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Another One Bites The Dust

Captain's Quarters has followups on CENTCOM's announcement.

CENTCOM announced minutes ago that one of the men expected to take the place of the now-room temperature Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has also reached thermal equilibrium near Baghdad. The spokesman for the military briefed reporters on the death of Sheikh Mansur, displaying before and after mug shots of the dead terrorist and explained his significance to the insurgent network in Iraq.

Check the link for updates. Last I saw, it appears that not only is this high-value target dead, but we also have another in custody.

Hoo-ah.

UPDATE

Michael Ledeen has more.

Coalition forces in Iraq killed 15 terrorists and detained six other suspects and a senior terrorist leader during raids yesterday and today near Baqubah, military officials reported today.

He suspects it'll get little MSM play, due to this closing paragraph:

Several women and children were present at the raid sites, officials said. None was harmed, and all were returned to their homes once the troops ensured the area was secure, they added.

The Forgotten Founder

Ever heard of John Witherspoon? I'm ashamed to say I hadn't until I read this fascinating piece on the New Criterion site. He was certainly a key part of early American history, not least for being James Madison's mentor. Just goes to show how having the wrong building burn down can plunge one into obscurity.

I like this bit of advice, certainly heeded by Madison:

"Ne'er do ye speak unless ye ha' something to say, and when ye are done, be sure and leave off."

Deception

I may have failed Nietzsche’s definition of an "educated man". Michael Ledeen makes a strong case that the Zarqawi document is a phoney. He consults his Ouija board and learns:

This is very important, because one of the best ways to identify a deception is when its “revelations” are things you are known to know. There are no secrets in this document, only lies, things we already knew, or things so vague that they’re meaningless, such as “unify the ranks of the resistance” without even stipulating a single method to achieve it, or “reorganize for recruiting new elements” without any concrete recommendation.

ML: So what’s the point of it all?

JJA: Aha! It emerges bit by bit, but the whole thrust of the document is that Iran is a sweet innocent, actually an ally of the United States in Iraq, and that the terrorists should do everything possible to foster conflict between Iran and the Americans.

ML: So we should interpret anything suggesting that Iran is hostile to us as part of a terrorist plot?

Get Your Papers Here!

Great news. Someone has done a very nice job of putting The Federalist Papers on line.

Kudos to Edward O'Connor and friends.

QOTD

Hard to beat this one, on the authenticity of data found in the wreckage of Zarqawi's hideout:

When asked how he could be sure the information was authentic, al-Rubaie said "there is nothing more authentic than finding a thumbdrive in his pocket."

Zarqawi's worries

According to a document he left behind he didn't exactly see his side as walking away with this war. In fact, he saw time as being on our side, not his.

In general and despite the current bleak situation, we think that the best suggestions in order to get out of this crisis is to entangle the American forces into another war against another country or with another of our enemy force, that is to try and inflame the situation between American and Iraq or between America and the Shi'a in general.

UPDATE

An alert reader on The Corner noticed this vote of confidence: Item 3 in the list of advantages should the US get into a war with Iran says

3. The possibility of acquiring new weapons from the Iranian side, either after the fall of Iran or during the battles.

(Emphasis added)

Yes, it's nice to have that kind of respect.

Inconvenient Truth indeed

First there's this risible claim by MoveOn.org (one of the few web sites whose name is an oxymoron) that Algore's little slideshow movie is "setting box office records". Trouble is, that claim doesn't quite match the data on BoxOfficeMojo. BO geeks may want to go to the charts which reveal the per screen averages. They tend to skew high when movies are in limited release. This blockbuster opened on a whole 4 screens. Now that it's "gone wide" to, count 'em, 122 screens, the per screen averages look, well, average.

Want to see some desperate, pathetic movie marketing? How about getting people to pledge to see it when (if?) it opens. Because it's important to show the world that "hundreds of thousands" of Americans care about this issue. Hundreds of thousands? Wow. You mean like the number of people who show up at a single airshow?

Then there's the inconvenient truth that scientists actually working in climatology aren't on Algore's bandwagon.

Appearing before the Commons Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development last year, Carleton University paleoclimatologist Professor Tim Patterson testified, "There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth's temperature over this [geologic] time frame. In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years." Patterson asked the committee, "On the basis of this evidence, how could anyone still believe that the recent relatively small increase in CO2 levels would be the major cause of the past century's modest warming?"

Well, as Rush pointed out the other day, I guess Al is just hankering to join that long list of people who have been launched into public office on the coattails of the winning isue, "global warming".

Why not tell them to just yell "Baaa-baaaa"

like the sheep they want them to be?

A chilling excerpt from this review of Guns and Violence: The English Experience:

Coming to the aid of crime victims is strongly discouraged. British subjects are taught that, if they are attacked by a criminal, they should not yell “Help! Help!” because such cries might encourager a bystander to use physical force against the criminal. Rather, victims are supposed to yell, “Call the police.” Likewise, the government tells Britons that when they are attacked, they should not fight back, but should instead curl into a ball or take a similar defensive posture.

If a properly-behaved British bystander does “call the police,” the response may be lethally slow. Vicky Horgan and her sister Emma Walton were shot by Stuart Horgan on June 6, 2004.[33] A total of sixty calls to 999 (the US’s equivalent to 9-1-1) were made, but help did not arrive for over an hour. The Express explained that a major cause of the delay was police reluctance to confront an armed criminal.

May I never find it necessary to visit England.

CENTCOM is watching!

The good folks over at CENTCOM noticed my link to the best video of the year, and sent me a nice email thanking me for it. Buttle's World is honored by their visit. Servicemen are always welcome here.

On their web site I found YASTMSMWC (Yet Another Story The Main Stream Media Won't Cover).

If, before I visited their web page, you had asked me whether women were joining the police department in Iraq, I would have said of course not.

And I would have been wrong

“We find that she is much better at interrogation than most of her male counterparts, especially when it comes to interrogating women. She quickly identifies the hot buttons and knows how to get the right information,” Aswar said.

I think a lot of men would like being interrogated by her. But not the Islamofacists, which makes me extra glad she's on the job.

What a week the bad guys are having

It goes way beyond the dinner party the other night. Bill Crawford has a nice roundup of good news for us (and bad news for the terrorists.)

Blipverts are coming

Max Headroom fans rejoice. Clear Channel is considering one-second radio spots.

The real value of the Blinks, as they are being called, may be in the publicity they can generate. After all, you're already reading an article about them, and the short spots are only in the concept stage.

Listen to her

She has complete moral authority since her son was killed in Iraq. Also, she is available for college speaking engagements.