EdDriscoll.com

Posted 12/20/2003 05:10:25 PM by Edward Driscoll
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY: Orrin Judd turns conventional wisdom on its head and writes:

No belief requires greater and more repressive conformity than that every individual is entitled to their own faith. The reasons for this are twofold and rather obvious: first, any manifestation of an organized and popular belief system must be attacked, lest those who differ be made to feel so much as uncomfortable--this is variously referred to as multiculturalism, tolerance, or political correctness; second, because there are no longer any socially imposed shared behavioral standards, the State must step in and dictate and enforce its own standards. So does Ms Hunt's imagined freedom lead inevitably to its opposite. Brits and other Europeans are no less conformist than Americans, they just conform to a belief which is so indivualistic as to make society untenable and to make statism necessary.

He's absolutely right: individual liberty requires great personal responsibility. Just ask that sage philosopher, the late Ben Parker.

Posted 12/20/2003 04:07:27 PM by Edward Driscoll
CHARLES JOHNSON WRITES that the media is criticizing the plan by the Coalition Provisional Authority to transmit news footage from Iraq directly via satellite, for use by local media outlets:

So in other words, they admit the media focus on violence and aren't very interested in the reconstruction of Iraq, but at the same time would also like to reassure us that they're unbiased. They've simply decided what information is appropriate for us to consume. Shh! Relax! Just go back to sleep! I must have missed the part where the government was planning to force people to watch C-SPAN Baghdad, in Clockwork Orange-style restraint chairs with eyelid clamps. Media elites sure do start to seethe (in their mild-mannered fashion) at the possibility of losing the tiniest bit of control over the information spigot. It's hard to see anything wrong with another point of view from Iraq, even if it does come from (horror!) the US government. If people aren't interested, they won't watch. What the elites are really worried about is that people will begin making up their own minds.

And we can't have that, can we?

Posted 12/20/2003 03:00:44 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE REVOLUTION WILL BE DRISCOLL-IZED, PART II: I have an article on NFL Films in the January issue of Videomaker magazine. Having grown-up literally 15 minutes away (by car) from their offices in Mt. Laurel, this was a treat to write. I also have a fun rant in defense of cell phones on the back page of the December issue of Electronic House. And be sure to check out these other Ed-equipped publications, available at your local newsstand!

Posted 12/19/2003 11:58:36 PM by Edward Driscoll
IS IT TIME FOR THE BBC TO RETIRE? Oh God, yes.

Posted 12/19/2003 12:35:39 PM by Edward Driscoll
IS IT TIME FOR JERRY RICE TO RETIRE? Skip Bayless thinks so.

Posted 12/19/2003 09:36:52 AM by Edward Driscoll
HAWKISH DEMOCRATS AND WMDs:

Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process. The responsibility of the United States in this conflict is to eliminate weapons of mass destruction, to minimize the danger to our troops and to diminish the suffering of the Iraqi people.

-- House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, in a statement in December 1998 supporting President Clinton's four-day bombing of Iraq.

Posted 12/19/2003 09:31:58 AM by Edward Driscoll
QUOTE OF THE DAY: "I think your moral compass has gone crazy"--David Welch, US ambassador to Egypt. Read the whole thing.

Posted 12/19/2003 09:16:49 AM by Edward Driscoll
"SAD BUT TRUE, defending America has truly become a partisan issue", writes John Hawkins, riffing on a comment that James Taranto made yesterday.

Posted 12/18/2003 10:26:19 PM by Edward Driscoll
GETTING LOOPY: I have an article on getting started with Acid Loops, titled "Meaningful Arbitrary Collisions of Events" in Blogcritics. Complete with my own MP3s, for your listening pleasure!

Posted 12/18/2003 05:14:13 PM by Edward Driscoll
TRANSNATIONALISM AND SADDAM'S TRIAL: Steven Den Beste writes that its the last gasp for the tranzis to be taken seriously. (If you're unfamiliar with epithets like "tranzis", be sure to read Den Beste's original post on transnational progressivism, which we linked to back in August of last year.)

Posted 12/18/2003 03:50:40 PM by Edward Driscoll
NEAL O'DONNELL REJOINS TITANS: O'Donnell had been cut before the season because of the salary-cap, but Tennessee needs a QB that's healthy and knows their system:

Getting O'Donnell back became a necessity after Billy Volek suffered a lacerated spleen in the Titans' 28-26 victory over Buffalo on Sunday. Rookie Jason Gesser has been the only healthy quarterback, with Steve McNair nursing a cracked bone spur in his left ankle. The Titans had been working since Tuesday to reach a deal that would make O'Donnell happy and keep the team under the salary cap.

Prior to serving as McNair's backup in Tennessee, O'Donnell is best known for his role as the Steelers' QB of the early to mid 1990s, when he led them to four playoff appearances and a Super Bowl appearance.

Posted 12/18/2003 03:44:20 PM by Edward Driscoll
WHEN DID THE MIDDLE INITIAL IN NFL stand for France? AP reports that the "NFL fines Bengals QB Jon Kitna for wearing cap marked with cross".

Posted 12/18/2003 03:22:37 PM by Edward Driscoll
BEHIND "ENEMY" LINES: Roger L. Simon blogs about his recent trip to France. Needless to say, things are not pretty there:

A look at this photograph I took of a Jewish school tells you a lot. Despite its almost block-length size there is no sign or name on the building, certainly no Hebrew letters or Jewish words of any kind to identify it as if it were a secret government installation or think tank. You would have no idea what it was except for a simple "College" written by one of the doors. When I stopped to take this picture, a barrel-chested man who looked like an expert in karate or krav maga, obviously a security guard, rushed out the door in seconds to see who I was, demanding to know what I was doing there. I had to repeat for him several times that I was Jew from California before he relaxed and asked me to please put away my camera. On second thought I'm not going to post the picture. Instead I will post this--the graffiti in the sidewalk all over the 13th Arrondisment where this school was located. The French Jewish culture, which gave our world, among so many others, Modigliani, Soutine, Chagall, Proust, Bergson and Serge Gainsbourg may soon be gone.

Read the whole thing.

Posted 12/18/2003 03:02:54 AM by Edward Driscoll
KYOTO: "All is well that ends well", says Hans H.J. Labohm, senior visiting fellow, Netherlands Institute of International Relations Clingendael, in Tech Central Station.

Posted 12/18/2003 02:37:36 AM by Edward Driscoll
THE MOTHERSHIP LANDS IN NEVERLAND: According to the New York Post, Michael Jackson became a member of the Nation of Islam yesterday. Given the racist epithets that Jackson was quoted as saying last year about Sony's Tommy Mottola, is it really all that surprising?

Posted 12/17/2003 11:19:58 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE KAMA SUTRA...of Imperial Scout Walkers. That's it--I've officially seen everything possible on the Internet. Night all! Drive safely! (Found via Across The Atlantic.)

Posted 12/17/2003 10:55:12 PM by Edward Driscoll
GENTLEMEN, START YOUR FISKING: Speaking of drifting out of the mainstream, This column, by Tina Brown, titled, "Tough Time For Democrats" is ripe for satire. Check out this bit, from the opening paragraph:

I was at a media-heavy Manhattan dinner party that vividly dramatized the pre-spider hole mood. The guests -- mostly Democrats, with a smattering of moderate Republicans -- were unanimously kissing off Bush. It had been a particularly obnoxious week for a crowd that favors a more metrosexual approach to foreign relations...

"A more metrosexual approach to foreign relations"? That's a staggeringly silly sentence--and Brown's attitude throughout this piece (much like Maureen Dowd's tone) is so 1990s in its lack of seriousness. But wait--she's just getting started!

"Good riddance" may not be a particularly eloquent thing for Bush to say about Saddam -- but comic-strip heroes don't have to be eloquent. In his interview with Diane Sawyer, Bush was like a guy in a sports bar, not much inclined to big-think. Dirty Harry doesn't talk much, and always in words of one syllable, but while the police commissioner is still fretting about getting a proper search warrant Harry has already offed the bad guy with his great big pistol.

