podpolia

I’m going to sound rather like Charles and some of the stories he covers in his Cynical Manner (TM), but I’ve finally scratched up confirmation of something that I had seen in one of the original articles on the story. (No, it’s not “how would the Islamic equivalent of the Bible fit down a toilet?”)
Despite the outrage about the false stories of US investigators, there are true stories of desecration of the Qur’an — but by the same people who purportedly hold it to be sacred, and important enough to kill people for. This story mentions “about a dozen cases” where prisoners damaged, destroyed, or even shoved pieces of the inviolable holy book into toilets themselves (mind you, these copies had been provided to the prisoners by the government — a signal of ‘cultural respect’ that you’d find in no story about what goes on at Guantanamo, unless it was attached to something negative like this). The article goes on and on detailing possible mistreatments of the Qur’an by guards, including a case where the Qur’an was accidentally knocked down by a guard, and another in which a detainee intentionally threw a copy next to a toilet so as to blame the guards and stir up trouble.
Where’s the outrage in the Muslim world over desecration of their holy book by members of their own faith? Why has there been no outcry from the vast majority of Muslims about the irreligiosity of the terrorists, while at the same time western political leaders stress that the vast majority of Muslims don’t support the terrorists? Why no outcry that the terrorists are committing outrages to important tenets of Islam?
I guess it’s just easier to blame the Americans — even the American media will help you out. If you tried to say anything positive about America and what it is doing or has done, you’d never be heard.

Howard Dean has been doing an incredible job as chairman of the Democratic party. He has not only managed to decrease their funding (at a time when Republicans control both branches of Congress and the White House, and Democrats would be interested in changing that), but he does it all with both feet crammed securely into his mouth. One wonders how he can get from place to place in such a posture, much less keep up the stream of stupid comments and statements that conflict with the party line, but somehow he manages to do it. Robert Novak has more on Dean and his upcoming appearance with Tim Russert on Meet The Press. It should be a good time — a well prepared Russert reduces Dean to a quivering mass of cliches and invective, pronounced around both feet and quite likely the majority of both legs as well.
And just think: many Democrats wanted Dean to be President!

UPDATE 5/19/05 10.40AM: Forgot to include this tidbit as an example of people backing slowly away from Dean. Unfortunately for Democrats, most of the red states that Dean has been visiting would respond most to moderate dissent to current Republican positions: a stance Dean can’t seem to master.

Hopefully Reagan broke the 20-year curse that seems to have been following presidents for over 100 years — every president elected on a year divisible by 20 (since 1840, I believe) has either died or been assassinated in office (yes, I know, generally assassination involves dying, but you know what I mean). This attempt on Bush’s life came close, but in all likelihood would not have injured him. Many people in the crowd would likely have been killed, and dozens more injured, but he was far enough away for it to not have been likely to harm him.
Those who have been saying that we’d be better off if Bush was dead should really rethink their position — Bush as a martyr would be just as dangerous to the ideals that kind of raving moonbat holds, if not more so. Also, with the number of nuts that seem to have gravitated to the left end of the political spectrum, it’s quite likely that quite a number of people (including elected officials) would say something after such an assassination about that would reflect poorly on the Democrats, and make future Republican victories even MORE likely. Imagine if Goldwater had said in 1964 that it was good that Kennedy had been assassinated, as it took a man that the Bay of Pigs had proven dangerous out of power. Even FEWER people would have voted for him (which would have been rather a feat, considering his already poor standing in the polls.
Now we’ll just have to see if the Secret Service interviews me for having a long discussion of the political ramifications of a possible Bush assassination. I rather doubt they will, considering the number of moonbats on the internet that have been actively advocating it — if the Secret Service investigated everyone who said something like that online, they’d have no time to eat or sleep.

I read an article in the New York Times (online, of course — I wouldn’t pay for that rag) about the insurgency in Iraq that was quite interesting. Then I read Power Line, and they had a different perspective on the issue.
I don’t think either analysis is entirely correct, although there may be a great deal of truth to both. Rather, I suspect that the insurgency is both ill-informed (being willing to die for something that seems to be failing requires a lack of faith in evidence to the contrary) and interested in making waves in the easiest way possible. If they are following Bin Laden’s analysis that America is a paper tiger and will run at the first sight of blood (an analysis that was borne out repeatedly for many years), they are likely relying on the media in America to exaggerate the death and destruction in Iraq to turn public opinion against it, and withdraw the troops.
This makes a great deal of sense, actually. Using the media as a force-multiplier, it wouldn’t be necessary to have a uniting ideology. In fact, one could just get in the way of being blindly supported by elements in American society in their desire to force troops out and embarrass the Bush administration, as such goals would likely violate liberal sensibilites and American and western values as a whole. It isn’t even necessary to go to the trouble of killing the more difficult targets of American soldiers, as any indiscriminate slaughter is amply covered in the media, and with much the same result.
Maybe the reason the insurgency is such a mystery to the media is that they are at once targets and participants in it.