September 11, 2004 by s.z.

Mini Carnival of the Wingnuts 1.  Let's start with a former Ms. Dark Window, Tamara Wilhite, who cites expert testimony on the terrorist threat we all face: Has anyone read Tom Clancy? A war against Islamicists start in his books with a dozen Muslims with AK-47s walking into malls and emptying their clips into the crowds. What are our soft targets? Schools, as Beslan reminded us. Day care centers, as the whacko in California reminded us when he started shooting at a Jewish Day School. Sporting events. Concerts. Political rallies. Anywhere people gather, we are at risk. Staying at home is not an option. Then, what are our options? Per Tamara, our options are to arm everybody (thank God that ban on assault weapons ends next week!), and then gun down "Mohammed and Omar" when they start shooting our populace. Fewer deaths and the deaths of those responsible would occur than if we followed the liberal mantra and all hide while having government sponsored dial-a-prayer: calling 911. However, such acts would be a defensive measure. It would be the equivalent to white blood cells attacking a disease organism. And we must admit, Islamicist radicals are a disease. What we need to do is remove the infection. And to do that, we stop acting like white blood cells and start acting like medieval surgeons -- we bleed our country with leeches, under the theory that our problem is too much freedom. We cannot protect every soft target. There are as many soft targets as there are people in this country. How do we prevent Beslan from occurring in Bedford, Massachusetts or Burlington, Vermont?  Remove the infection before we become Iran.   Create national ID cards. Include biometric information. Include religion on the ID card. Living in a totalitarian state will  be fun! Any criminals are to be rounded up and locked up the day they are identified.  No need for trials or due process -- if the police identify them as criminals, they should be locked up, for the good of society. Anyone who registers as Muslim should be required to take a loyalty oath. The U.S. or Islam. Anyone who chooses the U.S. shall be registered with the government. If they continue to show loyalty to this nation, they may stay. But only on sufferance. Anyone who chooses Islam is to be considered a threat to this country and put in confinement. Call it a concentration camp. Guantanomo Bay is more comfortable than Afghanistan, and I’m not suggesting we send them all to Cuba. Old Japanese interment camps work. Remember, extremism is a belief system. If Dad thinks he has a right to blow up Jews for the sake of Jihad, odds are that Junior does, too. Remember: Islamicists are equal opportunity suicide bombers these days. Mom has no qualms about sending her daughter off to school in a suicide bomber belt these days, either. Children tend to inherit the beliefs of their parents. And all children should be interred with the parents. All relatives of those in internment should be interred as well. Sadly, despite her efforts to be even loonier than an Ann Coulter/Michelle Malkin Thing With Two Heads experiment gone terribly wrong (reportedly, Mengele was working on this project near the end of the war), Tamara doesn't have the hair or legs necessary to be the next right-wing psycho bimbo. 2.  Now, let's see what's new with our friend Pastor Joseph Grant Swank, the hardest working man in wingnuttery.  Well, since we last checked on him a couple of days ago, he's come out with two new columns: Pansy Pacifists Led By John F. Kerry Would Sell Our America and The Spiritual Difference Between Bush And Kerry. Here's a representative paragraph from the first: Kerry would have us wilt on the vine. He would preach a gospel of pacifism that’s nothing other than sheer pansy weakness at its most crippled level. Pansy pacifism does not a mighty nation make. Pansy pacifism opens up America’s shores to those creeping killers who delight in watching our blood make rivers of our streets.  Let's pass over the fact that pansies don't grow on vines, and look at the key points from the pastor's column from yesterday: Kerry is a renegade Catholic. For one, he insists in desecrating Communion by defying scriptural truths. Specifically, Kerry endorses killing womb babies. That’s against divine revelation. While championing murdering unborn infants, Kerry places in his mouth the sacred elements representing the death of Christ. That is sacrilege. Therefore, on that one issue alone, Kerry is not only a horrible Catholic but not at all a Christian. He is as heathen as heathen can get. [...] Bush on the other hand is a devout Christian in that he seeks to understand the biblical morality, then live it. He, like us all, is not perfect. He, being mortal, has his share of flaws. Let that believer without flaw cast the first stone at the United States President. But let that pastor who writes for BushCountry.org feel free to call Kerry a horrible