Bookworm Room

Have you heard the old expression “a fine Italian hand?” It’s an old saying that applied to a situation in which you believed, at first, that you were dealing with one rather inept adversary. However, as the matter progressed, you began to realize that there was a more skilled, subtle — and invisible — player [...]

2 Comments »

There are no good people or bad people. There are only people who have different cultural values. My deep and abiding respect for the multicultural principles underlying moral relativism demand that I accept as culturally reasonable the fact that terrorists in Iraq strapped a remote-controlled bomb to an eight year old girl in order to [...]

13 Comments »

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 [...]

3 Comments »

We received in yesterday’s mail a warning (a very nice warning) that my 5th grader is struggling with geometry. As a former geometry struggler myself, I’m all sympathy. We did not get mad at her. What is infuriating, though, is her absolutely unwillingness to learn geometry. After 1.5 years in public schools, she believes that [...]

No Comments »

Honest to God, I really do wonder sometimes if the garden-variety fusion betwen Islamic and Arabic culture is salvageable: A teenage Iraqi girl who fell in love with a British soldier when he was in Basra was murdered by her father in an “honour killing”, it was revealed today. Rand Abdel-Qader, 17, was suffocated and [...]

20 Comments »

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, [...]

8 Comments »

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 [...]

7 Comments »

Michael Yon, who appropriately boasts that he is probably the most experienced reporter in Iraq, reminds us that Congress must stop obsessing about the past in Iraq and must approach Iraq as a winnable situation. He begins by detailing the enormous strides — both practical and “hearts and mind” stuff — that Americans have accomplished [...]

6 Comments »

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 [...]

5 Comments »

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, [...]

15 Comments »

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 [...]

11 Comments »

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 [...]

11 Comments »

I watched a pretty good movie last night, that was very pro-military; that showed the Iraqi military as being inefficient; and that showed Iraqis as being unbelievably brutal, both in terms of mob violence and in terms of the military’s and the secret police’s capacity for sadistic torture.  Surprisingly, it was made by the BBC. [...]

6 Comments »

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 [...]

3 Comments »

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 [...]

4 Comments »

I’ve got a project, and pretty much exhausted myself writing this morning’s post (too much thinking, dammit!), so I’ll just give you links to some stories that caught my eye today. 1.  John Hawkin’s writes about five top conservative female bloggers and discusses how they face different challenges from their male peers (not that they’re [...]

2 Comments »