USS Clueless has this take on what Bin Laden's tragedy was. I say was because I seriously doubt he's more than cave wall temperature right now. I largely agree with Mr. Beste's views on the way religious faith has shaped what Bin Laden has done.

Falwell and Robertson were roundly denounced even by other Christians, but that's because most American Christians don't think that way. It's the fundamentalists, the zealots for whom that is the only acceptable answer, because even the post-Enlightenment loving and non-meddling God, is heresy. It's no accident that they both also believe in Biblical inerrancy, and refuse to accept the findings of science which contradict the Bible. It's all part of the same pattern. They have an entirely different world view. They don't live in the same universe that most of us live in.

Earlier in the essay he said this.

Zealots see no contradiction or problem in praying to God for direct miracles that would benefit themselves, or in praying that God smite their enemies. It's the equivalent of front line riflemen using a radio to call for artillery support during a battle. It's part of what prayer is for. Prayer isn't conversation, or confession; it's how you tell God what you need from Him. It's the ultimate radio, and God is the ultimate artillery.

I think that he's dead right on this, I've known a fundementalist or two and they do indeed seem to think like that. That God HAS to comply as long as you dot all the i's and cross all the t's. It's a simplistic understanding of God at best, barely above tree whorshippers chanting spells to invoke mystical forces. It raises two points for me.

1. It's good that they are this deluded, in that it means we don't have to worry so much about brilliant chess like moves of strategy laying us low unexpectedly. They have no real plan, other than divine intervention.

2.This is bad in that we are fighting a group of zealots for which there is no setback or defeat that they will not turn on it's head as a sign that they just haven't believed hard enough yet.

If correct it suggests to me that aside from purely military victories, we might want to consider trying harder to find ways to shake that faith. Hurt them where it counts, by driving them to despair of ever being pure enough, or devout enough to warrent the help they seek. Try a little harder on the phsy-ops maybe.

Whatever the answer, it's worth a read.

Read this, and ask yourself a simple question, why did CNN feel that it was under any obligation to control or direct the tone of a political debate? Whould they have felt the need to lighten the mood if it were republicans going at it in a national debate? I doubt it very, very much.

Tobe Berkovitz, a communications professor at Boston University, said campaigns generally try to plant their own sympathizers in audiences.

"It's sort of considered an acceptable dirty trick by campaigns," he said. "But for the media to set someone up, it's vile."

Yes it is, and they wonder why they are losing to FOX. The FOX new network may have a conservative tone, but they do openly seek contrary opinion, you know exactly where they are coming from. CNN has played the uninterested bystander ploy way to often for anyone to buy it anymore. Items like this confirm what many of us long suspected, they slant the news, oddly enough despite denials, always to the left.

Time to bury this network and move on. They sold out to Huessein in Iraq, and they still play these kiddy games with real issues of national interest. Enough, enough already, America doesn't need a BBC.

The Instapundit points to this. An Arab News columnist has changed his mind and now supports the war for Iraq.

No, I don�t believe that by going to war, America had dark designs on Iraq�s oil or pursued an equally dark conspiracy to �help Israel.� I believe that the US, perhaps willy-nilly, will end up helping Iraqis regain their human sanity, their social composure and the national will to rebuild their devastated nation.

A secretly taken picture of an American soldier frisking an Afghan child has shocked human rights campaigners across the world.

Oh the SHAME of it, that the Taliban would consider using children as pawns in their war to reclaim the right to shoot women in the head in public stadiums. That the apologists for terror in this London based Peace and Justice Foundation think that child is being harmed, yet ignore completely WHY the US troops feel searching him is necessary.

Excuse me while I spit, that anyone in the Muslim world can use the word "shame" with a straight face after all that's happened to show they have none, makes me want to throw things. Little biddy things, like this,.....

The Taliban insists the extreme measures of jihad require extreme schooling. "Children are innocent, so they are the best tools against dark forces," says a Pakistani Taliban fighter, who was captured by the Northern Alliance last month near Dast-e-Qale.

The Taliban have broken and violated nearly every normal tenent of civilized behavior, openly, proudly............they admit it. Those apologists in London don't seem to notice that half of the equation. It doesn't fit in with the infidel invader must be driven out line. That picture is hardly something we should feel ashamed over, the ones who should feel shame............don't have any.

One other point.

If these children are being so violated, why are half of them smiling? It becomes obvious to me after blowing up this part of the image, that the children here aren't exactly the shameful victims of US oppression that somebody would have you believe. They don't seem scared or intimidated at all.

War is an ugly business, but distorting the truth doesn't make it any cleaner. There are no weapons pointed at them, no threatening postures. Those GI's are handling it as well as they can, the children are't frightened, their body language says that...That the picture was supposedly taken at extreme range with a telephoto lense says alot too. It's an implication that the cameraman feared for his life in taking this picture, that the US troops would have acted against him for snapping it.

More slander. It never ends, and I grow tired of the people who suck up this kind of pap. They can keep their heads where they are, it must be nice and warm in there, ....................mind the smell though.

Iran has been busy.

The NCRI, which in August 2002 broke the news about a large underground uranium enrichment facility at Natanz and other sites Iran later declared to the IAEA, said its information came from well-placed informers inside Iran.

"The (secret) site has been built to test centrifuges that enrich uranium," NCRI official Firouz Mahvi told reporters in Vienna. "It is located 15 km (nine miles) east of Isfahan under the name of Isfahan's Fuel Research and Production Center."

The battle continues......

The WaPo/NYT/Guardian Triumvirate of stupidity, or these guys?

Nope. No similarity to Iraq at all.

Is blogging under the influence against the rules? A minor surgical procedure but the drugs are intense. Keep that in mind as you read, if I'm any good, then fine. But If I ramble or stumble badly,...it's the drugs I swear..........

