Meg Whitman Takes Lead in California Gubernatorial Race!

I have no doubt Whitman's got the primary wrapped up, but now she's ahead of Democrat Jerry Brown as well. If this Chamber of Commerce advertisement is any clue, it's gonna be a rough road ahead for "Governor Moonbeam":

And see LAT, "Meg Whitman's deep pockets put her ahead of Jerry Brown."

Protests Topple Kyrgyzstan Government!

Reports are still tentative, but the government of President Kurmanbek Bakiev in Kyrgyzstan may be done. At CNN, "Protests Topple Kyrgyzstan's President, Opposition Claims."

And at ABC News, "Kyrgyzstan: Coup in a U.S.-Allied Country? Key Ally in Afghanistan War May Have Been Overthrown by Opposition Protestors":

Protests in Kyrgyzstan today were massive and frenzied. By the end of day, some reports said they had brought down the government of a crucially important U.S. ally.

The United States maintains an air base in Kyrgyzstan that is a key supply point for the war in nearby Afghanistan. President Obama's support for the now-ousted government long has angered the opposition.

This morning, when thousands of opposition protestors attacked the president of Kyrgyzstan's office, police used live ammunition to repel them. Hospitals filled quickly with the dead and wounded.

"Security forces were shooting with submachine guns," said one wounded protester being carried away in a stretcher. "Why are they shooting at the people?"

Protesters were armed as well, and they injured and killed several police officers. Some protestors even commandeered police vehicles.

"There will be blood for blood," a protestor vowed.

Tensions have been growing in Kyrgyzstan over what opposition supporters called increasingly repressive government policies. Arrests of opposition leaders overnight -- plus a 200 percent increase in utility prices -- sparked a violent backlash.

By this afternoon, the opposition had taken over television stations and began demanding that President Kurmanbek Bakiyev step down. He reportedly fled the capital in his jet tonight.

Kyrgyzstan, a mountainous country of five million people in Central Asia, is one of the poorest former Soviet republics, and has long been plagued by corruption and political division.

The United States has a "transit center" located at Manas International Airport in Kyrgyzstan, about 19 miles northwest of the capital of Bishkek. It is a major hub for the transit of personnel and equipment into Afghanistan. There are about 1,100 U.S., French and Spanish personnel located at the facility, with the overwhelming majority of them being American.

American flights to Kyrgyzstan have been rerouted.

Interesting story ... and will update ...

Why Capitalism Wins

From Doc Zero:

Socialism always seems to have a marketing advantage over capitalism. This is not surprising, because socialism is a deeply romantic notion: a dangerously seductive dream of prosperity as a function of justice, where the wise redistribute the profits of the wicked to care for the needy. Socialism’s promises are so alluring that questions about its poor performance are dismissed as rude. It is a childish philosophy, and like any errant child, it receives a limitless supply of forgiveness and second chances.

Capitalism rarely enjoys such wonderful advertising. To the academic, it seems vulgar, while the politician flatters his constituents by promising they can rise above crass materialism… by placing material concerns in the hands of politicians. In truth, capitalism is the chisel free people use to carve their dreams from the stone of history. Without it, we are “free” only to beg for the bounty of the State, and complain when it fails to deliver. Freedom is only a theory, when it lacks a practical means of expression. Freedom of speech without property leaves us doodling in the sand, instead of carving our will into stone.

We should be more forceful in declaring our love for capitalism. It should be a mature love, born of respect for its power and virtue, not a starry-eyed romance. For example, we should be thankful that capitalism is merciless. That might seem like a strange thing to celebrate, but it’s the reason we haven’t been subsidizing buggy-whip and vacuum tube production for decades. Left to its own devices, the free market doesn’t waste energy propping up the production of unwanted goods for sentimental reasons… or because the manufacturers of those goods are politically powerful enough to extract subsidies from the public.

We should also be grateful that capitalism is heartless. Sentimentality is expensive, especially when other people are taxed to pay for it. The lawful governance of a vast nation requires cold logic, and iron obedience to Constitutional discipline. The unsustainable programs bleeding us into fiscal ruin were sold to voters with emotional appeals. The architects of the entitlement state do not use children as props because they want you to think carefully about their proposals.

Emotion is a terrible basis for allocating resources. The essential tool for addressing disaster and poverty is wealth, which is created by transactions between citizens. Money is the tool that makes our time valuable to one another. A rich nation can afford to provide for the unfortunate, and develop goods that make everyone’s life better. The “heartless” efficiency of capitalism is the best way to coordinate our skills and resources, producing the fountain of value that nourishes us all.

RTWT.

ObamaCare Confusion

From McClatchy, of all places, "Health care overhaul spawns mass confusion for public" (via Memeorandum):

Two weeks after President Barack Obama signed the big health care overhaul into law, Americans are struggling to understand how — and when — the sweeping measure will affect them.

Questions reflecting confusion have flooded insurance companies, doctors' offices, human resources departments and business groups.

"They're saying, 'Where do we get the free Obama care, and how do I sign up for that?' " said Carrie McLean, a licensed agent for eHealthInsurance.com. The California-based company sells coverage from 185 health insurance carriers in 50 states.

McLean said the call center had been inundated by uninsured consumers who were hoping that the overhaul would translate into instant, affordable coverage. That widespread misconception may have originated in part from distorted rhetoric about the legislation bubbling up from the hyper-partisan debate about it in Washington and some media outlets, such as when opponents denounced it as socialism.

Both IMAGE and VIDEO via iOWNTHEWORLD.

BONUS! At USA Today, "Upper-income people would lose tax cuts in Obama plan."

