Old Dog, Old Tricks

The guys at Power Line have an article up about CBS using discredited documents to air a piece about the Republicans wanting to reinstate the military draft. This comes three weeks after using fake documents to push another story that proved false.
The first rule of holes is this : "When you find yourself in a hole... quit digging". CBS apparently doesn't know the rule, they're now using a backhoe.
---Larry Everett

"Old dog, old tricks
Ratherbiased.com (whose site is down now) and Little Green Footballs detail how CBS News last night used discredited documents to attack President Bush:" ...[Read the Whole Thing]

Sister Kerry

John Kerry has said he will build an international coalition in the fight against terrorism. Meanwhile he says our allies are a "coalition of the coerced and bribed". Words like those aren't a good way to win friends and influence people. Now, Kerry's sister Diana is helping spread that message to our international friends.
---Larry Everett

[snipped]
"Sister Kerry
From the October 4, 2004 issue: The candidate's sibling causes a stir overseas--and at home.
by Katherine Mangu-Ward
10/04/2004, Volume 010, Issue 04

EVERY MAN with presidential aspirations has a black sheep in the family. Heck, George W. Bush has been the black sheep in his family from time to time. John Kerry is no exception. After decades of living abroad--most recently in Indonesia--Diana Kerry, John's younger sister, has returned to the fold. And last week she put her foot squarely in John Kerry's mouth.

As the head of Americans Overseas for Kerry, Diana Kerry is a campaign official. And she was speaking in that capacity when, in reference to the invasion of Iraq, she said, "Australia has kept faith with the U.S., and we are endangering the Australians now by this wanton disregard for international law and multilateral channels."

The Weekend Australian's Roy Eccleston, who broke the story, added: "Asked if she believed the terrorist threat to Australians was now greater because of the support for Republican George W. Bush, Ms. Kerry said: 'The most recent attack was on the Australian embassy in Jakarta--I would have to say that.'" She also mentioned the October 2002 bombing of two Bali nightclubs, in which many of the victims were young Australians.

Alert readers, including Amanda Sokolski on this magazine's website, quickly picked up on errors in Ms. Kerry's timeline. The Bali bombing took place long before Australia got mixed up with those nasty Americans and their "wanton disregard for international law." And the September 9 attack on the Australian embassy was perpetrated by Jemaah Islamiyah, al Qaeda's Southeast Asia franchise, which has considered Australia a target since well

before the Iraq war. Evidently, the details of this timeline were blurry for Ms. Kerry, who has been busy shuttling around the globe on her brother's behalf for the last several months.

So who is Diana Kerry? A lifelong expat drama instructor and translator, she's now in charge of scooping up as many votes as possible from the more than 4 million Americans living abroad--including 100,000 in Australia. As part of this effort, she has recently tried her hand at blogging. A post on the official campaign blog introduces Diana and explains her project: "Nothing is more important to me than international understanding," she says. Bolstering her credentials, Ms. Kerry reminisces about "a State Dinner in Hanoi at which I joined John some years ago--one of only three women present. The affection and regard that the Vietnamese held for him in his work to restore diplomatic relations was very moving."

On the Americans Overseas for Kerry blog, one finds a long thread accusing the Pentagon of deliberately blocking voter registration overseas. Writes Ms. Kerry: "I was outraged to read that the Bush Administration has chosen to block access to [the] Federal Voter Assistance Program website for U.S. citizens residing in at least 25 countries around the world. . . . The Pentagon has been engaged in a growing practice of denying vital voter registration information to U.S. voters over the past several months."

The charges against the Pentagon are repeated on another (unofficial) blog aimed at overseas Democrats--in fact, such complaints are a staple of the bulletin boards and official notices on such sites. Luke Robinson, a London-based website designer, lightly floats Ms. Kerry's conspiracy theory over at the site he moderates, ExpatsAgainstBush.org: "I wonder if this could be due to any perceived Democratic bias in the expat voting population this year? No, that would be too far into tinfoil hat territory."
[snipped][Read the Whole Thing]

Beldars Challenge

Beldar offers a challenge to anyone that can debunk any allegation by the Swift Boat Veterans. He's a lawyer so of course he lays out some ground rules.
---Larry Everett
[snipped]

"A challenge to those who claim that the SwiftVets' allegations have been "debunked" or are "unsubstantiated"
Hence my challenge for the weekend to my readers — you're probably a minority, as these things go, but I know from my comments pages that you're out there — who may agree with the NYT or Mr. Sullivan:

Can you identify even one specific and material SwiftVets allegation that you believe to have been fully "debunked" or fully proven to be "unsubstantiated"?

