Newsweek's Bubble Burst

Scrappleface has a great parody of the Newsweek cover, Bush Admits He's Trapped in Bubble.

Paying for PR: The Sequel -- Shame on NBC

To confirm my point about the hypocrisy of the MSM media, there's this story today.

Which is worse, for the Pentagon to pay an independent Iraqi press to run factually accurate stories, or for NBC to run yet again demonstrably and obviously false, terrorist propaganda for free? Which is the greater threat to an independent, credible press?

Paying for PR

I must be missing something really basic. I just don't see what all the fuss is about the Pentagon paying the Iraqi press to run positive stories about the war's progress in Iraq. And, I don't see why this is such a threat to freedom of the press there. The American media's furor over this seems entirely hypocritical.

1) It is admitted by everyone on all sides that the stories are factually correct. The Pentagon is not planting false stories; they are paying the Iraqi papers to run true ones. Contrast this with the American MSM's practice of running stories based on fabricated evidence, which they call "fake but accurate." They're too stupid to get paid. Instead they pay others for the privilege, even if it's in quid pro quo favors.

2) The Pentagon is not compelling the Iraqi press to run these stories. True tyranny occurs when the press is merely an extension of the government. The fact that they have to pay shows that the press is independent. Again, the MSM comes out looking stupid by comparison. The NYT and WaPo frequently just repeat Democratic talking points even in supposed news reporting instead of analysis and opinion. They're volunteering to do it, without getting paid. It seems to me that our so-called free press is less independent than the Iraqis. The MSM is often merely a too-willing extension of the DNC.

3) The Pentagon does not have an exclusive arrangement with the Iraqi press. Though they may be paying to run these stories, there's nothing that keeps the Iraqis from running counter stories as well. Freedom of the press is compromised when only propaganda is printed. Surely, there's more question about the propagandizing role of the American MSM than the Iraqi press.

4) Almost every organization in the U.S. -- whether business, nonprofit organization, labor union -- has a PR department whose primary role is to get stories planted in the papers, and these are very successful. The press often run so-called quotes from interviews that are no more than PR-planted statements.

5) We are at war. Propaganda is increasingly a part of war.

I simply do not see what President Bush and the Pentagon have to be so apologetic about.

Sho 'Nuf

As I posted earlier, it is evident that the new Democratic strategy is to claim credit for the unfolding of Bush's Iraq policy. Democrat mouthpiece at the Washington Post David Broder writes that there are "new signs of an Iraq policy" formulated by the Democrats.

It has taken a long time, but the Democrats finally have come close to defining a sensible common ground on the issue of Iraq. ... [The] outlines of such a position emerged last week in speeches by two respected Democratic members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Joe Biden of Delaware and Barack Obama of Illinois.

Biden, the committee's senior Democrat, said in New York that it is time to scale back U.S. ambitions in Iraq and reduce troop commitment while shifting security responsibilities to the Iraqis. ... What must happen to make it possible, they agree, is a significant acceleration in the training of Iraqi security forces and in the civil reconstruction projects needed to give Iraqis a sense of hope—both of which will require a change in priorities and an improvement in operations by U.S. forces.

John Henke reacts.

So, after 2 years of debating Iraq policy, the Democrats have decided that training Iraqi security forces to take over and reducing US deployments as they do—"as Iraq stands up, we will stand down"—is the best course in Iraq? And this epiphany, David Broder writes, may have "pointed the administration and the country toward a realistic and modestly hopeful course on Iraq."

What the...?!?!?! This has been the strategy all along. . . . This was the strategy Bush enunciated in August of 2003, September of 2003, May of 2004, and many other times. It was the strategy outlined in this May 2004 "Fact Sheet: The Transition to Iraqi Self-Government".

The Democrats have not come up with a new Iraq Policy. They've jumped onboard the Bush administration's existing policy, with the novel new suggestion that we stay the course...but try harder.

Henke has links to the original Bush statements on his blog.

Cindy Sheehan's Book Signing

You have to admire AP/Reuters creativity in making it look like Cindy Sheehan still has an audience. Compare photos of the actual response to her book signing with the one they ran (at bottom).

Show and Tell: A Photo Essay

Great pictures of Iraqi school shildren at Michael Yon's site.

The Opinionated Bastard

Donald Sensing's summary comes from this blog: The Opinionated Bastard: I scooped the New York Times

Dem Election Strategy

Donald Sensing has an analysis of Democrat strategy on his blog, OneHandClapping.

He begins with a summary of the original DoD strategy for the war in Iraq:

The war plan, for good or ill has never been to occupy the country. It’s always been the plan for the Iraqis to provide security in their own country. ...

Instead of installing a puppet government, we’ve spent 2.5 years building up an Iraqi one. ... In other words, instead of going into Iraq and trying to run the country … we’ve done the minimal amount of work to keep Iraq in a holding pattern until the Iraqis could run it.

