Is it me, or has Michel Moore gotten fatter? The last time i saw him was at the Oscars in 2003. i don't think he looked as humongous back then. What he needs is a personal trainer. A tough one, like at one of those boot camps for fatties, maybe.

i can almost picture it now:

Holy Jesus! What is that? WHAT IS THAT?!

Sir, a jelly doughnut, sir!

A jelly doughnut?!

Sir, yes, sir!

How did it get here?

Sir, I took it from the mess hall, sir!

Is chow allowed in the barracks, Moore?

Sir, no, sir!

Are you allowed to eat jelly doughnuts, Moore?

Sir, no, sir!

And why not?

Sir, because I'm too heavy, sir!

Because you are a DISGUSTING FATBODY, Moore!

Sir, yes, sir!

Pick 'em up and set 'em down, Moore! Quickly! Move it up!

Were you born a fat slimy scumbag, you piece of shit?! Or did you have to work on it?

Move it up! Quickly! Hustle up!

The fucking war will be over by the time we get up there, won't it, Moore? MOVE IT!

Are you going to fucking die, Moore? Are you going to die on me?! Do you feel dizzy? Do you feel faint? Jesus H. Christ, I think you've got a hard-on!

Posted by: annika at 04:59 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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Like ants when their anthole has been disturbed, the Bush-haters are running around crazy, not quite sure what to make of this Sarin story. From DU:

Call me crazy but the finding of Sarin gas seems to indicate a spiralling decrease in security. If true it simply proves the point that borders are not secure. WMDs that were not in Iraq before are there now. Note to Bush: Be careful what you wish for.

When it comes to poison gas discoveries, i'm still holding my breath (heh heh). i'll wait and see if any significant stockpile is discovered. You see, unlike the Bush-haters, i had pretty much accepted that my side might have been wrong about WMDs. It's called intellectual honesty.

On the right, guys like Hannity and Medved were always pretty confident that we'd find the stuff. But even John Kerry was hedging his bets, saying last week that the WMDs might still be found. If you asked me, i would have scowled and said that asshole Scott Ritter was probably right. In fact, i said as much over a year ago.

On the right, the counter-argument was always: "If Saddam didn't have WMDs why did he refuse to allow inspections? Why didn't he cooperate fully?"

Two reasons make perfect sense to me. One, Saddam did finally relent. Just before the war started, i seem to remember a report about Saddam's 11th hour offer to allow full, unrestricted inspections, which we refused. If true, i'm not bothered by our refusal in the slightest. He had to go.

The other reason is that Saddam, correctly as it turns out, believed that we were going in no matter what. Knowing that he had an unavoidable fight coming, and that his military was totally unprepared to resist, much less win, he needed the myth of WMD as a force multiplier. If you know you're going to get rolled no matter what, isn't it a good idea to let the other guy think you've got a knife in your back pocket. It might give you that extra second or two you'll need to get the hell out of Dodge.

Another factor i've considered, in my attempt to explain why Saddam acted like he had WMD's while saying that he hadn't, is an often overlooked rationale behind most inexplicable human behavior: simple incompetence. You've seen it at your job countless times, i'm sure. A huge task is given to be completed within an unreasonably short time limit. Everybody scrambles to put it together, but there are inevitable mistakes.

The better the workers, the fewer mistakes, of course. But in the case of Iraq, these people were all short timers, who knew they were going to be out of a job soon. So the 1441 report they had to do contained a lot of errors, things they just didn't have time to check out for consistency. A lot of it might have been cut and paste. They probably didn't proofread it properly. Then when we got the report we interpreted it as being evasive; they had something to hide. When in fact they didn't. They were simply incompetent.

But, now that i've given my reasons for thinking that there were in fact no WMDs, it appears that i may be wrong again. Hopefully, i am wrong and we will uncover a cache of the stuff, if only to get it out of the hands of the enemy.

Update: According to Michele, now the Bush-haters are saying sarin is not a WMD? That's one for the Huh? files!

Posted by: annika at 08:47 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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This is not a religious war like the Civil War was not about slavery. When the enemy prays to God while slicing off the head of an innocent civilian, you bet your ass it's a religious war. We just don't want to admit it.

The enemy has no problem admitting it.

How many of you realize that when the Ottoman Empire entered WWI on the side of Germany and Austro-Hungary (that's the losing side, for those who slept through history class), they did not do so by "declaring war," like any normal country would. No, the Ottoman Empire entered WWI by declaring "jihad."

It's always a religious war for those fuckheads.

