More vandalized culture in Iraq?

One of the greatest wonders of civilisation, and probably the world's most ancient structure - the Sumerian city of Ur in southern Iraq - has been vandalised by American soldiers and airmen, according to aid workers in the area.

They claim that US forces have spray-painted the remains with graffiti and stolen kiln-baked bricks made millennia ago....

Ur is believed by many to be the birthplace of the prophet Abraham. It was the religious seat of the civilisation of Sumer at the dawn of the line of dynasties which ruled Mesopotamia starting about 4000 BC. Long before the rise of the Egyptian, Greek or Roman empires, it was here that the wheel was invented and the first mathematical system developed. Here, the first poetry was written, notably the epic Gilganesh, a classic of ancient literature....

--Observer (U.K.)

(Thanks again to the Rational Enquirer.)

The Los Angeles Times reports this:

At least 1,700 Iraqi civilians died and more than 8,000 were injured in the battle for the Iraqi capital, according to a Los Angeles Times survey of records from 27 hospitals in the capital and its outlying districts.

In addition, undocumented civilian deaths in Baghdad number at least in the hundreds and could reach 1,000, according to Islamic burial societies and humanitarian groups that are trying to trace those missing in the conflict.

Again, that's Baghdad alone.

The article explains the survey methods used at hospitals and other care facilities, and the method for arriving at that figure of 1,700 seems careful. Meanwhile, an estimate of 1,000 additional undocumented deaths comes from the Red Crescent:

Haidar Tari, director of tracing missing persons for the Iraqi Red Crescent, estimated there could have been up to 3,000 ... undocumented burials, perhaps one-third of them involving civilians. The Red Crescent has half a dozen teams working in districts where large numbers of dead were buried, but has not yet gained access to some areas under U.S. military control, including a large swath of land near the airport.

Hardest to trace will be people who died while traveling, Tari said. Their relatives might not have known when they left home, or where they were headed, and thus have no idea where to look.

"On one stretch of highway alone, there were more than 50 civilian cars, each with four or five people incinerated inside, that sat in the sun for 10 or 15 days before they were buried nearby by volunteers," Tari said. "That is what there will be for their relatives to come and find. War is bad, but its remnants are worse."

(As usual, use "clipjoint" as both member name and password if you're not already registered.)

(Thanks to Rational Enquirer for the link.)

EARTH TO SAFIRE ... EARTH TO SAFIRE ....

Four Palestinian suicide bombings. Suicide bombings in Morocco and Saudi Arabia. Near-total societal breakdown in Iraq. Scary times, no? Not in whatever Cloud-Cuckooland William Safire is writing from. Here's the lead of the column he published today:

Worried about having nothing new to worry about? Upset that Baghdad turned out to be a cakewalk and SARS didn't lay everybody low?

Idiot.

Your pro-war friends who smugly remind you that not as many museum artifacts were lost or destroyed in Iraq as originally feared need to read this:

...Basra University remained one of the few things that seemed to function well here, according to students and teachers. It has long been a source of pride for Basra, a city of 1.5 million people.

Now, a library that professors say contained two million volumes dating back to 1015 is a mess of twisted metal shelves atop ashes from the books set ablaze by looters.

The blue dome that professors say housed the oldest astronomy department in the Middle East is still there, but inside there is nothing but rubble. The law school, the economics department, the art school, the Arabic studies wing — all are ruined. The damage goes beyond what would be caused in mere burglary, crossing over into wanton destruction....

Volumes dating back to 1015 -- gone. But hey, the oil is secure, right?

Last month, I expressed skepticism about certain documents an ABC News correspondent found virtually undamaged in a Baghdad building, despite the fact that the building had been bombed and looted, and despite the fact that other documents in the building had been burned or shredded. Now Swopa at Needlenose sifts through some stories, including that one, and notes that you can often find the fingerprints of the Iraqi National Congress (and some of its U.S. pals) when a story from Iraq seems (from the Bush administration's point of view) too good to be true. Interesting.

And let's not forget, of course, that Seymour Hersh reported in The New Yorker that dramatic stories fed into the pipeline by the INC often don't pan out:

With the Pentagon’s support, Chalabi’s group worked to put defectors with compelling stories in touch with reporters in the United States and Europe. The resulting articles had dramatic accounts of advances in weapons of mass destruction or told of ties to terrorist groups. In some cases, these stories were disputed in analyses by the C.I.A. Misstatements and inconsistencies in I.N.C. defector accounts were also discovered after the final series of U.N. weapons inspections, which ended a few days before the American assault. Dr. Glen Rangwala, a lecturer in political science at Cambridge University, compiled and examined the information that had been made public and concluded that the U.N. inspections had failed to find evidence to support the defectors’ claims....