Some ground rules for this challenge that I think are not unreasonable:

By "specific," I mean to exclude sweeping conclusions like "John Kerry wasn't as big a hero as he's made out." By material, I mean to exclude trivia like "the VC soldier John Kerry shot was in a uniform instead of in a loincloth." And I ask that if you're to make an honest effort to meet my challenge, you provide quotes and links, both to the SwiftVets' allegations and to the evidence that you offer to show debunking or lack of substantiation.

If you rely on documents — for example, Larry Thurlow's Bronze Star citation as support for the proposition that he and Kerry were under enemy fire after PCF 3 was struck by a mine — then to reach "debunked" status, you ought to show that there are no contrary eyewitness accounts to those documents, nor other contrary documents. Otherwise, you've merely established that a dispute exists — what lawyers would call a "genuine issue of fact" that must be resolved by a judgment call as to which side has the greater weight of the credible evidence.

Saying your side has the greater weight of the evidence isn't "debunking" or showing that something is "unsubstantiated," it's saying that your side ought to ultimately prevail on the factual dispute, and that's a very different kettle of fish. To use a converse example by way of illustration: I would argue that the "Christmas in Cambodia" story repeatedly told by Sen. Kerry has indeed been thoroughly debunked and proved unsubstantiated — that is, there simply is no credible evidence from which any rational factfinder could conclude that Kerry's claim to have spent Christmas 1968 several miles inside Cambodia, under friendly fire and on a secret mission, was truthful."
[snipped]Read the Whole Thing

Looking for American Failure

Mark Steyn has this piece in the Chicago Sun-Times about John Kerry's attack on Iraqi prime minister Iyad Allawi.
---Larry Everett

Kerry's looking for American failure -- and he's it
September 26, 2004
BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
[snipped]
But last week he did it again. Ayad Allawi, the first prime minister of post-Saddam Iraq, was in Washington to give a joint address to Congress. A tough, stocky, bullet-headed optimist, Iraq's interim leader delivered a simple, elegant and moving speech, which made three basic points:

''First, we are succeeding in Iraq. [Applause] It's a tough struggle with setbacks, but we are succeeding . . .

''The second message is quite simple and one that I would like to deliver directly from my people to yours: Thank you, America [Applause] . . .

''Third, I stand here today as the prime minister of a country emerging finally from dark ages of violence, aggression, corruption and greed . . . Well over a million Iraqis were murdered or are missing . . .''

Kerry didn't show up for Allawi's visit to Washington -- he was in Ohio again, which is evidently becoming the proverbial Vietnam-type quagmire for him. Nonetheless, barely had the prime minister finished than the absentee senator did a daytime version of his midnight ramble and barged his way onto the air to insist that he knew better than Iraq's head of government what was going on in the country. One question from his accompanying press corps was especially choice:

''Prime Minister Allawi told Congress today that democracy was taking hold in Iraq and that the terrorists there were on the defensive. Is he living in the same fantasyland as the president?''

It would be nice to think this was a somewhat crude attempt at irony, but given America's Ratherized media this seems unlikely. Just for the record, Allawi is not living in a fantasyland. He's living in Iraq, and he begins his day with a dangerous commute across Baghdad's ''Green Zone.'' John Kerry's regular commute, by contrast, is from his wife's beach compound at Nantucket to his wife's 15th century English barn reconstructed as a ski lodge in Idaho. Nonetheless, he's the expert on Iraq and the guy living there 24/7 is the fantasist, and he's happy to assure us the prime minister doesn't know what he's talking about. It's all going to hell, forget about those January elections, etc.

