The newsroom is a sacred, magical place where unhinged partisanship never intrudes into actual reportage.

Except when it does.

The actual reference occurs on page three of the article:

After comparing the current war against extremists with the militarists of Japan and the communists in Korea and Vietnam in Wednesday's speech, he plans to discuss the war in Iraq in the context of its implications for the broader Middle East in a speech next Tuesday at the annual American Legion convention in Reno, Nev.

Isn't. That. Special.

Thanks to H.

A Bigger Screencap... is here. As you can see it's the top story as of 3:00 PM. I don't know when it went up with this screamer headline.

Thanks for that second screencap Dave.

MSM Suddenly Convinced Iraq NOT Like Vietnam, Now That Bush Has Suggested Comparison To Mass Slaughter and Displaced Boat People: Apparently Iraq is only like Vietnam in ways that benefit the Democratic party.

Who knew?

In related news... Liberals are so gosh-darn thoughtful they're incapable of thinking in anything less than doctorate theses, whereas conservatives can only chant simplistic slogans.

Simplistic slogans like

IRAQ LIKE VIETNAM: BUSH'S NEW TALKING POINT AS 14 AMERICANS DIE

as a fer instance.

Changed! Now reads "New Bush Talking Point: Iraq Like Vietnam."

No more caps, no more "AS 14 AMERICANS DIE, DIE, DIE!!!11!!"

'Sokay. I got it all screencapped.

The Actual Text Of His Remarks: Of course the MSM isn't interested in reporting them. But the Weekly Standard is. I'll swipe a bit because I'm going to link them in my next post anyhow:

Three decades later, there is a legitimate debate about how we got into the Vietnam War and how we left. There's no debate in my mind that the veterans from Vietnam deserve the high praise of the United States of America. (Applause.) Whatever your position is on that debate, one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like "boat people," "re-education camps," and "killing fields."

There was another price to our withdrawal from Vietnam, and we can hear it in the words of the enemy we face in today's struggle -- those who came to our soil and killed thousands of citizens on September the 11th, 2001. In an interview with a Pakistani newspaper after the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden declared that "the American people had risen against their government's war in Vietnam. And they must do the same today."

His number two man, Zawahiri, has also invoked Vietnam. In a letter to al Qaeda's chief of operations in Iraq, Zawahiri pointed to "the aftermath of the collapse of the American power in Vietnam and how they ran and left their agents."

Zawahiri later returned to this theme, declaring that the Americans "know better than others that there is no hope in victory. The Vietnam specter is closing every outlet." Here at home, some can argue our withdrawal from Vietnam carried no price to American credibility -- but the terrorists see it differently.

We must remember the words of the enemy. We must listen to what they say. Bin Laden has declared that "the war [in Iraq] is for you or us to win. If we win it, it means your disgrace and defeat forever." Iraq is one of several fronts in the war on terror -- but it's the central front -- it's the central front for the enemy that attacked us and wants to attack us again. And it's the central front for the United States and to withdraw without getting the job done would be devastating. (Applause.)

If we were to abandon the Iraqi people, the terrorists would be emboldened, and use their victory to gain new recruits. As we saw on September the 11th, a terrorist safe haven on the other side of the world can bring death and destruction to the streets of our own cities. Unlike in Vietnam, if we withdraw before the job is done, this enemy will follow us home. And that is why, for the security of the United States of America, we must defeat them overseas so we do not face them in the United States of America. (Applause.)

As Allah points out, Bush didn't say Iraq was like Vietnam -- he said it would be like Vietnam were we to surrender. Apparently the high-nuanced folks at ABC have not mastered the nuances of the subjunctive or conditional moods.

Posted by: Ace at 10:44 AM | Comments (68)
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Following on the heels of the deaths of two other Al Qaeda bigs.

Yes, this is a significant success, and it comes less than 24 hours after the deaths of two other Al Qaeda leaders, one in the Hilla region of The Triangle of Death, which I reported yesterday, and another one named Ali Latief al-Falahi, who was killed just north of Baghdad, which I didnÂ’t even have a chance to report yet. TheyÂ’re just killing these boys too fast.

Now when can we start killing the Al Qaeda in DC? I guess itÂ’ll be more fun to wait until after Petraeus has finished neutering them. It would appear that for this moment, the United States military is the most powerful poltical force in Washington DC. No one seems to realize that the military is now de facto calling all of the shots of the nationÂ’s war policy. Which means it is controlling the most powerful political force in the country. The military now controls the fate of the Democrat party, instead of the other way around, as the Dems tried so very hard to have it. The Dems tried to deny the military its just and hard won victory. Now the military will have its vengeance, as it denies the enemy within, theirs.

