One of Ours

Cincinnati Post
Senator apologizes for 'joke'

Republican Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky, speaking of Dr. Daniel Mongiardo, a dark-haired, dark-skinned second-generation Italian-American running against him this fall:

"I have to tell you he looks like one of Saddam Hussein's sons... I mean before they were dead, of course...I really mean that he looks like one of Saddam's sons, and he even dresses like them, too."

Bunning made the remarks at a Lincoln-Reagan dinner. After word leaked out, Bunning's campaign denied that he'd said any such thing.

But then it emerged that the event had been videotaped...

This is idiotic. Didn't Republican politicians learn anything from the downfall of Trent Lott? What a shmuck.

http://www.cincypost.com/2004/04/01/bunn040104.html

Wall Street Journal by Christopher Hitchens
A reminder of what the future might look like if we fail.

There must be a temptation, when confronted with the Dantesque scenes from Fallujah, to surrender to something like existential despair. The mob could have cooked and eaten its victims without making things very much worse. One especially appreciated the detail of the heroes who menaced the nurses, when they came to try and remove the charred trophies...

...I debate with the opponents of the Iraq intervention almost every day. I always have the same questions for them, which never seem to get answered. Do you believe that a confrontation with Saddam Hussein’s regime was inevitable or not? Do you believe that a confrontation with an Uday/Qusay regime would have been better?...Would you have been in favor of lifting the “no fly zones” over northern and southern Iraq; a 10-year prolongation of the original “Gulf War”? Were you content to have Kurdish and Shiite resistance fighters do all the fighting for us? Do you think that the timing of a confrontation should have been left, as it was in the past, for Baghdad to choose?...

...I hope I do not misrepresent my opponents, but their general view seems to be that Iraq was an elective target; a country that would not otherwise have been troubling our sleep. This ahistorical opinion makes it appear that Saddam Hussein was a new enemy, somehow chosen by shady elements within the Bush administration, instead of one of the longest-standing foes with which the United States, and indeed the international community, was faced...Fallujah is a reminder, not just of what Saddamism looks like, or of what the future might look like if we fail, but of what the future held before the Coalition took a hand.

Hitchens is certainly the most consistant anti-fascist liberal writer in America. He has been a war hawk on Iraq since 1995.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110004903

New York Times

The United Nations director for relief in Sudan said Friday that Arab militias were conducting a campaign of ethnic cleansing to drive black Africans out of a border region of the country with the apparent tolerance of the Sudanese government.
Jan Egeland, the under secretary general for humanitarian affairs, said the armed groups were using “scorched earth tactics,” deliberately destroying food and humanitarian supplies and attacking refugee centers in a program of “systematic depopulation.”

“I consider this ethnic cleansing,” he said, estimating that 750,000 people had been forced from their homes and villages, tens of thousands had fled into neighboring Chad and 10,000 might have died.

Speaking to reporters after briefing the Security Council on the situation, he said he was sounding the alarm because it was “one of the most forgotten and neglected humanitarian crises in the world.”...

...relief workers had witnessed beatings, killings and gang rapes, but that alerting Sudanese authorities had gotten no response. He said he personally knew of a number of occasions where the government refused to intervene in "ongoing massacres."

"We can tell they tolerate them," he said of the mass killings...

...He said the virtual civil war was being waged by rebel groups, militias and criminal gangs, as well as by Arab groups attacking black Africans. The fighting began a year ago over local protests that the oil-rich Sudanese government was ignoring the needs of Darfur, which borders Chad...

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/03/international/africa/03NATI.html

Command Post (war news)

...According to some sources, many residents were told to stay inside on the day the attacks occurred. Shops were closed and the town was all but empty. Iraqi media just happened to be in the area (so was Reuters).

“This was clearly an attack to get maximum media exposure,” said one source.

Iraqi insurgents had set up several ambush points around Fallujah, the city west of Baghdad that is a hotbed of anti-American sentiment, and had stocked them with gasoline on the morning of the attack, intelligence sources told ABCNEWS.

http://www.command-post.org/2_archives/011287.html

Last night the French raised their Terrorist Alert Level from RUN to HIDE.
It is now just one level below their highest Terrorist Alert Level, which is SURRENDER.

This joke came from Gene and refers to my favorite target of ridicule:
The Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys.