about what he saw there were true.

TNR needs to explain, quickly, what specific parts of "Scott Thomas'" warcrimes travelogue are corrobrated by other witnesses and to what extent. I'd be interested to know if, say, the "corroboration" for the dog-crushing driver consists of something like "Yeah, I heard that once too."

Thanks to Drew.

More: Gunbunny Confederate Yankee On Those Unique Square-Backed Glocks Used By The IP: Not so unique.

Glock pistols have been on the commercial market for decades, and are quite common worldwide. Glocks are a common and favored handgun on the Iraqi black market:

Glock pistols were also easy to find. One young Iraqi man, Rebwar Mustafa, showed a Glock 19 he had bought at the bazaar in Kirkuk last year for $900. Five of his friends have bought identical models, he said.

He includes citations for various Glocks being captured from insurgents or sold on the black market.

This bit doesn't suggest Scott Thomas is a fabulist, or ignorant, so much as it suggests he's willing to make fairly large inferences based on slight evidence to get a juicy story for his pals at TNR. I think the whole square-back mystery is well solved -- he either carelessly wrote "square back" to indicate the square indentation from the firing pin, or else his gun-ignorant editor attempted to simplify his language and in so doing made it inaccurate -- but his claim -- that he therefore knew the IP must be responsible for a killing -- is hardly compelled by the evidence.

It seems more compelled by the imperative to produce exciting, dramatic, propagandistic copy.

And it doesn't lend much credence to his other claims.

Posted by: Ace at 02:41 PM | Comments (31)
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As I pegged Ron Paul first (to my knowledge) with the appellation "Bircheresque crank," I'm happy to see Ron Paul admitting he's got lots of friends in the John Birch Society.

They understand the Constitution, after all. They know that America is threatened by an insidious fifth-column enemy within, an enemy consisting of terrorists belonging to a cult that seeks nothing short of the destruction of the American Republic.

I speak, of course, of the chairmen and analysts and clerks of the Federal Reserve banking system.

Priorities.

Also from Allah, Screw Loose Change has a great YouTube manifesto from a true conservative (meaning, "Bircheresque crank") who "took the red pill" like Neo and saw the world as it truly is -- a world in which, yes, our own government plotted 9/11.

And yuhhhhp: He's a Ron Paul supporter. Bigtime.

Ron Paul For President

If he's crazy, he's my kind of crazy.

(Joke swiped from Will Ferrell. It just fits in so many situations.)

Posted by: Ace at 02:25 PM | Comments (10)
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I would strongly caution conservatives on how they argue against Obama and other anti-war partisans on this point. Obama is basically playing Br'er Rabbit here -- "Don't throw me in that briar-patch" -- and conservatives would do well to be careful when dealing with Br'er Rabbit.

First of all, he's absolutely right. Cold-heartedly and cynically right, but quite frankly, that's the sort of "right" I like in foreign policy.

America does not risk thousands of casualties "merely" to prevent genocide. We like to make rhetorical noises about doing so, but we never do. We only risk (and lose) the lives of US troops when there's a strong national security element to the intervention. "Mere" moral concerns are rarely enough. Enough for a very small micro-invasion, perhaps -- as in Haiti -- or enough for a bombing campaign -- as in Serbia -- but moral considerations alone are not enough to justify the loss of US soldiers' lives.

We didn't go to war with Germany to save the Jews from genocide, though some speak as if that's why we did. In fact, evidence of the Holocaust was hidden from the American public precisely because FDR didn't want to give isolationists a pretext to say we were entering a world war "just to save the Jews." We fought the Nazis because they posed a long-term threat to our country, had they been able to conquer Europe and hold it. (Which they would have, had we not intervened.)

Ending the Holocaust was a secondary reason for US involvement in Europe -- a bonus moral justification, if you will (and one only revealed to the public broadly after Europe had already been liberated). But not the primary justification.

I certainly wouldn't trade 100 US soldiers' lives "merely" to spare the lives of 100 foreign civilians. In fact, I wouldn't trade 100 US soldiers' lives to save 10,000 foreign civilians, even if they were more or less true innocents, rather than ungrateful brutes who are partially at war with us (such as, say, the Iraqis). 100 to save 100,000? That sounds more reasonable... and yet I wouldn't be terribly happy about the exchange.