[Quoting a DOD source:] We can confirm that the plan is, in fact, to reduce the size of Coalition Forces in country in 2006. It’s big news inasmuch as the Iraqis are increasing the size and strength of their footprint and, by the same token, we’re reducing ours.

Now, many Democrats previously acknowledged that this has been the plan all along. Joe Biden, for example, harangued Condoleeza Rice during her confirmation hearings about the lack of speed in training Iraqi troops. His questioning made no sense unless all agreed that this was the plan for ultimate withdrawal.

It has also been very clear from the beginning that specific milestones were to be achieved before withdrawal: appointing an interim government, drafting a constitution, holding elections for a permanent government. President Bush has been unwavering -- some would say stubborn -- in his commitment to these milestones. Now that these milestones are nearing achievement, some level of withdrawal can be contemplated.

Sensing continues:

So, knowing that the plan was to redeploy troops beginning next year, the Democrats decided to get in front of the wave: Demand the troops be sent home NOW and then when the Pentagon announces the plan to redeploy, take credit for it.

The two prongs of the attack serve two purposes. The “Bush lied us into war” wing satisfies the huge numbers of the party’s base suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome. The “declare victory and go home” attack preserves, however weakly, the party’s appeal to traditionally patriotic Democratic voters, of which there are also huge numbers. Doubtless the Dem leadership sees the attacks as a two-fer.

The appeals to both wings are intended to garner huge dividends in November 2006.

With any president but George W. Bush, they’d be wrong. But GWB is the easiest president to blind side that I have seen in my life. The fact is, the Dem plan is working like a dream for them. GWB has been simply flattened by this one-two punch. For someone whose allies say can play rope-a-dope politically better than M. Ali could in the ring, he and his advisors have been amazingly inept in meeting this strategy.

Be prepared next year for the Democrats to take credit for and campaign on rescuing the country from the Iraq quagmire as US troop levels are reduced. And if the security situation in Iraq does not permit significant reductions, well, that will work fine, too. It’ll be back to the charges of mismangement of a manipulated war.

Journalists such as Nina Easton of the Boston Globe are already talking about how the Republicans are modifying their stance in response to pressure from the Democrats. This is revisionism.

Kennedy Inadvertently Bashes Colleagues Who Voted For the War

From The Political Teen, who has the video:

Russert: But Senator, what the Democrats stood for on the floor of the Senate in 2002, let me show you who said what I just read: John Kerry, your candidate for president. He was talking about a nuclear threat from Saddam Hussein. Hillary Clinton voted for the war. John Edwards, Joe Lieberman, John Kerry. Democrats said the same things about Saddam Hussein. You yourself said quote “Saddam is dangerous, he’s got dangerous weapons.” It wasn’t just the Bush White House.

Kennedy: (with a stricken look): The fact is — and I voted against the war — because every military leader, highly decorated military leader, said it was foolish to have a military intervention. General Hoar, with the Marines, General Hoar who has more silver stars than you could possibly count, said that if we go into Baghdad, it will look like the last five minutes of Private Ryan. So, we know we had enough information to vote against it, I believe.

TigerHawk writes:

Hanging off Russert’s hook, Ted Kennedy made it clear that “we had enough information” to vote against the war ex-ante, effectively denouncing the very idea that pro-war Democrats can rely on the excuse that they “were misled.”

Kennedy can't have it both ways. Either the Senate did have enough information to vote against the war, or they did not because it was hidden from them. Which is it?

Very important post

Now here's a very important topic. Why do so many people hate Duke basketball?

Clinton and Iraq

Just Google it. Clinton and Irag, 1998.

Bush Lied!

I read this article by Norman Podhoretz in Commentary. It is now available on Opinion Journal. I've heard this is the article that finally provoked President Bush to go on the counter attack.

Peter F. Drucker, a Pioneer in Social and Management Theory, Is Dead at 95

Here's Peter Drucker's obituary at the NYT.

Personality Quiz

Numenorean


To which race of Middle Earth do you belong?
brought to you by Quizilla

The Original Management Guru

I just read that Peter Drucker died yesterday at age 95. This is a great loss. Although his language in such classics as The Effective Executive is dated, his thoughts on management philosophy and social commentary continue to be influential. I was greatly helped by his advice always to "feed your strengths." This struck me as a very humble philosophy. It recognizes that we all have strengths and weaknesses and time is too short to spend a whole lot of time trying to perfect our weakness, a task that may be impossible anyway (if one is tone deaf, one is tone deaf). It is far better to admit our need for a team. The smart manager surrounds himself/herself with people whose strengths complement his/her weaknesses.

The Wall Street Journal is running an old editorial on Drucker, written originally to celebrate his 90th birthday. It's a good one.

Wilson

Joe Wilson is popping up everywhere again. It's very odd that his story still has traction even though almost every point in it has long been known to be false.

The full bipartisan Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on prewar intelligence is available at globalsecurity.org at this link.