The ultimate goal of the terrorists is religious. It is the establishment of a pan-islamic empire under religious rule according to shari'a law. It is the destruction of all jews. And by destruction, they mean slaughter. It is the forced conversion of Christians and Hindus, etc. to their evil bastardized religion.

They sliced off a guy's head.

They're barbarians. Brute animals. Worse than devil worshippers. At least devil worshippers only kill cats. These fucks kill innocent humans, and blaspheme the name of God while doing it. What awaits these pig-fuckers when they die? Eternal fucking fire, you can count on it. Hotter than a million mutha-fucking suns.

What does it take to slice off the head of another live, conscious human being? An innocent human being. With a knife. What is involved in that procedure? Could you do it? Do you think Private England would be capable of such a thing? Or Specialist Graner? Or General Karpinski even?

i bet even Scott Peterson couldn't do it. Not while the victim was still alive. Not with a knife.

Cutting through a fellow human's neck while they're still alive, with a knife, means slicing down through skin, severing arteries and veins, loosing a torrent of pulsing blood, sawing back and forth through thick muscle and tendon, crunching through the hollow, wheezing, screaming windpipe, hitting bone and disk, sawing again, pushing down, hearing it crunch, pop, putting your weight into it, slicing through the spinal cord, watching the body go limp, gripping the handle tight in all the slippery blood, sliding the blade through the last cords of muscle and tendon, blade striking the floor, watching the head roll forward, now just an inanimate object, though its eyes are open, then raising it, still warm, up to the camera.

Could you do that? Can you imagine the mind of someone who could? i simply can't fathom that kind of evil.

They chanted to Allah while they sliced off an innocent man's head. You can say this is not a religious war. You can say that God, assuming you believe in Him, doesn't take sides in a war. i say bullshit. God will deal with these unholy bastards. They will die someday, as all men must, and they will be shocked when they are finally confronted with His just punishment. His divine retribution. i pray too, that the United States will become the instrument of their death.

Posted by: annika at 06:53 PM | Comments (17) | Add Comment
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The true atrocities are being commited by our enemies, not by us.

But i pray that they will yet know the terrible retribution that awaits them. We must remain strong.

Strengthen the feeble hands,
steady the knees that give way;
say to those with fearful hearts,
'Be strong, do not fear;
your God will come,
he will come with vengeance;
with divine retribution
he will come to save you.'
[Isaiah 35:3-4]

Angry Update: What the hell's wrong with you people?! They fucking beheaded one of our guys! They fucking filmed it. i'm looking around the blogosphere and no-one, save Michele (God bless her), has a fucking word to say about it. Instapundit thinks it's only worth a measly line. Where's the Rottweiler? Where's Finch? Where's DuToit? Where's Lucas? i wanna see some rage, something, anything. Is everybody asleep, too shocked to care? The media will let this slip by if they can. i bet it won't be the lead on tonight's news. i bet it won't make tomorrow's front page. It's up to us to publicize this horror, people. Vent the outrage that the vast majority of non-blogging Americans are feeling right now. Just fucking say something!

Update 2: The Rottweiler checks in. Serenity checks in. Moxie checks in. Zomby too. And Reynolds deems it worthy of a few more lines. Sarah groks. So do Peter and Karol. LGF describes the video for those, like me, who can't watch it. Also, go read Will and Stephen at Vodkapundit. Then of course, there's Lileks. Tom draws strength from Churchill. See also Misha's second take, and Paul's take, and especially Banagor's "The Rage."

And many thanks go to my good friends at Candied Ginger for their link. Please read Candace's piece, perhaps the best of the lot on this tragedy.

As always, Wizbang was on top of it right away. But this morning's post disappoints me. Today is not a day for bikinis.

Sadly, the liberal bloggers that i read regularly have all chosen to ignore this atrocity. It's not a matter of left vs. right, Bush vs. not-Bush. Nick Berg was an American. How can anyone ignore his murder? It was intended as a message to all of us. A noteworthy piece at etalkinghead may explain why the only blogs that want to talk about Nick Berg seem to be on the right.

Posted by: annika at 11:51 AM | Comments (22) | Add Comment
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1 Outrage? From OUR press? Are you nuts? They only get outraged when WE cut off someone's fingernail or hair. Oh, the beheading? They are just misunderstood; we need to treat them a little better. When will our media get it that these are really, really eveil people and need to be killed. Every fucking one of them, like snakes.

