Serious question for our moonbat friends

The infamous Liberal Avenger and friends have been discussing the war in Iraq, whether or not we are winning, and what we should do. That leads me to turn his hypothetical question around, and ask the following:

Suppose just for a moment that we "wingnuts" are correct, and there really is a global radical-Islamist organization - absolutely ruthless, implacable, and dedicated - that has as its stated goal the destruction of the State of Israel, the elimination of all democratic governments, the establishment of a worldwide caliphate, and the imposition of the strictest Sharia law on every man, woman and child on the planet.

What should we do?

Rall and Trudeau spit on the troops

Garry Trudeau's latest series has wounded Iraq vet B.D. (sans helmet) suffering flashbacks and drinking heavily. The excerable Ted Rall, a far less accomplished artist* and commentator, goes further, insinuating that returned vets are all ultra-violent nutcases, at least as regards their sex lives. (ht - Michelle Malkin).

Thank God for Chris Muir, who can actually draw, and for Michael Yon, who gave us the photos of the jaw-dropping babes gracing the arms of the redoubtable warriors of the Deuce Four (can't WAIT for that new Bruce Willis flick!).

Rall really needs to see somebody about his sick fantasies.

* The airplane Rall has dropping bombs on the girlfriend's house (to break off the relationship) looks like it has the aft end of an F-4 or F-101 (with the horizontal stabilizer removed) and the front end of an F-105. The wing looks a bit like that on an A-4.

All of those are obsolete, long-retired, Vietnam-era aircraft.

Kind of like the Left's tired, tired "Vietnam" meme.

Superman as the Anti-Christ?

In the teaser trailer for Superman Returns, the voice of Jor-El tells Kal-El (the alien soon to be known as Superman) that humans have "great capacity for good. For that reason, I have sent them you, my only son."

God sent Jesus, his only Son, for precisely the opposite reason.

HT: Michelle Malkin

Paging Mr. Lynne, Mr. Barry Lynne....

Michelle Malkin reports on yet another excerable 9th Circus decision. This one supports an "educational" program that has children in a public school role-playing at Islam, including reciting Arabic prayers and fasting during Ramdan.

HELLOOOO?!?!?! Where's the ACLU on this? Where's Americans United for the Separation of Church and State?

More: Daniel Pipes reported on this in 2002.

George meets Ghengis

Gateway Pundit: George Bush Makes History, Praises Mongolian Democracy

Great photos.

What liberal media bias?

Two big stories out of Iraq this morning. This on the wires:

Iraq "Full" Coverage on Yahoo! News (quote marks added) leads with the AP report of "U.S. Forces Mistakenly Fire on Vehicle:
BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. forces mistakenly fired on a civilian vehicle outside an American base in a city north of Baghdad on Monday, killing three people, including a child, the military said."

Then there's this, from the blogs:

UPDATED: Arab Media Reports al-Zarqawi Dead:
"According to the Jerusalem Post, at least one Arab television network has reported that al-Qaeda mastermind in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has been killed.

The report says that coalition soldiers encircled al-Zarqawi’s hideout, at which point several terrorists blew themselves up in order to avoid capture."

Which one will you see on CNN tonight or read about in the papers tomorrow?

Three guesses, the first two don't count.

Semper Fi, indeed

I have nothing to add to this; it speaks for itself.

Our Humvee was in the kill zone, and we were taking a lot of fire. A rocket-propelled grenade hit the weapon I was holding, an M-249 SAW, and just blew my hands off and blew my leg open. My femur was fractured and sticking out. My artery was hit, too, and bleeding like crazy. One of the Marines was able put the tourniquets on.

I was irritated that I couldn’t pull the trigger. I was thinking, “Damn, I can’t shoot back; what can I do?” What I could do was talk to my Marines and issue orders and supervise. I was still in a leadership position even though I didn’t have my hands.

- Sgt. James E. Wright

Good!

The House GOP is growing a spine. They're forcing a vote on Murtha's irresponsible resolution to cut and run in Iraq. With a GOP majority, the resolution will fail, of course. The only question is by how much. Democratic Representatives will have to decide whether to break with their party by voting for Murtha, or break with their base by voting against him.

Any Republican foolish enough to vote for surrender, of course, will be out of a job next election.

Break out the Orville Redenbacher's - this is gonna be good!