The account of Joe Wilson's mission begins on page 39. The 3rd paragraph says (brackets with open spaces indicate deleted classified material):

The former ambassador had traveled previously to Niger on the CIA’s behalf [ ] . The former ambassador was selected for the 1999 trip after his wife mentioned to her supervisors that her husband was planning a business trip to Niger in the near future and might be willing to use his contacts in the region [ ] . Because the former ambassador did not uncover any information about DELETED during this visit to Niger, CPD did not distribute an intelligence report on the visit

The report also says,

The CPD reports officer told Committee staff that the former ambassador’s wife “offered up his name” and a memorandum to the Deputy Chief of the CPD on February 12, 2002, from the former ambassador’s wife says, “my husband has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity.

So, let's be clear.

Wilson claimed the Vice President asked him to go to Niger. That's a lie! His wife did.

Wilson said that he wrote up a report for the Vice President. That's a lie! He gave an oral report to low-level CIA debriefers in his own home with his wife acting as hostess. No report about his trip was ever written up because it was considered so inconsequential.

Wilson claimed that during his trip he exposed certain documents as forgeries. That's a lie! These documents didn't show up till 8 months after his trip. He never saw them, and they were immediately recognized as forgeries by all concerned. They never figured in to anyone's intelligence estimates.

After at first embracing Wilson, Kerry ran away from him as fast as he could lest he be associated with such a blatant liar. Yet now because of propaganda value of the Libby indictment, the Democrats are scurrying to Wilson again.

There's a very interesting article over at RealClearPolitics by Clarice Feldman about the irregularities of the Joe Wilson mission. The insinuation that there was an anti-administration conspiracy within the CIA may be farfetched, but the questions she raises are all very valid.

Bill Bennett

LaShawn Barber has an interesting perspective on Bill Bennett's remarks.

The Real Reason

From today's New York Times:

The second factor in Ms. Miller's decision to go before the grand jury was a change in the position of the special prosecutor, Mr. Fitzgerald, concerning the scope of the questions she would be asked, according to Mr. Abrams. Mr. Fitzgerald only recently agreed to confine his questions to Ms. Miller's conversations with Mr. Libby concerning the identification of Ms. Wilson, Mr. Abrams said.

This is very obviously the real reason Judith Miller has refused to testify in the past. She is protecting some other source. She had a release from "Scooter" Libby over a year ago. I still think Joe Wilson himself was the source of this information.

School

I've just completed my first full week as a full-time student on campus at Southern Seminary. It's been very strange. I have only one class with fellow students within 20 years of my age, and in that class there's only a couple. The guys I've most enjoyed talking to are barely older than my own sons. I've been tempted often to question what I'm doing here. Starting over is tough! But, I've had some good devotional times this week. I will need to cultivate the old Christian discipline of watching.

I'm taking more than a full load, six courses instead of the usual four, because two of them are prerequisite courses I'd like to get out of the way. I'm paying the price for goofing off my freshman year in college 33 years ago, when I took my only English Comp course and did not do well enough to avoid taking a basic writing course here at Southern. I suppose, since I took many writing-intensive courses, including English Literature, subsequent to that, with As, I could appeal that decision. But, I have read far too much poor writing over the years to think that anyone is above taking a remedial course.

I am also taking Elementary Greek, again. This is a refresher. I've had both Classical and Koine Greek in the past, but it's been so long that I don't think I could pass a placement test. I haven't thought about a Greek verb conjugation or noun declension in many years though I've used my Greek New Testament regularly, both devotionally and in preparing to teach. I've bought a number of supplemental books to make the course more interesting.

Those are my two prerequisites. I'm also taking Early Church History, Systematic Theology I, Old Testament Theology, and Personal Spiritual Disciplines. We have the choice of Grudem's text or Erickson's for Systematics. I've read through Grudem's a couple times on my own. I plan to reread it as part of this course, but I'm going to read Erickson's, too, to get a different perspective.

Of all my assignments, I am most interested in the position paper I will have to write for Systematics. We have our choice of several topics in the doctrine of scripture and the doctrine of God. We need to present, succinctly, alternate positions, on the doctrine, state our own position, and argue for it. I have already settled on my topic: God's relation to time. Does God exist within time; that is, is he everlasting? Or, does God exist outside of time; is he eternal? If he does not exist within time, how can he have meaningful, personal relations with his creation? I intend to study Paul Helm's book very closely, as well as Craig's and Hasker's.

It will be interesting to see how this semester unfolds ...

Name Change?

One of the things that stood out in today's New York Times article about Joe Wilson/Valerie Plame is that the article refers to her as Valerie Wilson throughout. I've run a google search to check whether they've ever done this before. As best I can tell, they haven't; they've referred to her consistently as Valerie Plame. Why the switch?

Could it be that they are trying to add credibility to their story that a State Department memo, rather than journalists, was the source of Rove's information? The blatantly obvious flaw in their previous story was that said State Department memo referred to her as Valerie Wilson, a name no one involved in this case has ever used to refer to her. How could Rove have learned the woman's name from this State Department memo, if the name he "outted" was Plame and the memo never uses that name?