Posted by: shelly s. at May 11, 2004 01:49 PM (AaBEz)

2 A-Rab (and liberal) in appropriate environment!

Posted by: Radical Redneck at May 11, 2004 02:18 PM (oTkr8)

3 Sorry, I just heard about this an hour or two ago (workin' all day, y'know) and then posted something very brief about. I was going to post a more extensive rant, but I figired Misha had already done it better than I could.

Posted by: Tuning Spork at May 11, 2004 04:15 PM (NgWVQ)

4 Where is the outrage from the Muslim community? I'm not counting on it. The "religion of peace" is the biggest threat to the civilized world...but we are not supposed to say that because it might offend somebody. I don't want here anymore bullshit about Muslims being peace-loving people until I hear one important Muslim religious leader condem this and the thousands of other atrocities these sick, demented people have commited.

Posted by: Blu at May 11, 2004 04:21 PM (lj3Ju)

5 I watched the ABC news tonight and they are attempting to blame the beheading on the anger the Arab world feels over seeing the pictures of the prisoners. They can't even own up to these people being evil when they behead one of our men. That is just disgusting.

Posted by: Jonathan at May 11, 2004 05:03 PM (8ygiB)

6 That doesn't surprise me Jon. Did they lead with the story, at least?

Posted by: annika! at May 11, 2004 05:17 PM (zAOEU)

7 It really is time to introduce these people to Sherman's philosophy of war, i.e. it's hell, and as soon as we make them figure that out, we'll be close to being done.

Posted by: Casca at May 11, 2004 06:27 PM (q+PSF)

8 Not too shocked to care... trying to find words filthy and low enough to describe the perpetrators of the atrocity done to this innocent being. People really need to get this and your description of beheading a living human being helps drive home the enormity of the act. I WANT THEM TO BURN!!!!! GOING OUT TO THE WOOD PILE RIGHT NOW!!!!

Posted by: Bonfire7 at May 11, 2004 10:58 PM (Ij50v)

9 Annika, look a Tomfoolery. http://djslybri.blogspot.com/ Mutted rage, but rage.

Posted by: Chuck at May 12, 2004 06:02 AM (s6c4t)

10 I have several things to say about it. I also have the links to video if you are so inclinded. naproom.mu.nu

Posted by: Tom at May 12, 2004 07:52 AM (eAINt)

11 i feel better knowing that many of you are angry as i am about this. i'm also surprised to see the LA Times put this story above the fold this morning. i won't buy that rag, and i'm sure the article is sufficiently tilted left-wing, but i truly expected them to bury it on page three.

Posted by: annika! at May 12, 2004 09:29 AM (zAOEU)

12 Peter told me the news over my graduation dinner and both of us posted as soon as we got home. I'm also surprised at the lack of insta-coverage though I think we'll see more about it in the next few days.

Posted by: Karol at May 12, 2004 10:12 AM (AGo3+)

13 As one of your readers who is further to the left, I feel the need to speak up. The thing is, I don't know what to say. I don't often blog about the war, because it upsets me to do so. I do discuss it - on online forums, at home. But I find it easier to participate in a dialogue about things like this than to make a singular statement. I guess I'm saying that just because something isn't in my blog doesn't mean that I'm not thinking about it.

Posted by: other Annika at May 12, 2004 10:51 AM (hQUF1)

14 To be honest, I'm not so much angry at the enemy, because you don't get angry at rabid dogs; you just shoot them. But I am angry at those who exploit the pictures of prison abuse to their political advantage, while saying nothing about this. That's not just hypocricy; that's plain treason, and people who help the enemy should be put to trial. I am sick of the "good guys" on the left who'd rather be politically correct than human.

Posted by: Ivan Lenin at May 12, 2004 02:43 PM (j3KG7)

15 The bikini pic was an on the way out the door quickie post, which given the tone of the day may have best been saved for later.

Posted by: Kevin at May 12, 2004 03:35 PM (bwshg)

16 I'm shocked, sad and angered. There are no words. Except you know what? You said what I think. If anyone had the slimmest notion that this war is NOT about the Islamofascists against anyone who isn't, then the events of this week should prove them wrong. It's frightening. Damned frightening. And when I'm this numb with rage and grief, I escape. Sorry, but that's what my blog is about - for me.

Posted by: Emma at May 12, 2004 11:22 PM (kpNlZ)

17 There is bit of a distinction between state sponsored abuse and the actions of a rogue agents. Especially when the state based its invasion on removing tyranny and introduction democracry. You can't invade a foreign nation and not expect people to live up to your words.

