Reverse Psychology?

Do you suppose that this report might well be an instance of the kind of reverse psychology one might use with children....?

Let's see if it works!

“The Hell of Israel is better than the paradise of Arafat.”

Here is what the Palestinians get to look forward to after the "oppressive" Israelis leave them to their own devices:

Some have noticed though: among them Khaled al-Haroub, a Palestinian residing in the UK, who wrote a column for the daily Al Hayat entitled “Let’s prevent Hamas to become Gaza’s Talibans.” Also the Kuwaiti daily Al Qabas has been reporting that, in the past few months, numerous Islamic style honor crimes have been committed in Gaza most likely by Hamas members.

But what has been the real eye-opener was the atrocious murder of Yousra al-Azzami on April 8 in Gaza. She was traveling home with her husband, her sister and her sister’s fiancé, when their car was attacked and rippled with bullets. The assailers then proceeded to beat up violently the two couples including Yousra, who had been hit by a bullet in the head and was lying motionless on the ground bleeding to death. Palestinian police arrested two of the five killers and recognized right away that they were Hamas members and had received their orders from their superior, Yusuf Dayah. He had reportedly told them: ”There are some ‘insolent’ couples on the beach. Teach them a lesson.”
[...]
Hamas is trying to control every aspect of the life of the people of Gaza. As an example, in the past eight months, Hamas' religious police is behind the burning of tens of cyber cafes, which are viewed as “vice outlets.” And that’s why, were Hamas to seize power in Gaza, a Taliban-style regime could easily come to power.

The Palestinians aren't going to get a state. They are going to get a hell on earth, courtesy of Islam.

I'm very happy for them. But somehow I doubt that the suicide bombings and mass murders and such will be much detered by Israel's clever withdrawal from the lands of these blighted people. They (and their supporters) will still need someone to blame for their pathetic lives in a prison of their own making. Guess who?

Allah be praised.

Out of This World !

While NASA is forced to go fly a kite...





...and the media remains obsessed with leaks;








I suggest you blast off with a good book!



ShrinkWrapped has a great psychological review, comparing Harry Potter with The Lord of the Rings. I won't give away the ending, but I had tears in my eyes--both for what happened and for the fact that I WILL HAVE TO WAIT FOR JK ROWLING TO FINISH THE 7TH BOOK TO FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENS!!!! Patience has never been one of my virtues, sadly.

Buy the book by clicking on the link:

"And All The Children Are Above Average..."

...so none of them should fail according to professional teachers:

The Professional Association of Teachers will be told at its meeting next week that the label of failure could undermine pupils' enthusiasm.

Delegates will also hear a condemnation of the phrase "happy slapping". (NOTE: they want to condemn the words--not the action??)

The term is used to describe bullying where assaults are filmed on mobile phones.

Liz Beattie, a retired teacher, will call on the association's annual gathering in Buxton, Derbyshire, to "delete the word 'fail' from the educational vocabulary to be replaced with the concept of 'deferred success'".

She argues that repeated failure, such as in exams, can damage pupils' interest in learning.

So we begin to see why editors and journalists believe we should never use that awful word "terrorist" and should select less pejoritive words (wouldn't want to hurt their poor feelings, would we?) to decribe them! Perhaps we can refer to suicide bombers as "deferred living specialists" so as not to damage their interest in life, perhaps?

Well, if you want to truly damage pupils' interest and enthusiasm in learning --not to mention their genuine self-esteem--then parents should encourage this kind of tripe in their local schools.

As our children's education is taken over more and more by the guardians of multiculturalism and the priests of political correctness, we parents can happily watch as student scores drop even further and further into the toilet, secure in the knowledge that at least their self-esteem hasn't suffered from the trials and tribulations of objective reality. If we are really really lucky, they will remain children their whole life and simply defer success entirely!

This nonsensical and not-so-subtle attempt at political correctness which distorts language and thus distorts the ability to think rationally, is just what our children need, don't you think?

A modest suggestion: if you want to keep kids interested in school, give them an intellectual challenge and some good teachers who live in the same world you and I inhabit. Do not--I repeat, do not--give them teachers who are so dim that they are willing to sacrifice Truth and Reality on the altar of feel-good, happy talk.

