Reservists of the ISRAELI DEFENSE FORCE weigh in

Haaretz publishes the full text of a petition of complaint filed by the "Spearhead Brigade" of the IDF about their recent Sweepus Interruptus campaign in South Lebanon, through which effort the security of Israel from terrorist assault by Hezbollah was NOT achieved.

I provide it here in full, having been so struck by the impression that, with a few substitutions of critical nouns [place names and military titles] I suspect a great many of the rank and file, and of the officer corps, of the American military now or ever in Iraq would readily sign on to the wording of this statement if directed to the office of the Commander-in-Chief and his Secretary of Defense. (The resignation of the latter was just yesterday called for by increasingly independent Senator Joe Lieberman, marginalized Democrat of Connecticut. I concur completely, and, no, it's not too late to do any good.)

The IDF speaks:

The following is the text of a petition signed by IDF reservists who served in the Spearhead Brigade in Lebanon, sent to Defense Minister Amir Peretz and IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz in protest at the handling of the war by the government and senior military officials:

We, fighters and commanders at the Spearhead [Hod Hachanit] Brigade, were called up to enlist under an emergency mobilization order [Tzav 8] on July 30, 2006. Our attendance was complete in all battalions.

As we were signing on the battle equipment and weapons, we knew that we were signing for much more. We left behind wives and children, girlfriends and families. We put aside our jobs and livelihoods; we were prepared to carry out our mission under the most difficult of conditions, in heat, thirst or hunger.

At the back of his mind, each and every one of us knew, that for the just cause of protecting the citizens of Israel, we would even put our lives on the line.

But there was one thing we were not and would not be willing to accept: We were unwilling to accept indecisiveness. The war's aim, which was not defined clearly, was even changed in the course of the fighting.

The indecisiveness manifested itself in inaction, in not carrying out operational plans, and in canceling all the missions we were given during the fighting. This led to prolonged stays in hostile territory, without an operational purpose and out of unprofessional considerations, without seeking to engage in combat with the enemy.

The "cold feet" of the decision-makers were evident everywhere. To us the indecisiveness expressed deep disrespect for our willingness to join the ranks and fight and made us feel as though we had been spat on, since it contradicts the principles and values of warfare upon which we were trained at the Israel Defense Forces.

The heavy feeling that in the echelons above us there is nothing but under-preparation, insincerity, lack of foresight and inability to make rational decisions, leads to the question - were we called up for nothing?

We are now on the day after, and it seems that the immorality and the absence of any shame are the fig-leaves to be used in order to cover up for the blunders. The blunders of the past six years and the under-preparation of the army have been carried on our backs - the backs of the fighters. In order to face the next battle prepared - and this may happen soon - a thorough and fundamental change must take place.

The crisis of confidence between us as fighters and the higher echelons will not be resolved without a thorough and worthy investigative commission under the auspices of the state. When the commission completes its task, conclusions must be drawn both on the level of strategic planning and national security, and on the personal level of the parties involved.

We paid a heavy price in order to fight and come out of the battle victorious, and we feel this has been denied of us. We will all attend calls to enlist in the future for any mission we will be required to complete, but we would like to know that these missions will be part of a clear objective and will be carried out by striving to engage in combat.

As soldiers and citizens we expect a response at your earliest convenience,

We the undersigned

Fighters and officers of the Spearhead Brigade

Israel is a small country in which basically each and every citizen is in a "neighbour" relationship with all other citizens, and on the whole they have a crystal clear sense of every minute of their days being taken up in the task of their personal and national survival. America is too big and unwieldy a country and a culture to achieve a similar unity of purpose, and the production of such a statement as that above would be interpreted as simple factionalism, and perhaps unbecoming whining-- or, alternatively, as some kind of earth-shaking revolution and lip-foaming endorsement of mindless pacificism. Neither of these would do anybody a lick of good.

But the statement is food for thought. And I bet you a cookie (as a brilliant but, then, impecunious room-mate of mine used to say, having nothing more valuable to wager) it would taste satisfying, even sweet, on the lips of many a soldier and Marine who has felt the reverberation, and witnessed the carnage, of the IED in the Iraqi sand.

MIDDLE EAST REPORT-- DATELINE: LEBANON
(Cue sackbuts)
"I saw three ships come sailing in, come sailing in, come sailing in...."

God bless the Welsh-- their national website is right on top of the story as our NATO ally France makes its first contribution to the safe-guarding of its long-time colonial partner, Lebanon.

Story #1, August 16:
World scrambles to keep the Lebanon peace

The international community is scrambling to put together a fortified UN peacekeeping force for southern Lebanon...Nearly a dozen countries have said they could take part in the strengthened force...Many possible contributors appeared to be waiting for France to take the lead. France, which has been in the forefront of the diplomatic push, is demanding a more specific mandate for the 15,000-strong force...

Story #2 -- follow-up, August 19
French troops land in Lebanon

Two small boats carrying French soldiers, the first reinforcement of UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon, went ashore today.

Local TV channels showed live video of two inflatable dinghies motoring ashore from a French warship anchored in the Mediterranean near Naqoura, about three miles from the Israeli border...

The two boats, carrying about five soldiers each, were followed 10 minutes later by a larger boat flying a French flag.

Two cheese-eating countries-- can you spot the Surrender-Monkeys?

David Warren passes on two articles which pretty much sum up the disaster quotient on the Israeli/Hezbollocks ceasefire, one by Ari Shavit of Haaretz ["Absolute folly"] and one by Caroline Glick at the Jerusalem Post ["Unimitigated disaster"]. Can't be said any better than these.