But we didn't "off" Hussein--he's still alive, and no matter what his fate is, it will be more merciful than those that he put--feet first--into the shredder. And as far as Bush being "a guy in a sports bar, not much inclined to big-think", maybe Brown should read the recent article by Jonathan Rauch, which portrays Bush as nothing less than a latter day FDR. Brown ends, astonishingly, with Hillary Clinton as staunch cold warrior (and die-hard American ally) Margaret Thatcher:

Planted solidly behind the lectern with only intermittent reference to her notes [Hillary] exuded the sense of a well-filled mind and life. Maybe not yet a credible commander-in-chief but at least a Democratic Major Barbara. Distantly one could hear the voice of Maggie Thatcher during the Gulf War in 1990, commanding Bush 41 not to "go wobbly." She will wait this one out. Self-discipline, not self-doubt.

If Hillary had commanded her husband not to go wobbily, Al Gore would be far more likely to be president today, and either way, Bill Clinton would have gotten the glory (not the least of which would have come from Brown herself) that Bush is receiving from the American people--largely by cleaning up the messes in the Middle East that Clinton (Bill, not Hillary) ignored. Brown, and her cocktail party coterie, "mostly Democrats, with a smattering of moderate Republicans"--in other words, RINOs--favor "a more metrosexual approach to foreign relations". Unfortunately, out in the real world, Saddam, al Qaida, the PLO and other terrorists rarely reciprocate such niceties. And Bush, (whose campaign slogan against would-be metrosexual Howard Dean could be, as James Lileks recently wrote, "He doesn't moisturize. He doesn't tweeze. And he never had a pedicure"), seems to get that. Which explains the title of Brown's cri de coeur.

Posted 12/17/2003 10:26:04 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE OLIVER STONE WING OF THE DNC: The Washington Times has a nice roundup of some of the conspiracy theories blowing through the Democratic Party, as espoused by supposedly serious people, such as former secretary of state Madeleine Albright and leading Democratic presidential candidate, Howard Dean. The article quotes Donna Brazile, who ran Al Gore's presidential campaign in 2000, who understands the danger of these wild rumors and innuendo:

[Brazile] said the comments of Mrs. Albright and Mr. Dean and Mr. McDermott have "no place in our dialogue on this very serious issue. I think most Americans have some lingering doubts about what happened on September 11, but until the commission and Congress completes its investigation, I think it best if people hold these views to themselves. But because we don't yet have a nominee, it's all out in the open."

And having all these Oliver Stone and X-File conspiracy theories risks, as one unnamed Democrat is quoted as saying, the party drifting out of the "mainstream." UPDATE: Heh.

Posted 12/17/2003 05:57:33 PM by Edward Driscoll
OTTO GRAHAM DEAD: The Hall of Fame QB of the Cleveland Browns, back when Paul Brown was their coach, was 82.

Posted 12/17/2003 04:46:24 PM by Edward Driscoll
JIM FASSEL OUT AS GIANTS COACH: He'll coach the remaing two games (including Sunday's against Dallas, who will be in the playoffs with a win) and then move on.

Posted 12/17/2003 04:42:04 PM by Edward Driscoll
YOU KNOW WHAT'S REALLY DEPRESSING about the John Rhys-Davis interview that Andrew Sullivan quotes? That Rhys-Davis has to add, "I'm burying my career so substantially in these interviews that it's painful". The fact that he's merely speaking logical, common sense statements, and that he's worried how it could affect his career, speaks volumes of how out of touch the artists' enclave in Los Angeles is.

Posted 12/17/2003 04:11:23 PM by Edward Driscoll
ARMING PILOTS: The Bush Administration (and the TSA) continue to drag their feet, according to this report.

Posted 12/17/2003 02:31:54 PM by Edward Driscoll
BUT WHAT WOULD VIRGIL SOLLOZO THINK? Dick Morris believes that Hillary could become Howard Dean's candidate for vice president. Of course, given Morris's track record of previous prognostications...