Guilty Pleasure

Powerline wonders how they will attack John Roberts, Bush's pick for Supreme Court.

As for me, when it was mentioned that Senators Kennedy, Durbin, and Schumer were the only senators on the committee who voted against his nomination to the lower court, I realized that there was probably nothing that would prevent me from liking this candidate.

If those idiots learned and reasonable men are opposed to him, he must certainly be a brilliant choice! I look forward to the usual grandstanding and hope the triumvirate will proceed to make utter fools of themselves, as they seem to enjoy doing.

Yes, I know this isn't entirely objective and fair on my part...but I get so much pleasure out of watching hysterical men act foolishly.

An Islamist Apology

Daniel Pipes has been issued an apology. It was extracted via a libel suit, but it is an apology nonetheless.

It is perhaps a good sign. Perhaps some insight and self-awareness is developing? Maybe it is even the beginnings of acting responsibly? Like Daniel Pipes, I certainly hope so.

Sigmund, Carl and Alfred have more thoughts. One of the commenters quoted in the post cites a 45 year old alcoholic who still blames his parents for his alcoholism, and says, "At some point, you need to be accountable for your own action."

Yes. You do.

At some point, Islam must grow up and accept responsibility for what is going on in its name. It cannot hold the West responsible, when their own holy book has passages that justify and exculpate mass murder, enslavement, and oppression of others.

Once, in its early days, Islam was a vibrant and creative force for its followers. Those days have been over for a thousand years. Yet, like the 45 year old alcoholic, the blame for the sorry state most Muslim countries are in is laid at the feet of the West.

It won't work. You may find some countries (e.g. Spain) willing to take the blame. But it will do you no good in the long run. You won't get better; your lives won't improve; your societies will remain barbaric--until and unless you begin to take responsibility for what you believe, say and do.

I am not foolish enough to think even for a moment that the solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict will end the anger and rage of the Muslim/Arab world. What I see clinically all the time is that if you change the circumstances that the patient claims is the source of their failure in life; they will only find yet another circumstance that can be pointed to as the new reason they don't get better and are unable to have happiness and success. It will always be someone else's fault that they cannot reach the happiness they just know is right around the corner.

No one can change the past. An accumulation of injustices and grievances is a surefire way to establish permanent victimhood. And a victim will remain a victim--until the courage is found to take responsibility for one's own life and future.

Recognizing what you are doing to contribute to and perpetuate your own victimhood is a good first step to ending it. A second step is to take responsibility for the consequences of your own actions.

Thinking The Unthinkable

In light of the recent remarks by Congressman Tancredo, it is perhaps a good idea to go back and read this post from The Belmont Club, which discusses the issue in some detail: The Three Conjectures:

Even if Islam killed every non-Muslim on earth they would almost certainly continue to kill each other with their new-found weaponry. Revenge bombings between rival groups and wars between different Islamic factions are the recurring theme of history. Long before 3,000 New Yorkers died on September 11, Iraq and Iran killed 500,000 Muslims between them. The greatest threat to Muslims is radical Islam; and the greatest threat of all is a radical Islam armed with weapons of mass destruction.

Conjecture 3: The War on Terror is the 'Golden Hour' -- the final chance

It is supremely ironic that the survival of the Islamic world should hinge on an American victory in the War on Terror, the last chance to prevent that terrible day in which all the decisions will have already been made for us. That effort really consists of two separate aspects: a campaign to destroy the locus of militant Islam and prevent their acquisition of WMDs; and an attempt to awaken the world to the urgency of the threat. While American arms have proven irresistible, much of Europe, as well as moderates in the Islamic world, remain blind to the danger and indeed increase it. Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad recently "told an international conference of young Muslim leaders ... (that) ... Muslims must acquire skills and technology so they can create modern weapons and strike fear into the hearts of our enemies". Fecklessness and gunpowder are a lethal combination. The terrible ifs accumulate.

You will have to read the entire piece to fully understand why the attainment of Nuclear weapons by the Islamic radicals may well be the final nail in the coffin of Islam (at least according to this analysis).

However, I am somewhat taken aback at the hysteria unleased by both the Left and Right on Tancredo, who is surely expressing something that many people are feeling right now.