If you've read a lot of his work, it's fairly obvious that Christopher Hitchens is repulsed by women -- but is his peculiar misogyny so all-consuming that it would find its way into a review of a book on the writing of the King James Bible?

Yup.

Writing about Adam Nicolson's God's Secretaries in The New York Times Book Review, Hitchens says of the year 1604,

The once refulgent reign of Queen Elizabeth had come to a stale and frustrated end in the preceding year, and a new monarch had been imported from Scotland, emerging from the rather questionable uterus of the old queen's former rival, the amorously notorious Mary, Queen of Scots.

Excuse me? "Rather questionable uterus"? How can a uterus be questionable? And what on Earth does this have to do with the Bible?

I suspect that, for Hitchens, all uteruses are questionable. Not content with merely critiquing tales of Mother Teresa's saintliness, he wanted (scroll down) to call his book about her Sacred Cow; it was ultimately published as The Missionary Position. Years ago, he appeared on U.S. television -- Nightline, as I recall -- and repeatedly denounced Princess Diana as "that loathsome Spencer woman." (Sorry -- I don't have a link for this, but it's a vivid memory, and I'm uncertain only of whether the adjective was "loathsome," "repulsive," or "vile.") Katha Pollitt can't quite remember whether he used to refer to women as "douchebags." And while he was not the only person to loathe Bill Clinton from the left, he was probably the only leftist (rather than liberal or liberal-centrist) to embrace the far right wholeheartedly, and the proximate cause was not Clinton's advocacy of welfare reform or NAFTA but his dalliance with Monica Lewinsky.

Hitchens has, as they say, issues -- though I never expected them to surface in this context.

OK, this is fairly trivial, but it annoys me:

VENEZUELA: U.S. AMBASSADOR CRITICIZED The government sharply criticized the American ambassador, Charles Shapiro, for holding an event at his official Caracas residence during which a female impersonator used a puppet to ridicule President Hugo Chávez. "What we have here is an irresponsible U.S. ambassador," Vice President José Vicente Rangel told a news conference, adding that the incident could be interpreted as "a provocation." The event, to commemorate International Press Freedom Day, was broadcast on television and was attended by several anti-Chávez media personalities. It ended with the appearance of the female impersonator carrying a large puppet representing the Venezuelan president. Mr. Shapiro planted a mock kiss on the impersonator's cheek.

This is one of our diplomats.

Imagine if the French ambassador to the U.S. had an event scheduled that was, for some reason, slated to be broadcast live on U.S. TV. -- say, PBS. Now imagine if the guest list pointedly included Michael Moore, Janeane Garofalo, Martin Sheen, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, with music from the Dixie Chicks. Think anyone here would be a bit peeved? Think it would be considered a tad undiplomatic?

Dumb terrorists in Morocco. Don't they know that if you want to get the attention of Americans you don't launch a vicious, brutal suicide bombing on a Friday night? Friday night is when you do things you don't want Americans to notice. The Bush administration knows that, which is why this story is breaking now:

In Reversal, Plan for Iraq Self-Rule Has Been Put Off

In an abrupt reversal, the United States and Britain have indefinitely put off their plan to allow Iraqi opposition forces to form a national assembly and an interim government by the end of the month.

Instead, top American and British diplomats leading reconstruction efforts here told exile leaders in a meeting tonight that allied officials would remain in charge of Iraq for an indefinite period, said Iraqis who attended the meeting. It was conducted by L. Paul Bremer, the new civilian administrator here.

"It's quite clear that you cannot transfer all powers onto some interim body, because it will not have the strength or the resources to carry those responsibilities out," The Associated Press quoted Mr. Sawers as saying. "There was agreement that we should aim to have a national conference as soon as we reasonably could do so."

...Opposition leaders were "very respectful" to Mr. Bremer and Mr. Sawers, a participant said, "but I think everyone was also pretty forceful about the need to have full sovereignty for the Iraqis." A question they kept posing, he added, was, "Do you want to run this place, or should we?"

No date was set for creating an interim authority, and no details about its powers and functions were discussed in the meeting, the Iraqis said....