What, No Racists? CNN Loves the Tea Parties! -- UPDATED!!

Added: Dave in Boca, in the comments, reminds us that the Capitol Hill "racial slurs" and "spitting" were a hoax.

*******

How about some ratings boosters!

At Michelle Malkin, "Desperate CNN: Hey, those Tea Party nuts aren’t so bad after all. Please, please tune in!"

She got this in the mail:

Hi there,

I thought this might be an interesting post for you– a behind-the-scenes piece about the Tea Party and how the stereotypes don’t tell the full story. Let me know if you need anything else!

Reporter’s notebook: What really happens at Tea Party rallies ...

And check this out from the piece:

During the health care debate last month, opponents shouted racial slurs at civil rights icon Georgia Rep. John Lewis and one person spit on Missouri Rep. Emanuel Cleaver. The incidents made national headlines, and they provided Tea Party opponents with fodder to question the movement.

But here's what you don't often see in the coverage of Tea Party rallies: Patriotic signs professing a love for country; mothers and fathers with their children; African-Americans proudly participating; and senior citizens bopping to a hip-hop rapper.

Last week, I saw all of this during a five-city Western swing as the Tea Party Express national tour made its way across the country. CNN was along for the ride, and I was charged with planning CNN's coverage for five stops in two states: St. George, Provo and Salt Lake City, Utah; and Grand Junction and Denver, Colorado.

The piece notes that there were some signs black might find offensive, but the writer, Shannon Travis is black, so his voice is reassuring in this conclusion:

... it's important that with a newsworthy, growing phenomenon like the Tea Party movement, viewers and readers fully understand what they see and what they don't.

And Doug Powers weighs in, "CNN Reporter Totally Ruining the Left’s ‘Racist, Hateful, Vitriolic Tea Party’ Meme":

Proof-positive that once a movement gets large enough, it becomes harder for people ignore the truth, and kudos to Shannon Travis for this honest report — not that Keith Olbermann will bother to read it because it goes against his pre-deranged notions.

More at Memeorandum. And Michelle's got the clip from last year of former CNN hack Susan Roesgen.

WikiLeaks Update: How the Leftist Media Massacres Truth and Helps America's Enemies

Doug Ross and Rusty Shackleford are my heroes.

In just two separate blog posts, Doug and Rusty have put the left's media-industrial-complext to brutal shame, they've exposed for all to see the alliance between America's MSM and the enemies of freedom across the globe.

Spend a couple of minutes with Doug's post, "Cleverly-Eited Video Becomes Anti-Military Infomercial for World's Dumbest Blogger and His Traditional Posse of Useful Idiots." The evidence is right before your eyes. No murder. Nothing to cover up. (The "dumbest blogger" is Matthew Yglesias, but he's joined by Glenn Greenwald as perfect representatives of the mindless anti-Americanism that's encroaching deeper into what were once great national institutions.) And see also Rusty Shackleford's post, "Case Closed: Weapons Clearly Seen on Video of Reuters Reporters Killed in Iraq." Plus, in a follow up, "MSM Continues False Reporting of Reuters 'Murder' in Iraq," Rusty explains simply:

My biggest problem with this whole story is that it's a story at all. It took me no more than two minutes of watching Wiki Leak's video to realize that not only was their nothing to the accusations, but also that the video did exactly the opposite of what the Left Wing conspiracy theorists over at Wiki Leak claimed it did: fully exonerated those involved, proved that the investigation into the matter was spot on, and that there was no "cover up" as they alleged.

Seriously, this whole thing didn't even deserve a "debunking" story. The evidence that the US soldiers acted well within the rules of engagement and that Reuters stringers were embedded with enemy combatants is that overwhelming.

But we have to debunk, because with the exception of Fox News I've yet to yet a MSM report that's genuinely critical of WikiLeaks' jihad against America and our military in Iraq. See Fox News, the single source pushing back, "Military Raises Questions About Credibility of Leaked Iraq Shooting Video":

WikiLeaks, the self-proclaimed "whistle-blowing" investigative Web site, released a classified military video Monday that it says shows the "indiscriminate slaying" of innocent Iraqis. Two days later, questions linger about just how much of the story WikiLeaks decided to tell.

At a press conference in Washington, D.C., WikiLeaks accused U.S. soldiers of killing 25 civilians, including two Reuters journalists, during a July 12, 2007, attack in New Baghdad. The Web site titled the video "Collateral Murder," and said the killings represented "another day at the office" for the U.S. Army.

The military has always maintained the attacks near Baghdad were justified, saying investigations conducted after the incident showed 11 people were killed during a "continuation of hostile activity." The military also admits two misidentified Reuters cameramen were among the dead.

WikiLeaks said on Monday the video taken from an Army helicopter shows the men were walking through a courtyard and did nothing to provoke the attack. Their representatives said when the military mistook cameras for weapons, U.S. personnel killed everyone in sight and have attempted to cover up the murders ever since.

The problem, according to many who have viewed the video, is that WikiLeaks appears to have done selective editing that tells only half the story. For instance, the Web site takes special care to slow down the video and identify the two photographers and the cameras they are carrying.

All I can say is DAMN! It's about time someone's shifting the MSM meme. (And RTWT at the link.)

And I'm surprised at this, but in an otherwise fawning report, "Inside WikiLeaks’ Leak Factory," the far-left Mother Jones dishes some pretty damaging dirt. Apparently Julian Assange lists bigshot names as members of WikiLeaks' "advisory board," but then Noam Chomsky, who's cited as a member, says he's never heard of the joint. And then there's this:

Digital security expert Ben Laurie laughs when I ask why he's named on the site. "WikiLeaks allegedly has an advisory board, and allegedly I'm a member of it," he says. "I don't know who runs it. One of the things I've tried to avoid is knowing what's going on there, because that's probably safest for all concerned" ....

