Archive for October, 2005
The Halloween edition of the Carnival of Music is up at the Ministry. Yours truly even gets a mention, but only because Nazis are involved. Go check it out.
UPDATE: Check out the new and improved Murdoc’s MilSearch here.
I’ve set up a Rollyo search for military stuff. I’ve been waiting for their “add your search to your website” tool to be completed. It is, so here it is:
Rollyo allows you to specify a group of sites to include in your search. I’ve currenlty included the following sites in my list:
airbornecombatengineer.typepad.com
www.windsofchange.net
www.defensetech.org
www.intel-dump.com
www.armytimes.com
www.defenseindustrydaily.com
www.murdoconline.net
www.defensereview.com
So when searching for good stuff on military equipment, give this a try. (You have to select ‘Murdoc’s Military Search’ from the drop-down.)
Also, up to 25 sites can be included in the search list, so there’s room for more. Pass on your suggestions. I’m going more for military hardware than for general military news or politics.
Give it a try and let me know if this is any good. I’ll be adding it to the sidebar shortly.
Witchcraft tax-break is no hocus pocus
Under Dutch court’s spell witches can write off schooling costs
This boggles the mind.
You very likely saw this image recently during the brouhaha about the president of Iran stating that he wanted to see Israel “wiped off the map”:
Notice the poster on the podium? Here it is in full:
Hmm. Who is that down there, already broken by the time Israel begins the death plunge?
Oh. It’s us. How charming.
I’m wondering why this isn’t getting more exposure.
See Regime Change Iran for much, much more. Via Dean Esmay. I’ve long been undecided about whether Saudi Arabia or Iran was going to be a bigger problem in the long run.
As mentioned in last Friday’s Linkzookery, Bill Roggio of the Fourth Rail is going to be spending some time in Iraq soon. He’s asking for a few buck to support his efforts, as he needs additional insurance and is taking an unpaid leave from work to do this. I’ll certainly be keeping tabs on his reports and pointing them out here.
Bill’s coverage of the Anbar province operations have been invaluable, and I’m asking MO readers to consider making a donation. Five or ten bucks can make all the difference in the world when added to a lot of other five or ten dollar donations. Murdoc has given a bit, and he wants you to do the same. Please give it a thought.
Sick and tired of ill-informed reporting and slanted analysis? Here’s your chance to help make a real difference. The view from the front is going to well worth it.
Body hanging from tree mistaken for Halloween decoration
CNN:
FREDERICA, Delaware (AP) — The apparent suicide of a woman found hanging from a tree went unreported for hours because passers-by thought the body was a Halloween decoration, authorities said.The 42-year-old woman used rope to hang herself across the street from some homes on a moderately busy road late Tuesday or early Wednesday, state police said.
Is this for real? Seriously, don’t we get a story like this every year? Am I imagining it?
I meant to point this out over the weekend. It’s a satire by Rand Simberg on how today’s media might have noted the passing of the 250,000 dead American soldiers milestone during WW2. I thought it went quite well with the Midway comparison that I noted earlier in the week.
I’m a bit partial to WW2 comparisons myself, as longtime readers will no doubt know. And I knew that if I pointed Simberg’s piece out someone would immediately jump up and whine “but Iraq isn’t World War Two!”. In fact, I’m almost surprised that no one complained that the Midway comparison wasn’t honest because the Iraqis don’t have any aircraft carriers or something. I planned to address this fairly obvious “gotcha!”, mostly by pointing out that it’s not the war that’s being compared but the coverage. In the end, I just didn’t have the patience to explain the exact same things to the exact same people yet again, so I decided to skip it for the time being.
Anyway, Glenn Reynolds noted the post on CNN over the weekend, and Roger Simon (not the blogger) shook his head:
I just don’t find much comparison between World War II, in which we were fighting predatory fascism that was trying to take over the globe, and invading Iraq for reasons that the administration now admits were false.
Never mind that he seems to be repeating the WMD myth. (Despite the use of the plural “reasons” instead of the singular “reason”…better work on that, Mr. Simon) He totally misses the point.
Even if we ignore the lazy attempt to cling to the WMD myth and the fact that what Mr. Reynolds said went totally over his head, we still have some issues with Mr. Simon’s point, summed up neatly by Simberg in his follow-up post:
“…predatory fascism that was trying to take over the globe…”I guess he’s never bothered to read any statements of intent from Al Qaeda.
