General Augusto Pinochet, who escaped earthly justice on December 10, was detained in London in 1999 awaiting a ruling by a British court on whether he would be extradited to Spain on a Spanish judge’s warrant to face charges of crimes against humanity committed during his rule in Chile from 1973 to 1990. “I tell you how I feel,” he told a London journalist at the time. “I would like to be remembered as a man who served his country, who served Chile throughout his entire life on this earth. And what he did was always done thinking about the welfare of Chile.”
P.W. Botha, former president of South Africa died November 1. He was a man who had vigorously defended the apartheid system, which led to the jailing of tens of thousands of people. He never repented or apologized for his actions, and resisted attempts to make him appear before the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. At one point he declared: “I am not going to repent. I am not going to ask for forgiveness. What I did, I did for my country.”
As Pol Pot lay on his death bed in 1997, he was interviewed by a journalist, who later wrote: “Asked whether he wants to apologize for the suffering he caused, he looks genuinely confused, has the interpreter repeat the question, and answers ‘No.’…‘I want you to know that everything I did, I did for my country.’”
“In these three decades I have been actuated solely by love and loyalty to my people in all my thoughts, acts, and life.” Adolf Hitler, “Last Will and Testament,” written in his bunker in his final hours, April 29, 1945.
When the Associated Press reported that 6 Iraqis had been burned to death in sectarian violence, Michelle Malkin and the right wing bloggers went on the offensive against the AP. Their main complaint was that the report of immolation was based on a single source, identified as police captain Jamil Hussein, who couldn’t be tracked down for confirmation.
So, former CNN chief Eason Jordan invited Michelle Malkin to come to Iraq and investigate the story for herself. Miraculously, within hours of the challenge, a Pajamas Media blogger found the source. Turns out he’s Jamail Hussein, not Jamil Hussein.
* * *
Imagine that, as soon as Michelle is asked to put up or shut up, one of her colleagues solves the mystery. I sure hope Michelle Malkin has a nice Christmas present picked out for Danziger.
More evidence on whether Powell is a liar, idiot, or lying idiot
UPDATE: Videos here. Some of the sound is a little unclear, so hopefully there will be transcripts soon.
• • •
You may recall Colin Powell saying this during his U.N. speech:
Iraq’s record on chemical weapons is replete with lies. It took years for Iraq to finally admit that it had produced four tons of the deadly nerve agent, VX. A single drop of VX on the skin will kill in minutes. Four tons.
The admission only came out after inspectors collected documentation as a result of the defection of Hussein Kamal, Saddam Hussein’s late son-in-law.
This was true. However, there’s one little thing Powell left out: when Hussein Kamel defected in 1995, he also said ALL IRAQ’S UNDECLARED WMD HAD BEEN SECRETLY DESTROYED IN 1991. In other words, Iraq had been lying about what it had done in the past, not what it possessed in the present.
Of course, to know this you had to have access to supersecret sources of information. For instance, CNN:
SADLER: Can you state here and now — does Iraq still to this day hold weapons of mass destruction?
KAMEL: No. Iraq does not possess any weapons of mass destruction. I am being completely honest about this.
All chemical weapons were destroyed. I ordered destruction of all chemical weapons. All weapons - biological, chemical, missiles, nuclear were destroyed.
This morning Sam Husseini caught Colin Powell as he was leaving an appearance on Face the Nation and asked him whether he was aware of this when he spoke at the U.N. Powell said he wasn’t; in other words, he declared that he didn’t know the most basic information about what he was saying, and apparently doesn’t feel any responsibility for knowing it.
Check back later today for the video and transcript.
I believe Dennis Perrin may possess the world’s greatest YouTube skillz. If you like Monty Python arcana, be sure not to miss these videos he dug up of Terry Jones, Michael Palin and Graham Chapman appearing with Tom Snyder on “Tomorrow” in 1979 to promote Life of Brian. (You’ll have to scroll down past some cruel comments about James Woolsey and friends.)
The Government’s case for going to war in Iraq has been torn apart by the publication of previously suppressed evidence that Tony Blair lied over Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.
A devastating attack on Mr Blair’s justification for military action by Carne Ross, Britain’s key negotiator at the UN, has been kept under wraps until now because he was threatened with being charged with breaching the Official Secrets Act.