John Young, founder of the pioneering whistleblower site, Cryptome.org, is skeptical. Assange reverently describes Cryptome as WikiLeaks' "spiritual godfather." But Young claims he was conned into registering the WikiLeaks domain when Assange's team first launched (the site is no longer under his name). He fought back by leaking his correspondence with WikiLeaks. "WikiLeaks is a fraud," he wrote to Assange's list, hinting that the new site was a CIA data mining operation. "Fuck your cute hustle and disinformation campaign against legitimate dissent. Same old shit, working for the enemy."

Amazing that a far-left journal of opinion provides more balance than a typical report at the New York Times, although they could have gone a lot further by linking Jawa Report and others who're uncovering the scam. Still, Julian Assange, WikiLeaks' founder, left an angry comment at the thread there:

I am Julian Assange, and the subject of this article, which is full of errors and was not shown to me, even in part, prior to publication.

The article is full of extremely irritating tabloid insinuations of the type that might be expected from a poor quality magazine which is unsurprising, since the content is recycled from an old article that even Wired refused to publish.

My interview with the author was 12 months ago. I have not spoken to him since.

There plenty of gutter journalism insituations [sic], some examples:

1. The article very irritatingly goes for the "fear" angle, but contains not a single example of any of our publications causing harm related to their content. Not a single example! The whole thesis is pure invention. There is a reason no example was given. No one knows of any case where this has occurred and we have a 4 year publishing record.

2. The article, despite the insituations [sic], does not mention a single example of us ever having released a misattributed document. There is a reason no example was given. It has, as far as can be determined, never happened. Compare our record unblemished record to, say, the New York Times.

3. The article outrageously tries to insinuate that the tragic death of two very public human rights lawyers in Nairobi is related to some failing of WikiLeaks. The insinuation deplorable and it is false. The men were not confidential sources. They were public sources and very brave ones at that.

4. The article states that I believe all leaks are good. I have never stated this. The claim is an idiotic and false.

There are many others, but Mother Jones can do its own damn research.

Assange protests too much:

(Image Source.)

The media's toally enabling WikiLeaks' domestic and global propaganda efforts. Below, the first video shows hack Press Secretary Robert Gibbs responding to questions on the non-murders and non-cover up, and second is Al Jazeera's video showing family members of the Reuters journalists, where one of the sons pledges to "take up the camera" in his father's name (and thus embed with terrorists).

Also, Atlantic does a roundup, but excludes sources debunking the murder/cover-up myth: "The Focus Falls on WikiLeaks." And I e-mailed leftist gossip rag Gawker after seeing this story, which offers the appearance of objectivity but omits the key details as well: "Wikileaks Video Demonstrates Conclusively That Innocent People Get Killed in Wars." Haven't heard back yet ...

Finally, scum Glenn Greenwald continues his push for war crimes trials, "Follow-Up Points on the WikiLeaks Video." And communist Laura Flanders at AlterNet, "The Wikileaks Tape — How War Poisons the Soul."

Megyn Kelly Hammers Code Pink's Jodie Evans!

Meant to post this earlier, and still worth a look. I was very respectful of Jodie Evans when I met her. But she obviously doesn't share my values:

Video Bible: 'I Am Not Ashamed'

From "I Am Not Ashamed":

I'm not sure if video Genesis is my thing, although some folks could sure use more shame in this country.

CNN, NYT Boost WikiLeaks War Crimes Gambit, Downplay/Omit Key Evidence: MSM Joins Daily Kos, Neo-Communists in Renewed 'BushCo' Recriminations

I don't normally attack CNN as the "Communist News Network," but this time the epithet sticks. See, "Video Shows Deaths of Two Reuters Journalists in Iraq in 2007." The story went live at Noon today, but there's no mention of the fact-checking by right-bloggers such as Jawa Report. And note this passsage:

The U.S. investigation into the attack found that the helicopter gunship's crew mistook the journalists' cameras for weapons while seeking out insurgents who had been firing at American troops in the area. The fliers estimated they killed 12 to 15 Iraqis in the attack.

This is falsely reported. The insurgents were armed, which was seen clearly at Jawa Report and in the Pentagon's own internal intelligence memo as well. That document includes pictures from one of the Reuters photographers, which shows a U.S. Army humvee just down the road from the battle scene. Leftists claimed no on-the-ground contingents were in close vicinity, and left-wing media reports have refused to correct the initial disinformation:

Since all evidence shows the ROE were observed, the left plans to trump up war crimes on the basis of the attack on the rescue van (and this second strike was also completely within the ROE, as reported here earlier), and the alleged cover-up by the military. WikiLeaks posted this tweet today:

And here's Joan McCarter at Daily Kos, "The Fallout from Collateral Murder":

The killing of innocents is the collateral damage that is inevitable in war, and what makes a war of choice rather than necessity that much more immoral. That this was a war of choice creates even greater responsibility on the U.S. to be honest in how it conducts that war, and honest with the American people who are sending their sons and daughters to fight it.

There's also the practical fact that cover-ups are almost always far more damaging than the event they are meant to hide. In this case, because two of the innocents killed were connected with a media organization, it was inevitable that the truth would come out. But it's compounded when it sustains the myth that war is not hell and that the U.S. doesn't conduct war that way ....