You probably read that article from yesterday's New York Times about the management of image in the Bush White House (this is the link, though as I type this the whole Times site seems to be down). I want to put up a couple of numbers, for comparison. First, there's this from a USA Today story about Bush's Top Gun stunt on the Abraham Lincoln:

Staff members for Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, calculated that the visit delayed the ship's arrival in San Diego by at least a day and cost as much as $1 million in extra fuel costs, plus $100,000 in additional sea duty pay for the crew.

Now, from yesterday's Times article (I'm typing from the print edition):

The president's image makers, Mr. Bartlett [White House communications director Dan Bartlett] said, work within a budget for White House events allotted by Congress, which for fiscal 2003 was $3.7 million.

So if Obey is right, this stunt ate up 30 percent of the year's budget for events like this in one day.

Lovely.

This (from The Independent) is just appalling:

Statistics unpublished until today reveal the stark facts: 242 people have died in Baghdad in just over three weeks, almost all from bullet wounds. It is an epidemic, and it is getting worse....

Dr Fa'ak Amin Bakr, director of the city mortuary, says 242 people have died in the past 25 days, of whom more than nine out of 10 had been shot. He says that before the invasion Baghdad had an average of one death a day caused by gunshot wounds.

Battles between looters and score-settling from the Saddam years have taken hold, fuelled by a security vacuum that owes much to a decision by Donald Rumsfeld, the American Defence Secretary, to invade and occupy Iraq with minimum troop numbers – two divisions short, say well- informed sources within the Allies' reconstruction team.

They are the by-product, too, of the failure of the Allies to coax the Baghdad police to return to work in sufficient numbers. Most of the Iraqi officers who have returned have yet to come out of their police stations.

And homicide figures are going up. The 124 who died from bullet wounds in the past 10 days is a rise of 60 per cent on the previous 10-day period....

I keep going back to what that smug bastard InstaPundit said near the end of the war in his MSNBC blog:

The latest Iraqi claim I could find was for 500 civilian casualties and it’s almost surely inflated. Various antiwar groups are claiming to keep count, but their numbers, as several different commentators have observed, appear to be bogus. So I think it’s very possible that Iraqi civilian casualties, too, will turn out to be under 500.

The casualties from gunshot wounds in the postwar period are nearly half that -- in Baghdad alone. And it's all because Donald Rumsfeld was determined to show off and fight this war with low troop numbers, just to show what a big stud he is. Call this apples and oranges if you want to -- I say these are casualties of war.

A lot of people (Josh Marshall, Paul Krugman, the Rational Enquirer, Cursor) are citing this New Republic article, for good reason -- it's pretty damn scary:

Thus far violence in Baghdad has been limited to unorganized gangs of looters carrying Kalashnikovs. But Iraqi security experts and other sources in the capital say that, under the nose of the American forces, Iraq's nascent political groups are forming armed militias and storing weapons as they prepare for a potential civil war for control of the country. In fact, The New Republic has learned, several Iraqis say even Hezbollah has formed a branch in Baghdad. Ultimately, if Baghdad's power vacuum is not filled soon, the rise of organized armed factions could turn Iraq's capital into a twenty-first-century version of 1980s Beirut....

Though the armed wings of political parties already possess small arms, security sources say they are storing heavier weapons around Baghdad and other cities. In fact, says Sadoun Dulaimi, a one-time high-ranking Baghdad police official who recently returned to Iraq after fleeing the country in 1991 when Saddam sentenced him to death, what makes the militias so dangerous is their access to heavy weaponry, such as rocket-propelled grenades. ... Even tanks left around Baghdad by the retreating Iraqi army may have fallen into militias' hands....

I want to juxtapose an excerpt from this article with an excerpt from today's Paul Krugman column. First, The New Republic:

In part, U.S. reluctance to take on the militias may be a product of the relative security of the part of Baghdad where most Americans are billeted. Though most of the capital remains highly unsafe, and militias are becoming increasingly prevalent, American officials and journalists do not often see the armed groups because they generally stay within the small area surrounding the U.S. compounds and the Palestine and Sheraton Hotels, an area protected by Abrams tanks and machine-gun-wielding soldiers.

Now Krugman:

The administration's antiterror campaign makes me think of the way television studios really look. The fancy set usually sits in the middle of a shabby room, full of cardboard and duct tape. Networks take great care with what viewers see on their TV screens; they spend as little as possible on anything off camera.

I don't think the administration gives a damn what happens to the Iraqi people -- as long as they remain "off camera."