ANTI-SEMITISM IN AMERICA CHRONICLES:
These days if you're an anti-semite in America it helps to be a black liberal instead of a rare Hollywood arch-conservative.

Defeated Congresspugiliste, Cyntha McKinney, Georgia's shame, was accompanied from a recent "I-was-robbed" rally by bodyguard thugs who let the world know that Zionist-Kike-Jew-bastards should quit giving their sugar-mama grief.

Former Atlanta mayor (what is it about Georgians these days? -- as I heard a transplanted Bostonian say, "They're morons-- they could only HOPE to be idiots") and former UN ambassador, the not-so-honourable Andrew Young, was shilling for Wal-Mart until a couple of days ago when he cited, as a point in Wal-Mart's cut-price favour, that Jewish, Korean, and Arab owners of small corner stores have made a career out of ripping off poor minorities. The story was covered, but Young's name never appears in the headlines (even on Drudge).

As usual, these folks, helped by minority status but even more importantly by liberal Democratic credentials, get a pass from the press that Mel Gibson can only dream about.

CBS senile citizen Mike Wallace gets a similar pass when he spends 60 Minutes [video] doing a Sta-puff Marshmallow interview with Iranian presidential nutjob Mahmoud Ahmadinnerjacket, an encounter so softball that even NPR has reservations about it. Mahmoud, of course, did a cute fairy-dance around his well-known aspiration to exterminate all remaining Jews. Wallace didn't press him on it, and later pronounced the planet's premier anti-Semite "interesting, intelligent, and attractive." E-e-e-e-w-w-w-w.

Larry Elder at Townhall.com commented: "With all due respect, Mr. Wallace, you are in your 61st minute. It's time. "

Back on planet earth, specifically planet Hollywood, the vociferously and vituperatively denounced Mel Gibson got a tall order to attend AA meetings for a year, curtail his driving for three months, pay a fine, enter rehab, and be subject to three years' probation while doing some sort of public service works. He can start by wiping up from the sidewalk all the spit that missed his face.

David Frum (notorious conservative Jew) had this to say at his National Review Online blog:
July 30, 2006: Mel's Calling

If a drunken Mel Gibson did indeed call out, "Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world," then there can be only one possible place for a man who believes such things: as the next Secretary General of the United Nations.

Good call from the Frumster.

Finally-- Department of Funny Peculiar (and not Funny Ha-Ha):
Separated at birth?















And I mean WA-A-A-Y-Y separated.

HEATHROW AIRPORT, AUGUST 2006:
All my worldly goods in a clear plastic bag

Just returned from London, filled, as usual, with admiration for the way official Britain acts in the face of terrorism (as opposed to the way they speak of late, which can only be described in Mrs. Thatcher's famous term, as "WET"). All passengers were kept out of the terminal until a couple of hours before their departure time, corralled on a 4th-level parking lot. Folding chairs, marquis tents, free water, sandwiches, and granola bars all provided, as well as four to six highly visible information officers at each door with lists of which flights were operative and had or hadn't been called in yet--all of the representatives of officialdom, by the way, sporting generally pleasant attitudes and good manners.

There were numberless whiners, of course, but that doesn't mean that things weren't being handled reasonably well-- the unpleasantness of the experience did not come close to our worst expectations. And, bottom line, is there anything quite so unpleasant as being blown out of the sky by some freaking jihadist with explosives in his lemonade bottle?????? I'll trade a couple of hours on the sidewalk for that any day. It was not nearly as chaotic and irritating as Toronto's Pearson airport two days after a bunch of flights had been cancelled due to a couple of days of serious thunderstorms.

My capsule assessment of the Israeli/Lebanese mini-war: The Rumsfeld Doctrine [attack of the High-Tech Toys instead of massive waves of boots on the ground] FAILS AGAIN.

* * * * *

Very much enjoyed being, on the whole, detached from reality in Oxford and environs for ten days. Would much prefer to think about earlier times when folks had a better notion of what was what, while sitting here:

and being one of these:


We thought we'd be fighting off the students and tourists to sit on these hallowed benches, but the nook was empty and we had it to ourselves.

I have seldom hoisted a pint in better company.

Other Tolkien haunts enjoyed:

--the Oxford Oratory
--Pembroke College
--Holywell Street
--Blackwell's bookstores

and these:

ROLLRIGHT STONES (possible Weathertop?)















ROLLRIGHT -- "WHISPERING KNIGHTS"
















ROLLRIGHTS -- RETURN OF "THE KING"

















ROLLRIGHTS -- NEARBY VISTA

WHERE TOLKIEN VISITED [I never read it in a brochure, but you can bet on it] -- a little piece of Normandy in Iffley village, Church of St. Mary, ca. 1170


When reality sucks, try this. Well, this is more real than "reality".

HELLO, I MUST BE GOING

It's a hard-knock life-- I'm just in town and then out again, so blogging takes a back seat to everything. Major gatherings of the clan have passed and are to come-- babies arriving, kids shuttling between continents, all very exciting. Almost enough to take one's mind off the mess and misery which is the Middle East these days, with the especially disheartening sell-out of Israel by the wimps of the world.

Is this one of them?

Also disheartening. I'm working this one over in my mind, and hope to reflect upon it from abroad. (The selection of this photo to accompany Christopher Hitchens's savaging of Gibson at Slate.com (no I'm not linking-- and Hitchens should be grateful) says a lot about the degree of objectivity one can expect to find about the story in the DriveByMedia. It's a good thing Mel wasn't sleeping with little boys at his Neverland Ranch, or hadn't drugged and raped a 13-year-old and then fled prosecution, or hadn't all-but-decapitated his wife and then sped down the L.A. freeways in a white Ford Bronco-- 'cuz if he'd done any of those things, people wouldn't know whether to damn him or hand him the Irving Thalberg Award. but I digress......