What a small, graceless man Kerry is. The nature of adversarial politics in a democratic society makes George W. Bush his opponent. But it was entirely Kerry's choice to expand the field, to put himself on the other side of Allawi and the Iraqi people. Given his frequent boasts that he knows how to reach out to America's allies, it's remarkable how often he feels the need to insult them: Britain, Australia, and now free Iraq. But, because this pampered cipher has floundered for 18 months to find any rationale for his candidacy other than his indestructible belief in his own indispensability, Kerry finds himself a month before the election with no platform to run on other than American defeat. He has decided to co-opt the jihadist death-cult, the Baathist dead-enders, the suicide bombers and other misfits and run as the candidate of American failure. This would be shameful if he weren't so laughably inept at it.
[snipped]

Read the Whole Thing

Burning Books at Borders

Charles Johnson, the proprietor of Little Green Footballs has posted a disturbing article about Borders Books hiding, destroying, or otherwise making unavailable, books the union doesn't agree with politically. He has linked to a discussion by union members on how to avoid selling certain books they don't like. This, to me, is the equivalent of book burning. If you feel the same way, let your views be known to Borders Union or a local Borders bookstore if you have one. If organizations are "burning" books you don't like, it won't be long before someone will be "burning" books you do like. Censorship is not, and shouldn't be, a part of this great country we call America. History, from the burning of the library at Alexandria, Egypt to "Crystalnacht," the "Night of the Shattered Glass" in Nazi Germany, to the state of the moslem world today, should have taught us that suppressing dissenting views is dangerous, deadly, and, counterproductive to a free society.
Charles opines, and I agree, this page is to hot for Borders to leave up and will disappear soon so he has posted a link to a Google cache that has retained the page. This is the link to that cache : Neandertals in Fancy Suits. (Borders title, not mine)
If you don't like the message Borders is sending, PLEASE, let them know respectfully. No one listens to barking moonbats ranting and raving, except, maybe, other barking moonbats.
Visit LGF and Read the Whole Thing
---Larry Everett

The First Rathergate

The forged memos aren't the first time Dan Ra^ther has fabricated a story, been proven wrong, and stood behind the story in spite of the facts. He has hurt a lot of people with his fabrications and got away with it. Now we have web loggers, (bloggers), that WILL fact check the lame stream media and they don't like it. Anne Morse has the story.
---Larry Everett

"September 15, 2004, 5:52 a.m.
The First Rathergate
The CBS anchor’s precarious relationship with the truth.

By Anne Morse

Critics are calling the media scandal over the Jerry Killian forgeries "Rathergate." But to thousands of Vietnam veterans, the real Rathergate took place 16 years ago when Dan Rather successfully foisted a fraud onto the American people. Then, unlike now, there was no blogosphere to expose him.

On June 2, 1988, CBS aired an hour-long special titled CBS Reports: The Wall Within, which CBS trumpeted as the "rebirth of the TV documentary." It purported to tell the true story of Vietnam through the eyes of six of the men who fought there. And what terrible stories they had to tell.

"I think I was one of the highest trained, underpaid, eighteen-cent-an-hour assassins ever put together by a team of people who knew exactly what they were looking for," said Steve Southards, a Navy SEAL who told Rather he had escaped society to live in the forests of Washington state. Under Rather's gentle coaxing, Southards described slaughtering Vietnamese civilians, making his work appear to be that of the North Vietnamese.

"You're telling me that you went into the village, killed people, burned part of the village, then made it appear that the other side had done this?" Rather asked.

"Yeah," Steve replied. "It was kill VC, and I was good at what I did."

Steve arrived home "in a straitjacket, addicted to alcohol and drugs" knowing that "combat had made him different," Rather intoned. "He asked for help; that's unusual, many vets don't. They hold back until they explode."

Rather then moved on to suicidal veteran named George Grule, who was stationed on the aircraft carrier Ticonderoga off the coast of Vietnam during a secret mission. Grule described the horror of watching a friend walk into the spinning propeller of a plane, which chopped him to pieces and sprayed Grule with his blood. The memory of this trauma left Grule, like Steve, unable to function in normal society.

Neither could Mikal Rice, who broke down as he described a grenade attack at Cam Ranh Bay, which blew in half the body of a buddy, "Sergeant Call." "He died in my arms," Rice tearfully recalled. Rice described how the sound of thunder and cars backfiring would regularly trigger his terrible memories.

Most horrific of all were the memories of Terry Bradley, a "fighting sergeant" who told Rather he had skinned alive 50 Vietnamese men, women, and children in one hour and stacked their bodies in piles. "Could you do this for one hour of your life, you stack up every way a body could be mangled, up into a body, an arm, a tit, an eyeball . . . Imagine us over there for a year and doing it intensely," Bradley said. "That is sick."