Nothing about this war was done right by the Bush administration, from making the choice to go to war against a country that did not pose a threat to us, to creating a vast fabric of lies to justify that choice, to deciding to torture to back up those lies. These were dangerous, immoral, and extremely damaging decisions. That damage can't be undone, but it can be mitigated. The only way to do it, though, is with sunlight, even if that means looking backward.

The "looking backward" remark is a rebuke to President Obama, who pledged his administration to looking forward when pressed with demands for indictments of former Bush administration officials.

Note how the New Yorker has gotten into the act as well, "The WikiLeaks Video and the Rules of Engagement."

And scheduled for tomorrow's New York Times is this breathless report, which pooh-poohs evidence of armed insurgents with the Reuters photographers, "Iraq Video Brings Notice to a Web Site." The newspaper's screencap shows the targets taking fire, not the images of RPG toting combatants:

I'm also embedding additional videos, including more WikiLeaks propaganda, etc., to give an indication of how the press has sucked down the neo-communist party line without criticism. All of this at NYT, "Wikileaks Defends Release of Video Showing Killing of Journalists in Iraq. But see also, "Military Can't Find Its Copy of Iraq Killing Video":

Finally, here's more of the meme, from Stanley Kubrick, that radical leftists are spreading:

Topless (Post-Colonial?) Feminists: Now That's My Kind of Protest!

Geez, I've been covering the wrong protests!

At the Portland Press-Herald, "Marching for Fight to Bare Breasts, Women Faced With Sea of Cameras: The Picture-Taking Bothers the Event's Organizer, Who Says Partial Female Nudity Shouldn't Be Remarkable":

About two dozen women took a walk down Congress Street topless Saturday, attracting a large crowd as they tried to preach that partial female nudity is not worthy of attracting a crowd.

The point of the march was that a topless woman out in public should attract no more attention than a man walking around without a shirt on, said Ty MacDowell, 20, of Westbrook, who organized Saturday's event and promoted it on Facebook.

But as the event got under way in Longfellow Square, the marchers were soon outnumbered by scores of onlookers -- mostly young men eagerly snapping away with cameras and cell phones.

MacDowell said she was surprised by the turnout of those interested less in challenging societal convention than in seeing partially undressed women.

"I'm amazed," she said, and "enraged (at) the fact that there's a wall of men watching."

MacDowell said she understood that for women, going topless in public "is not socially acceptable yet, and obviously there's going to be a reaction to something that breaks the norm."

But, she said, the picture-taking was particularly upsetting.

Hey, wait a second? This lady's mad people looked? But she wanted people to look, and then turns around and says "that's upsetting"?

Boy, you just can't win with today's lefties!

(Or, as Rick at Wizbang concludes, "Ms. McDowell is an idiot.")

Also, interestingly, I heard back from radical feminist Charli Carpenter yesterday in my post on Alaina Podmorow, although post-colonialist Laura Sjoberg, riddled by her own preposition placement problems, snarked nevertheless:

... Charli Carpenter and I are, of course, not the same person, intellectually or personally; and that the 13-year-old kid American Power quotes could teach the blogger a fair amount about polite, respectful critique and perhaps even grammar).

Umm, I did kinda conflate Charli and Professor Sjoberg together, although while my blog-side manner may have been lacking, my grammar, well ... not so much.

EXIT QUESTION: Will Professor Sjoberg loosen up in response, or will our dowdy dumpling do a grammar-check once more?

RELATED: Are conservative women hotter than radical feminists? Robert Stacy McCain's on the case, "Stormy Daniels, GOP Porn Star."

Obama Is Not the Antichrist!

Well, geez, that's a relief.

From Newsweek, "Obama Is Not the Antichrist — And Nobody Really Thinks He Is."

I guess Harris Poll got a lousy survey sample, you know, unrepresentative and all that. See, "'Wingnuts' and President Obama."

I checked Harris' methodology, and the poll's "preselected." Not good. Besides, from what I gathered, the White House did without magical bloody Jesus eggs for official Easter festivities (although Obama nevertheless botched the online Easter address).

Image Credit: Serr8d.

Hubble IMAX in 3-D

Via Glenn Reynolds, at NYT, "Seeing What the Hubble Sees, in Imax and 3-D":

What goes through an astronaut’s head when things go wrong, and he is floating in space 350 miles above the Earth?

Six days into a mission last May to repair and rehabilitate the Hubble Space Telescope, Michael J. Massimino, an astronaut, robotics expert and honorary New York City fireman, was getting ready to rip a handrail off the side of the fabled telescope.

Beneath the handrail, behind a panel secured by 111 tiny screws, was a broken spectrograph needing electronic repair to go back to its job, which included inspecting faraway planets. Dr. Massimino had trained for years to do this on-orbit “brain surgery,” but first, having stripped a crucial bolt, he would have to resort to brute force.

Dr. Massimino’s thoughts, he recalled recently over lunch in New York, flew back to his boyhood and the day his Uncle Frank couldn’t get the oil filter off his car. At one point, his father ran across the street, came back with a giant screwdriver, and punched it through the filter to get leverage to pry it off. After yanking, and cursing, “Finally he got the thing to budge,” Dr. Massimino said. “That’s what I was thinking when I was yanking on the handle on the Hubble.”

He has been reliving that moment in talks and interviews for the last year. Now, the whole world can as well.

RTWT.

Case Closed on 'Collateral Murder' -- UPDATED!!

Jawa Report has the definitive entry, "Case Closed: Weapons Clearly Seen on Video of Reuters Reporters Killed in Iraq."