I am not saying that the course he suggests is the correct action in response to a nuclear attack on the US by the Islamofascists. Frankly, I don't know what an effective response would be, since there is no "nation" of Islam that can take responsibility for such an atrocity if it occurs.

But I daresay--human nature being what it is--the likelihood of Conjecture #2 in Wretchard's analysis coming to be once the nuclear threshold is crossed, is not at all unlikely. Tancredo's emotionally honest openness about the "unthinkable" is not dismaying as much as it is sobering --for both sides, one hopes.

All the more reason why we must continue to take this war against Islamofascism seriously, and why those elusive "moderates" of Islam need to take back control of their religion.

Cotillion Carousel

Welcome aboard Dr. Sanity's Cotillion Carousel! Dr. Sanity is honored to be one of the hosts for the weekly Cotillion Ball, but frankly, she's exhausted from dancing and just wants to sit for a while! So, let's take a ride on a merry-go-round of conservative ladies' blogs!

On our first carousel horse we have Jane at Armies of Liberation whose post today is about Abdulkarim al-Khaiwani, Yemen’s main democracy advocate and reformer, who was recently released from jail, and targeted by the Yemeni government again along with the Popular Forces Union, his political party.

Right behind her is Raven from And Rightly So, who is pleased to point out, "Osama, yo mama, you out!", as OBL's standing in the Muslim world plummets to a new low.

Then there is Oddybobo the boboblogger, who thinks that Hell is too kind a place for the murderous fanatics who killed in cold blood 18 Shiite babies. And who can blame her? Atlas Shrugs reminds us that the road to hell is paved with Live 8, which is "all rock and no action."

And as the carousel goes round and round, we can hear Baldilocks commenting about the Plame affair -- otherwise known as Nadagate.

Janette at Common Sense Run Wild entertains us with a book review and he book under scrutiny is Jesus by Leith Anderson. The painted ponies go up and down as we learn about the Safe Community Alert Network (SCAN) over at An American Housewife ; and Absinthe and Cookies discusses a recent movie that cashes in on two common stereotypes about weddings: that women hate attending nuptials alone, and that men, realizing how vulnerable weddings make single women feel, use the occasions to their advantage.

And check out this fabulous audio device brought to you by Are You Conservative. It's the Gitmo-terro-Gator! You can decide what is torture and what isn't! Annika at Annika's Journal tells us about her most popular post, due in large part to the mysterious intracies and craziness of the GOOGLE search engine..

Kathy at The Cake Eater's Chronicles ia urging everyone to Walk For Diabetes at her blog; and tells the moving story of her young nephew James who lives with Type I diabetes.

And finally, over at A Mom and Her Blog there is a wonderful recipe for a cheesecake to die for! Now that's something that might make me get off the carousel!

Crossposted at The Cotillion!

Singing A Different Tune to the Court

A brilliant essay by Andrew McCarthy at NRO about how the media have misled and misdirected us from the beginning of the Plame affair--now referred to a "Nadagate":

With each passing day, the manufactured "scandal" over the publication of Valerie Plame's relationship with the CIA establishes new depths of mainstream-media hypocrisy. A highly capable special prosecutor is probing the underlying facts, and it is appropriate to withhold legal judgments until he completes the investigation over which speculation runs so rampant. But it is not too early to assess the performance of the press. It's been appalling.

Is that hyperbole? You be the judge. Have you heard that the CIA is actually the source responsible for exposing Plame's covert status? Not Karl Rove, not Bob Novak, not the sinister administration cabal du jour of Fourth Estate fantasy, but the CIA itself? Had you heard that Plame's cover has actually been blown for a decade — i.e., since about seven years before Novak ever wrote a syllable about her? Had you heard not only that no crime was committed in the communication of information between Bush administration officials and Novak, but that no crime could have been committed because the governing law gives a person a complete defense if an agent's status has already been compromised by the government?

No, you say, you hadn't heard any of that. You heard that this was the crime of the century. A sort of Robert-Hanssen-meets-Watergate in which Rove is already cooked and we're all just waiting for the other shoe — or shoes — to drop on the den of corruption we know as the Bush administration. That, after all, is the inescapable impression from all the media coverage. So who is saying different?

The organized media, that's who. How come you haven't heard? Because they've decided not to tell you. Because they say one thing — one dark, transparently partisan thing — when they're talking to you in their news coverage, but they say something completely different when they think you're not listening.