Nevertheless, while genocide alone isn't a compelling enough reason to put so many soldiers' lives at risk, the inevitable consequences of such a genocide would be. Who wins in a genocide? Who wins in an all-against-all civil war?

Well, who, exactly, has been trying to push the country towards exactly that? Al Qaeda and the Sadrist jihadi militias, and their Iranian backers. Once the country descends into civil war, the entire population will be forced to support the only armies capable of protecting them. Which, absent the US military, is only Al Qaeda (and the Sunni insurgent groups which will be compelled by circumstances to rejoin with them) and the Iranian-backed Sadrist militias.

The only people who benefit in a state of violent chaos are the lunatic murderous thugs and the leaders who control them in order to achieve power. The decent people -- those who have an interest in stability and peace -- lose in such a situation, because even though they'd prefer to not have a civil war, they simply don't have an army of their own. They're too busy minding their shops and raising their families to join an army, by and large.

Well, they do have one army in the country that is also interested in peace, order, stability, and prosperity-engendering political moderation. An army not consisting of murderous, largely stupid thugs and economic losers whose only path to wealth lies in killing people, but rather a well-educated, professional army who fights only for justice and peace.

Unfortunately, that army is the US military, the very army Obama and friends wish to withdraw from Iraq.

So the one army that fights not for chaos but for stability, and not for their own power and wealth but the power and wealth of the decent class of Iraqis, is precisely the one army the anti-war partisans wish to withdraw from the field.

There are some who actually pine for an Al Qaeda versus Sardrist bloodbath. Let them all murder each other, the thinking goes.

Alas, Al Qaeda and Sadr will not fight each other much once the US army withdraws from Iraq. Sadr just wants to control the Shiite provinces of Iraq; why bother with the oil-poor deserts which have so little of value? Why bother trying to occupy provinces rich in nothing except Sunni jihadists who will shoot and blow up Shi'ite troops?

And Al Qaeda can't defeat the Shi'ite provinces, so why bother? They'd be content to establish Taliban terrorist rule in the dirt-poor Sunni provinces. They needn't worry about the economy; these people don't work for a living, after all. They get paid to kill by foreign benefactors, and from what they can steal from the local populace.

The likely winner in an Al Qaeda vs. Iran/Sadr battle will be both. Not Al Qaeda, not Iran and their toady Sadr. Both. Just like Hitler and Stalin could agree to take half of Poland each, Al Qaeda and Sadr will be more than willing to take over half of Iraq each. It gets them what they want -- power, and a base from which to attack America. There will be a few flare-ups as Sadr ethnically cleanses the Sunnis from Baghdad and other Shiite-controlled areas, but once that easily-achieved ethnic cleansing/genocide is over, the two joint rulers of Iraq can put aside their differences and focus on the real enemy -- America.

And that is a strong justification for remaining in Iraq. Not to save the Sunnis from ethnic cleansing and genocide, per se -- my heart isn't exactly bleeding for them at this point -- and not to save the Shi'ites from Iranian domination and Sadr's misereable theocracy -- the Shi'ites can go hang as far as I'm concerned, too.

However, there is a reason the Shi'ites and Al Qaeda have been so determined to have a civil war and genocide since Saddam Hussein was deposed. They recognize a genocide and civil war is their only certain way to complete power. And for that reason -- and not the genocide per se -- they must be thwarted.

All arguments about Iraq have to be connected to the American national interest. Not merely the interests of decent Iraqis. Not only is the argument that we must trade US soldiers' lives for Iraqi civilians' lives wrongheaded, it's just bad politics. I don't think the US public is much more exercised about the fate of Iraqis themselves at this point than I am, and I am not awfully worried about them myself. Talking about preventing a genocide merely to prevent a genocide is the sort of airy-fairy appeal-to-emotion unicorns-and-rainbows rhetoric that never much appealed to me, ever, even before the actual war. It was the sort of emotive blather offered up by Andrew Sullivan on a daily basis, widely misunderstood by conservatives to actually constitute a compelling case for war.

We're not in this for the Iraqis. We're in this for ourselves. It turns out that helping the decent Iraqis take control of their country and drive out the thugs is in our interest, but let's not mistake their interests, and only their interests, for our own.