Blog Resumption scheduled for August 14, if not before-- refreshed, renewed, returned for re-grooving. (More Firesign Theatre references, for those of us in our declining years.)

LIFE ON THE ROCK

Elsewhere in our neighbourhood.
Bay watch.

Let's all go lupins.


How delightful it was to lose myself in the hinterlands of Newfoundland for 10 days—to be transported to a small (technically dying!) community, with lots of work to do to settle into the old house, no satellite TV and no time to waste in cyber-space. There was the detachment from reality owing to distance and local concerns, plus the detachment from present time represented by reminiscences at every turn, of the days of 70 years ago when the house was once before in present family hands. There was a little spare time to take in undiscovered beauties, all of which harken back to even earlier times—like half a billion years ago when the plates shoved this rock up from the depths of magma to break the surface of the seas.

Back home, drinking up the news and reading the wires, it is tempting to get depressed about a whole world of things. Much healthier, I think, to select just a few and become monumentally depressed about only those.

OH, GRANDMA, IS IT ALWAYS ABOUT POLITICS?

I did something this week I haven't done in more than a decade-- visited a TOYS'R'US. It was all in the name of the Mommet and the Teufelpuppy, expected this year. The store has changed a lot, seems more crowded and a bit run-down, way too much room devoted to video-games. Man at the check-out has a long body, a long ponytail, and spoke as if he had a long acquaintance with magic mushrooms.

I got a few good necessaries, but on the side picked up one of the handful of small football [soccer] action figures left, a little but remarkably accurate statuette of Zinedine Zidane, of ignominious red-card head-butt fame. (Re-live the moment with this ridiculous time-waster from Addictinggames.com-- I've only ever done a couple of these things, and this is the first one I haven't been killed at.) The little figure is in the act of lifting the ball upwards and seems to be preparing for a header, so it's especially appropriate.

I, however, being terminally perverse and politically jazzed, saw it as fitting nicely into my other arrangement of mini-figures, purchased at the exchange on Marine Corps Base Quantico. It's a little grouping of high-quality miniatures produced by one of those makers of model soldiers (not Britain's but something equally good), which I bought and set out to remind myself who it was who changed history by engineering the attack that finally delivered the message about Islamist terrorism-- the late 20th-century evil that may dictate the future of generations long past my kid who was then training at Quantico. So I gave Zizou the opportunity to put his own Algerian pride to better use. And there he stands, poised to make that red card a thing worth having.
It's still great to be a TOYS'R'US Kid.

BACK IN THE REAL WORLD:
I watch, so you don’t have to.

The news finally surfaced that there was indeed graphic/photographic evidence of what was inflicted upon our kidnapped soldiers, Privates Kristian Menchaca and Thomas Tucker, by the twisted butchers who took them. Websites which felt duty-bound to be heralds of this horror to a complacent citizenry posted them for a short time, but thought better of it and removed what they came to consider too horrible to disseminate. Even the site that offered just still screen-captures backed off pretty quickly.

But there’s always somebody who’s prepared to stiffen public resolve, or just exploit the sensational, and the video and stills are out there to be found. In keeping with my previous decision that some among us need to bear witness to the harshest realities, I checked it out.

Fortunately it is of the usual poor quality, probably recorded by a cell-phone camera, so that at first one is not quite sure what one is seeing. The overwhelming image, it should be said, is one of blood-- it is fair to call the video "The Passion of Menchaca and Tucker." One can only hope, as has been speculated, that they were both dead before the mutilations were carried out, killed or severely wounded at the same time their comrade Spc. David Babineau died, whose body was left behind-- this seems a distinct possibility, as Menchaca is clearly dead in the video but still intact, even as he is subjected to what is, to Muslims, the maximum human indignity: a bystander presses the bottom of his running shoe against Menchaca's face and grinds it.

We learned at the time of the fall of Baghdad in 2003, as Iraqis throughout the country slapped or threw their shoes against images of Saddam Hussein, that this was considered the greatest possible insult in their culture, presumably because shoes come into contact with all the filth of an underdeveloped society. It is one of the many peculiarly, one might even say "pervertedly," puritanical characteristics of Muslim culture that they have all sorts of what we would call "hang-ups" about personal defilement associated with dogs, pigs, and women (not necessarily in that order), which manifest themselves in, among other things, hypersensitivity to what's on the soles of one's shoes. Yet, as this and other videos of human slaughter make clear, there seems to be no taboo against bathing oneself in enemy blood-- in picking up a dripping head or wearing the backwash of a jugular puncture. Odd, that.

This week we have witnessed the spectacle of tough talk, ultimatums, and unqualified support for military retaliation issuing from the lips of the American President on the subject of two Israeli Defense Force soldiers kidnapped by Hezbollah. If I had to make a guess, it would be that the soldiers will end up being returned, probably alive, or maybe killed inadvertantly during the battle to shut down Iran's terrorist proxy in Lebanon. I would be mightily surprised if the soldiers are returned to Israel in the condition in which we found Privates Menchaca and Tucker. Were that to happen, I'm thinkin' Hezbollah could reasonably expect their Lebanese turf to be flattened into moonscape. Al Qaeda, however, has learned that it can reasonably expect no such response from the United States. The butchery of our two Privates seems to have had little effect on the digestive tranquility of the inhabitants of the West Wing.