To us, the reading, news-hungry public, the media are saying one thing. To a court they are singing another tune. If you want to have your jaw drop, go see what 36 news organizations (all the one's calling for Karl Rove's head) joined together to write in a brief filed as a friend-of-the-court in the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington.

Believe me, this is truly astonishing and repellant. The hypocrisy is unbelievable...except, this is the mainstream media we are speaking of, after all.

I suppose I shouldn't be so shocked.

Multicultural Humor

This was sent to me from the internet--it's multicultural, but probably not PC:

On a chain of beautiful deserted islands in the middle of South Pacific,
the following people are stranded:

Two Italian men and one Italian woman.
Two French men and one French woman.
Two German men and one German woman.
Two Greek men and one Greek woman.
Two British men and one British woman.
Two Bulgarian men and one Bulgarian woman.
Two Japanese men and one Japanese woman.
Two Chinese men and one Chinese woman.
Two Irish men and one Irish woman.
Two American men and one American woman.

One month later, on these absolutely stunning deserted islands in the
middle of nowhere, the following things have occurred:

One Italian man killed the other Italian man for the Italian woman.

The two French men and the French woman are living happily together in a
ménage a trois.

The two German men have a strict weekly schedule of alternating visits
with the German woman.

The two Greek men are sleeping together and the Greek woman is cooking
and cleaning for them.

The two British men are waiting for someone to introduce them to the
British woman.

The two Bulgarian men took one look at the Bulgarian woman and started
swimming to another island.

The two Japanese have faxed Tokyo and are awaiting instructions.

The two Chinese men have set up a pharmacy, liquor store, restaurant,
and laundry, and have gotten the woman pregnant in order to supply
employees for their stores.

The two Irish men divided the island into north and south and set up a
distillery. They do not remember if sex is in the picture because it
gets somewhat foggy after a few liters of coconut whiskey. However,
they're satisfied because the British aren't having any fun.

The two American men are contemplating suicide, because the American
woman will not shut up and complains relentlessly about her body, the
true nature of feminism, what the sun is doing to her skin, how she can
do anything they can do, the necessity of fulfillment, the equal
division of household chores, how sand and palm trees make her look fat,
how her last boyfriend respected her opinion and treated her nicer than
they do, and how her relationship with her mother is the root cause of
all her problems, and why didn't they bring a damn cell phone so they
could call 911 and get them all rescued off this Godforsaken deserted
island in the middle of freaking nowhere so she can get her nails done
and go shopping.

As an American woman, I resemble that remark!

The Axis of Cluelessness

I thought this was an interesting interview by Hugh Hewitt with Victor Davis Hanson on Radioblogger. Here is an excerpt:

HH: Professor Hanson, you talked about the left in the article at National Review.com today. Our first hindrance is moral equivalence. Our second shackle is utopian pacifism. The third restraint is multiculturalism. The question, and it's a very serious question, is can the left be rescued from these three chains?

VDH: I don't know. It was rescued before in the 50's, remember. There was a strain, the Henry Wallace Party. And a group of concerned, sophisticated Democrats decided that was not where to go, and got tough on the Soviet Union, were the architects of the Cold War, and produced people like Scoop Jackson, Harry Truman, JFK. And then Vietnam started that detour again, and we haven't really gone back yet. We've tried to, a little bit sometimes with Bill Clinton's middle course. But I think what's happened is they've come very close...they won the popular election in 2000. They came within three or four points in the last election. But they have no political power, in the sense of no majority in the House, none in the Senate, no presidency, no Supreme Court, no majority of state legislatures or governors. And that creates a frustration. And rather than to do the hard work of laying out an agenda, that would give the American people a clear-cut choice, they just look for an Abu Ghraib scandal, a Koran flushed at Guantanamo, a Karl Rove, any little scandal they think that can get them in power on the cheap. And it's not going to work. Not in a time of war.

Hanson discusses a number of things, but particularly what is needed to win the war. He is absolutely correct about the current strategy of the Democratic Party--a strategy that is unconcerned with this war, and which in fact is tied up in the three chains that Hewitt queries Hanson about: moral equivalence,, utopian pacifism, and multiculturalism.
Let's just call the three together the "axis of cluelessness". All three styles of "thinking" are actually representative of an ideology that provides a shortcut to doing the hard work of living: rational thinking and making judgements about the real world. Two crucial faculties that are necessary for human survival.