Which part does he think is untrue of the enemy? That they aren’t fascists? Well, admittedly, the term has lost much of its currency from overuse by much of the left to be applied to everyone who disagrees with them on almost any conceivable subject, so let’s call it totalitarianism instead (a term that I would hope that Mr. Simon would agree also applies to our enemies in the second world war). If that word can’t be applied to people who want to run every aspect of everyone’s daily existence, will brook no dissent, and have no apparent value for human life, as the Jihadis objectively do, then to whom does it apply? And even if you want to imagine that the “secular” Saddam didn’t support the “terrorists” (one would have to disregard the Salman Pak training camp and the bounties offered for attacks on the Israelis to buy that one), he was as totalitarian (and fascist) as they come.
The comments section of the post has a lot of good stuff, as well.
US House Votes To Allow NASA To Buy More Soyuz Taxi Flights
Because shameful times require shameful measures.
A reader tipped me off to this: The Snark – the meanest VTOL UAV on the planet
Good stuff:
Constructed mainly of Carbon Fibre and Kevlar, the Snark is light and fast (280 km/h), quiet (special rotor blades make it extremely quiet ), virtually invisible to radar or infrared detection (it recycles its exhaust gases and emits little heat) and can carry a payload of 680kg, offering the ability to pack both massive firepower (enough to sink a ship) and surveillance equipment (such as high res infrared cameras with a magnification of 7500). But wait, there’s more, and this is the clincher. The Snark is the first UAV that runs on diesel fuel, which means it can be easily integrated into any military force — current UAVs require their own special fuel supply to be transported with them whereas the entire US Army plans to run on a single one fuel – diesel. Last and probably most importantly, the Snark can stay airborne for 24 hours at a time, offering an unprecedented loiter time for a machine of this capability.
I’d write more on this, but I’m going to take the lazy way out and point you to Buckethead at the Ministry of Minor Perfidy whose got a great post up on this nifty bird and what the future may hold.
I freely and readily admit to being at a loss over the Plame thing. Scooter Libby has been indicted, but as far as I can tell, it’s only over things he said and did during the investigation, not for any wrongdoing related directly to the disclosure of Valerie Plame’s status as a secret agent for the CIA. (If I’m wrong, please correct me…I make no claims to being anything approaching knowledgeable about legal procedures and the terminology associated with them.)
The media remains hopeful that Karl Rove and/or other will still be indicted, a hope that made my local newspaper’s front page top row all the way across the page. But no bias, mister. No sirree.
Anyway, so far we’ve got a senior aide to the VP indicted. But no one has been charged with anything directly related to the leaking of Plame’s ID or even with doing it as retaliation against her husband Joseph Wilson. Which was the whole point.
Don’t get me wrong. Not only do I think that the charges against ‘Scooter’ Libby are serious and that he should be punished appropriately if found guilty, but I’m skeptical that his missteps and misdeeds are all the dirt that’s to be found in the administration’s laundry here. Libby resigned immediately, which is good. I believe that this counts as “out of the administration”, though others doubtlessly disagree.
Still, the fact that two years and millions of dollars have not produced more than this is more than a little telling. While not giving anyone a free pass, more than two years of breathless headlines and countless calls for Rove’s head (and even Cheney’s resignation) seem a little silly today.
At Mass this morning, our priest compared today’s rants by the opposing political parties to the rants during the Clinton/Lewinsky affair, and his point was that when the shoes were on the other feet, the positions were different. As today’s subject at church was hypocrisy, this is a valid point and is something that should trouble people a lot more than it apparently does.
(As a side note, after our priest outlined the various positions held at various times by the various political parties, he asked what that made the politicians. A lot in the congregation said “CROOKS!”, even though the answer the priest was looking for was “hypocrites”. No argument here.)
But I’d like MO’s readers to recall the careful eye the media kept on that witch-hunter Ken Starr during his investigation, including the time and dollars spent. I’ve not been following the Plame thing for some time, but I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a similar story about Special Investigator Patrick Fitzgerald. I’m sure that some mention has been made, generally in Right-leaning outlets. And I don’t know how the dollar amounts compare.
A bigger difference, though, is the lucky recipient of the indictment. If the lone winner in the last administration had been Al Gore’s senior adviser, it wouldn’t have mattered enough to enough people to make it worthy of mention in this morning’s homily in church. Even if he had been convicted.
At this point, I don’t find this story any more interesting than I did a week ago. Until more information is available, there doesn’t seem to be much point in debating it. That hasn’t stopped anyone so far, though.