I was First Secretary in the UK Mission to the United Nations in New York from December 1997 until June 2002. I was responsible for Iraq policy in the mission, including policy on sanctions, weapons inspections and liaison with UNSCOM and later UNMOVIC…
I read the available UK and US intelligence on Iraq every working day for the four and a half years of my posting…
During my posting, at no time did HMG assess that Iraq’s WMD (or any other capability) posed a threat to the UK or its interests. On the contrary, it was the commonly-held view among the officials dealing with Iraq that any threat had been effectively contained. I remember on several occasions the UK team stating this view in terms during our discussions with the US (who agreed). (At the same time, we would frequently argue, when the US raised the subject, that “regime change” was inadvisable, primarily on the grounds that Iraq would collapse into chaos.)
Any assessment of threat has to include both capabilities and intent. Iraq’s capabilities in WMD were moot: many of the UN’s weapons inspectors (who, contrary to popular depiction, were impressive and professional) would tell me that they believed Iraq had no significant materiel. With the exception of some unaccounted-for Scud missiles, there was no intelligence evidence of significant holdings of CW, BW or nuclear material.
We need more comparisons of Iraqis to American Indians
This, by James Woolsey in the recent Vanity Fair article about the chastened neocons, is a good start:
[Woolsey draws a] historical parallel, to the U.S. campaigns against Native Americans in the 19th century, to make another point: that the absence of Iraqi auxiliaries deprived coalition soldiers of invaluable local intelligence. “Without the trained Iraqis, it was like the Seventh Cavalry going into the heart of Apache country in Arizona in the 1870s with no scouts. No Apache scouts. I mean, hello?”
But we need much more where this came from. The lack of this is, I think, what has caused so much ill-will towards us among Iraqis. Only when they hear the United States constantly comparing them to Native Americans will they understand how truly glorious the future we have planned for them is.
Since repeating yourself seems to be the key to success, recent events have prompted me to bring back the beloved character, Gipper the Talking Points Duck (click to enlarge) :
Yes, that’s based on an actual cartoon. The “write your own joke” gag is also from here and here.
Speaking of Mr. “Conservative and with a duck“, why is it that so many conservative humorists’ impressions of liberalism are completely stuck in the mid-90’s (at best)? Sure, they mention more recent figures like Howard Dean, but conservative hacks like Tinsley are always dating themselves with endless references to Ted Kennedy’s drinking, Bill Clinton’s infidelity, and Barbara Streisand. It’s not like lefties are still telling jokes about Ollie North, Jimmy Swaggart, and Ross Perot. As Jack Chick says, HAW HAW HAW.
My guess is that for conservatives like Tinsley, whose worldview revolves around the idea that mass media is intrinsically immoral and/or politically-biased, their shunning of the society they’re commenting on makes their decent into cultural illiteracy inevitable. In a fair world, they’d be treated like the disgruntled, out-of-touch loons that they are, but in the interest of “balance”, their work is promoted to the same level as people who know what the hell they’re talking about. I can’t help but think that if this sort of thing were happening in any other field, it would launch a thousand self-righteous lectures from the right about “reverse affirmative action” or something equally silly.
Hoosier Edward Bruce Tinsley, creator of the conservative comic strip Mallard Fillmore, was arrested in Columbus Dec. 4 and charged with operating a vehicle under the influence — his second alcohol-related arrest in less that four months, according to the Bartholomew County Sheriff’s Department.
Tinsley, 48, who lives in Columbus, had a blood-alcohol level of 0.14 — almost twice the level at which an Indiana driver is considered intoxicated. He posted $755 bond.
On Aug. 26, Tinsley was arrested for public intoxication, according to the sheriff’s department.
Recovering from a weekend immersed in the indignities of air travel. At some point along the trip, I was reminded of an incident from a few years back, when we had to fly from New York to California for a wedding. My wife was eight months pregnant at the time, and on the return trip, I was begging the staffer at the Jet Blue counter to release a bulkhead seat for her. They weren’t assigned to other passengers yet, the airline was simply holding them back until the last minute, for reasons that I’m sure made sense to someone.
The young woman’s response: “Sir, pregnancy isn’t a medical condition — it’s a voluntary condition.” And she refused to release the seat.
Always wanted a chance to say: thanks for that, Jet Blue!
Dennis Perrin examines the near-simultaneous passing of Augusto Pinochet and Jeane Kirkpatrick, here.
I’d forgotten this Jeane Kirkpatrick quote about the Maryknoll nuns raped and murdered by the Salvadoran National Guard in 1980:
“The nuns were not just nuns, they were political activists, and we should be very clear about that.”
EVEN BETTER: During the eighties the U.S. encouraged Chilean arms manufacturers to help arm Saddam Hussein. This effort was spearheaded by a man now forgotten by history named Robert Gates.