It is one thing to say, "live and let live" -- which is the essence of tolerance. It is quite another to say that we are no better than the people trying to kill us because we choose to defend ourselves. That their culture is just as good as ours; and that peace is worth any price (except fighting for it). That is sheer idiocy. That is utter cluelessness. That is suicidal.

That is what is being embraced by the Democratic Party and most of the Left today.

Noone seems to wonder --if these three psychological strategies have any merit or truth in them at all--then why do their proponents (1) give priority to all cultures-- except for Western culture (which is inherently inferior to any primitive culture on the face of the planet according to the Left); (2) perceive worth and give understanding to all actions no matter how misguided or in error--except our own actions; and (3) strive for "peace" by being behaving violently?

Until we can confront the very real danger that these three convenient and easy thought shortcuts present to rational thought, then we cannot possibly achieve a victory over the forces that threaten Western Civilization.

We won't even be allowed to name them.

Dem Darn Leaks

Mountain out of Molehill, Part II

John Podhoretz says that the Karl Rove portion of the Plame Affair is over:

"So did Rove leak Plame's name to me, or tell me she was covert? No. Was it through my conversation with Rove that I learned for the first time that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA and may have been responsible for sending him? Yes. Did Rove say that she worked at the 'agency' on 'WMD'? Yes."

Translation: Did Karl Rove break any laws? No. Did he do anything wrong? No - because saying someone worked for the CIA on WMD is not in any way wrong. Nor was there anything wrong with Cooper learning that Mrs. Joseph Wilson may have arranged a little Nigerien jaunt for her has-been, lame-o hubby -- perhaps because she knew he needed some Dry Look hair spray and could use the Duty Free Discount at Dulles. Or perhaps because she wanted him out of the hosue because he was so annoying. Or because they could use a little more scratch and he was presumably reimbursed to some extent for his travels. Or perhaps because she's his wife and loves him and wanted to throw him a bone to salve an ego that is roughly the size of the Goodyear Blimp.

Are the people who are going after Karl Rove's throat with precious little evidence and even less reason now going to hang their heads and blush with shame because they all but convicted a man for a felony he didn't commit in the public prints?

Are you kidding?

The Karl Rove portion of the story is over. The Judy Miller portion continues. And here the question is: Who's in real trouble -- somebody in the administration or somebody in the media? Or maybe somebody in the Wilson family? Or, as is most likely, nobody?

It would be very interesting to see exactly who or what Judith Miller is protecting in all this. But, I could live without knowing. There are a lot of more important things going on in the world right now--even if the Democrats haven't noticed in their crazed pursuit of Rove.

Carnival of the Insanities

Time for the weekly insanity udate, where the insane, the bizarre, the ridiculous, and the completely absurd are highlighted for all to see! This has been a week of rare idiocy (as always!). Calling all bloggers! Be sure to send in your entries to the Carnival, which will be posted every Sunday. Entries need to be in by 8 pm on Saturday to make their way into the list that week. This week we have a record number of insanities thanks to all the submissions and the way the world turns. SO MANY INSANITIES! SO LITTLE TIME!

1. Terrorists just wanna have fun.

2 The debasement of women serving in the United States military at Gitmo? Give me a f***ing break, please.

3. Crooks and Liars and Morons, Oh My!

4. The latest in automobile satellite radio technology!

5. Homer Simpson is right about donuts--they can do anything!

6. Just a few "minor" errors from Juan Cole via Tim Blair.

7. How to trick a liberal.

8. I find it hard to believe the Olympics prefers this sport over Baseball or Softball. It's inexplicable!

9. Sometimes you can be too environmentally friendly.

10. This could be described as genocide in the insect world. Pretty awful.Watch the entire video.

11. Too bad he's not available instead of Oliver Stone.

12. Now where would they get the bizarre idea that multiculturalism was failing??? Imagine that.

13. A real innovation in bicycle design.

14. So this is what it will take to get the blue states to support the WOT! I didn't realize....

15. This is the kind of controlled demolition that is taking down the brains of the apologists for mass murder.

16. Oh yes, this was a perfectly understandable mistake. Any journalist could have made it.

17. No IFS, ANDS, or BUTTS

18. Multiple Mentality finds very little gray in the DU cesspool after the London Bombings.

19. Stuck in an elevator with Nancy Pelosi? What a horrible thought!

20 As seen on Al-Jazeera. Really!

21. Did you know that racism is OK as long as it come from the Left?

22. As if we needed more proof after watching the the Tour de France.

Off To Camp And Places Unknown....