Click on the report right now (here). The piece features a dynamic vidcap demonstrating -- beyond a shadow of a doubt -- the insurgents' RPG capabilities. In addition, here are images from the unclassified Pentagon investigation. "AIF" designates "ANTI-IRAQ FORCES", i.e., insurgents:

And here are screencaps of key sections from the Pentagon's internal investigation ("AWT" designates "AERIAL WEAPONS TEAM", i.e., the U.S. Apache helicopter):

See, "Legal Review of AR15-6 Investigation..."

It's not as if the antiwar activists and their media enablers don't have this information. Jawa Report noted this buried passage from yesterday's NYT hit-piece:

Late Monday, the United States Central Command, which oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, released the redacted report on the case, which provided some more detail.

The report showed pictures of what it said were machine guns and grenades found near the bodies of those killed. It also stated that the Reuters employees “made no effort to visibly display their status as press or media representatives and their familiar behavior with, and close proximity to, the armed insurgents and their furtive attempts to photograph the coalition ground forces made them appear as hostile combatants to the Apaches that engaged them.”

The full story is here, "Video Shows U.S. Killing of Reuters Employees." Memeorandum posted the story last night with a bit less emotion-inducing headline. Now it's not the "photographer" -- who chose to embed with armed insurgents -- but the "Reuters employees," which implies a "civilian" massacre:

And that's just the beginning. Despite the availability of information to the contrary, media reaction has been entirely predicable. Here's Dylan Ratigan's episode from last night, featuring WikiLeaks' America-bashing Julian Assange and anti-American Glenn Greenwald. Talk about fair and balanced!

Assange decries the "moral corruption" of U.S. forces, and useful idiot Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer argues that American forces should have captured the insurgents captured rather than kill them (i.e., U.S. forces were to use "minimum force"). And Greenwald goes on to extrapolate that America's "imperial" interverntions are all about killing indigenous civilian populations, blah, blah. Only Brett McGurk of CFR, who spoke after Assange, possesses anything near an objective take on what happened.

Now, taking a look around the 'sphere, here's Greenwald's entry this morning, "Iraq Slaughter Not an Aberration." See what I mean? (And this despite rigorous empirical evidence showing that the norm of non-combatant immunity has been univerally adopted in the U.S. military, and that Iraqi civilian casualties have been historically low compared to previous U.S. wars.) And an update from Greenwald, "N.Y. Times, Weekly Standard Join in a Falsehood." Then Greenwald links approvingly to this, "Neo-Cons Defend Massacre of Iraqi Journalists, Children":

Bloodthirsty neo-cons who would defend barbecuing Arab babies on the White House lawn if they were told it was part of the “war on terror” are disgracefully scrambling to defend a shocking video released by Wikileaks which shows U.S. Apache helicopters massacring Iraqi journalists and children in Baghdad while laughing about it.

And while I almost forgot about him, Barrett Brown demonstrates utter fail while adding a catchy title, "Fascist U.S. Bloggers Come Late to Game, Announce Score":

The entire video is inconsistent with the military’s report. These Apaches aren’t responding as reinforcements to an ongoing firefight in which this particular spot has been identified as containing insurgents who have just fired off RPGs. None of these people had RPGs, for one thing.

Sorry, Barrett, don't pass go, don't collect $200. Better go back and visit Jawa a bit more.

Okay, what about Matthew Yglesias? It's not like we don't know which side he's on:

I watched this gruesome video yesterday of US military personnel in Iraq gunning down a group of people, including two Reuters employees, based on the notion that they’re carrying AK-47s and RPGs. I can’t see clearly enough to tell whether or not some of the men in the group are in fact armed, but it’s clear that one of the so-called RPGs is actually a camera. And it’s also clear that whether or not anyone in the group was carrying weapons, that possession of a firearm is not cause for summary execution either in Iraq or the United States. My understanding of the rules of engagement is that soldiers are not supposed to fire unless there’s a hostile act or a clear sign of hostile intent ...

The confusion or whatever about the weapons is bad enough, but the people on this recording don’t seem to have any idea what the rules of engagement they’re supposed to be operating under are, or else they don’t care.

Not only is Yglesias wrong about the armed insurgents and RPGs, he's lying as well. The video clip repeatedly shows communications between the AWT and ground forces, and no shots were fired without both proper identification and permissions from U.S. personnel in the immediate vacinity. And recall that Yglesias is an author of a book on the war? Hmm, you'd never know ...

And hatemaster Larisa Alexandrovna claims that Americans targeted Reuters journalists all along, "Would you put it past the likes of Dick Cheney to have a policy of getting rid of pesky journalists too near a big story?"

Marcy Wheeler plays up the civilian angle, "“Well, It’s Their Fault for Bringing Their Kids into a Battle” – Wikileaks Tape Shows Civilians Killed by US Troops."

And Crooks and Liars takes it from there, "Death, Lies and Videotape":

What truly bothers me is the absolute callousness of the conversation going on in the Apache helicopter. Beyond the 'fucking prick' and the 'bastards' comments, it's the laughter, particularly during the shooting as if it's all just a video game, cheering each other on as the wounded journalist crawls on the ground, willing him to reach for a ‘weapon’ so they can shoot him again, laughing when his body is run over by a military truck. The comment when the crew realized children have been wounded was shocking: ‘Well, it’s their own fault for bringing their kids to a battle.'

Of course, American forces are fighting a war, and, frankly their language is cleaner than construction guys I've worked with. Free Market Miltary responds:

I can see and understand some people’s comments ... that the Soldiers (Pilots) were a bit blood thirsty, callous, and a little to casual with humor in killing the insurgents. I think their wrong! Frankly, I’d never hold it against anyone in taking enjoyment out of their job. You might find that callous as well. Tough. If your living this 24/7 I doubt you would spend a year without laughing and having a good time. This is war, the thing video games are based upon and billions of dollars are spent for enjoyment.