You want to turn a national-security-oriented, patriotic American off from supporting a military action off in a hurry? Then just talk about all the wondrous things we can do for undeserving foreigners if we just sacrifice thousands of US troops and billions in US treasure. That's where I check out myself, and I can't imagine I'm alone in that.

It's the other guys who like to posture and preen about risking US military troops to save barbaric foreigners from their own political dysfunctions, social pathologies, and suicidal embrace of endless intercine warfare as the organizing structure of their primitive cultures. Not us. We're the guys -- or at least are supposed to be the guys -- who are unabashedly on America's side in all fights between the various miscreants of the world. If it's in American's interest to kill some of those miscreants, we do. If it's not, we don't. But we never elevate the interests of barbaric death-cultists above the interests of the American people -- and her brave corps of heavily armed diplomats.

It may be fun to rhetorically skewer the left for its wildly inconsistent stances on foreign policy -- yes, of course they're in favor of idealism when America is acting according to foreign policy realism, and when America embraces idealism, they suddenly are adherents of Kissingerian realpolitik -- but that cuts no ice with the unhinged, America-hating left, which has long ago come to peace with having simultaneously contradictory stances based on churlish but malevolent opposition to anything America does.

But the American public has long accepted the left is not terribly serious on matters of war and peace, and furthermore, noting the hypocrisy of a non-entity like David Corn on these issues is hardly the sort of thing like to change the minds of the average, pragmatic, patriotic and America-first minded American.

The question isn't whether the left is adult or pro-American or even something close to serious on foreign policy. They're not, and the American public knows that. The question is whether we conservatives are those things, and aping the left's selective bleeding-heart rhetoric doesn't do much to convince the public we are.

They expect us to be tougher-minded, and focused, as Clinton said, like a laser on the American interest.

So let's lay off all the outrage over the left's indifference to genocide per se. We're indifferent to it as well, or at least we should be, and we gain no credit in the eyes of the American public when we speak the bear-any-burder-so-long-as-it-does-not-actually-advance-the-American-interest
language of the left.

And if you think the plight of the poor Iraqis cuts much ice with the American public, consider the polls. They must know that genocide is coming, and yet they're not terribly supportive of the war at this point.

Strong arguments can be made for attempting to defeat Al Qaeda -- and Iran -- in Iraq. But I arguments about the well-being of Iraqis are now very weak indeed. If they ever had much appeal, they surely no longer do.

Posted by: Ace at 01:01 PM | Comments (112)
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Greyhawk finds some of the details offered in "Scott Thomas'" account unpersuasive.

I'm not so sure I buy the "chow house" argument, actually -- seems an awful stretch, making much of so little -- but it certainly does seem like he knows what he's talking about with respect to uniforms.

Bryan Preston finds one that seems damning. This supposed military guy claims that 1) the finding of a 9mm cartridge casing proves the Iraqi police were responsible for a shooting, because only the IP uses 9mm ammunition in all of Iraq (!!!), and 2), it's "square-backed" ammo, which I never heard of, and neither has Bryan.

Maybe someone with gun knowledge can explain that last one; maybe there is some sort of distinctive "square back" ammo out there.

But that first assertion seems... dubious. 9mm parabellum is, as far as I know, the most popular, most available, most consumed ammo in the entire world, used in -- guessing here -- a full half of all pistol models as well as in submachineguns. (I shot a Steyr, I think, in 9mm a couple of months ago. I picked 9mm over .45 because 9mm was so much cheaper.)

Hell, even some rifles are chambered for it -- not because it's a good rifle round, but just because it's so damn ubiquitous.

I find this guy's assertion that finding a 9mm round on a battlefield is some sort of telling clue rather hard to believe.

I want to stress, again, that Stephen Glass was able to fake his reports because the only "factual verification" done to confirm his articles was checking them against his own notes. That is, of course, the most "verification" Scott Thomas' articles are getting (if that -- it's unlikely Thomas can fax or send his notes back to DC for checking every as he goes through the supposed "editorial process").

TNR claimed to have fixed the Stephen Glass loophole long ago. Never again, they swore.

Well, whether this guy is simply embellishing his "war stories" for dramatic Wilsonian "literary flair" or simply making them up wholesale a la Stephen Glass, it is beyond question that TNR has suspended the post-Glass verification rules for this guy -- jeopardizing the reputation of a magazine, once again, that has been burned not once but twice by high-profile embarrassments regarding fictitious reportage.