I doubt the President has watched the video (he should)-- but even if he has had a look, and even if his stomach did churn and his heart did ache, it SEEMS to have had little effect-- the public has not been permitted to PERCEIVE anything. If this is stoicism on the President's part (which would be giving him much more credit than I'm inclined to do), it is NOT what the moment calls for. It would NOT be appropriate in the mayor of the soldiers' home towns, the governor of their States, the commander of their unit. It is NOT appropriate from their Commander-in-Chief. I have previously called him the "Delegator-in-Chief", and this is not a compliment. In this case, he seems to have delegated the appropriate OUTRAGE so far down the chain of command that it is only to be perceived among the right-wing media and blogosphere.

At some point, Mr. President, we're going to get tired of doing your job for you-- chew your own food, do your own spellcheck, and find a corner in which to lodge your own emotions instead of leaving them to others. This was the time for battle-cry-- GOD FOR MENCHACA! GOD FOR TUCKER! GOD FOR AMERICA, IRAQ, AND FREEDOM! GOD FOR HARRY, ENGLAND, AND ST. GEORGE!

Mr. Bush was caught on tape this week, in private conference with Tony Blair at the G-8 meeting in St. Petersburg, opining that Syria should press Hezbollah to "stop doing this sh*t." Leftists pretended shock (puh-h-h-le-e-e-ze), and rightists gushed kudos. I found it more disturbing that Mr. Bush was caught displaying the table manners of a coarse hillbilly (mouth half-open, lips smacking) and couldn't manage the politeness of a lowered voice. Mr. Blair's remarks were often discreetly unintelligible on tape, while Bush's were at a slightly subdued holler, aided by the fact that he couldn't be bothered to look Blair directly in the face much of the time, but was looking out at the business of the room. (Perhaps that was his method of pretended insouciance, of covering for the semi-official gravity of the conversation-- I'll give him that, though I'd buy it more if he'd kept his voice down.)

All in all, it was not a pretty picture. I'm perfectly content with the locker-room vocabulary. I just wish he could speak so bluntly, and act with the forcefulness it represents, on behalf of our own troops in their separate battle. Maybe I'd appreciate the tough talk if the Delegator-in-Chief had heard and acted upon the answer to L. Paul Bremer's $64,000 (or rather, 35,000-troop) question to General Ricardo Sanchez in 2004: Q-- "What can you use?" A-- "Give me two more divisions and I can control Baghdad." Message never received, troops never delivered.

Private Thomas Tucker and Private Kristian Menchaca were kidnapped, murdered, and hacked up like... I can't even say it.

IT SHOULD NEVER HAVE COME TO THIS.

Having come to this anyway, IT SHOULD NOT STAND.

Yet it seems to have passed into the history of the war like just another day in the Sandbox. Two more flag-covered coffins will come home, but this time inside they will contain the most taxing mortician's cosmetic re-assembly, after the most complicated autopsy, of this entire war, or perhaps any war, ever-- because it's probably the first time in history that a people primitive enough to inflict such damage have committed it against a people who care enough to deliver home their dead in some semblance of peaceful repose, with as clear a picture as possible of the circumstances of their death.

SPEAKING OF BEHEADINGS -- THIS JUST IN:
BRAD PITT does DANIEL PEARL

I haven't read any details about how the deal went down, but somewhere along the road between Kandahar and Candyland (read: Hollywood) Brad Pitt obtained the movie rights to Marianne Pearl's account of the life and death of her husband, reporter Daniel Pearl, who was lured to his gruesome death (our first filmed beheading of the GWOT) while reporting on the invasion of Afghanistan in 2002.

Actually, the rights belonged to the production company of the then husband-and-wife team of Bradifer Pittaston or Jennad Anistipitt or whatever the moniker was for the ill-fated couple. The company and its properties were handed over to Brad in the divorce settlement, and he is now slated to do the film with his new squeeze (are they married? I forget) the flabby-lipped, adoptathon, glam-humanitarian Angelina Jolie. (Aniston is apparently FUMING that her potentially Oscar-winning role is now going to the OTHER WOMAN-- film at 11:00.....).

So Brad has recently announced his operating principle for the film project by gushing, “We hope the film can increase understanding between people of all faiths and portray the story and the people involved as honestly as possible without anger or judgment.”

Abby Wise Schachter at National Review Online takes it from there:

Daniel Pearl was...kidnapped by Islamic fundamentalists, bound, beaten, terrorized and finally beheaded — all with cameras rolling. In the last moments before Daniel Pearl was brutally decapitated, his killers demanded that he identify himself. Not as an American, not as an infidel, not as a journalist. He was forced to define himself one way and one way only — as a Jew — and then his head was removed from his body.

I had but one thought while reading this article (Schachter had it too, making it her closing lines), and that was: I don't need to buy a ticket for this movie-- I've already seen it. If Brad Pitt can make this film without anger, he is a heartless automaton. That he can make it without a scintilla of judgment he has already amply demonstrated.

MEMO TO BRAD: HEROISM LOOKS LIKE THIS

Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute posted an entry on National Review's The Corner consisting of the account nominating SSG David Bellavia for the Medal of Honor, for conduct during the battle for Fallujah, November 2004. Ledeen's only comment is "Who could comment on this?"

I'll give away the ending: "SSG Bellavia single handedly saved three squads of his Third Platoon that night, risking his own life by allowing them to break contact and reorganize." I wrote to thank Ledeen for the posting, and suggested someone should undertake a psy-ops mission to leaflet the congressional Democrats with it. See what you think-- READ IT ALL. (I'll give away another ending-- I expected to learn that Bellavia had died in the action-- he survived, has retired, and was on FoxNews last night with some insights about what's happening with Hezbollah. More about him here.)