The Boo went off to summer camp for TWO WHOLE WEEKS today! She has never been away from home for more than one night. She is handling it in a very mature and excited fashion.

I, on the other hand, am a nervous wreck. My little baby has grown up and is spreading her wings. Things will never be the same again...

Of course, I knew it was coming. For the last two years, since the Boo was in middle school, there have been lots of signs that this was coming. I had to walk several steps behind her at the mall so it didn't look like we were together. She was usually embarassed to be seen with me at school. She started saying things like, "Oh, Mother!" and "I don't want you to do that anymore" in an exasperated and disgusted tone of voice. She'd roll her eyes when I would say just about anything. And she would frequently respond to my attempts to console her when she was upset at something with, "you just don't understant!"

I think I managed to convey how excited I was for her to be going away and what a wonderful time she was going to have: swimming, horseback riding, water-skiing and doing lots and lots of fun things with her friends. I managed to be enthusiastic when she decided to pack for herself and requested that I trust her to get everything ready on her own. At the last minute, she decided to take her favorite blankie--the one that she's had since she was born and which she sleeps with every night, but had been considering leaving behind for the two weeks.

She gave me and her father a quick hug and a smile as she got into the car that would drive her 450 miles away. I smiled brightly back and waved until the car was out of sight. Then I went in the house and cried for a long time.

Terminal Tolerance

Are you a fan of multiculturalism? Then don't read this article as you will have to face some hard facts about reality. And we wouldn't want that to happen, would we?

Nevertheless, here's an excerpt:

Only one faith on earth may be more messianic than Islam: multiculturalism. Without it — without its fanatics who believe all civilizations are the same — the engine that projects Islam into the unprotected heart of Western civilization would stall and fail. It's as simple as that. To live among the believers — the multiculturalists — is to watch the assault, the jihad, take place, unrepulsed by our suicidal societies. These societies are not doomed to submit; rather, they are eager to do so in the name of a masochistic brand of tolerance that, short of drastic measures, is surely terminal.
I'm not talking about our soldiers, policemen, rescue workers and, now, even train conductors who bravely and steadfastly risk their lives for civilization abroad and at home. I'm instead thinking about who we are as a society at this somewhat advanced stage of war. It is a strange, tentative civilization we have become, with leaders who strut their promises of "no surrender" even as they flinch at identifying the foe. Four years past September 11, we continue to shadow-box "terror," even as we go on about "an ideology of hate." It's a script that smacks of sci-fi fantasy more than realpolitik. But our grim reality is no summer blockbuster, and there's no special-effects-enhanced plot twist that is going to thwart "terror" or "hate" in the London Underground, any more than it did on the roof of the World Trade Center. Or in the Bali nightclub. Or on the first day of school in Beslan. Or in any disco, city bus or shopping mall in Israel.

It has been said repeatedly by those who know, that the United States cannot be defeated militarily in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and anywhere we go to fight the "War on Terror". I am not a military expert, but their assessment of the battlefield situation concurs with my own limited knowledge and seems straightforward and a true appraisal to me.

What concerns me as a psychiatrist is the fact that America’s (and civilization’s) victory over this terror seems to hang on a tenuous psychological thread. The question of the hour is: Will American’s resolve to win this war continue to erode as time goes on – as the enemy hopes and believes? Will the voices of those who relentlessly criticize, impede, and otherwise undermine efforts to achieve victory prevent us defeating an enemy that intends to muffle the voices of everyone?

Or, will America stand fast and unite for victory against ....whom?

The enemies of civilization must be named. How can people remain psychologically involved in the struggle when there is a overt attempt on the part of our leaders; our press and a good portion of the population to disguise who and what we are fighting?