"You've got to be angry about it," Rather replied. "I'm suicidal about it," Bradley responded.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, drug abuse, alcoholism, joblessness, homelessness, suicidal thoughts: These tattered warriors suffered from them all.

The The Wall Within was hailed by critics who — like the Washington Post's Tom Shales — gushed that the documentary was "extraordinarily powerful." There was just one problem: Almost none of it was true.

The truth was uncovered by B.G. Burkett, a Vietnam veteran and author of Stolen Valor: How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of its Heroes and its History (with Glenna Whitley). Burkett discovered that only one of the vets had actually served in combat. Steve Southards, who'd claimed to be a 16-year-old Navy SEAL assassin, had actually served as an equipment repairman stationed far from combat. Later transferred to Subic Bay in the Philippines, Steve spent most of his time in the brig for repeatedly going AWOL.

And George Gruel, who claimed he was traumatized by the sight of his friend being chopped to pieces by a propeller? Navy records reveal that a propeller accident did take place on the Ticonderoga when Gruel was aboard — but that he wasn't around when it happened. During Gruel's tour, the ship had been converted to an antisubmarine warfare carrier which operated, not on "secret mission" along the Vietnam coast, but on training missions off the California coastline. Nevertheless, Burkett notes, Gruel receives $1,952 a month from the Veterans Administration for "psychological trauma" related to an event he only heard about.

Mikal Rice — the anguished vet who claimed to have cradled his dying buddy in his arms — actually spent his tour as a guard with an MP company at Cam Ranh Bay. He never saw combat. Neither did Terry Bradley, who was not the "fighting sergeant" he'd claimed to be. Instead, military records reveal he served as an ammo handler in the 25th Infantry Division and spent nearly a year in the stockade for being AWOL. That's good news for the hundreds of Vietnamese civilians Bradley claimed to have slaughtered. But it doesn't say much for Dan Rather's credibility.

As Burkett notes, the records of all of these vets were easily checkable through Freedom of Information Act requests of their military records — something Rather and his producers simply didn't bother to do. They accepted at face value the lurid tales of atrocities committed in Vietnam and the stories of criminal behavior, drug addiction, and despair at home."

[snipped]

"Burkett, who did check the records of the vets Rather interviewed, shared his discoveries with CBS. So did Thomas Turnage, then administrator of the Veterans Administration, who was appalled by Rather's use of bogus statistics on the rates of suicide, homelessness, and mental illness among Vietnam veterans — statistics that can also be easily checked. Rather initially refused to comment, and CBS spokeswoman Kim Akhtar said, "The producers stand behind their story. They had enough proof of who they are." For his part, CBS president Howard Stringer defended the network with irrelevancies. "Your criticisms were not shared by a vast majority of our viewers," he sniffed, adding that "CBS News and its affiliates received acclaim from most quarters . . . In sum, this was a broadcast of which we at CBS News and I personally am proud. There are no apologies to make."[Read the Whole Thing]

Rathergate Unhinged

ABC News posts that two document experts were consulted on the Killian memos by CBS about President Bush's National Guard service before the airing of the "60 Minutes" broadcast. An excerpt from that article is posted below. Below that is a posting by Bill Dyer, the proprietor of the web log Beldar Blog. It is "The online journal of a crusty, longwinded trial lawyer, bemused observer of politics, and internet dilettante". He has some deep feelings about this and an excerpt is below the ABC piece.
---Larry Everett

"By Brian Ross
ABCNEWS.com

Sept. 14, 2004 — Two of the document experts hired by CBS News say the network ignored concerns they raised prior to the broadcast of a report citing documents that questioned George W. Bush's service in the National Guard during the Vietnam War.

The authenticity of the documents in the report by CBS News' 60 Minutes II has been widely questioned. The documents were allegedly written by Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, who died in 1984.

Emily Will, a veteran document examiner from North Carolina, told ABC News she saw problems right away with the one document CBS hired her to check the weekend before the broadcast.

"I found five significant differences in the questioned handwriting, and I found problems with the printing itself as to whether it could have been produced by a typewriter," she said.

Will says she sent the CBS producer an e-mail message about her concerns and strongly urged the network the night before the broadcast not to use the documents.