CATHOLIC MOMENT
The Anchoress passed on a pretty funny bit from the Colbert Report, with comments about Colbert's up-front (albeit liberally diluted in all the right places) Catholicism. I'm in the habit of saying that there is no such thing as a liberal or conservative Catholic-- there are just orthodox Catholics and pretend Catholics. That's not to say that the pretenders haven't one sincere or devout belief in their whole person-- they may well have many-- they just believe in something different from Catholicism. That having been said, Colbert openly gives it everything he's got (and it's sad that he hasn't got everything), and that's rare enough. His take on Unitarianism is BRILLIANT. Watch and grin.

PAGE SIX SCANDALS from the New York Post
Richard Johnson reports:

ELIOT Spitzer's campaign for governor has received a major boost from celebrities like Barbra Streisand ($1,000), George Steinbrenner ($15,000) and Christie Brinkley ($1,250). The Post's Kenneth Lovett reports Spitzer raised a hefty $10.7 million during the past six months, with contributions also from Don Henley ($10,000), Edward Norton ($15,000), Ben Affleck ($1,000), Jets owner Woody Johnson ($10,000), NBA Com missioner David Stern ($5,000), Ivanka Trump ($1,000), Robert (son of George) Soros ($25,000), John Kerry's stepson Chris Heinz ($1,500), Robert Kennedy Jr. ($200), public relations powerhouse How ard Rubenstein ($11,000), and Laurie David, the activist wife of "Seinfeld" co-creator Larry David ($2,400).

What can I say but...can you believe how cheap some of these rich libs are?!!!
Haven't they ever heard of putting their money where their mouth is? Chris Heinz can't borrow more than than 1500 bills from the Ketchup Goddess?!!!

TUCK IT AWAY -- MIGHT BE USEFUL ONE DAY:
"BUSH LIED" myth DEMOLISHED

Absolutely everything you'll ever need on this subject found neatly packaged and shipping your way on the USS Neverdock blog. Captain Jack Sparrow never scored such a treasure trove of truthiness, such B.S.-blasting booty. HAR-R-R-R. Lots of good links from the Neverdock deck.


Oh, and, just in case you ever wondered which side God might be on, this apparition was made manifest deep inside the Battleship North Carolina recently.

Hm-m-m-m-m.

BLOGGING CEASES TILL WEEK OF JULY 10
Newfoundland calls again








I'll be gone, and won't be here to witness what happens on St. Clair Avenue when Italy gets either its next win or crashes in the World Cup. It will be TOTAL MAYHEM (check it out here) in either case. College Street and Ossington Avenue will run a close second regardless of how it goes for Brazil, based on local Portuguese loyalties. (Why does nobody ever rag on the Portuguese for the still-evident consequences of their fierce 16th-century colonialism? But I digress.)











I've been having an interesting exchange with various retired military dudes, one Colonel who edits the Marine Corps publication Leatherneck magazine, and one General who co-wrote Cobra II, a large and pointed history of the conduct of the Operation Iraqi Freedom. I've only just started the book, but began it with Victor Davis Hanson's review in hand (Refighting the War), which was critical enough that I wrote and suggested that Leatherneck re-visit the subject, since their review of Cobra II had been pretty brief and uncritical. (It's time to get nervous when you start sounding not unlike the New York Times.)

Well all sorts of considerations are now going back and forth about my letter and Hanson's viewpoint. All very fascinating, and, in view of the influence the book is likely to have in shaping public opinion, all very important too. Recommended reading for one and all if (as the old adage goes from the earliest days of the eco-freaks) you love this planet.

Cheers.

THE CONTINUING TRIALS OF MICHAEL YON, self-embedded reporter on the War on Terror

If you want to know what's really going on in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is no better way to get to the bottom of the story than to follow the "Milblogs"-- web-loggers on the battlefield, either as military personnel or embedded reporters. Among the best, and bluntest, is Michael Yon, a journalist with no previous combat exposure who decided to raise money and get himself embedded as an independent observer, not in the employ of any commercial media outlet. His writing and photography have been among the most vivid and intense, and he takes second place to no one in giving the true picture of front-line action.

Yon has supported himself in this endeavour by soliciting donations and selling limited editions of his powerful photographic images, the most famous of which is the picture of Major Mark Bieger giving compassionate comfort to Farah, a 3-year-old Iraqi girl in her last moments of life after terrorists attacked an Army convoy which had been surrounded with excited young children, as they often are. The full story behind this photo is here.


When Yon offered this moving image in a limited edition to support his continued presence in Iraq, I snapped one up (for $125 well spent) and was proud to put it on my wall, where I can see it now from where I sit. For Yon this image is an icon of every courageous act of service he has witnessed in Iraq and Afghanistan while living and travelling side by side with American troops, and it is precious to him, as to all of us who own one.

Imagine his shock, and that of all his readers, when this image turned up on the cover of the debut issue of a magazine called "SHOCK" -- the new English-language version of a trashy French photo-rag which typically features gross-out freakshow exploitation pictures of festering wounds, human deformities, disaster victims, vomiting celebrities, plus the predictable array of half-naked women. Yon's copyrighted photo had been used without permission in a setting which degraded it beyond description.