Catholic heathen without recognizing any incongruity whatsoever. So we have two persons running for the highest office in the country. One is a self-styled religionist of the most liberal and apostate expression. The other is a devout believer who seeks, as best he can, to live out the Spirit of Jesus. That’s the main difference between these two candidates — one a sincere Christian and the other a desecrating churchgoer. This is the point where we look at Pastor Swank's bio, to see there's something (like being a recent immigrant from Elbonia, or being frequently dropped on the head as a child) to explain his lack of facility with the language and really stupid ideas. Graduate of accredited college (BA) and seminary (M Div) with graduate work at Harvard Divinity School. So, apparently he's not writing columns as part of some wingut Special Olympics event. Married for 41 years with 3 adult children. Therefore, he's not the younger version of Kyle Williams (whose folly can be explained by the fact that he's only 15, and apparently never gets to leave the house). Pastorates: Calgary, Alberta; Indianapolis IN; Akron OH; Fishkill NY; Manchester CT; Walpole MA; Windham ME. Hmm, he's possibly from Alberta -- however, that isn't enough to explain his mangling of the English language.  Winner of First Prize Writing Contest which yielded a three-week guided tour of the Middle East. Okay, that's just as inexplicable as his columns! 3.  So let's move on to the latest by Frank Gaffney.  It's about how the investigation (and reporting on the investigation) of possible espionage at the Pentagon is anti-Semitic, and probably a sign that the FBI is now working for Iran. Using innuendo and a steady stream of (often recycled) press leaks, the names and reputations of a number of people — including several who are senior officials in the United States government at the moment — have been sullied. There is no need to repeat their names here. But here's a graph from a WashPost story from last week, just for fun: Investigators have specifically asked about a group of neoconservatives involved in defense issues, including Feith, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, Iraq and Iran specialist Harold Rhode and others at the Pentagon. FBI agents also have asked current and former officials about Richard Perle of the defense board and David Wurmser, an Iran specialist and principal deputy assistant for national security affairs in Cheney's office, according to sources familiar with or involved in the case. But back to Frank: Today, anti-Semitic witch-hunts can be dressed up as ideological conflicts between the Bush Administration's so-called "hardliners" and "moderates." The former are increasingly caricatured as "neo-conservatives." For many who use this ill-defined term, though, it serves as an unmistakable, pejorative code word for "Jews." Funny, Dick Cheney doesn't look Jewish. If the conduct of hostile bureaucrats and Democratic partisans, reprehensible as it is, can at least be easily understood, the behavior of the FBI is less comprehensible. It would be one thing if law enforcement were filing charges and presenting compelling evidence of wrongdoing — and clarity as to who engaged in it. Because if they are investigating prior to filing charges and presenting evidence, then it must mean that something is terribly wrong at the FBI. In the absence of such information, however, one has to wonder whether it is purely coincidental that the FBI has, since September 11th, been assiduously cultivating a constituency keenly interested in: driving wedges between the U.S. and Israel; neutralizing AIPAC's considerable influence in Washington; and diminishing the effectiveness of the most articulate advocates of President Bush's offensive strategy for the War on Terror. The Bureau reported to the 9/11 Commission that, over the past three years, its officials have held some 900 meetings with, among other constituencies (including Seikhs and Jewish groups), self-identified "leaders" of the Muslim-American and Arab-American community. Wait, is Frank saying that the Sikhs are behind all this? The available record suggests that most, if not virtually all of the latter meetings — including at least 19 with FBI Director Robert Mueller or his senior subordinates — have been with representatives of organizations that have long sympathized with Iranian or other Islamist causes. So, the FBI has been meeting with various constituencies, including Muslim-Americans, and representatives from these Muslim-American groups may sympathize with Islamist causes?  I am shocked, SHOCKED!  Clearly, Robert Mueller is an Iranian agent, and the Bureau is persecuting Jews at his direction.  They should be disbanded NOW, before they can frame somebody from the Jewish Vice President's office for leaking info to the Jewish Robert Novak. 7:47:15 AM