Posted by: jim jones at May 14, 2004 12:05 PM (3vAcw)

18 BUSH LIED - BERG DIED!

Posted by: fredhero at May 14, 2004 01:58 PM (w/nTu)

19 Please don´t feel ofended. The video is tricked. I´m video editor expert and FBI veteran for video works. The movie is the worst quality for webcams and reading the file with the most advanced tools for video editing I have four questions: 1. Where is the compression header of file for video files? 2. Not blood flow (maybe in the 326 missing frames on the long video) where is the blood?. 3. The screams is not in movement-audio sincrony (why the voice is in right sincrony but not the murder and the screams?). 4. In the head exposition (where is the blood?). In adition, in this part of video, with the video editing tools reveals most of 100 frames missing. My personal opinion with forense support is: This is a propaganda movie with the only goal for "war on terror" support. Please our president is a puppet member of a very powerful gang of killers, but they think about the all american people like an standar serie of Simpson Homer. PD If Nick Berg is Dead, God bless him. If youre are alive, take your money for a complete change of face and give some to your family. The FBI veterans are not killers

Posted by: Edward Maddox at May 17, 2004 10:42 AM (eDZ9g)

20 Interesting comment, Edward Maddox. How long have you been speaking English. You should brush up on your grammar, it might help your credibility just a tad. Good luck spamming!

Posted by: annika at May 17, 2004 07:14 PM (CmuaG)

21 Despite Maddox's grammar... those are very apparent and damning questions? You have no response? Come on... the most obvious one is the blood, or lack thereof of commensurate amounts. And just to give you something else to chew on (probably me in your response) - Or how about this one... when the first photos and reports of prisoner abuse (in Afghanistan and Guantanemo) were released to the public by the US. government last year why did the administration do nothing about it?

Posted by: rainlion at May 20, 2004 11:58 AM (zkjrJ)

22 i'm not sure it's true that the administration "did nothing about it." But if it is, you won't catch me defending them on the Abu Ghraib scandal. While i personally don't think we were hard enough on the fucks, there is such a thing as Geneva. But in regards to your "questions" about the Berg video. Why do you even have questions. After Daniel Pearl, and everything else, is it so hard to believe that a terrorist would behead a guy? Why are you so eager to play the hoax card on this one? What is the point? You don't give an alternate theory. Are you trying to say that the CIA killed Berg? If so, you're going to have trouble convincing reasonable people of it. Just because people can come up with questions does not mean that they're always reasonable questions. i can come up with good questions about whether the earth is round, whether evolution is true, whether we landed on the moon. Doesn't mean they're reasonable questions to ask. i didn't watch the video. i did see stills, and i saw enough blood in the stills to convince me. Then again, i've never seen anyone beheaded before, so i don't have a frame of reference. Do you? It's hard for me to decipher Maddox's "questions" because his english skills are so poor. Is he saying there are 100 missing frames or is he saying 326? (That's like the number of communists in the state department according to McCarthy. The number keeps changing.) The voice is not in "sincrony" because he's watching it over the internet. It's called streaming video. Someone who doesn't know how to spell "synchronization" probably doesn't make enough money to afford broadband. On the lack of blood, use your head to figure this one out. The heart pumps blood, not the head. The brain contains tiny blood vessels, blood is not going to pour out of them quickly. Certainly it's not going to gush. The only large vessels coming out of the head are the arteries and veins like the carotid and the jugular. These are going to drain (not gush) blood right away, probably as soon as they are severed. That probably happened early in the process of cutting the head off. By the time the whole neck was severed, the blood from inside the skull was probably dripping in drops too small to show clearly in the low quality video. Even still, i saw evidence of dripping blood in the stills i saw, when they held Berg's head up to the camera. Look, if it's a hoax, perpetrated by the CIA or Mossad, or whoever you want to blame it on, don't you think it would be more perfect? The fact that there are little flaws (like strange edits) suggests to me that it's authentic. If it were a hoax, the perpetrators would want to avoid giving people reason to doubt the video's authenticity. And come on. Maddox says he's an FBI veteran? Right. He couldn't even fill out an application, let alone pass a written test. If the very first line in his comment is an outright lie, why give any credence to the rest of it.

Posted by: annika! at May 20, 2004 02:54 PM (zAOEU)

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You know me. i'm a staunch Republican. Although i'd never vote for Nader, i can still listen to the man and put myself in the place of someone who opposes Bush, hypothetically speaking. And when i do, i can't see how any principled progressive can say that the man does not make a hell of a lot of sense.

