Which, of course, means it is reasonable and doesn’t have any name calling, dripping sarcasm, and bitter ad hominem attacks, and as such probably doesn’t even count as blogging.
Still worth reading, though.
by John Cole| 34 Comments
This post is in: Excellent Links
Which, of course, means it is reasonable and doesn’t have any name calling, dripping sarcasm, and bitter ad hominem attacks, and as such probably doesn’t even count as blogging.
Still worth reading, though.
by John Cole| 26 Comments
This post is in: Previous Site Maintenance
by John Cole| 53 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics, Politics, Democratic Stupidity, General Stupidity
I am with the Captain on this- certain people are not covering themselves with dignity in regards to the bridge collapse in Minnesota:
Yesterday, Senator Amy Klobuchar blamed the collapse of the I-35W bridge on a lack of highway funds — even though the 2005 highway bill increased federal funding to Minnesota by 46% over its five-year span. Apparently realizing that line of argument wouldn’t hold, Rep. James Oberstar accused MnDOT of being too cheap to use advanced technology for bridge inspections. He left out of his accusation that the technology hasn’t proven itself for that purpose:
On the House floor Friday, U.S. Rep. Jim Oberstar, D-Minn., accused MnDOT of turning down an opportunity to use a $200,000 high-tech inspection technology on the bridge that might have detected a fatal flaw. …
“Technology can discover microscopic cracks not visible to the naked eye and then measure their propagation and do the same with bridges,” he said on the House floor. “The Minnesota Department of Transportation was offered the opportunity to use that technology and I am disappointed that the state rejected the opportunity to use that technology to test the structural integrity of the bridge that collapsed.” …
John Schadl, Oberstar’s spokesman, said the congressman mentioned the incident because he is frustrated by the lack of investment in new technologies, at both the federal and state levels. But Oberstar does not know whether the company’s system would have detected any fatal flaws in the bridge.
“Nobody knows if this technology would have prevented this tragedy,” Schadl said.
Precisely. And do you know why nobody knows it? Because we don’t know why the bridge failed yet. We don’t know whether this system works as promised, either. Why can’t our Democrats in this state wait to find out what actually happened before leaping to conclusions as to what could have prevented it — especially on the floor of Congress?
Just once it would be nice if, in the aftermath of these tragedies, we could actually get an idea of what went wrong before the politicians are promoting politically motivated fixes and wagging fingers at people for no reason.
As an aside, the Star Tribune headline on a story states: “MnDOT chose ‘most cost efficient’ of 3 options.” Since when is cost efficiency a bad thing? And since when does cost efficient mean ineffective? I am sure we could all list any number of things we do every day which are both cost effective and efficient. Last week I spilled a drink on my floor. Now, I suppose I could have ripped up the carpet and replaced it with a new, top-of-the-line carpet. Instead, I cleaned up the mess with about 50 cents worth of detergent and water. I guess, if there is ever a problem with my carpet in the future, the Star Tribune will be on my case.
by John Cole| 32 Comments
This post is in: Previous Site Maintenance
I will be in and out today, so entertain yourselves.
By the way, I failed to comment on this yesterday- this moderator should be beaten with a stick. Disgraceful behavior.
*** Update ***
Heh.
by John Cole| 54 Comments
This post is in: War on Terror aka GSAVE®, Democratic Stupidity
It appears the Democrats can behave like a supine minority while in the majority:
A furious push by the White House to broaden its wiretapping authority appeared on the verge of victory on Friday night after the Senate approved a measure that would temporarily give the administration more latitude to eavesdrop without court warrants on foreign communications that it suspects may be tied to terrorism.
The House is expected to take up the White House-backed measure on Saturday morning before going into its summer recess.
Democratic leaders acknowledged that the bill would probably pass.
Democrats in both the House and the Senate failed to pass competing measures on Friday that would have included tougher judicial checks and oversight on the eavesdropping powers.
The White House and Congressional Republicans hailed the Senate vote as critical to plugging what they saw as dangerous gaps in the intelligence agencies’ ability to detect terrorist threats.
“I can sleep a little safer tonight,” Senator Christopher S. Bond, the Missouri Republican who co-sponsored the measure, declared after the Senate vote.
Are we really passing legislation so Chris Bond can sleep better?
At any rate, well done Democrats. If you are wondering why your poll numbers in Congress are so low, it is because the Republican opposition hates you, and the people who voted for you hate you more. Why? Because of stuff like this.
Grow a spine, you cowards.
This post is in: Military, Blogospheric Navel-Gazing, General Stupidity
It is official! One hundred percent of soldiers, when asked, state that no, they do not want an Article 15:
To your question: Were there any truth to what was being said by Thomas?
Answer: An investigation of the allegations were conducted by the command and found to be false. In fact, members of Thomas’ platoon and company were all interviewed and no one could substantiate his claims.
As to what will happen to him?
Answer: As there is no evidence of criminal conduct, he is subject to Administrative punishment as determined by his chain of command. Under the various rules and regulations, administrative actions are not releasable to the public by the military on what does or does not happen.