Posted 12/17/2003 02:17:03 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE GOREFATHER: Daniel Henniger of the Journal looks at the DNC through a Puzoian eye.

Posted 12/17/2003 01:34:22 PM by Edward Driscoll
NEXT TUESDAY ON BRAVO, it's a special episode of Queer Eye For The Straight Guy...

Posted 12/17/2003 01:27:30 PM by Edward Driscoll
SHOOT THE PRESIDENT, receive unsupervised visits to your parents. What a smart move, judge. Willie Horton could not be reached for comment. UPDATE: Wow--now it makes a little more sense. Check out the judge's track record. (Via Drudge.)

Posted 12/17/2003 01:21:41 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE BIKE PATH LEFT: Brilliant Mark Steyn piece in The Wall Street Journal:

There was a revealing moment on MSNBC the other night. Chris Matthews asked Dr. Dean whether Osama bin Laden should be tried in an American court or at The Hague. "I don't think it makes a lot of difference," said the governor airily. Mr. Matthews pressed once more. "It doesn't make a lot of difference to me," he said again. Some of us think what's left of Osama is already hard enough to scrape off the cave floor and put in a matchbox, never mind fly to the Netherlands. But, just for the sake of argument, his bloodiest crime was committed on American soil; American courts, unlike the international ones, would have the option of the death penalty. But Gov. Dean couldn't have been less interested. So how about Saddam? The Hague "suits me fine," he said, the very model of ennui. Saddam? Osama? Whatever, dude. So what does get the Dean juices going? A few days later, the governor was on CNN and Judy Woodruff asked him about his admission that he'd left the Episcopal Church and become a Congregationalist because "I had a big fight with a local Episcopal church over the bike path." I hasten to add that, in contrast to current Anglican controversies over gay marriage in British Columbia and gay bishops in New Hampshire, this does not appear to have been a gay bike path: its orientation was not an issue; it would seem to be a rare example of a non-gay controversy in the Anglican Communion. But nevertheless it provoked Howard into "a big fight." "I was fighting to have public access to the waterfront, and we were fighting very hard in the citizens group," he told Judy Woodruff. Fighting, fighting, fighting. And that's our pugnacious little Democrat. On Osama bin Laden, he's Mister Insouciant. But he gets mad about bike paths. Destroy the World Trade Center and he's languid and laconic and blasé. Obstruct plans to convert the ravaged site into a memorial bike path and he'll hunt you down wherever you are.

That's just a taste--read the whole thing. I think a meme was born today. UPDATE: Charles Johnson is not happy:

Being a cyclist, however, and a member of the Bike-Path Right, I have to say that I'm mortally offended by Steyn's heinous conflation of cycling with the Dean campaign. I hereby declare a fat-tire-wa on Steyn's narrow Canadian tuchis. Bike paths aren't just for angry dwarves.

Actually, I think he'll get over it. Charles has a pretty good handlebar on things.

Posted 12/16/2003 06:44:49 PM by Edward Driscoll
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO the great Arthur C. Clarke, who turns 86 today.

Posted 12/16/2003 06:10:07 PM by Edward Driscoll
A PICTURE SPEAKS A 1000 WORDS, even when CNN doesn't.

Posted 12/16/2003 06:09:10 PM by Edward Driscoll
OF HOWARD DEAN, Orrin Judd writes, "Here's a guy who was on top of the world last Friday, having won the endorsement of his Party's fallen martyr. Today he has the dean of Iowa journalism asking if his candidacy is viable..." UPDATE: Charles Johnson adds:

Remember, this is the same Howard Dean (unless he has an equally evil twin) who, a week ago, was using the Bush administration's "failure to catch Saddam or bin Laden" to score political points from the incredibly addled Deaniacs. Suddenly, he's trying to argue that capturing Saddam is no big deal. In all the years I've been following politics I don't believe I have ever seen a more blatant case of the old switcheroo.

And Andrew Sullivan fisks the recent speeches by Dean, and Hillary, to boot.

Posted 12/16/2003 12:18:50 PM by Edward Driscoll
CLASS ACT: Sports Illustrated's Peter King calls Green Bay's Mike Sherman "the coach of the week":

Call me sentimental. But when Sherman brought a wheelchair-bound U.S. soldier -- who had served in Iraq and was in San Diego to watch the Pack's win over the Chargers -- into the locker room after the game ... and then gave him the game ball ... well, on the day Saddam Hussein was captured, no coach made a better call.

And that's rather classy of King to write, as well.

Posted 12/16/2003 12:08:19 PM by Edward Driscoll
SUSPENSIONS WOULD STOP SHOWOFFS: Steve Wilstein of AP writes:

Old standards of sportsmanship have been dying for a long time. Ages ago it was considered cool for a player scoring a touchdown to flip the ball nonchalantly to the ground and run, head down, off the field. Then came ball spins and other tricks, dancing, prancing and in-your-face taunting. The sublime, indeed, had turned ridiculous. After the [Terrell Owens Sharpie incident], NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue sent a memo around the league clarifying that if a player has objects that are not part of the uniform on the field or sideline he will be given an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. Everyone knew it also would mean a fine, something Owens escaped because no one had anticipated a player being quite so boorish. * * * Fans have a stake in it because this kind of stuff doesn't enhance games, it diminishes them. When sportsmanship goes, the sport is cheapened. The way to end the nonsense is to skip a fine and suspend [New Orleans Saints wide receiver Joe Horn] for a game. How big a grin do you think Horn would be flashing if he were sidelined next Sunday against Jacksonville with the 7-7 Saints' playoff hopes on the line? Sitting a star like Horn, or any starter, would affect the whole team and the outcome of the game.

I agree. I don't necessarily want to return to the old days of coolly flipping the ball to the ref after a score, but I think there's a balance--I don't want to see the NFL become the XFL, either. UPDATE: Don't hold your breath, sports fans. Horn will be fined $30,000 by the NFL. No suspension planned.

Posted 12/16/2003 11:04:31 AM by Edward Driscoll
FROM THE HOME OFFICE IN TIKRIT, David Letterman's "Top Ten Questions Asked by Saddam Hussein When He Was Captured". I kind of like number four, myself.

Posted 12/16/2003 10:59:39 AM by Edward Driscoll
THE 2003 DISHONEST REPORTING "AWARD", from HonestReporting.com: Two guesses as to which "news agency" won the "award" for the most skewed and biased "coverage" of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (Somebody should give the winner an award for most use of scare quotes as well.)

Posted 12/15/2003 04:06:12 PM by Edward Driscoll
<MAP NAME="boxmap-p8"><AREA SHAPE="RECT" COORDS="14, 200, 103, 207" HREF="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm/privacy-policy.html?o=1" ><AREA COORDS="0,0,10000,10000" HREF="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect-home/eddriscollcom-20" ></MAP><img src="http://rcm-images.amazon.com/images/G/01/rcm/120x240.gif" width="120" height="240" border="0" usemap="#boxmap-p8" alt="Shop at Amazon.com"> <MAP NAME="boxmap-p6"><AREA SHAPE="RECT" COORDS="1, 140, 83, 150" HREF="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm/privacy-policy.html?o=1" ><AREA COORDS="0,0,10000,10000" HREF="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect-home/eddriscollcom-20" ></MAP><img src="http://rcm-images.amazon.com/images/G/01/rcm/120x150.gif" width="120" height="150" border="0" usemap="#boxmap-p6" alt="Shop at Amazon.com"> THE REVOLUTION WILL BE DRISCOLL-IZED! While I usually have a few articles in print each month, I haven't written a flagrantly self-promotional update lately, so here's a quick round up of the some of the more unusual stuff I have out there right now. Because the new buzz word du jour is "internationalization", I have a nifty (if I do say so myself) article on music arranging in this issue of England's Computer Music magazine, which is available at Borders, and other US book and magazine sellers--or click here to subscribe. The magazine is bundled with a CD-ROM of music programs, samples, loops, and other fun stuff. And I'm in the debut issue of Servo magazine. (That's me on the cover, in a rare early-morning photograph.) The article that I mentioned back in August, on the history of robots in the movies is the first cover story of the magazine. I interviewed Don Bies, who operates R2-D2 for LucasFilm, David Gerrold (who created the tribbles of the original Star Trek series, and helped program Mr. Data for The Next Generation), and David Stork, the author of Hal's Legacy, a book which looked at what it would take to actually build the famous computer of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Finally, I'm writing, two--two--TWO newsletters a month (actually three, because one is bi-weekly) for Electronic House magazine, one on home entertainment, and another on electronic ideas for every room. Click here to subscribe, or to simply read 'em online--they're free!

Posted 12/15/2003 03:22:48 PM by Edward Driscoll
TALK ABOUT PHONING IT IN: The NFL is considering a fine or suspension for New Orleans Saints wide receiver Joe Horn. Horn pulled out a cell phone that he had previously hidden in a goal post and made a call after scoring a touchdown in last night's game against the Giants. The game--and Horn's stunt--was covered nationally by ESPN. AP reports that last year, "after San Francisco's Terrell Owens pulled a pen out of his sock and autographed a football after scoring a touchdown in a game, NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue sent a memo to all teams warning that other such stunts would be punished." For the sake of sportsmanship, lets hope the NFL keeps its word.

Posted 12/15/2003 03:12:37 PM by Edward Driscoll
THAT WAS FAST: Rich McKay, formerly of the Tampa Bay Bucs, was hired as general manager of the Atlanta Falcons today.

Posted 12/15/2003 03:05:53 PM by Edward Driscoll
IS THERE ANOTHER FORD in the Republicans' future? Orrin Judd writes that Karl Rove should be getting 33 year old Harold Ford on the blower--and quick.

Posted 12/15/2003 03:02:42 PM by Edward Driscoll
PETER JENNINGS NEVER FAILS: "There�s not a good deal for Iraqis to be happy about at the moment. Life is still very chaotic, beset by violence in many cases, huge shortages. In some respects, Iraqis keep telling us life is not as stable for them as it was when Saddam Hussein was in power." Guess Peter forgot to interview these folks. Which is why Glenn Reynolds' latest MSNBC column is all about, as Glenn puts it, "the dictatorship of the Big Media, which is losing its stranglehold over news". UPDATE: Too bad Peter doesn't read Steven Den Beste. Maybe he should start.

Posted 12/15/2003 02:40:11 PM by Edward Driscoll
PASS THE ICE TEA, AL: Matt Drudge writes:

Frustrated with the lack of domestic support, left-leaning website MoveOn.org has apparently been reaching beyond American borders to generate cash revenue over the internet! The provocative international fundraising strategy threatens to embroil the presidential candidacies of General Wesley Clark and former Vermont Governor Howard Dean. Both men are named on international fundraising websites suggesting donations to MoveOn.org. * * * "To avoid even the appearance of impropriety, we are not going to take contributions from overseas," Wes Boyd, one of the founders of MoveOn.org, explained this weekend. Boyd refused to disclose how much revenue had already been generated from overseas sources.

As usual, Drudge signs off with "Developing..."

Posted 12/15/2003 02:24:23 PM by Edward Driscoll
WAITING FOR ANTAR: Charles Paul Freund looks at the cultural reasons why Saddam was supposed to kill himself--and the shame that many in the Middle East felt by his not doing so.

Posted 12/15/2003 02:15:03 PM by Edward Driscoll
JAMES TARANTO:

The Angry Left is America's equivalent of the Palestinians: a self-destructive political movement based on nothing but a collection of grievances rooted in a falsified, self-justifying history. These grievances so distort their view of the world that they lose the capacity for ordinary moral judgment and cannot understand something as simple as that the fall of a genocidal tyrant is a good thing.

Or it all could be because of Colin Powell's prostate, as angy leftist Eric Alterman suggests...

Posted 12/15/2003 02:04:33 PM by Edward Driscoll
FRENCH KISS: Charles Johnson looks at "Killers in Love".

Posted 12/15/2003 03:14:06 AM by Edward Driscoll
THE GALLOWAY AWARD: Andrew Sullivan has lots of nominees, for his award named after the British Labour Party politician who was in a certain recently captured tyrant's pocket.

Posted 12/15/2003 02:57:50 AM by Edward Driscoll
"THE POOR MAN'S STALIN": Nice turn of the phrase by the folks at Samizdata.net.

Posted 12/15/2003 02:53:29 AM by Edward Driscoll
WHERE WAS N.O.W.? The New Criterion asks why feminists have been so silent about a man, and a place, that treats women so despicably. Read the whole thing.

Posted 12/15/2003 02:45:32 AM by Edward Driscoll
LILEKS:

I�ve read all the nutball far-left sites worrying about the worrisome worries � does this help Dub? Was it all faked? Surely America will see that the man paraded before the cameras was a soy-based simulacrum cooked up in the Halliburton labs? It�s amusing to troll the fevered swamps, but nothing they say matters in the end. The history texts will note that Baghdad fell on this date, Saddam was captured on that date, and the events between the two events will fill up a paragraph at best. Cruel but true. This was a big event, but there are bigger events to come. We live in an age where we�re always waiting for the other shoe to drop. And drop it does. And drop again it will.

Exactly.

Posted 12/15/2003 02:15:04 AM by Edward Driscoll
SADDAM'S 9/11 CONNECTIONS: Charles Johnson has a link to the Telegraph's story on Saddam's connection with Mohammed Atta and Abu Nidal, and astonishing photos, to boot.

Posted 12/14/2003 07:23:06 PM by Edward Driscoll
KERRY STILL CRITICAL OF BUSH ADMINISTRATION: Even if they can't call it a great day for Iraq and Americans, why can't any of these guys (or their speechwriters) do the classy thing and simply say, "Many Iraqis and Americans are rejoicing today, and it wouldn't be right to interject politics into things at this moment. We'll have plenty of time for that later". Instead the Copperhead Conjunction reigns supreme for most of the Democrats (Joe Lieberman and Joe Biden being the notable exceptions). UPDATE: George Will writes:

No Democrat is running for president as a little ray of sunshine, but John Kerry used the occasion Sunday morning to tell Fox News that although the capture was good, the administration still has not done enough about AIDS. Can someone that tone-deaf govern? Howard Dean was more gracious than he was when Hussein fled Baghdad. Then Dean said 'I suppose' that Hussein's removal was a good thing. The capture was the third element in last week's trifecta for George W. Bush, coming after Al Gore strengthened the candidacy of Bush's preferred opponent and the Dow passed 10,000. But perhaps Sunday's euphoria among the majority of next November's voters will cause Democrats to pause on their double-time march toward nominating the one serious candidate of whom it can be indisputably said that, were he president, Hussein would still be a president too.

Posted 12/14/2003 03:55:54 PM by Edward Driscoll
NEW IRAQI LEADERS CONFRONT THEIR FORMER DICTATOR: Devastating article in the New York Times, which quotes, among others, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, one of the members of Iraq's Governing Council, and someone who was tortured in 1979 by Saddam's henchmen:

Mr. Rubaie said: "One thing which is very important is that this man had with him underground when they arrested him two AK-47's and did not shoot one bullet. I told him, `You keep on saying that you are a brave man and a proud Arab.' I said, `When they arrested you why didn't you shoot one bullet? You are a coward.' "And he started to use very colorful language. Basically, he used all his French." Mr. Rubaie added: "I was so angry because this guy has caused so much damage. He has ruined the whole country. He has ruined 25 million people. "And I have to confess that the last word was for me: I was the last to leave the room and I said, `May God curse you. Tell me, when are you going to be accountable to God and the day of judgment? What are you going to tell Him about Halabja and the mass graves, the Iran-Iraq war, thousands and thousands executed? What are you going to tell God?' He was exercising his French language."

I'll bet the French government used some rather colorful language themselves today as well.