And why have they decided to suspend these rules? Why are the flirting with shuttering the magazine forever?

To get Bush, and editorialize against the war, of course.

BDS.

Another magazine could take this sort of risk, if it were inclined. After all, other magazines have not been rocked by two huge journalistic scandals caused by their laissez-faire attitude towards fabricators. Most magazines don't have two enormous strikes already against them.

But TNR? What the hell is TNR doing taking big swings at trash pitches when it's already two in the hole?

For what? It appears that getting Bush and propagandizing against our troops is a big enough potential reward to risk the magazine's bloody, public, caught-on-video public suicide.

"Square Back" = "Marked With A Squared-Off Dimple From A Rectangular Firing Pin"? Over at the Weekly Standard blog, arms experts (including Bob Owens) from Confederate Yankee say the Glock does have a rectangular firing pin which imprints casings with a dimple which may look "squared off," and that non-Glocks tend to have (or exclusively have) cylindrical firing pins.

So actually this point looks a lot weaker. Although the jargon is garbled, this can easily be explained by a clueless editor mis-editing "Thomas'" words, making them inaccurate as he tries to make them simpler. Or Thomas using his own idiosyncratic gun terminology.

Confederate Yankee notes that Glocks have been seized from insurgent groups dozens of times (just in the articles that specifically mention this), so it's hardly clear that Glock = Iraqi Police.

More problems found at the Weekly Standard. Including "Scott Thomas'" reference to "Little Venice" in Baghdad -- apparently getting the details of it 100% wrong.

The American Standard, meanwhile, thinks it may have ID'd "Scott Thomas." And I think they may be right.... But.

If they're right, then "Scott Thomas" is vet-turned-conscience-objector/warcrimes-gadfly Clifton Hicks, taking his nom de plume from the reporters who quoted him on the Haditha massacre, Scott Peterson and Evan Thomas. And telling the same sorts of stories he tells as Clifton Hicks.

But in that case: What possible reason does TNR have to disguise his identity? He's not in the army anymore, and he's safe at home, beyond any frag-style reprisals from the soldiers he's "ratting on." Further, he's already been quoted by name by dozens of other outfits.

If it is Clifton Hicks, TNR has even more questions to answer. But I'm having trouble comprehending how they could justify concealing the identity of an already well-known "Jenjis Khan" style propagandist.

Update: Dan Riehl says it's probably not Hicks, as Hicks says he's a high school dropout whereas "Scott Thomas" mentions his college experience. He also seems to think their writing styles are dissimilar.

Posted by: Ace at 12:00 PM | Comments (35)
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Not safe for work gratuitous nudity content warning. A country song called "Show Them To Me," all about "settin' those puppies free," visualized with some of the greatest boobie shots in Hollywood history. Including, right off the bat, Phoebe Cates from Fast Times, just to get you into the spirit of the thing.

I'll drop the link below the fold to stress this is a boobapalooza. more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:36 AM | Comments (31)
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Norm Coleman's amendment to prevent the UnFairness Doctrine from returning failed by a vote of 49-48. Only Evan Bayh on the Democratic side voted in favor of it.

They really want to do this. And they're going to.

Here's a petition against this, if you want to sign it.

Bonus: Sen. Inhofe blogs about the Democrats' determination to destroy citizen radio at RedState.

If Democrats want "fairness" for radio, how about broadening the "fairness" to include broadcast television network news? After all, isn't more fairness even more fairerer?

Posted by: Ace at 10:48 AM | Comments (18)
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Not really the biggest surprise of the day.

He's actually missing a chunk of his brain, with insensate moronfluid sloshing around where his think-muscle should be.

(Sorry to drop the medical terminology on you, but the price of being as brilliant a polymath as I am is that I often find it difficult to "talk down" to the level of ordinary people. Or sub-ordinary people, like yourselves.)

Posted by: Ace at 10:43 AM | Comments (7)
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For two and half hours, while Bush undergoes a colonoscopy, and while the world burns.

This is going to be the scariest white-knuckled two and half hours of Harry Reid's life.

Do what needs to be done, Mr. President.

Posted by: Ace at 10:29 AM | Comments (25)
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