Once again, these pilots did their job. They probably even saved American lives that day.

Also, I left the link to yesterday's AmPower report at Crooked Timber, but that didn't make folks too happy:

Americanmoralcretin, fuck off.

Wars of choice ARE criminal precisely because this kind of stuff is guaranteed to happen.

**********

UPDATE: Gateway Pundit links, "Confirmed: Media’s Military-Hating America-Bashing Allegations Proven False & Misleading (Video)." Added: The Rhetorican links!

**********

UPDATE II: Barret Brown has made a correction to his posts on Wikileaks, "WikiLeaks Editor Lies to Stephen Colbert, World; WikiLeaks Necessary Nonetheless."

Maxine Waters: Vanguard Revolutionary

Allahpundit ran a post the other day entitled, "Maxine Waters: We can’t hear legitimate tea-party concerns because they’re drowned out by the fringe."

That's a perfect summary of the Democrat congresswoman's appearance on MSNBC. Fox Nation has a brief unedited clip, "Waters: 'Outrageous' That GOP 'Waved American Flag' at Tea Party."

But check out the congresswoman "egging on" Bush-era antiwar communists at this clip. This is where we are in American politics, and bloggers are bringing it to you:

Leftist Hack David Weigel Premieres at Washington Post

I missed the announcement at Politico earlier, "WaPo Hires Weigel." Weigel worked previously at the Washington Independent, where he published a stream of leftist screeds against conservatives and the tea parties. For example, "‘N-Word’ Sign Dogs Would-Be Tea Party Leader" (on the totally repudiated Dave Robertson), and "Tea Partiers Want You to Remember the Days When the Left Was Crazy" (where Weigel's spews equivalence in comparing tea partiers to the "Bush = Hitler" protesters).

The guy's a hack.

Stephen Gutowski reports that WaPo is looking to hire more leftist bloggers in an effort to repeat their "success" in bringing radical Ezra Klein on board:

Yes, it seems that Post is so pleased with the success they've had in promoting Ezra Klein's heavy-handed liberalism that they want to duplicate it at any cost to their own credibility. While it's laughable to think that Washington Post print reporters don't have an absurd and unprofessional amount of latitude to reach conclusions, it is utterly unacceptable that they want to move even further in that direction.

Anyway, Weigel's blog has now launched, "Welcome to 'Right Now'."

Robert Stacy McCain once vouched for Weigel, telling me that he was a good man who got caught up in the exuberance of a Democratic resurgence. That premise will be tested throughout 2010, when Weigel will have plenty of opportunities to affirm his pleadings that he's just a misunderstood conservative.

PREVIOUSLY: "What's Up With David Weigel?"

HAT TIP: Glenn Reynolds.

CARTOON CREDIT: Eric Allie.

WikiLeaks 'Collateral Murder' is Left's Latest Attempt to Criminalize U.S. Wars

The story's at the BBC, "WikiLeaks Posts 'Killing' Video," and Guardian UK, "Wikileaks Reveals Video Showing U.S Air Crew Shooting Down Iraqi Civilians."

There are two versions, long at short, available at WikiLeaks' Twitter page, and there's a website as well, with links to "Collateral Murder." And Glenn Greenwald's orgasmic tweets are here, here, and here (for starters). Greenwald's been active in getting WikiLeaks public, for example, "The war on WikiLeaks and why it matters." MSNBC extremist-hack Dylan Ratigan also tweets, and the network has an item up already, "U.S. pilot seen firing on people in Iraq." And radical feminist Charli Carpenter has a post up entitled, "Precision Targeting at Work." (Via Memeorandum.) These folks, anti-Americans all, have long pushed a delegitimation campaign against the U.S. and American foreign policy.

The Guardian provides a synopsis of the news, and the short version is embedded:

The newly-released video of the Baghdad attacks was recorded on one of two Apache helicopters hunting for insurgents on 12 July 2007. Among the dead were a 22-year-old Reuters photographer, Namir Noor-Eldeen, and his driver, Saeed Chmagh, 40. The Pentagon blocked an attempt by Reuters to obtain the video through a freedom of information request. Wikileaks director Julian Assange said his organisation had to break through encryption by the military to view it.

In the recording, the helicopter crews can be heard discussing the scene on the street below. One American claims to have spotted six people with AK-47s and one with a rocket-propelled grenade. It is unclear if some of the men are armed but Noor-Eldeen can be seen with a camera. Chmagh is talking on his mobile phone ...

I'll first note that WikiLeaks online infrastructure is questionable. The Collateral Murder page barely loads, if at all, but WikiLeaks claims to be raising hundreds of thousands for the effort, so why not launch with enough servers to handle the load? Plus, Julian Assange, WikiLeaks' editor, is Australian, and a key activist in the global left's movement for international war-crimes trials against Bush administration civilian and military officials. In a piece at communist Alexander Cockburn's CounterPunch, "The Anti-Nuclear WANK Worm," Assange's bio reads:

Julian Assange is president of a NGO and Australia's most infamous former computer hacker. He was convicted of attacks on the US intelligence and publishing a magazine which inspired crimes against the Commonwealth.