You know things are bad in Iraq when even the New York Post acknowledges it:

...soldiers see the reservoir of Iraqi goodwill draining away while bureaucrats take their time holding meetings and making plans as if time were somehow not an issue. They fear that their successors here will face an intifada in the summer if power, water, medicine, gasoline and food don't start reaching Iraqi civilians.

"We ain't helping these people" says Sgt. Johnny Perdue of the 4/64 Scouts. It's just so f----ing frustrating. ORHA [the Organization for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Aid] say they're doing it. Well, they're not doing it in the places we go."

"I'm no bleeding heart" says Sgt. Leon "Pete" Peters (who had more than his share of kills during the fighting south of the city). "I'll pull the trigger quick as anyone. But this place is going to go crazy if we don't find a way to help these people . . . I've been here for more than 30 days and I've yet to see a single yellow humanitarian food package."

He asks why American companies aren't being brought over to fix the electricity here. "You could get a message out to real Americans like the company I used to work for, and they'd come over here and get the power back on in a week." ...

The failure of ORHA and the Civil Affairs teams to have an impact in the street is particularly galling to men like Sgts. Peters and Perdue, who are working 19 hours a day, much of them spent walking through alleys ankle deep in uncollected trash. The bureaucrats, on the other hand, work civilian hours....

The Civil Affairs brigades are also notorious for failing to keep appointments with the locals. They'll put out a call for some kind of local professionals, telling candidates to turn up at the gate to the palace area at 9 a.m. on Tuesday. But when Tuesday comes, they'll forget to send anyone to get the 300 candidates through security, or cancel the recruiting session without telling anyone (as happened with interpreters in the third week of April).

Sometimes important local officials or informants or even Shia mullahs will be left to stand waiting for hours in the sun....

There are articles like this in the Christian Science Monitor, the Los Angeles Times, the British press, and elsewhere on a regular basis -- Rational Enquirer regularly provides links to these. But I'm surprised to see an article like this in Murdoch's Post.

When I heard that Bush won again in the Senate on tax cuts, I started to wonder: What would happen if lefties began to fight for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution?

Remember the balanced budget amendment? As late as 1997, Republicans loved the idea; now, of course, they'd run from it like scared rabbits. Budget balancing is an issue that resonates in the heartland, or at least it used to. It could unite lefties with the people who reject what they see as baby-boomer irresponsibility, the people who liked Ross Perot and Paul Tsongas. It could drive the GOP nuts.

Oh, I know: It's not a good idea; it's pretty much what's straitjacketing state governments now as tax revenues plummet. And if the movement were led, or partially led, by lefties, and it started to catch on, the right would discredit it by discrediting us ("During the war in Iraq, while our troops were in harm's way, this is someone who had the audacity to say..."). But I bet it's something Karl Rove hasn't war-gamed against. Maybe it could throw him off stride. (Something has to, someday, or we're screwed.)

A stupid idea, probably, but I'm just thinking out loud here.

In the hours before U.S. bombs began falling on the Iraqi capital, one of Saddam Hussein's sons and a close adviser carried off nearly $1 billion in cash from the country's Central Bank, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials....

Some Americans said they suspect the money may have been spirited across the border into Syria, in much the same way some senior officials in Saddam's government were believed to have fled Iraq.

Col. Ted Seel, a U.S. Army Special Forces officer who said he knew about the seizure of money, said intelligence information at the time indicated that a group of tractor-trailers crossed the Iraqi border into Syria.

--Dexter Filkins in The New York Times, May 6, 2003

The night after President Bush gave him 48 hours to surrender, Saddam Hussein sent his son Qusay to the vault of Iraq's Central Bank to make a modest withdrawal for the family's departure.

It took three tractor-trailers to haul away nearly a billion dollars in cash — all in $100 U.S. greenbacks — plus $100 million worth of euros. Thus did Saddam & Sons bring off the grandest larceny in bank history....

The stolen billion was probably driven out of Iraq on March 18, the night before the war began. Across which of its borders? Iran, Saddam's enemy, is least likely; Turkey, which does not want further tensions with the U.S., unlikely; Jordan, possible; Syria, occupying Lebanon, with its corrupt Beirut banks, the most probable.

--William Safire in The New York Times, May 8, 2003

American Treasury officials announced today that they had recovered $950 million in Iraqi assets that they believe constitutes the bulk of the $1 billion looted by Saddam Hussein's family hours before war began in mid-March.

The money was found inside Iraq within the last week, they said, dispelling a theory proffered earlier by military officials in Baghdad that it might have been whisked into Syria aboard three tractor-trailers.

--Timothy L. O'Brien in The New York Times, May 15, 2003

Apparently -- shocking as this may seem to conservatives -- you don't have to be an affirmative-action hire to publish articles in The New York Times that are utterly at odds with objective reality. And you don't have to black, either -- Safire's white, obviously, as is Dexter Filkins.

The Republican Party regards itself as "the party of ideas" -- and now those ideas are being articulated by a new voice. Joining such savants as Gary Aldrich, Paul Weyrich, and Tammy Bruce is a new pundit writing for the right-wing Web site NewsMax: Melrose Larry Green.

Some of you know exactly who that is. The rest of you are fortunate. This site explains:

While standing on the corner of Melrose and Vine in Los Angeles almost every morning with a sandwich board preaching the virtues of Howard Stern, Melrose Larry Green came to life. Melrose has traveled around the country with his signs being beaten, arrested and verbally abused while exclaiming "Baba Booey" to the world. Hated by most fans and Gary [Dell'Abate, producer of Howard Stern's show], Melrose endures due to Howard's fascination with him.

Here's his vitae, from AmIAnnoying.com.

You probably think a guy like this can't possibly be taken seriously as a political commentator. But consider:

* Michael Savage, a self-proclamed "World Famous Herbal Expert," has a high-rated radio show, a TV show on MSNBC, and a #1 New York Times bestseller;

* P.J. O'Rourke, who used to write articles for National Lampoon with titles such as "How to Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink," is a best-selling author and is now considered a political philosopher;

* Dr. Laura Schlessinger, a Ph.D. in physiology, is a successful radio host and author and is now considered a moral philosopher;

* Dennis Miller, who once sang a song on Saturday Night Live the chorus of which consisted of the word "penis" repeated over and over, has now written his first Wall Street Journal op-ed piece.

So it's entirely possible that in a few years we'll see Bill O'Reilly nodding sagely and agreeing with Melrose Larry's opinions about Ted Kennedy, while he tells Katrina vanden Heuvel that she's an idiot.

One of Melrose Larry's NewsMax articles is "Moran's Remarks 'Insensitive, Irresponsible and Inaccurate,'" a response to anti-Semitic comments by the conservative Democratic congressman. Larry writes:

As an American and a Jew, I was shocked to read the recent anti-Semitic comments of Rep. James P. Moran, D-Va. ... These remarks are insensitive, irresponsible and inaccurate.

Here's an excerpt from Private Parts, the first book by Howard Stern, a man Larry deeply admires:

Take the Mexicans. They're nice people. I got nothing against Mexicans, but if they're Mexicans, they should be in Mexico. And the ones that come here are so angry. Of course, I'd be confused and angry, too, if I had dark skin and white people's hair. Speaking of hair, how do you like those Hispanic chicks who dye their hair blond? That's an attractive look. No wonder some Spanish guys are ready to rape any white woman who comes along.

Now that I think of it, I wonder why Stern isn't writing for NewsMax.

This is from The Times of London:

BARONESS Thatcher returned to politics last night with an attack on the French, whom she accused of collaborating with “enemies of the West” for short-term gain....

She praised Tony Blair, but above all President Bush, for overriding the “rot” that “paralysed” the United Nations.

A few paragraphs down, there's this:

Lady Thatcher said that she had “drunk deep from the same well of ideas” as her great ally, the former US President Ronald Reagan.

And there's also this:

Lady Thatcher said: “For years, many governments played down the threats of Islamic revolution, turned a blind eye to international terrorism and accepted the development of weaponry of mass destruction. Indeed, some politicians were happy to go further, collaborating with the self-proclaimed enemies of the West for their own short-term gain — but enough about the French....”

Yeah, coddling enemies of the West is such a French thing to do....

Washington, D.C., 25 February 2003 - The National Security Archive at George Washington University today published on the Web a series of declassified U.S. documents detailing the U.S. embrace of Saddam Hussein in the early 1980's, including the renewal of diplomatic relations that had been suspended since 1967. The documents show that during this period of renewed U.S. support for Saddam, he had invaded his neighbor (Iran), had long-range nuclear aspirations that would "probably" include "an eventual nuclear weapon capability," harbored known terrorists in Baghdad, abused the human rights of his citizens, and possessed and used chemical weapons on Iranians and his own people. The U.S. response was to renew ties, to provide intelligence and aid to ensure Iraq would not be defeated by Iran, and to send a high-level presidential envoy named Donald Rumsfeld to shake hands with Saddam (20 December 1983).