"I told them that all the questions I was asking them on Tuesday night, they were going to be asked by hundreds of other document examiners on Thursday if they ran that story," Will said.

But the documents became a key part of the 60 Minutes II broadcast questioning President Bush's National Guard service in 1972. CBS made no mention that any expert disputed the authenticity.

"I did not feel that they wanted to investigate it very deeply," Will told ABC News."

[snipped]

"A second document examiner hired by CBS News, Linda James of Plano, Texas, also told ABC News she had concerns about the documents and could not authenticate them. She said she expressed her concerns to CBS before the 60 Minutes II broadcast.

"I did not authenticate anything and I don't want it to be misunderstood that I did," James said. "And that's why I have come forth to talk about it because I don't want anybody to think I did authenticate these documents."

A third examiner hired by CBS for its story, Marcel Matley, appeared on CBS Evening News last Friday and was described as saying the document was real.

According to The Washington Post, Matley said he examined only the signature attributed to Killian and made no attempt to authenticate the documents themselves."Read the Whole Thing

Beldar expresses his legal opinion and personal outrage in a manner not to be misunderstood.

"Dan Rather was complicit in defrauding the American public in an attempt to defeat a sitting President. Rather must be fired now. Congress should subpoena CBS News' lawyers and all documentation of their advice.

I try to be fair-minded. I try not to reach snap judgments. I try to "see the other side." I try not to overstate. But in this post, I will express opinions that are as blunt and as strongly felt as any I've ever stated in my life. Nothing in this post is sarcasm or snark. This is as serious as a heart attack — and it's no longer funny to me, but a national disgrace and a national tragedy."[Read the Whole Thing]

Viet Vets Against Kerry March in Washington D.C.

Dan of Dislogue has a piece about the Vietnam Veterans Against Kerry march in Washington D.C. with pictures. He posts things you won't see in the MSM.
---Larry Everett

"I jotted lines from the speeches that struck me as significant. Some were applause lines, some were just notable. I'll list them here. If I know who was speaking, I'll credit them.
The wounds Kerry inflicted are more serious. They are to the heart and soul. Those wounds never go away.

Shame is the word he [Kerry] focused on. Now we're focusing it back on him for having provided aid and comfort to the enemy.
This speaker spoke about the cover of The New Soldier, John Kerry's anti-war book, and how that greatly offended them. The cover photo is of a paraody of the Iwo Jima memorial; several anti-war demonstrators are raising an upside-down U.S. flag. This book was brought on stage as a prop later, by John O'Neill, who held it up to punctuate his talk. As is so often the case, John Kerry's own words are his greatest enemies.

B.G. Burkett talked to the false credentials of so many in the anti-war left. One prominent name was that of Dan Rather. I could not take notes fast enough, so that bears some research. As I recall, Rather claimed to have served in the Marines, I think two tours. It seems he served for 4 months and was kicked out. I expect Stolen Valor has details. He tied this to the dispatch with which Kerry got himself out of Vietnam. Many of these people see Kerry's departure after three Purple Hearts for very minor wounds as a form of legal abandonment of his crew and fellow Swifties. It was not wrong, legally, but it broke the code of duty, honor, country.
He wants us to stand up and be loyal to him? Hell no! He doesn't know the meaning of loyalty! Now we're going to take the war to him!
--B.G. Burkett

We were the sons and daughters of the greatest generation.
--Donna Roe

I even saw them save babies.
--Donna Roe
And here she inserted the wonderful story of the Montagnard baby girl, saved from a village the Viet Cong had wiped out. The baby she herself named "Kathleen" when the baby girl arrived at Roe's hospital and they fought to save her life. That Kathleen was adopted and now has her own family here in the U.S. The story is told in In the Shadow of the Blade.
I'm proud to be a Vietnam Vet that served a whole twelve months!
--Donna RoeJim Warner spoke of this experiences as a POW for five years. He mentioned that they had been tortured, but gave no details, as is the norm for these true heros. The anecdote he spoke of was how he was interrogated and presented with a cardboard storyboard on which a magazine article had been posted. It spoke of Winter Soldier hearings in Detroit, and his mother was quoted saying normal concerned mother things. She had not heard from him. She only knew he was a prisoner. As he put it, the North Vietnamese "hadn't gotten around to letting me write a letter." In four years. They showed him another storyboard and this one contained testimony by a Lieutenant JG John Kerry, who said they were all guilty of committing atrocities, they were all war criminals. Warner didn't know what would result. His captors told him with that as evidence they could try him and find him guilty of war crimes. As he put it, communist courts are not American courts. They don't have the same standards.