Intrepid defender of the troops Bob Owens with the “scoop.” Our brave defender of the soldiers honor opines:
Let’s look at that once more: “members of Thomas’ platoon and company were all interviewed and no one could substantiate his claims.”
Presumably thorough, in-person interviews of all of Alpha Company, 1/18 Infantry, Second Brigade Combat Team, First Infantry Division, and Beauchamp’s platoon within Alpha Company by military investigators, and not one of those soldiers could confirm Beauchamp’s stories as told in The New Republic.
Note that the investigation didn’t just stop by stating that the claims were uncorroborated; Col. Boylan states categorically that Beauchamp’s allegations were false. Not a lot of wiggle room there.
But what about the OPSEC violations! NO CRIMES? DOES THAT MEAN NO EXECUTIONS FOR TREASON?
And no- these were not proven “false.” Not in any sense of the word- not from interviews alone. What it means is that the military can’t corroborate it, and of course they can’t- what idiot is going to cop to what Beauchamp described under the threat of punishment? Seriously. If interviews were the only thing done in this investigation, it proves nothing (“O.J.- did you kill your wife? No? Ok.”).
And this is not to blame this on the military or the poor bastards at the Public Affairs Office who have been dealing with idiots like Owens for the past two weeks- what are they supposed to do? Search for canine corpses in the desert? Go the the KBR records and line up a name with every meal served in Kuwait?
No- they did the only thing they could do- they asked the soldiers, and surprising no one, found no one willing to cop to the behavior. Again, this should come as NO surprise, and only in the world of make believe would this mean that the story is finished. Kudo’s to Allahpundit for asking the right questions:
NR claims to have corroborated the various elements of Beauchamp’s story with five different members of his company, four of whom had firsthand knowledge of the incidents. The statement Bob got suggests (but doesn’t quite explicitly say) that every last man in the company was interviewed and, to quote the spokesman, “no one could substantiate [Beauchamp’s] claims.” Assuming both Foer and the spokesman are telling the truth, five guys in the squad are lying to someone. They all have a motive to tell the Army the incidents never happened given the trouble they’d be in for not reporting them at the time; assuming they’re all friends of Beauchamp and want to protect him from a career-destroying mistake, they also all have a motive to tell TNR that the incidents happened the way he said. (Although if they’re lying to TNR, why then dispute the location of burned woman incident? Why not just corroborate him on that detail too? Maybe because there are too many people at FOB Falcon who could disprove it?)
Unless the Army comes up with compelling evidence disproving his story it’s going to end up as the military version of a he said/she said where each side simply believes whom they’d prefer ideologically to believe and leaves it at that. Let’s hope what they’ve got is as specific as Goldfarb’s quote implies.
Allah is probably right. At any rate, hopefully a few things will happen:
1.) Bob Owens and the other nitwits will leave these guys at the Public Affairs office alone and let them get on to more important things. Like, for example, fighting a war- one that really isn’t going very swimmingly. I am betting their 100% attention to that would probably be a good thing.
2.) Scott Beauchamp will get his computer back and will be allowed to talk to his parents again.
3.) Somewhere in Greater Wingnuttia®, someone will cry that a little extra duty is not punishment enough, and I will be blessed with another week’s worth of easy blogging material- making fun of really, really stupid people.
Finally, let me close with the observation that it is Doug Feith’s profound misfortune that Tommy Franks never met Bob Owens.
*** Update ***
Mandatory Troll Disclaimer- Thinking this investigation as currently described proves nothing in no way means that I think Beauchamp’s writings are accurate, nor do I want them to be true. Nor do I want the terrorists to win, nor do I hate America, nor do I plan to move to France and share a condo with Barbra Streisand.
*** Update #2 ***
The whooshing, clattering sound you hear is the strict rules of evidence that they so recently applied to the New Republic being slam-dunked into wastebaskets, as the broad official denial suddenly becomes the gold standard of investigative research.
This post is in: Military, Blogospheric Navel-Gazing, General Stupidity
Matt Sanchez, live from FOB Falcon:
Despite the media coverage back home, most of the fifty or so soldiers I spoke with had never heard of Private Scott Thomas Beauchamp, and shrugged their shoulders when I mentioned the “Baghdad Diarist”. Not following the news too closely is normal on bases throughout Iraq and FOB Falcon is no exception. The day begins long before the sun floats on the horizon and sears the unpaved roads causing the dust to drift in the air by noon and settle long after dusk. Soldiers will only rest when the mission is complete and that means little time for leisure and less time for the latest literary scandals. This is a demographic far much more likely to read anonymous Myspace.com profiles of far-away pretty girls than the pages of a 90 year old progressive bi-weekly magazine.
*** Three Paragraphs Later ***With Operation Law and Order, Lt. Colonel James Crider and his soldiers of the Quarter horse employed clear, control and retain tactics to make the protection of the Dora occupants their personal priority. It’s fair to say the men and women of the 1-4 Cav, like so many of their sister units, know their bit of Baghdad real estate just as well or even better than they know FOB Falcon. For these men and women, the success of their mission is never reduced to a talking point on a tele-prompter, real soldiers have died defending this ground. Which may be why the “Baghdad Diarist” saga is taken so personally.
Jesus wept.