Yon expressed his outrage on his webpage, and it did not take much encouragement for his fans to embark on a major campaign of complaints and boycotts aimed at retailers and publishers who handle this revolting magazine. With its image in the back of my mind, I kept an eye out for it as I did my regular shopping. The last place I expected it to turn up was on the shelf at my local Bruno's Fine Foods one of seven branches of a family-run up-market grocery in Toronto. I immediately emailed the management of the chain, and to their credit they agreed wholeheartedly with my opinion of the magazine and have returned it to the publisher. [I think the email I received was from the manager of my local store, so I will check out other branches to see if they have done likewise.] The response was as follows:

Upon receiving your e-mail and looking at the publication, I could not agree with you more fully. We do not always choose what the publisher sends us, but we are not under any obligation to display or sell any title. The ladies who look after the shelf have not encountered many situations like this, and I apologize to you for having this type of magazine available for sale here at Bruno's. We have informed our distributor that we no longer want to receive the "Shock" title and I have pulled all issues from the shelf, personally. We trust that will meet your approval and that of most all our customers'.

I thank you for bringing this matter to my attention and hope that we will be able to continue to serve you here at Bruno's, in the future.

Sincerely, Al McMurray Manager, Bruno's Fine Foods

Good work, Al.

The debut issue of "Shock" with the Michael Yon photo is now off the shelf, replaced by issue #2. All Toronto readers of this blog are urged to monitor both your local Bruno's and other stores (Chapters/Indigo has refused to pull the magazine-- big surprise!) to see if this piece o' trash is littering the magazine rack. It is truly the kind of stuff you used to have to order in a plain brown wrapper, but that's true of so much that has become mainstream in today's media. Still-- this is a new item, it has no other purpose than exploitation and an appeal to sick appetites, and a quick reaction might nip its future in the bud, at least at small neighbourhood outlets. (But it's also worthwhile keeping up the waves of complaints to the big guys-- Borders in the States is being as unresponsive as its little cousin, Chapters/Indigo.)

The publisher of "Shock" is a huge French media conglomerate (HFM) which also publishes Elle, Car & Driver, Woman's Day, and various other popular magazines. Michael Yon's fans are working hard to make HFM feel the pinch on all these products until they arrive at a fair settlement for their misuse of his prized photograph.



LAUGH OF THE DAY (MONTH? YEAR?)
At the recent whack-job conspiracy nutbar 9/11 + The Neo-Con Agenda convention held in La-La-Los Angeles, a stoodent named "Rico" was heard to opine that the presence of Charlie Sheen: Actor, Swinger, Structural Engineer lent the conference some needed "legitimacy."

Bwah-hah-hah-hah. Heh.

Speaking of journalists—NON-STORY of the week:
WHEN DID ISLAMOFACSCISTS TORTURING AMERICANS
BECOME MERELY HO-HUM, “DOG BITES MAN”?

Silly me. My prediction (below) seems to have spluttered. I was fool enough to think that the grisly details of th deaths of Pfc. Mechaca and Pfc. Tucker might prove irresistable fodder for the ongoing media cannonade at the Bush administration, the perfect opportunity for humiliating him through this devastating tragedy: Was the President slow to react? Did he look like he cared? Will he apologize to the families? What kinds of mutilation did the soldiers undergo? Has there been video on Al-Jazeera?

Silly me—I thought the MSM would run with this one for sure. But for that they would have had to look up from their lap-tops and notice. They would have to feel some stirring within that went deeper than their amnesia over Danny Pearl and their indifference to Nick Berg. And the federal Democrats gave them almost nothing to work with.

Only one floated a noticeable trial balloon. Senator Dick (the Turban) Durbin let fly a suitably grief-stricken reaction to the reports.

Unfortunately, this is a grim reminder of the price we're paying for a failed policy in Iraq.

Okay, so he followed by calling the news “heartbreaking” but not until he had barfed up the important death statistic—2500. (I almost wrote “combat death statistic,” but of course it isn’t— that would carve off the nearly 18% which are non-combat deaths, primarily from accidents, and take that nice round 2500 number out of the equation) It's a round “grim milestone” number Durbin had been waiting for-- dare we say “eagerly”?— ever since he announced:

At the time that we recorded the 2,000th military death in Iraq, I asked, along with other Senators, for a moment of silence on the floor of the U.S. Senate to acknowledge their great contribution to our country and in respect for their memory. When the time comes that 2,500 have given their lives, I will make that same unanimous consent request... Senators from both parties should come to the floor when we have recorded the 2,500th death in Iraq and observe a moment of silence in memory of our fallen warriors and in prayer for their families whose lives will never be the same because of their loss.

[Read into the Congressional Record 06/14/06]

Durbin’s politicization of the heinous murders of Private Kristian Menchaca and private Thomas Tucker prompted me to write him a little note, as follows:

Congratulations on being the first Democratic official to exploit the butchery of two American soldiers by Iraq-based terrorists, to score points against the current administration. Your statement regarding "the price we're paying for a failed policy in Iraq" implies that the degree of barbarity reportedly exhibited in these deaths represents some kind of zenith in a prolonged and escalating scale of violence, which might not have reached this height had we concluded our involvement earlier. You called it a "grim reminder"-- but DO you remember? This is the same band of global gangsters who beheaded journalist Daniel Pearl in Afghanistan more than FOUR YEARS ago. What did that have to do with failed policies in Iraq or anywhere else? They have been beheading adolescent girls in Indonesia for the offense of being Christian. Are you ready to hang that on our Republican President?

There is nothing escalating about this-- butchery is what these people do, and have done, irrespective of "policies." If there is any real American arrogance on display in our era, it is in the belief that Islamist savagery is primarily a response to actions taken by us. To anyone who's been paying attention, we are but one ring in their global target. Your use of our soldiers' deaths for political fingerpointing is not only shameful, it is myopic.

I emailed Durbin via his website, and then broke down and sobbed. For the first of several times that day.

I don’t know what it means that there has been no word of an Al-Jazeera video of the soldiers killings. I’m a little bit surprised. And very glad—I hope we never so much as hear about one, much less find that it is available to see.

