Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Beamer
David Beamer, father of Flight 93 victim/hero Todd Beamer, has been going around reminding people what the fight is all about and our liberals aren’t the least bit happy about it.
On yesterday morning’s FOX & Friends First I was stunned to see the face of David Beamer, father of Flight 93 hero Todd Beamer, appear on my screen making a political pitch out of the tragedy of his son’s death. In front of a montage of clips of his son, the 9-11 towers, soldiers fighting in Iraq and the Shanksville site where United 93 crashed, Mr. Beamer appeared in a political ad and uttered words cleverly designed to mislead FOX viewers once again into believing that somehow Iraq had something to do with the death of his son and 3,000 other Americans. The ad was paid for by Progress for America, Inc..
According to SourceWatch, “the PFA was, from the beginning, ‘closely associated’ with the Bush administration, the Republican National Committee and ‘their consultants.’ PFA was established in 2001 to support George W. Bush’s ‘agenda for America.’ The PFA Voter Fund, which was set up in 2004, raised $38 million in support of Bush’s 2004 election bid.” One of the most prominent names affiliated with PFA is C. Boyden Gray, a major Republican power broker.
Republicans with money! Using it for campaigning! Oh, how evil!
Here is the clip…
What gets liberals in an uproar, is that Beamer is implying Iraq has something to do with Al Qaeda. Well, it’s a matter of fact that it does, now. Liberals would like to promote the idea that before we invaded Iraq, the two had not a thing to do with each other at all…and the elder Beamer’s message poses a problem for this, in no small part because not a single word of what he said can be proven false. That’s why Newshounds had to use the phrase “uttered words cleverly designed to mislead”…come to think of it, that phrase, itself, is full of words cleverly designed to mislead.
Attention liberals in general, Newshounds in particular: The soldiers to which Mr. Beamer seeks to direct your attention, and the attention of others, are in Iraq simply to do a JOB. A good chunk of the fighting force there, believe in this job, and some of them actually signed up for this job.
My point is, Saddam’s old regime having something to do with the 9/11 attack is unproven — that is a completely different thing, from saying it is REFUTED. Completely different. Saddam’s old regime had a long, rich history of sneaky, underhanded, “attacks” against the United States, mostly logistic in nature. Aid and comfort to our “provable” enemies, harboring “real” terrorists, that kind of thing. He was a credible threat in the spring of 2003, and the credibility of that threat remains strong today.
I have a text file I like to upload in forums wherever and whenever this silly “Saddam was innocent until proven guilty beyond the shadow of a doubt” thing comes up…which is quite often. The text file quotes a single page from a recent book by Stephen Hays, and contains a lot of facts which, so far as I’m aware, have never been disproven or even subjected to factual challenge.
“Iraqi intelligence documents from 1992 list Osama bin Laden as an Iraqi intelligence asset. Numerous sources have reported a 1993 nonaggression pact between Iraq and Al Qaeda. The former deputy director of Iraqi intelligence now in U.S. custody says that bin Laden asked the Iraqi regime for arms and training in a face-to-face meeting in 1994. Senior al Qaeda leader Abu Hajer al Iraqi met with Iraqi intelligence officials in 1995. The National Security Agency intercepted telephone conversations between al Qaeda-supported Sudanese military officials and the head of Iraq’s chemical weapons program in 1996. Al Qaeda sent Abu Abdallah al Iraqi to Iraq for help with weapons of mass destruction in 1997. An indictment from the Clinton-era Justice Department cited Iraqi assistance on al Qaeda ‘weapons development’ in 1998. A senior Clinton administration counterterrorism official told the Washington Post that the U.S. government was ‘sure’ Iraq had supported al Qaeda chemical weapons programs in 1999. An Iraqi working closely with the Iraqi embassy in Kuala Lumpur was photographed with September 11 hijacker Khalid al Mihdhar en route to a planning meeting for the bombing of the USS Cole and the September 11 attacks in 2000. Satellite photographs showed al Qaeda members in 2001 traveling en masse to a compound in northern Iraq financed, in part, by the Iraqi regime. Abu Musab al Zarqawi, senior al Qaeda associate, operated openly in Baghdad and receved medical attention at a regime-supported hospital in 2002. Documents discovered in postwar Iraq in 2003 reveal that Saddam’s regime harbored and supported Abdul Rahman Yasin, an Iraqi who mixed the chemicals for the 1993 World Trade Center attack — the first al Qaeda attack on U.S. soil.
“Then, on March 21, 2004, Richard Clarke, a former top counterterrorism offical with access to all of this information, made a stunning declaration: ‘There’s absolutely no evidence that Iraq was supporting al Qaeda, ever.'”
— The Connection, Stephen F. Hayes, ISBN 0-06-074673-4, pp. 177-8
So here’s my beef.
With all of the above, the left-wingers are correct in saying the above falls short of proving Saddam Hussein had anything to do with the attacks of September 11, 2001. They’re right in saying that.
Just as a Republican would be correct in saying, the Foley mess, and the DeLay mess, and the Abramoff mess do not prove there is a culture of corruption in the Republican party.
Liberals, who are supposed to be champions of the rights, privileges, and renewed capacities for people to do their own thinking as sentient and intellectually autonomous individuals…would have the former of those “proofs” held to be absolutely inadequate. And the latter of those “proofs” to be utterly, incontestably sufficient.
And in that logical contradiction, they uncompromisingly deny people the right and privilege to think for themselves. To the point where a bereaved father — the morality of bereaved parents is absolute, remember that? — observes that the soldiers in Iraq are fighting the same group of people who conspired to kill his son, and boom! Liberals have to make sure they have the last word. David Beamer’s words are factually correct, but they make for a political problem for the Democrats who want a referendum on a military operation already engaged. And so Todd Beamer’s father has to be shouted down.
I know of no evidence to indicate Todd Beamer would disagree with David Beamer’s position on this. I do know of evidence indicating Nick Berg held different views from Michael Berg, and that Casey Sheehan disagreed with Cindy Sheehan. No matter. David Beamer is the bereaved parent that has to be shouted down. His words are factually correct, but they cannot be the last ones.
The “Al Qaeda had nothing to do with Iraq” platform is far, far too important. Of course you can’t prove the negative. Nor does it pass the “left testicle” test — no thinking man, sufficiently educated about the whole situation, is going to place his left gonad on a block under a sledgehammer, and bet the family jewels that Saddam Hussein was innocent in all this. In the final analysis, the innocence of the old Hussein regime is a matter of religion. It is a matter of faith. One shows one’s allegiance to a sect by holding it to be a truism, and proferring it whenever and wherever one has the ability to do so…against the evidence.
And of course, by making sure that whenever someone like David Beamer contests it in any public forum, that infidel is never allowed to have the last word. Never, never, not ever!
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