Under the umbrella of "Political Correctness" and the multiculturalist's code of conduct; and out of fear of offending those who would kill us with a backward glance, we have failed to explicitly name who we are fighting against.

This omission on our part has a significant psychological impact. By merely referring to the enemy as “terrorists” we invite the substitution of numerous, less pejorative nouns (e.g. militants, insurgents, freedom-fighters, bombers, etc.) which, in fact, precisely is what has happened in the mainstream media—who we can safely list for the most part in the camp of enemy enablers. Slogans like, "one man's 'terrorist' is another man's 'freedom fighter'" are just another way to obscure the issue.

Since the early days of of human speech, the act of naming of a thing has always given one tremendous psychological power over that thing.

By our reluctance to name the enemy we face – whether we call them Islamic Jihadists, Islamofascists, or Islamic Fundamentalists, (are all good, descriptive and comprehensive names that could be used)— we have ceded considerable psychological advantage and power. The Jihadists are perfectly clear about who they are fighting. I refer you to Bin Laden’s 1998 Declaration of War:

First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples.

If some people have formerly debated the fact of the occupation, all the people of the Peninsula have now acknowledged it.

The best proof of this is the Americans' continuing aggression against the Iraqi people using the Peninsula as a staging post, even though all its rulers are against their territories being used to that end, still they are helpless. Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, in excess of 1 million... despite all this, the Americans are once against trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation.

So now they come to annihilate what is left of this people and to humiliate their Muslim neighbors.

Third, if the Americans' aims behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews' petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there.
[....]
The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies--civilians and military--is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim. This is in accordance with the words of Almighty God, "and fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together," and "fight them until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in God." (emphasis mine)

Let us stop pussyfooting around the truth and take the cure for terminal tolerance by calling the "terrorists" by their real name. One immediate result would be that a line will be drawn in the sand and everyone will have to step onto one side or the other.

Then perhaps we can begin to focus on victory in this war.

"ABC Lied And People Died?"

Ace has a tape from a 1999 ABC Newscast documenting the relationship between Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

Did you get that? 1999. When Clinton was President. There was a clear, demonstrable connection between Osama and Saddam. There was a well-known and clear connection between Saddam and attempts to get WMD. There was explicit documentation--that everybody knew about-- that Saddam had harbored the most notorious terrorists in the world.

Somehow, according to the Left, this well-known, documented, fully discussed and reported, open information had disappeared and evaporated into thin air as soon as Bush became President of the US.

Go and listen. Then tell all the the nuts on the Left that, obviously, "ABC Lied and People Died." Maybe they can organize a protest march or something.

The Council Has Spoken !

This week's winners in the Watcher's Council are now posted at the Watcher's site. Every week the Council nominates posts from the blogs of the Council members, and posts from around the blogsphere. The Council then votes to select the "Best" of all these posts.

BEST COUNCIL POSTS:

First Place

I Despair. The Sundries Shack

Second Place

A Functional Philosophical Structure Must Have an Understanding of Evil Gates of Vienna

BEST NON-COUNCIL POSTS

First Place

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Open Mouth, Insert Foot

That is my advice to the mainstream Press at the moment. They are so thick-headed that they don't even realize yet that--not only have they cleared Karl Rove, but they have identified the culprit in the Valerie Plame "outing"--and is is....the PRESS!

For verification of this, read the NY Times article here.

Read the Anchoress' assessment of the NY Times article here.

Read Ace, Captain Ed,, Polipundit -- or, heck, just go read the entire blogsphere and see if you don't agree.

What's fascinating is that the Press is far too clueless to even realize they have damned themselves.

Sweet.

UPDATE: And don't miss Roger Simon's comments about a certain "fatuous creep." I love it!

UPDATE II: An emailer asks why I haven't written about this before. Well, to be honest, with various and sundry other issues on my mind--like Terrorism etc. (and maybe baseball)-- I just didn't care about the whole issue. I figured it would get sorted out in the end, and that the rising hysteria in the media was pretty nonsensical (which is usually the case in these situations). As the implications of the latest information sink in, we should see a pretty fast retreat from the issue once the press realizes that they have yet another scandal on their hands (a la CBS etc.) and my hope is that we shall hear no more about this non-issue -- or from Wilson and Plame themselves -- for evermore.