When Daniel Pearl was beheaded his family knew that the video was circulating on the internet, and made a public plea that people would not watch it. Even if I had been inclined to, I felt their wishes should be respected and we should close the book on his horrific end, in favour of thinking about his accomplishments in life.

“Closing the book” had to do with the belief that this act had been a freak—a desperate game of chicken which the hostage-takers lost. It never occurred to me, or to many others I’m sure, that sawing off a head with kitchen-sized knife was something that would come so easy to anyone as to occasion repetition.

But occasions came: Eugene Armstrong, Paul Johnson, Nick Berg, Kenneth Bigley, Robert Jacob, Jack Lee Hensley, Kim Sun-il (Korean translator), Luqman Mohammed Kurdi Hussein (Titan Security employee), Shosei Koda (Japanese traveller), Ibrahim Mohammed Ismail (Egyptian driver), Georgy Lazov (Bulgarian truck driver), Mohammed Mutawalli (alleged Egyptian Spy), Durmus Kumdereli (Turkish Driver), Khudair al-Tamimi (26-year-old groom taken from his wedding reception in Muqdadiya, Iraq, with his father, uncle, cousin, and one guest-- all beheaded). And many others whose names have not been reported.

Nicholas Berg had the misfortune to have literally lost his head at the time when the world's most raving anti-Americans, including those in the United States Senate and many of their fellow-countrymen, were losing their metaphorical heads and tarring the whole American culture with guilt over the outrageous "tortures" committed at Abu Ghraib prison. Compared to stacks of naked Iraqi men and sadistic application of women's underwear, poor Nick Berg hardly merited the time of day. As Senator Zell Miller of Georgia put it at the time, "Why is it that there's more indignation over a photo of a prisoner with underwear on his head than over the video of a young American with no head at all?"

I decided at that point, when so many of those with the luxury of public platforms and public influence had let this horrific event pass with barely a raised eyebrow, that I was going to see what they refused to see. I figured some of us owed it to the slaughtered to see how it was during their last seconds on earth.

So I scoured the internet (it wasn't too hard), and I watched. I watched them all, starting with Daniel Pearl, and searching out at least another four based on names known at the time. (Paul Johnson was one). Since then I have discovered one website that has every single known beheading video-- dozens of them. I won't name it here, and I certainly couldn't make myself look at any more of them, or at any of the early ones a second time. But it did help put names to the many, many victims, and to get an idea of the scope of these kinds of killings.

I remember as a fact that the sound of Daniel Pearl's death is the most horrible thing I've ever heard-- so horrible that I can't replay it in my memory even if I wanted to. I recall that there was only sound to begin with, while the screen was blank; this was followed by the murderers' clumsy re-enactment of the decapitation because their camera had failed to function during the original act. For this second segment, the soundtrack had an overlay of pig squeals, considered appropriate because Pearl's ultimate crime was being a Jew.

All these videos are jumpy and out of focus for some reason-- maybe they are recorded on cell phones, or sent to Al-Jazeera by email. Or maybe Al-Jazeera imposes distortion on them so they will be clear enough to communicate their message without being so clear that they disgust even the jihadists who watch them. Nevertheless they are enough to teach any viewer that the imagination is no substitute for reality.

The news reports on Privates Menchaca and Tucker began with suggestions that they might have been beheaded. Since then I have heard different reports: of eyes gouged out, hearts cut out, throats slashed, genitals hacked off and stuffed in their mouths. The method could have been any, or all, of the above. Anyone capable of one such act is capable of anything, in any number and combination.

On the whole it is not important that the general public know the particular details of these deaths, or any of the others, as long as there is a willingness to understand that there is no moral equivalency between such acts and anything known to have been done by any member of the American military in Iraq.

Senator John Kerry claims our people committed similar acts during the Vietnam war. He may be right, though the ensuing decades have produced only accusations and no documentation. History points to Wounded Knee and Samar and My Lai as examples of American bloodlust in war-- we can't deny them or downplay their gravity. But there is something about a conventional mass battlefield whacking with rifles that seems essentially different from what is required of a person to complete the job of carving up a human body-- in this case, sawing off a living human head with a knife too small for the job, usually after making a prolonged speech into a camera lens. One can imagine the mass shooting becoming easy-- fast and relatively clean, nearly mechanical after awhile, and conducive to emotional detachment. Not so the hands-on bloodletting.

Normal human beings have stood horror-struck at their own species when bearing witness to this kind of mad-sickness throughout history: the Roman genius for martyring Christians by flaying, cutting off breasts, or igniting human torches coated with pitch; the Iroquois custom of biting off fingers and burning or extracting clods of flesh from the extremities, in the knowledge that they can endure tremendous damage without causing death; the uniquely English capital punishment whereby the condemned was dragged through the streets behind a horse, hanged until not quite dead, gruesomely disembowelled alive (including castration), and dismembered after death-- a penalty in use from the 13th to the 19th centuries; the experimental surgeries of Dr.Josef Mengele on the 3000 twins who passed through Auschwitz, including two Gypsy children whom he stitched together back to back just to see what would happen. (Their parents suffocated them to put them out of their misery once gangrene set in.)

Probably no bodily atrocities more resemble the actions of Al Qaeda in Iraq than those committed by the Japanese army during the 1937 "Rape of Nanking" where it is claimed that about 300,000 civilians were deliberately massacred (gang-raped, shot, beheaded, impaled, disembowelled) in about six weeks.

Our kind can do this stuff-- and once upon a time we used to be taught about it so we would not forget. But that kind of education is pretty sketchy these days.

Now that the basest kind of man-on-man butchery is happening again, our current state of historical amnesia ought to increase the shock and outrage, yet so many people in positions of prominence seem oddly blasé. When the mutilated bodies of Privates Menchaca and Tucker were discovered, Senator Harry Reid's outrage took the form of calling it "sad news." His reflection on the meaning of the tragedy?

One thing Democrats agree on is this war has taken too long, it's too expensive... We all agree that there should be redeployment starting sooner rather than later.

Okay-- crammed into that ellipsis was something about the cost in lives and injuries. But "too long" and "too expensive" were his first thoughts on the subject. What kind of robot is this man? Or any of the rest of them? Did we hear one single elected official (including the Commander-in-Chief) rail in fury and visceral digust, or display a millisecond of unguarded emotion? Where we should have seen barely suppressed impulses to vengeance, we instead saw and heard arguments over when and how fast to RUN AWAY!!!!. (Mona Charen
references Monty Python). Ah, timing is everything.

A politician once said

In fact, I fear that in the run-up to the 2004 election, the administration is considering what is tantamount to a cut-and-run strategy. Their sudden embrace of accelerated Iraqification and American troop withdrawal dates, without adequate stability, is an invitation to failure. The hard work of rebuilding Iraq must not be dictated by the schedule of the next American election.

That was John Kerry speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations in December of 2003, (hat-tip Captain Ed at Captain's Quarters) In that same speech Kerry asked (rhetorically, I'm sure)

How is it possible to liberate a country, depose a ruthless dictator who at least in the past had weapons of mass destruction, and convert a preordained success into a diplomatic fiasco?

Isn't it astounding how a "preordained success" transmogrified into "the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time" by the following September? And is it any wonder that people have so much trouble believing Kerry's previous remarks to the other Foreign Relations folks (the Senate committee)-- the 1971 version-- when he said that Americans randomly dismembered and beheaded civilians in Vietnam. He's as phony now as he was then, only now his party has the good sense to know he's got political "cooties" and should be shunned. Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit summed it up: "Kerry will have his Iraq position all figured out by, say, 2016. This is one of many reasons why Democrats should be embarrassed that he was their nominee -- and why Republicans should be embarrassed that he came so close to winning." Amen, brother.

And they should ALL be embarrassed at how far short they fell of the proper level of SEETHING RAGE over the butchery of our guys. The New York Times continues to defend its national security nudism, apparently failing to make the connection between the fate of Privates Mechaca and Tucker and the implictions of their own premeditated loose lips. However, the connection was not lost on some of our fighting men. Check out Letter Number One from Lt. Tom Cotton (hat-tip Powerline), sounding off from Baghdad, and Letter Number Two where Sgt. T. F. Boggs weighs in from Mosul (hat-tip Hugh Hewitt).

Bottom line-- military to New York Times: "Thanks for nothin', schmucks. Here's some newsprint to wipe the blood off your hands."

The New York Times should be boycotted and its editorial staff charged. The government leakers should be hounded out and prosecuted.

JUSTICE FOR MENCHACA, TUCKER, AND ALL OUR HONORED DEAD.

* * * * *

Speaking of late night TV offerings:
WATCHING THE FUR FLY, IN INUKTITUT

My channel surfing stopped, as it often does, on APTN, the Aboriginal Peoples' Television Network, a Canadian government-funded outfit which produces pretty respectable and interesting programming, as well as running old films and series that have some tangential connection to their mandate. Truth to tell, in any given week I expect my APTN viewing time outnumbers my CBC time by about 5 to 1.

Friday night brought me a fashion show. It originated in Nunavut, and the models were attractive (as in fresh-faced and smiling) Inuit girls (plus a couple of embarrassed-looking young men), with the lyrics to the appealing sooundtrack sung mostly in Inuktitut.

What was most appealing, though, was that the fashions being presented were all coats, jackets, and wraps made of seal fur (mature, of course-- the mottled black, grey, and greenish hides-- no snow-white babies have been harvested for more than a decade). And the clothing was absolutely beautiful-- this was first-rate creative fashion design. I found myself feeling very proud for them-- the show itself had a pleasantly amateurish feel to it, but there was nothing amateurish about the work-- it was brilliant. [PHOTOS are from a different show, but clothing in similar style.]










Take that, (soon-to-be-not) Sir Paul and Mrs. McCartney! The only thing disturbing white baby seals these days is loud-mouthed celebrity animal-rightists seeking a doe-eyed prop for their on-ice photo-op. Even if Sir Paul and wife had chosen to create a more honest photo-splash by posing with khaki-coloured mature seals (the only ones actually still hunted for their fur), it wouldn't have changed the fact that European PETA-loving do-gooders have all but wrecked a millennia-old aboriginal trade. I, for one, was no end delighted to discover, by chance, that somewhere on the Canadian ice-patch the fur trade is being unapologetically pursued and, even better, providing the raw material to feed the creative juices of contemporary artists drawing on ancient traditions.

"Here are the facts. It is illegal to kill whitecoats. Adult seals are killed with rifles. Many of those videos were staged and became so notorious, they created the term animal snuff films. Greenpeace, which originally promoted the sealing ban, has reversed its position. The World Wildlife Fund is trying to alert the public to the damage the seal ban continues to inflict on the people of the Arctic." (see Furs.com)

The real endangered species?: the Inuit hunter.

Saturday night's APTN Inuktitut feature: competitive clog-dancing and melodeon-playing for the whole damn town, in a rural gymnasium. GREAT STUFF! I loved it. Nice seal-fur boots, by the way--lookin' good.