That's him at this Al Jazeera broadcast, "Video of US attack in Iraq 'genuine'":

I've watched the "Collateral Murder" clip above. Seeing the video and listening to the combat audio, the crew in the Apache are engaging an insurgent contingent, and at the distance the transmissions identify the fighters as clealy armed with AK-47s and RPGs. There is no mention as to an accompanying civilian or journalists' detachment. It appear as a routine search-and-destroy aerial operation. The crew commander repeatedly calls to hold fire until "we see weapons." This is not indiscriminate fire. When an unmarked van rolls up the street near the fallen bodies, the commander radios, "trying to get permission to engage." A lot is being made of the two small girls who were injured in the fight and rushed to a local hospital (not a military hospital, and which is alleged to mean they'd deliberately get inferior care). At the end of the clip, the caption denounces not just this episode -- which shows civilian casualties as incident to an ongoing active combat engagement -- as dedicated "to all the victims of war whose fates remain unknown."

As I'm writing, checking Memeorandum, there's an entry up at hard-left MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow's blog, "Wikileaks posts combat video from Iraq showing civilian casualties."

This is going to be the lead story before the night's out, especially with the dinnertime news hour coming up right now on the East Coast. The story's being engaged by conservatives as well. See Ed Morrissey, "Video: Collateral murder, or the risks of war zones?":

In the video, starting at the 3:50 mark, one member of this group starts preparing what clearly looks like an RPG launcher, as well as some individuals with AK-47s. The launcher then reappears at the 4:06 mark as the man wielding it sets up a shot for down the street. In 2007 Baghdad, this would be a clear threat to US and Iraqi Army ground forces; in fact, it’s difficult to imagine any other purpose for an RPG launcher at that time and place. That’s exactly the kind of threat that US airborne forces were tasked to detect and destroy, which is why the gunships targeted and shot all of the members of the group.

More at the link and Memeorandum.

I'll have more on this when I get some information from military personal, although we do have rigorous political science research that provides context. U.S. policy on the rules of engagement were more comprehensive and effective in Iraq than at any time in the history of American wars. See, Colin H. Kahl, "In the Crossfire or the Crosshairs? Norms, Civilian Casualties, and U.S. Conduct in Iraq." Here's the abstract:

The belief that U.S. forces regularly violate the norm of noncombatant immunity (i.e., the notion that civilians should not be targeted or disproportionately harmed during hostilities) has been widely held since the outset of the Iraq War. Yet the evidence suggests that the U.S. military has done a better job of respecting noncombatant immunity in Iraq than is commonly thought. It also suggests that compliance has improved over time as the military has adjusted its behavior in response to real and perceived violations of the norm. This behavior is best explained by the internalization of noncombatant immunity within the U.S. military’s organizational culture, especially since the Vietnam War. Contemporary U.S. military culture is characterized by an "annihilation-restraint paradox": a commitment to the use of overwhelming but lawful force. The restraint portion of this paradox explains relatively high levels of U.S. adherence with the norm of noncombatant immunity in Iraq, while the tension between annihilation and restraint helps to account for instances of noncompliance and for why Iraqi civilian casualties from U.S. operations, although low by historical standards, have still probably been higher than was militarily necessary or inevitable.

And from the body of the article:

The number of documented fatalities attributable to U.S. forces or crossfire in Iraq is much lower than those for many other U.S. military campaigns of the last century where civilians were clearly targeted. During World War II, for example, U.S. and British forces engaged in strategic bombing against German and Japanese cities, killing more than 1 million noncombatants. In a single night of U.S. firebombing over Tokyo in 1945, at least 85,000 people, mostly civilians, were incinerated—nearly 21 times the total number of civilian deaths from U.S. air strikes in Iraq through the end of 2006 (according to IBC data), and 6–10 times the total number of Iraqi civilians killed by all U.S. ground and air forces or crossfire in the first three and one-half years of the war. Although some might argue that improvements in precision-guided munitions account for the majority of this historical difference, many of the noncombatant fatalities from bombing during World War II were the result of attacks aimed at destroying enemy morale, not incidental by-products of crude targeting and guidance technologies.

Perhaps the most telling comparisons, however, are to the U.S. wars in the Philippines and Vietnam, the two most significant foreign counterinsurgency campaigns in U.S. history. In the Philippines between 1899 and 1902, approximately 16,000 guerrillas were killed and at least 200,000 civilians perished (out of a total population of 7.4 million in 1900). U.S. forces engaged in the widespread destruction of crops, buildings, civilian property, and entire villages as forms of collective punishment against families and communities suspected of supporting insurgents. Hundreds of thousands of Filipino civilians were moved to concentration camps to separate them from guerrillas, and ablebodied men who dared to venture outside of these “protected zones” were assumed to be enemies and could be shot.

In Vietnam, the United States also fought in ways that put civilians directly in the crosshairs. Almost 750,000 North Vietnamese troops and Vietcong were killed during the war, and a conservative estimate of civilian deaths from violence in South Vietnam places the total at 522,000 (out of a total population of 16 million in 1966). U.S. troops fighting in Vietnam relied on massive firepower directed on occasion at targets in densely populated areas. U.S. forces established “free fire zones” in some areas, allowing anyone not wearing a South Vietnamese military uniform to be shot. The U.S. military used more than 29 times the tonnage of incendiary bombs in Vietnam as it did in World War II, and sprayed toxic defoliants on land in South Vietnam that was home to about 3 percent of the population. U.S. forces were also involved in many cases of outright murder and several incidents of mass killing. In the most notorious case, at My Lai on March 16, 1968, as many as 571 unarmed men, women, and children were massacred by a platoon of U.S. soldiers. Recently declassified records show abuses were documented in every U.S. Army division deployed to Vietnam.