Dear Senator Kerry

I just saw you on CNN denouncing "another Swift Boat attack" on John Murtha's character by people who never chose to wear the uniform of the United States. I'm not sure what you meant by that.

The Swift Boat vets were themselves verterans - some of whom served alongside you, and who called into question your inflated version of your wartime service. If anyone had standing to question you about your claims, or your character under fire, they did. It's not their fault you lied about spending Christmas in Cambodia, or claimed to have served with a man you didn't, described covert operations for which no records exist and no corroborating witnesses have come forward, or wrote your own award recommendation. They just brought these facts to light.

The criticism of Murtha's proposal to abandon the Iraqis to the same fate as the South Vietnamese and Cambodians is simply pointing out that if retreat and surrender did not bring peace and freedom to Southeast Asia, it is unlikely to work in Southwest Asia. That's not an attack on the man's character, it's an attack on a very stupid idea.

To the best of my knowledge, the only charge against Rep Murtha's character has been that by proposing we cut and run, he has denigrated the sacrifice of those who have bled and died so that the Iraqi people have a shot at determining their own future. No one has intimated that he did not honorably serve his country in uniform.

Some of Murtha's harshest critics, by the way, are active-duty soldiers and Marines and their families. They have counted the cost, and paid the price, and see Murtha as selling them out. Do you consider their criticisms valid, Senator Kerry?


"Chickenhawk" disclosure: I tried to join the USAF in the late 80's. They didn't want a flatfooted, nearsighted asthmatic. My dad served with Nimitz. Had Truman not dropped the bomb he probably would have been taken out by a kamizake attack on a carrier during the invasion. One of my uncles was a paratrooper who jumped at Normandy and the Bulge, earning two Purple Hearts with an Oak Leaf Cluster. He carried shrapnel in his legs to his dying day. Another uncle was infantry in Italy I believe. Another uncle had three ships shot from under him in the Merchant Marine (*they* couldn't shoot back). Another uncle lost a finger to a Howitzer breech mechanism in the hedgerow country. My Scoutmaster was a mud Marine in Korea.

No, I was never shot at. But I knew them what was. And I believe that they would be repudiate Rep. Murtha without hesitation.

How to grow a spine

#1. Dump Frist
He's in love with the idea of being in the Senate. He sees himself as a modern-day Byrd (as Byrd imagines himself to be). I like the idea of a Senate, too. Deliberation and all that is not a bad thing - the founders had a good idea. And the asbestos thing was overblown- Frist was talking to the National Association of Manufacturers, and the asbestos litigation issue is HUGE in their world.

But still. Frist has demonstrated time and again that he'll sacrifice party, principle, and President for precedent. Get him gone.

#2. Get Delay back on the mound
Or at least coaching from the bullpen. Back in the game somehow.

#3. Schedule an up-or-down roll-call vote on an IMMEDIATE withdrawal of troops from Iraq. No amendments. Bring it on, let's git'r done, as they say.

SAFE

So Pennsylvania Democrat Re. John Murtha wants to "immediately redeploy U.S. troops consistent with the safety of U.S. forces" and let the Iraqis fend for themselves.

Yes, let's keep our troops safe, by all means. Bring them home. Keep them safe.

We'd best ground the Air Force, too - it's not safe to fly those big jets. Keep the Navy in port - that water is deep and cold out there. It's not safe. Don't let the Army drive those tanks - what if they were to run over someone's foot? And for the love of safety lock up all those dangerous guns and missles and things.

We don't want anyone to get hurt. Especially not the men and women who have volunteered to go in harm's way to defend the rest of us. Let's all stay nice and safe.


Until the masked men come to our door with their beheading knives.


UPDATE: The new headline paints John "Cut-n-Run" Murtha as a "Hawkish" Democrat. He's a decorated Vietnam vet, a former Marine intel officer. How can he POSSIBLY want to visit upon the Iraqi people what the retreat from Vietnam visited upon Southeast Asia?

Unbelievable.

Netflix for geeks

Cool beans!

I'm an Ent

Who knew?


Entish

To which race of Middle Earth do you belong?
brought to you by Quizilla

The good, the bad, and the Uruk-Hai

If I were Lileks, I'd have sound clips. But I'm not, so you'll have to use your imagination.