The declassified documents posted today include the briefing materials and diplomatic reporting on two Rumsfeld trips to Baghdad, reports on Iraqi chemical weapons use concurrent with the Reagan administration's decision to support Iraq, and decision directives signed by President Reagan that reveal the specific U.S. priorities for the region: preserving access to oil, expanding U.S. ability to project military power in the region, and protecting local allies from internal and external threats....

Chris Whittle promises profits soon, but I see that his "for-profit" company Edison Schools is still in the red, according to The New York Times:

The company's net loss for its fiscal third quarter, which ended on March 30, was $6.4 million, exactly half the size of its loss in the same quarter last year, on revenue of $108.4 million.

For the nine months that ended in March, the company lost $35.2 million on revenue of $291 million, down from a loss of $37.1 million on revenue of $327.3 million in the same period a year earlier....

Edison's effort to rein in its growth in pursuit of profitability was evident in the continuing shrinkage of its revenue, as it continued to close out unprofitable management contracts and it was unable to renew a few other contracts around the country. Net revenue in the third quarter fell more than 10 percent from the same period a year earlier....

Every year, all over the country, tax increases and bond issues are rejected as ways of dealing with school budget shortfalls; taxpayers, having heard decades of right-wing propaganda about "government waste," insist schools should "live within their means."

So why can't Edison Schools live within its means? And if it can't, why do conservatives lavish it with praise?

Fox News, of course, calls itself "fair and balanced." It also posts billboards proclaiming that it delivers "real journalism."

When you hear those phrases, what's the first thing that comes to mind? Perhaps something like this response from Fox's Neil Cavuto to comments in a recent Paul Krugman column?

...You're as phony as you are unprofessional. And you have the nerve to criticize me, or Fox News, and by extension, News Corporation?

...And by the way, you sanctimonious twit, no one -- no one -- tells me what to say. I say it. And I write it. And no one lectures me on it. Save you, you pretentious charlatan.

..Nowhere does it ever occur to you, one can legitimately not agree with you. That doesn't make me less of a journalist. But, Mr. Krugman, it does make you more of an ass....

Now may I suggest you take your column and shove it?

Lovely.

Yeah, the Drudge Report can be obnoxious -- but give the guy his due: every so often he gives you a story that doesn't reflect well on his side.

Like this one:

Some Audience Members Told Not to Wear Ties for Bush Speech

President Bush came to Indianapolis to send the message that his tax cut plan will help everyone and not just the wealthy. That's why all those people sitting behind him were instructed on what to wear....

George W. Bush came to Indianapolis for the picture. And in that picture, the White House wanted ordinary people.

“These are V.I.P.'s right, ordinary people aren't up on stage behind the president of the United States when he's speaking but the trick is to make V.I.P.'s look like they're ordinary people,” said Bill Bloomquist, political scientist.

That's why everyone sitting behind the president wearing a necktie was instructed to take it off.

Exhibit A is Brian Bosma. He appeared onstage in a necktie, prior to the president's arrival. When the president got there the Indiana House minority leader had an open collar. In a News 8 interview immediately following the speech, the tie was back on.
        
...There were some other neckties in the crowd but most of them belonged to Secret Service agents. Representative Bosma told News 8, “When the guy from the White House tells you to take your tie off, you don't ask why.” But he also removed his pocket square....

Now, our side needs a media food chain that can turn this into ... Tiegate!



 

Howell Raines says Jews were responsible for the Holocaust! Outrageous! How can any decent person write for his paper?

...No, wait -- it wasn't the editor of The New York Times, it was the owner of The Washington Times, Sun Myung Moon, who said this in a speech on March 2 in Arlington, Virginia:

"Who are the Jewish members here, raise your hands! Jewish people, you have to repent. Jesus was the King of Israel. Through the principle of indemnity Hitler killed six million Jews. That is why. God could not prevent Satan from doing that because Israel killed the True Parents."

Wake me when a conservative denounces Moon for this, or refuses to write for Moon's Bush-friendly paper.

(The quote is from the May issue of Church & State, the magazine of Americans United for Separation of Church & State. The story isn't online yet.)

*****

UPDATE: It's nearly two years late, but here's the link.