On the Dennis Miller/Breitbart show, Dollard mentioned that media gave great play to the assassinations of two Iraqi provincial governors -- as they should. Obviously those were important and newsworthy attacks by the enemy.

But when the perpetrators were caught within 24 hours, did the media report that? Of course not.

A war looks pretty bad when all you report are the friendly casualties. Wouldn't want the American public to get the "wrong idea" by also reporting on enemy casualties and US/Coalition successes, eh?

Thanks to Purple Avenger for reminding me of that part of the Dollard interview.

Posted by: Ace at 09:40 AM | Comments (20)
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Part of a Continuing Series: The national debate about the War on Terror has led to intense discussion of laws both international and domestic. In my other Law Lessons posts IÂ’ve focused on international law because I believe conservatives too often assume that it is an obstacle to their goals. Leftists and lazy journalists like to rely on ignorance or distaste for international law to get away with shady arguments.

However, law that is wholly domestic is just as contentious as its international variation. LetÂ’s face it, Americans love to argue about the law. So I am expanding my Law Lessons series to include issues of domestic law that have been the subject of debate during the last few years.

Update on Other Posts:Those of you who are looking out for future posts about international law need not worry. I still have several in the works, including ones which will apply Just War theory to the Iraq War and examine the importance of international rules of warfare. I’m also working on the much anticipated post (it is, right?), “International Law: What It Is, Why It Is Important, and Why We Should Stick To It.” That one is looking like it will have four and maybe five parts, the first of which will be up on Monday.

Enough preamble. My topic today is congressional declarations of war. I rather summarily dealt with the issue in the comments of an earlier post. I wrote:

When Congress points our military at another nation and says "fight them, overthrow their government, and occupy their territory" it is declaring war regardless of whether it uses magic words in the enabling act.

I think the topic deserves a little more than that. more...

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 09:33 AM | Comments (22)
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Approved by Lucas, apparently.

This is old -- the article's from May -- but I'm posting it as a semi-bleg.

Apparently they showed about 15 minutes of the show at the Star Wars Celebration thing in June or so, and someone recorded it using his cellphone camera. All of those clips have now been pulled due to infringement claims by 20th Century Fox.

Anyone happen to know of a working URL? Or maybe someone got a download of it? I hear it's funny, albeit in that sort of middling Family Guy sort of way.

Posted by: Ace at 09:22 AM | Comments (19)
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But the Reality-Based Community can only deviate so far from their Community-Based Reality.

Posted by: Ace at 09:17 AM | Comments (9)
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A guest on the Dennis Miller show, which is being guest-hosted by Andrew Breitbart.

On right now. I can't guarantee it's interesting. Just potentially so.

"Red Meat For The Blogosphere:" This is the Terror Watch column referenced, the one claimed to be so explosive. I'm still reading it... not sure I see what's explosive here. It's a fair digest of the IG report, but this "explosive" information seems kinda old to me:

The report also criticized intelligence problems when Bill Clinton was president, detailing political and legal “constraints” agency officials felt in the late 1990s. In September 2006, during a famous encounter with Fox News anchor Wallace, Clinton erupted in anger and waived his finger when asked about whether his administration had done enough to get bin Laden. “What did I do? What did I do?” Clinton said at one point. “I worked hard to try to kill him. I authorized a finding for the CIA to kill him. We contracted with people to kill him. I got closer to killing him than anybody has gotten since.”

Clinton appeared to have been referring to a December 1999 Memorandum of Notification (MON) he signed that authorized the CIA to use lethal force to capture, not kill, bin Laden. But the inspector general’s report made it clear that the agency never viewed the order as a license to “kill” bin Laden—one reason it never mounted more effective operations against him. “The restrictions in the authorities given the CIA with respect to bin Laden, while arguably, although ambiguously, relaxed for a period of time in late 1998 and early 1999, limited the range of permissible operations,” the report stated. (Scheuer agreed with the inspector general’s findings on this issue, but said if anything the report was overly diplomatic. “There was never any ambiguity,” he said. “None of those authorities ever allowed us to kill anyone. At least that’s what the CIA lawyers told us.” A spokesman for the former president had no immediate comment.)