I'm watching the extras extended edition DVD of the Lord of the Rings - The Two Towers, taking a break to get a bite to eat, and it suddenly strikes me. The Rohan theme - dah dah dah di dah di dah dah, dah dah dah di dah di dah daaah... sounds a WHOLE LOT like the theme from the Clint Eastwood classic The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Who-ee-oo-ee-ooh bwah bwah bwah. Who-ee-oo-ee-ooh bwah bwah bwaaah...

The Rohirrim are people of the horse. They live in wooden towns on windswept plains. The men are brave and loyal, the women are strong and stoic. They have swords instead of sixguns and a king rather than a sherriff, but STILL!

Has anyone noticed this before?

This needs a good fisking

TCS: Tech Central Station - Is Intelligent Design a Bad Scientific Theory or a Non-Scientific Theory?

So full of errors and bias I'm amazed that Glenn linked to it.

Crank it up to eleven

I quit trying to explain this to my intermediate guitar students some time ago. The new electronic tuners are good enough.

Tune it or die.

Absence of evidence = evidence of absence?

Shifting Icebergs May Have Forced Penguin Evolution

So three widely-separated colonies of penguins are genetically identical. But-but-but, evolution says that they should be different! So we have to come up with a mechanism to explain why evolution doesn't seem to have happened in a place where it should. Whew! Crisis averted.

Oh - the article includes this statement:

Microevolution involves small-scale genetic changes in a species over time. The classic example is a color change undergone by British pepper moths in response to changing levels of air pollution.

Only problem is, that example is a well-known hoax, not a classic example.

How do you say "Mein Kampf" in Farsi?"

Clifford May echoes my own thoughts:

Eighty years ago, Adolf Hitler published an autobiography-cum-manifesto. Its title translates as “My Struggle.” In it, Hitler talked of his desire for revenge against France, the German nation's need to control more land, and the means by which his National Socialist Party could gain power. It also included, of course, a clear indication of his genocidal intentions against the Jews. Last week, Iran's president echoed those themes. He talked about his “struggle” – the word translate into both Arabic and Persian as “jihad” -- his desire for revenge against America and the West, the Islamic nation's need to control more land, and the means by which his Militant Islamist movement could gain global power. Of course, there are differences between Hitler in 1925 and Ahmadinejad in 2005. Perhaps the biggest is this: When Hitler made his threats he was an obscure politician whom hardly anyone took seriously. By contrast, Ahmadinejad is the president of a large and wealthy nation that operates terrorist organizations and is well on its way to developing nuclear weapons. (emphasis mine)

(emphasis mine) Couple that development with the riots in France, and things are getting...interesting.

Are the New Testament Gospels Reliable?

WOW. The erudite and readable Rev. Dr. Mark D. Roberts has completed a 30-part series on the historical reliability of the Gospels. In his closing segment, Robers notes,

I don't believe I've proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the New Testament gospels are historically reliable. I do believe, however, that I've shown it is reasonable to regard these gospels as historically accurate.

I've long argued that proof "beyond a reasonable doubt" - the standard set in criminal law - is not a rational standard to evaluate the historicity of the Gospels. Indeed, theologically it is impossible to do so. If the truth of the Gospels is proven beyond doubt, then there is no room for faith.

"Preponderance of evidence" and "most likely explanation" - the civil legal standard - is a far more reasonable standard to employ.

Lots of reading to do.

An even more insignificant protest

A few weeks ago, perhaps as much as 100,000 people marched in Washington to protest the war in Iraq, the existence of the state of Israel, global warming, etc. I noted then that it was statistically insignificant, since the marchers represented at best 3.3% of the population - a fringe movement by any definition. Today, about 9,000 students cut classes nationwide to protest the war in Iraq.

That's .003 percent - 1 in 33,333. If the population were the bloodstream, and the protestors were alcohol, the nation would not only be legal to drive, a blood test wouldn't even pick it up.

Scientists in a snit

In an escalation of the nation's culture war over the teaching of evolution, the National Academy of Sciences and the National Science Teachers Association announced yesterday that they will not allow Kansas to use key science education materials developed by the two organizations.

The refusal came after the groups reviewed the latest draft of the Kansas State Department of Education's new science education standards and concluded that they overemphasize uncertainties about the theory of evolution and fail to make it clear that supernatural phenomena have no place in science.

Next up, watch for the NAS and the NSTA to castigate Kansas for using "substandard" curriculum materials.