Typeface Gate! As the NY Times reveals, all the font analysis in the world is never going to resolve whether the Killian memos are forgeries or not.  Mr. Matley, the documents expert, said in an interview after the program, that he had examined documents and handwriting since 1985 and had testified in 65 trials. Mr. Matley said the documents the network sent him were so deteriorated from copying that it was impossible to identify the typeface. "It's sheer speculation to say that you couldn't have done that until a computer came along,'' he said. It's been proven that there were typewriters in the '70s which could do all the stuff which the critics use to claim show that the documents had to have been created on a word processor.  But nobody can prove that these documents were or weren't typed on one of the IBN Selectrics (such as the "Composer," which the Air Force had reportedly service tested in 1969) available at the time which had "proportional font" and "th" keys and the rest.  So, what else does CBS have (besides expert handwriting analysis)?  In a statement, CBS News said it stands by its story. "This report was not based solely on recovered documents, but rather on a preponderance of evidence, including documents that were provided by unimpeachable sources, interviews with former Texas National Guard officials and individuals who worked closely back in the early 1970s with Colonel Jerry Killian and were well acquainted with his procedures, his character and his thinking," the statement read. "In addition, the documents are backed up not only by independent handwriting and forensic document experts but by sources familiar with their content," the statement continued. "  Countering that are Killian's widow and son. Gary Killian, who served in the Guard with his father and retired as a captain in 1991, said he doubted his father would have written an unsigned memo which said there was pressure to "sugar coat" Mr. Bush's performance review. "It just wouldn't happen," he said. "No officer in his right mind would write a memo like that." An officer who was being pressured to give evaluations which he felt were not justified might very well do such a thing.  Writing MFRs (Memorandums for the Record) is a time-honored way for government employees to record, "for the file," information which they feel is being swept under the carpet by the powers that be.  I've written such memos myself, and I can assure you that my family knows nothing about them or the file into which they were placed.  So, I'd give a lot more weight to Killian's colleagues than I would his family on a matter like this. Also, Fox News had William Campenni (the guy who served in the same unit as Bush in the early '70s, and who wrote the letter touted by Ed Gillespie as proving that Bush actually existed back then) on the Brit Hume show this evening.  Campenni was brought on to give his opinion that the Colonel wouldn't have routinely written a memo ordering a pilot to show up for his physical, because pilots usually had until the end of their birth month to get checked out -- which for Bush would have been a couple of months after the date on the memo -- and they took said exam without needing a special order to do so.  Campenni added that drug and alcohol screening also wasn't routine in 1972, and was only done when requested by a commanding officer who had reason to suspect there was a problem. So, Fox News is making it sound like Col. Killian had reason to suspect that George Bush was using drugs (or seriously abusing alcohol) in 1972, and so he specifically ordered the young officer to show up for a physical which would have included special screening for alcohol and/or drugs.  And Bush refused to obey that order.  And then George was whisked out of state by his family.  And he was later given permission to serve in a non-flying unit in Alabama (even though he had signed a commitment to serve his country as a pilot, in recognition of the fact that it had invested thousands and thousands of dollars training him to fly planes), all so it wouldn't come out that George had a drug problem.  But he didn't even bother to show up to read the magazines (or whatever other cushy made-up work they arranged for him in Alabama) during the time he was there, because a commitment to his country meant so little to him at the time.  And then associates of his family put pressure on George's superiors to write up undeserved performance ratings for him, showing their contempt for honorable military service.  And then most of the records which could embarrass him were illegally destroyed in the past decade or so, in order to help George's political prospects, because his career is more important than the law or the truth. Pretty damning stuff, which I never would have suspected without Fox News' efforts to discredit the memos.  (Because, as even the White House said, the stuff about Bush basically bailing on the last couple of years of his National Guard service is old news.)  Thanks, Fox News! 12:23:25 AM