The contrast between the current Iraq war and previous U.S. counterinsurgency campaigns is striking. Adjusted for population size and duration, civilian deaths in Iraq through the end of 2006 were 11–17 times lower than in the Philippines. Because available data for the Philippines do not separate casualties caused by U.S. forces, this estimate is based on all violent deaths in Iraq. This certainly underestimates the difference between the Philippines and Iraq because, in the former case, anecdotal evidence strongly suggests that U.S. troops were responsible for a much higher percentage of total deaths. In the case of Vietnam, extrapolations from available hospital records suggest that at least 177,480 South Vietnamese civilians were killed by U.S. bombing and shelling. Controlling for population and duration, Iraqi civilian fatalities ttributable to direct U.S. action and crossfire through the end of 2006 were 17–30 times lower than those from bombing and shelling alone in Vietnam. Without adjusting for population, the average monthly deaths are still 10–16 times lower than in Vietnam.

Outside the U.S. context, contemporary Russian counterinsurgency efforts in Chechnya offer an even starker contrast. In the two Chechen wars (1994–96 and 1999–present), the Russians used an extraordinary amount of indiscriminate firepower, including intensive artillery and aerial bombardment in dense urban settings. The lowest estimate of civilian deaths attributable to Russian actions through 2003 is 50,000 out of a total Chechen population of approximately 1 million (other estimates place the death toll for the two wars as high as 250,000). Even the most conservative estimate is 100–175 times the U.S.-caused toll in Iraq through 2006 (controlling for duration and population). Given the nature of the conflict, the number of civilians killed in Iraq, however awful, is not sufficient to suggest systematic U.S. noncompliance with the norm of noncombatant immunity. On the contrary, compared with conflicts where civilians were directly targeted, Iraqi casualty data provide some indirect evidence for U.S. adherence.

These findings will be meaningless to the anti-Americans of the neo-communist left and their enablers in the Democratic-media-complex. But keep an eye on those now pushing the meme of a wartime cover-up (compared to the objective analysis of international security specialists). You can see that this is just one more instance in the global left's campaign to criminalize American foreign and military policy.

Obama's First Pitch at Washington Nationals Opener!

Last week Harry Smith of CBS News asked President Obama, who loves basketball, "if he can ever go to his right." The president responded, "I can go to my right, but I prefer my left ..."

Let's make that HIGH AND WIDE left, as seen here at the Washington Nationals' opener:

Or as JackM. at AOSHQ quips, this is "why Baseball is not Kenya's national pastime." And DrewM. embeds the video (see 3:30 minutes) and adds, "How a real man and a real President throws a pitch":

See also, Lonely Conservative, "Obama Still Throws Like a Girl."

13 Year-Old Smashes 'Post-Colonialist Feminist Theory'!

You gotta love this!

Via BCF, it turns on that Alaina Podmorow, from British Columbia's Okanagan Valley, has smacked down Canadian political scientist Melanie Butler, and her thesis, "Canadian Women and the (Re)Production of Women in Afghanistan." Notice Butler's canned post-modern attack on U.S./Canadian foreign policy:

In Canada as in the United States, government agencies have justified the military invasion of Afghanistan by revitalizing the oppressed Muslim woman as a medium through which narratives of East versus West are performed. While CW4WAfghan [Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan] attempt to challenge dominant narratives of Afghan women, they ultimately reinforce and naturalize the Orientalist logic on which the War on Terror operates, even helping to disseminate it through the Canadian school system. Drawing on post-colonial feminist theory, this paper highlights the implications of CW4WAfghan’s Orientalist discourse on women’s rights, and tackles the difficult question of how feminists can show solidarity with Afghan women without adhering to the oppressive narratives that permeate today’s political climate.

Miss Podmorow's response is here, "A Very Young Activist's Reply":

... even though I don’t understand at all the words Orientalist or feminism theory, I do understand what this chunk means, and now I want to speak my truth.

I am the founder of Little Women for Little Women in Afghanistan. I founded this organization 3 years ago, when I was 9 years old. In the fall of 2006, I found out that the privileges that I have, other girls in our world don’t get. I learned about this when I went with my Mom to listen to journalist, author and human rights activist, Sally Armstrong speak about Afghanistan. She told stories about the terrible things that happen to little girls in Afghanistan. I was so moved. It was so upsetting to me that these girls weren’t able to exercise their rights. They were not able to go to school and sometimes they didn’t go to school because they were afraid they would be hurt or even killed ...

No one will ever tell me that Muslim women or any women think it’s ok to not be allowed to get educated or to have their daughters sold off at 8 years old or traded off at 4 years old because of cultural beliefs. No one will tell me that women in Afghanistan think it is ok for their daughters to have acid thrown in their faces. It makes me ill to think a 4 year old girl must sleep in a barn and get raped daily by old men. It’s sick and wrong and I don’t care who calls me an Orientalist or whatever I will keep raising money to educate girls and women in Afghanistan and I will keep writing letters and sending them in the back pack of my friend Lauryn Oates as she works so bravely on the ground helping women and girls learn what it is to exercise their rights. I believe in human rights so I believe everyone has the right their own opinion, I just wish that the energy that was used to write that story, that is just not true, could have been used to educate a girl in Afghanistan. That’s what the girls truly want. That’s what the Women in Afghanistan truly want. I have a drawer full of letters from them that says just that.

I wonder how my good friend Charli Carpenter and her friends at DOM and LGM feel about this? They really do like smart, precocious kids:

Don't bug 'em though, well, at least not until they get back from their upcoming conference on "Gendered Consequence of Violence and War on Women’s Health" (among other things).