He pointed out that John Kerry had been through SERE training, that he was trained to know what the POW experience might mean. Yet he endangered his fellow servicemen who were in captivity by telling his lies. Warner also pounded on the theme that after the overwhelming defeat of the communists at Tet, the communists were lost. That is, they would have been except Ho Chi Mihn saw their salvation in the budding anti-war movement. The battlefield moved from Vietnam to America and Paris. All they needed was a holding action in Vietnam; the real fight would be led by others, including John Kerry.
The first thing you need [in war] is a commander with sound judgment and steadfast character. This is something I'd like you to go away from here with seared seared into your memory. You'll know he has sound judgment if he know the best way to stop a war against an evil enemy is to win it!
--Jim Warner

Leave John Kerry in command of the largest vessel he has ever competently handled--his surfboard.
--John O'Neill

We need a leader, not a weathervane.
--John O'Neill"

Read the Whole Thing

Dan Rather, 60 Minutes and Forged Memos

Are President Bush's Texas Air National Guard memos forged. It's starting to look that way. The MSM seems to be avoiding the issue but the blogosphere is all over it and it looks like some bad news for Dan and CBS. Check out these blogs and the links in them for all the information you'll need on this subject. The boys at Power Line have the some of the best coverage. Beldar Blog has some of the best legal analysis. For more news and links to blogs and information you won't find in the main stream news, try Memeorandum
---Larry Everett

Photos of School Atrocities in Beslan

UPDATE :
The link to the Daily Blits has been updated. Jheka has E-mailed to inform that the photos on his page linked to below will scroll off. The updated link is here :
Beslan Photos - the Daily Blitz. Check out the Blitz for for the story about the Beslan atrocity.
---LE

Jheka over at the Daily Blitz has many graphic and ugly photos of the Chechen school atrocity at Beslan. The links he presents will take you to many more photos and stories you're not getting in the MSM. This puts the exclaimation point on the last two posts.
Scroll down all the way to the bottom of the page. The photos are updated throughout.
---Larry Everett

When the Killers Come for the Kids

From the New York Post Online Edition.
Ralph Peters is the author of "Beyond Terror: Strategy in a Changing World." This article should be read with the article below titled "Pieta for the 41st Photograph".
---Larry Everett

"WHEN THE KILLERS COME FOR THE KIDS

BY RALPH PETERS

September 4, 2004 -- The mass murder of children revolts the human psyche. Herod sending his henchmen to massacre the infants of Bethlehem haunts the Gospels. Nothing in our time was crueler than what the Germans did to children during the Holocaust. Slaughtering the innocents violates a universal human taboo.

Or a nearly universal one. Those Muslims who preach Jihad against the West decided years ago that killing Jewish or Christian children is not only acceptable, but pleasing to their god when done by "martyrs."

It isn't politically correct to say this, of course. We're supposed to pretend that Islam is a "religion of peace." All right, then: It's time for Muslims to stand up for the once-noble, nearly lost traditions of their faith and condemn what Arab and Chechen terrorists and blasphemers did in the Russian town of Beslan.

If Muslim religious leaders around the world will not publicly condemn the taking of children as hostages and their subsequent slaughter — if those "men of faith" will not issue a condemnation without reservations or caveats — then no one need pretend any longer that all religions are equally sound and moral.

Islam has been a great and humane faith in the past. Now far too many of its adherents condone, actively or passively, the mass murder of school kids. Instead of condemnations of the Muslim "Jihadis" responsible for butchering more than 200 women and children in cold blood, we will hear spiteful counter-accusations about imaginary atrocities supposedly committed by Western militaries.

Well, the cold fact is that Western soldiers, whether Americans, Brits, Russians or Israelis, do not take hundreds of children hostage, then shoot them in cold blood while detonating bombs in their midst. The Muslim world can lie to itself, but we need lie no longer.

The tragedy in southern Russia occurred thousands of miles from the United States, but, in essence, that massacre happened next door. The parents, teachers and students kept for days without water or food in a sweltering school building before being butchered were our children, our sisters, our wives, our parents.