So here goes.

The Mirror is one of Britains less than truthful tabloid papers, it's coverage of the war has been selective, biased and harsh. So take this report with a huge grain of salt.

Still, it sounds plausible, possibly likely. Saddam is no martyr, no till the death fanatic out to claim his 72 warm ones. He's a cornered rat, and if true, this piece suggests that Miss. Rice isn't going to sellout the cause of justice. She's headhunting.

Damn I like that woman.

From Drudge.

This deserved a second post, as it appeared down toward the end of David's article on a different subject.

"Foreigners had more rights in Iraq than Iraqis did under Saddam," is not an uncommon complaint to be heard here. There is a lot of animosity towards those countries that managed to gain from Saddam's thirst for international recognition and popularity. In this light, the bombing of the Jordanian embassy in August is not difficult to comprehend. It was even more tragic and disgusting an act if you consider that it was mainly Iraqis that died in the blast.

Pan-Arab nationalists will find that their dreams have died in the dusty streets of Baghdad, and the narrow lanes of Fallujah. Iraqis just aren't interested. They have enough problems of their own and just want to get back on an even keel, to enjoy their country as they hoped they were always supposed to.

That's why the resistence will get feebler and weaker, go even farther underground, and in the end will die by Iraqi hands. It doesn't have anything to do with the desires of the people of Iraq, that point is driven home to them with each attack that takes out more Iraqi's than Americans. The so-called resistence is in the game for it's own islamicist agenda and the Iraqi's know that, even if Egyptians and Jordanians do not.

The critics in Europe are so eager to see us fail, they aren't even paying attention to what's going on on the ground. They screech quagmire, as if that were a position, and not a desire of theirs. The Iraqi's say different, our soldiers on the ground say different, so any carping from the peace no matter what crowd rings hollow. It'll take awhile to rebuild, but the work has started, and wishing it away won't do the Europeans any good.

Have I said that Chirac can go fuck himself today?

To win friends in Iraq. If you're one of the new Iraqi police, you're probably starting to get quite a complex. Baathists want to kill you. Americans mistake you for bandits and fire upon you.

Insightful look at the day to day life of patrols in Iraq. Nothing eye popping till the end. My God, the humanity of it all.

To their credit, soldiers like Grado and Capt. Mike McBride are able to find humor in the dangerous and austere lives they lead in Baghdad's streets. Recently, Captain McBride says, neighborhood councils in the areas his men patrol voiced concern over the illegal liquor stands that pop up along sidewalks each evening. As a result, soon Grado's platoon will take on a new role as the enforcers of a street-side prohibition.

"If we confiscate it [the liquor], the people will just think we're going to get drunk," he said. The solution: pour it out on the spot. "I'm going to have soldiers on their knees crying as the beer goes flowing into the Tigris," he says with a sigh.

Damn these inhuman Saddamites, damn them all................................

A statistical look at who's being killed in the "middle east conflict".

For constantly updated statistics, look here.

Go here to read the full report. It's long, but very interesting.

Bottom line: Israelis target combatants, Palestinians target randomly - preferring to go after "soft" targets like women and children.

UPDATE

Don't believe me? Then what about this?

I believe Occam's Toothbrush is correct about Davi Warren, Moe often goes to him. As terrorist/baathist/islamacist attacks have become a nearly daily occurance in Iraq the din of screeching wailing and outright cowardice of some in the media and political left have become almost deafening. Enough, this is coming from people who never would concede that we are right in any event. It's coming too from people who harbour some twisted fantasy that they can ride a parade of dead GI's into the White House.

The Iraqi army collapsed, but owing to U.S. foresight, training, and technology, there was little scorched earth. Now the second part is going badly, too -- though it is far from over, and the Western liberal media are at least keeping their part of the "bargain", with endless, misleading, "chaos in Iraq" coverage

Exactly right, this whining squealing wet their pants when things get tough crowd of professional malcontents is way past their fifteen minutes of fame.

It was almost too fast: for part of the problem when Baghdad fell was the U.S. didn't yet have enough troops ready for occupation duty. The whole 4th Infantry Division was still en route from its pointless wait to be allowed to pass through Turkey. A fairly brilliant job was done of cobbling together U.S. Army patrols, in the first couple of weeks, from troops that seemed almost outnumbered by media hacks. These latter, having been wildly wrong in all their own predictions about how the war would go, were now desperately trying to score after-the-fact "gotchas".

Emphasis mine, but you see what I mean from this analysis. The people doing most of this understand neither history, nor the long term goals of what we are trying to accomplish. Tie a knott in it and act like you got a swingin pair for Christ's sake. It's a war remember? At what point did these fucksticks decide that the Army that rolled up the Iraq forces like a cheap rug suddenly forgot how to fight?

An independent poll conducted earlier this month on Western sampling principles showed that 73 per cent of Iraqis thought the coalition were doing a very poor job, and 76 per cent wanted them to stay.

No popular support for kicking us out except in baathist strongholds, the Iraqi's want us to stay, most all the arrests and seizures of weapons come from Iraqi tips and sources. There are about six other nations preparing to send peacekeeping troops in support and reconstruction is just starting. When we start fielding the new Iraqi Army it will get easier.

So why all the panic?

The US is a unilateralist cowboy right, I mean us not caring what other nations say and all. "Important" nations that is, you know, the ones that constantly tell us just how important they really are, how vital, how needed. Countries like,say,........FRANCE! Yep the constant drumbeat of how we're just a rogue elephant stumbling about doing untold amounts of damage cause we don't listen to what other nations are telling us......................

That is the refrain isn't it.

So how exactly does this position not make them hypocritical slack jawed butt sucking weasels? No really, I want to know if they just can't see the contradition, or are they really that craven and decadent....