In any case, the inspector general found that the CIA's failure to conduct effective covert actions against bin Laden prior to 9/11 was ultimately not because of ambiguous legal authorities but because it did not have effective assets on the ground who could mount a “credible operation” against him.

Didn't we already know Clinton had refused to actually give a kill order on bin Ladin? We know this, it's proven by documentation, but the media won't report it. I'd say it's possible the media will be shamed into finally reporting it by this new report, but that's simply absurd.

More... "We are at war," a 1998 CIA memorandum announced, putting the agency firmly into warfighting mode.

Right.

Posted by: Ace at 08:39 AM | Comments (6)
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You're not allowed to drive a golf cart drunk? Why not? What are they for, then?

Anyway:

Bill Murray could face a drunken driving charge after cruising through downtown Stockholm in a golf cart and refusing to take a breath test, citing U.S. law.

Police officers spotted the "Caddyshack" star early Monday in the slow-moving vehicle and noticed he smelled of alcohol when they pulled him over, said Detective-Inspector Christer Holmlund of the Stockholm police.

"He refused to blow in the (breath test) instrument, citing American legislation," Holmlund told The Associated Press on Wednesday. "So we applied the old method — a blood test. It will take 14 days before the results are in."

Murray, who had been at a golf tournament in Sweden, signed a document admitting that he was driving under the influence, and agreed to let a police officer plead guilty for him if the case goes to court, Holmlund said.

"Then he was let go. My guess is he went back to America," Holmlund said.

He said the 56-year-old actor-comedian would only be charged if tests show his blood alcohol level exceeded the legal limit, which is quite low in Sweden.

A very high alcohol level could lead to a prison sentence, but Holmlund said fines were more likely.

"There were no obvious signs, like when someone is really tipsy," he said.

Thanks to Drew.

Posted by: Ace at 08:33 AM | Comments (29)
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Now that the Goldmans have seized the manuscript in satisfaction of a lawsuit against Simpson's various attempts to dodge paying them what he owes them, they've renamed it Confessions of a Killer and will publish it-- and take most of whatever money it makes. (I assume the rest will go to the publisher and not to Simpson.)

Well played, Fred Goldman. Well played.

If you're interested in the contents, this Radar writer gives most of the good stuff away.

Here's the point in this hypothetical maybe-book where O.J. would probably like the record to reflect that Nicole was the one begging him to stay and not the other way around. He was leaving her, he'd say in an exchange that might go:

"'Are you saying this isn't working?" (Nicole would ask.)

"Christ! What was I supposed to say to that? Wasn't it obvious? 'Well,' I said. 'I'm not feeling all that optimistic. And if you honestly feel it's working, then something is really wrong with this picture.'

"I guess I was trying to be honest, and maybe I was a little too blunt about it, but maybe she needed that bluntness to get her mind around the situation."

The Juice would be the one doing the breaking up. Everyone clear on that point? Good.

There's something particularly pathetic about that, don't you think? The guy murdered her and yet is still playing the eighth grade game of "I was the one who wanted to break up, seriously!"

Posted by: Ace at 08:07 AM | Comments (9)
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Rat complaints in Buffalo NY have "skyrocketed" by almost 90% this year. Its being blamed on a "dry spell", but we all know what THAT is code for.

BuffaloÂ’s rat busters thought they had eliminated the nasty rodent a couple of years ago with garbage totes, but this summer, rat complaints skyrocketed by nearly 90 percent .

The cityÂ’s pest control officers think they know one reason for the resurgence: Blame it on a dry spell...

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 07:58 AM | Comments (18)
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More evidence that the regime in Russia is intent on tightening their grip on power with complete disregard for human rights:

A woman in southeastern Moscow set fire to her former husband's penis while he lay helpless in an alcohol-induced slumber, a police spokeswoman said Tuesday.

The 41-year-old woman faces up to three years in prison if charged and convicted of deliberately inflicting the injuries, said Tatyana Korolyova, a spokeswoman for police in the city's Southeastern Administrative District.

What, did crime in Russia suddenly come to a standstill, and so now the authorities have turned to meddling in family disputes?

Ridiculous.

If setting fire to your ex-husband's dick is outlawed, only outlaws will be setting fire to their ex-husbands' dicks.

Thanks to eddiebear, whe never sends me a link to his blog when he tips me, forcing me to look it up every damn time. I'm just too lazy this morning.
OK, maybe not.

Posted by: LauraW. at 06:11 AM | Comments (54)
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