Posted 12/14/2003 03:11:08 PM by Edward Driscoll
PHOTOS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS DEPARTMENT: Proof of victory in 1945: Proof of victory in 2003:

Posted 12/14/2003 01:28:43 PM by Edward Driscoll
ANDREW SULLIVAN:

This event must, of course, come as a terrible blow to many ordinary Arabs, who have been fed for years on the possibility that Saddam might be the next Caliph. He wasn't deposed by Arabs; he didn't put up a fight; he is no martyr either - just a coward in a miserable little hole. The point of this is not to humiliate Arabs, of course. But it is to attempt to break the mass delusions that have both kept other dictators in power and prevented progress in the Arab world. Taking Saddam alive - and giving him all the dignity of a bedraggled hobo - is about as big a propaganda victory as the forces against terror can hope to accomplish.

Be sure to also read the post below about the Telegraph's discovery of a document that they claim proves a link between Saddam and Al Qaeda.

Posted 12/14/2003 01:23:19 PM by Edward Driscoll
OH, THAT LIBERAL MEDIA: Read the comments that Robert Kaiser, associate editor of the Washington Post, said in an online chat today.

Posted 12/14/2003 01:06:52 PM by Edward Driscoll
BEST OF THE WEB's James Taranto has a rare Sunday column, linking and thinking about Saddam's capture.

Posted 12/14/2003 12:58:11 PM by Edward Driscoll
JOY TO THE WORLD: Peggy Noonan writes:

All the journalists and politicians, they are always embarrassed to feel joy when something like this happens. They fear it will show a lack of understanding that history is a heavy and ponderous thing, a big tragedy machine, and all progress is illusory. Celebrating a military triumph--and this was among other things a military triumph--seems to them tantamount to Kiplingism, quaintly ignorant and unhelpfully nationalistic. That's why everyone on TV today is furrowing his brow. They know joy is the wrong thing to be feeling. It's unsophisticated. But normal people don't have to be sophisticated. They can be normal. And happy. And say what normal Americans say when something great in history happens. 'Thanks, God. Thanks a lot.'

Thanks, God.

Posted 12/14/2003 12:36:03 PM by Edward Driscoll
CLICK FAST, Because I'm sure it will be deleted quickly, but as of the time of this post, Saddam's lice are up for bidding on eBay! (Link via John Hawkins, who's also linking to more serious stuff.)

Posted 12/14/2003 12:28:00 PM by Edward Driscoll
"AL GORE MUST BE THINKING LIFE IS PRETTY UNFAIR ABOUT NOW": Mackubin Thomas Owens has some thoughts on how the left is viewing Saddam's capture. And there are several other articles on Saddam's capture on NRO's homepage.

Posted 12/14/2003 12:08:01 PM by Edward Driscoll
MERRY CHRISTMAS, MR. HUSSEIN: Orrin Judd has some thoughts on Saddam's capture. Be sure to read the comments, as well.

Posted 12/14/2003 12:04:26 PM by Edward Driscoll
"THANK GOD HE'S ALIVE", writes Lee Harris:

We took Saddam Hussein alive, and, in doing this, we have done a great deal more than simply knock down a statue of a dictator -- we have vanquished a collective nightmare. We have turned the light on a bogey-man, and revealed him to be a broken old man, hiding fearfully in a six by eight hole. We can see now how foolish we were to regret not rubbing him out that first night, when we dropped the bunker-piercing bomb on what we had been told was his hide-out. Had we pulverized him then, he might well have returned to claim a permanent place in the Iraqi imagination, like a kind of Mesopotamian Freddy Krueger. But, luckily, we missed him, and now we can see that there was a providence in our failure -- as so often there is in our ordinary lives as well. That is the problem of living through history, rather than reading about it when it is over. What at first appears a triumph may be just a prelude to disaster; what at first seems a failure may prove to be merely a necessary step toward a final success. The capture of Saddam Hussein may not prove to be the turning point when, decades from now, we look back on this period; but, for right now, it certainly feels like it.

I wonder if Saddam can be coerced (by any means necessary, as far as I'm concerned), to issue a final "surrender, lay down your arms" speech to the remaining pro-Baathist troops still fighting. I wonder how many of them will listen.