Bookworm Room

The British press was rocked for a few minutes a couple of weeks ago by the story of an Iraqi girl whose father murdered her quite brutally because she’d fallen in love with a British soldier. (There was no hint, by the way, that she’d done anything about the love; it was an infatuation from [...]

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Our local public radio station was replaying the most recent Hillbama debate, and so I listened to a piece of it that had slipped under my radar the first time. It’s actually quite funny, despite the scary implications of what Hillary is saying she’ll do regarding Iraq if she’s elected President. Here’s what she said, [...]

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The news story was the beating the Iranian thugs and terrorists took in Basra. But there was another type of thuggery going on, too, and Ralph Peters attacks it with a righteous zeal: LIKE many Americans, I get angry at biased “reporting” about Iraq and the spin from dishonest pundits. Usually, I get over it [...]

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A couple of nights ago, I watched a Frontline show entitled Bad Voodoo’s War, which followed a platoon of National Guard soldiers who were deployed to Iraq at the beginning of the Surge in 2007.  The show’s editor/producer did not go to war with the men.  Instead, she gave them video cameras, and they recorded [...]

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Here’s the story: Saddam Hussein’s intelligence agency secretly financed a trip to Iraq for three U.S. lawmakers during the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion, federal prosecutors said Wednesday. The three anti-war Democrats made the trip in October 2002, while the Bush administration was trying to persuade Congress to authorize military action against Iraq. While traveling, [...]

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As is the rest of the media, the Times is making much of the fact that 4,000 American troops have died during more than five years of war in Iraq. I won’t repeat here (or, at least, I won’t repeat at length) my oft-stated belief that, while each death is a personal tragedy, this is [...]

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If nothing else proves that most MSM journalists are hacks, it’s their inability to break free from the phrase “grim milestone” whenever they talk about a new reportable number of American deaths in Iraq.  They’ve taken a phrase that should give a sense of tragedy and, instead, turned it into something so hackneyed it’s almost [...]

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To be honest, I made that post title up, but the fact is that Iraqi attitudes are in line with McCain’s (and Republicans’) views about Iraq: They too think the situation in Iraq is improving, they want Americans to stay and see this thing through, and they think it is very important that America continue [...]

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Writing at American Thinker today, Steven Warshawsky gave a very good review to John McCain’s victory speech the other night. Warshawsky praises McCain for taking the high road and promising to focus on the issues, which should help middle class voters get past possible guilt about not voting for the woman or the black candidate. [...]

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I lost track of his blog for a while, and didn’t realize that Teflon Don, who wrote so poetically and movingly on his blog, Acute Politics, about his Iraq experiences when he was on active duty there has returned as a civilian journalist.  You should definitely check it out.  He’s roaming more freely as a [...]

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A friend sent me an email that I found fascinating on two levels. The first level was the email’s content, which describes all the huge positive strides occurring in Iraq that somehow never manage to get into the mainstream media: Did you know that 47 countries have reestablished their Embassies in Iraq? Did you know [...]

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Are there words to describe men who strap bombs onto mentally disabled women and then send them into a marketplace, only to blow up the women and kill and injure hundreds of surrounding civilians, using remote control devices that keep the bombers themselves safe?  I think there is a word:  Evil.  This is pure, undiluted, [...]

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I’ve never believed Bush lied and, to the extent his information was incorrect (as was information in the hands of all other Western agencies and governments), I assumed that our spywork was to blame. Now we get confirmation of what’s been rumored forever — it was Saddam who lied, never suspecting that his bluff would [...]

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When I was growing up, my father always told a story about a weapons training class he had in the Israel Army (this was during the War of Independence). An explosives expert led the impromptu class, made up of men and women soldiers, all grouped around the teacher in the hot Mediterranean sun. The teacher [...]

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The Surge’s effectiveness in bringing down the rate of deaths in Iraq is stunning.  Naysayers (and there are a few who hang out here), have already moved the goal posts, saying that the Surge hasn’t worked because (a) all the necessary internecine, tribal, religious, etc., killing was already done before the Surge kicked in and [...]

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This is good news: Iraqi oil production is above the levels seen before the US-led invasion of the country in 2003, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). The IEA said Iraqi crude production is now running at 2.3 million barrels per day, compared with 1.9 million barrels at the start of this year. It [...]

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You remember Matt Sanchez, don’t you? He’s the conservative military writer who suddenly shot to fame when it was revealed that he’d had an earlier career working in gay porn. He’s since turned against the lifestyle (porn), and writes about how it degrades the human spirit. He’s also been writing from Iraq and Afghanistan, and [...]

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Dennis Prager likes to say (and I’m paraphrasing here) that liberals and conservatives have entirely incompatible world views. They understand facts in such a different way that there are few points of intersection. I had a reminder of that truism the other day when I watched Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center with a liberal friend. [...]

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Next time someone tells you about the intractable Civil War in Iraq, you might take a moment to show them this photo. It’s by no means the factual clincher to an anti-War argument, but it is a wonderful insight in a society that hopes to mend itself, even as the anti-War crowd in America, by [...]

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As Saddam Hussein’s miles of documents are slowly being translated, more is being revealed about the WMDs: The gist of the new evidence is this: roughly one quarter of Saddam’s WMD was destroyed under UN pressure during the early to mid 1990′s. Saddam sold approximately another quarter of his weapons stockpile to his Arab neighbors [...]

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There are some interesting numbers coming out regarding World War IV. First, American troops are less likely to die now than they were in the 1980s. Every death is a tragedy, but it’s still something of a miracle that, during a two front war, the US military has nevertheless managed to reduce its casualties to [...]

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Scott Malensek, writing at Flopping Aces, revisits the question of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear abilities. After a scathing indictment of Congresspeople who had access to the full National Intelligence Estimate detailing all known information about Saddam’s nuclear capabilities and his access to other illegal weapons of war, but who still chose not to exercise that right, [...]

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Americans like to talk about ecumenicalism, which is an idea that concerns itself with “establishing or promoting unity among churches or religions.” We in America have proven to be very good at it, so much so that we think nothing of little news stories about the rabbi giving a talk to his neighbor’s church, or [...]

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One of the things I landed on, hard, in my post about the great Rush Limbaugh smear was the fact that Media Matters, in order to smear Rush, did some very selective editing so as to destroy entirely the context in which his “phony soldier” comment arose. It seems that another “respected” member of the [...]

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TNR has finally broken its silence and responded to the fact that Drudge made public documents regarding the Scott Thomas Beauchamp affair. According to TNR, everything Beauchamp said is true, and any recantations resulted from the military’s bullying him, augmented by right wing spin. I don’t have time to comment know, and don’t have a [...]

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