What do we do as red-blooded Americans who want clean politics and progressive, responsive policies . . . ? We sit around engaging in the 'least worst?' [He imitates a voter, holding his nose.] 'I'll go vote for Gore.' Or do we get out there, like Thomas Jefferson counseled, try to change the paradigm, enrich the dialogue, get more candidates, local, state, national.

I'm going to say [to Kerry], look, you're not doing that well in the last month. Here's a chickenhawk . . . making you explain your first Purple Heart, and why you did this and that. You've had Dick Clarke . . . and . . . Michael Moore and . . . Bob Woodward putting Bush on the defensive, and you're getting blurred.

The problem is these consultants who have got their hooks into the Kerry campaign. I mean, $27 million for a Madison Avenue image builder? He's not his own person. If there's one thing the mass of voters can see through, that's someone who is not his own person, someone who has more antenna than brains. They really see through that.

You can take the greatest country in the world into a war quagmire, based on fabrications, deceptions, and lies.... The one thing you don't want to do when you're fighting terrorism is to produce more of it, and he's doing exactly that. He's now turned Iraq into a magnet for stateless terrorists, and we're stuck, because now collective ego is involved.

[People say:] 'We're not going to cut and run. We got to support the troops.' To which I say, I want to to protect the troops, to get them out of there. [emphasis added]

Stop voting defensively, stand up for your principles and for what you really believe. You hate the war? You hate corporate power? You wanna see the environment protected? Gotta have those abortions on demand? Do you really think Kerry shares your principles? A former military man whoÂ’s admitted to shooting civilians in wartime? An elitist snob who's been sucking off the tit of corporations by way of marriage all his adult life? A hunter who owns guns and SUVs is gonna care about the environment? Can you really trust a churchgoing catholic to defend your precious abortion rights?

You progressives. Why would you vote for the status quo? Another Yale rich boy president who, instead of having cronies in Big Oil dictating the shots will simply take his direction from his Big Ketchup in-laws. Don't play that game anymore.

[Democrats] say, 'support us, we have to beat George Bush.' I'm sorry. We played that game for 20 years. We're not playing it.

In October there will probably be a last minute surge in support for Nader when people realize KerryÂ’s going to lose, and Nader will get blamed for blowing the election again. In reality, a surge in Nader votes will be a protest of people who realized that Kerry was going down anyway and they felt free to vote their conscience.

So why not follow your conscience right now and tell everyone that you're voting for the guy who agrees with you the most? Suggest to your friends that they do the same. Build momentum for Nader now, don't wait until it's too late. If Nader starts polling high early in the summer, one of two things might happen. Either his support will snowball and he might win, or Kerry will realize that he needs to move closer to Nader's ideology to have a chance. Either way, you progressives come out ahead!

Seriously.  ; )

Posted by: annika at 08:32 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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The calls for Rumsfeld's resignation seem to be nearing the point of critical mass. i'm as yet undecided on the issue. i've always liked the guy, and i think he's been a great Secretary of Defense. i think it's unfair to blame him for what happened at Abu Ghraib, yet i understand the doctrine of accountability. The demand that he resign is mainly hardball "gotcha" politics, in my view.

Yet i don't see the demands lessening any time soon. Rummy did not make friends among the uniformed elite, with his abrasive management style. i doubt they'd go to bat for him. The left is salivating at the chance to force a resignation, because they so desperately want to recapture the power they think they had back in the days of Vietnam.

Ideally, i'd like to see Rumsfeld stay, but CENTCOM go, along with a lot of the top brass over in Iraq. Sacrificial lambs? Maybe, but i think there's plenty of legitimate criticism regarding the post "end of major combat" phase, which would justify an overhaul of the leadership now. Often in war -- and you saw this in WWII a lot -- turnover at the top is the only way to get younger, more effective officers into command positions.

However, i'm afraid that the chant "Rumsfeld must go" may get so loud that politically, Bush may have no choice but to get rid of him. Unfair as i think that would be, it might also be the best thing for our country.

Posted by: annika at 12:04 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Here's a bit of good news out of LAX, if you can believe that. Six French journalists were arrested and deported when they tried to enter the country to cover a trade show.

Six is definitely a good start. Now, how quickly can we round up the rest of the journalists and Frenchies and kick them out too?

Posted by: annika at 11:42 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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"Here is the most powerful guy in the world, and he wants to make sure I'm safe."

Via Blogs for Bush.

Posted by: annika at 09:05 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Thanks to Sarah for pointing out this heroic member of the Salvadoran military, serving in Iraq. It's a story you won't hear Don Rather talking about, or Seymore Hirsch writing about.

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