The mass hostage situation wasn't about Chechen rebels (and at least 10 Arabs) opposing the Russian government. It was a continuation of the universal struggle between good and evil. And there is no doubt which side is evil, scorned though the word may be by our own elite.

How can any human being with a shred of conscience dismiss what occurred in that school as anything less than evil?

The attack in Beslan wasn't about Russia's brutal incompetence in Chechnya — as counter-productive as Moscow's grim heavy-handedness may have been. It was about religious bigotry so profound that the believer can hold a gun to a child's head, pull the trigger and term the act "divine justice."

We will hear complaints that the Russian special forces should have waited — even after the terrorists began shooting children. Negotiations are the heroin of Westerners addicted to self-delusion. Who among us would have waited when he or she saw fleeing children cut down by automatic weapons? The urge to protect children is as primal as any impulse we ever feel.

Make no mistake: No blame attaches to the Russians for the massacre at that school. The guilt is entirely upon the Islamic extremists who have led the religion they claim to cherish into the realms of nightmare.

There will be repercussions. Having suffered the hijacking and destruction of two passenger jets, a deadly bombing at a Moscow subway station and a massacre in a primary school all in less than two weeks, the Kremlin will have learned to rue the day it imagined that there was anything to gain by opposing American efforts against terrorists, whether Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein.

As they inevitably do, the terrorists reminded the world of their heartless barbarism. Even if France manages to beg the release of its kidnapped journalists in Iraq, it has begun to sense its vulnerability. And all Europeans with a vestige of sense will recognize that the school seizure in Russia could easily repeat itself in Languedoc or Umbria, Bavaria or Kent.

An attack on children is an attack on all of humanity.

No matter what differences Western states discover to divide them, the terrorists will bring us together in the end. Their atrocities expose all wishful thinking for what it is.

A final thought: Did any of those protesters who came to Manhattan to denounce our liberation of 50 million Muslims stay an extra day to protest the massacre in Russia? Of course not.

The protesters no more care for dead Russian children than they care for dead Kurds or for the hundreds of thousands of Arabs that Saddam Hussein executed. Or for the ongoing Arab-Muslim slaughter of blacks in Sudan. Nothing's a crime to those protesters unless the deed was committed by America.

The butchery in Russia was a crime against humanity. In every respect. Was any war ever more necessary or just than the War on Terror?

And what will terror's apologists say when the killers come for their own children?"

Original Article

Pieta for the 41st Photograph

Gerard Vanderleun has an article up at American Digest
This post is a must read and is a lead-in to the next one titled "When the Killers Come for the Kids". Please, click on the title of my article or the "American Digest" link above for the whole article.
---Larry Everett

American Digest
September 04, 2004

Pieta for the 41st Photograph

The boy that lies in his father's lap covered with crusts of blood gazing upward at nothing, nothing at all except his own pain. The soldier with the unlit cigarette carrying the little girl in filthy underwear with a long smear of blood across her nose and down her chin. The child's small hand with the dry pool of blood in the palm and the small gold crucifix lying in it. The stretcher being run past the camera carrying what might, under the burns and the blood, be a young girl.... and another, and another, and another, and another, and another....

I began to gather these images yesterday, I think. Or was it the day before? I'm not really sure. The cascade of outrages, the piling of atrocity on top of atrocity, has become so unremitting that it is sometimes difficult to know where one episode of evil ends and another begins. The waves keep coming and, because they are always to your back, they keep slamming you down into the hardpacked sand. You pick yourself up and spin around to face the next wave, but this sea of evil is cunning and the next wave will always come from behind your back no matter which direction you face. All you can know now is that there will be another one, and it will come at your back in the way the bullets came for the backs of the children in Russia.

Because I am both too old and too distant to either pick up a weapon to defend, or offer help and comfort to the wounded or the dying, I am forced back on silly, futile, small gestures such as gathering images of the atrocities. In this I disgust myself and, like those who did not stand with Henry, hold my manhood cheap.

I thought that, perhaps, I could gather enough of them and arrange a kind of gallery as a testament, my own small memorial, to the children who were shot in the back or otherwise slaughtered by the diseased "militants" who thought nothing of these lives taken for their vile cause and their vile god. Somehow I would, I imagined, at least bear my own small witness among the millions of others doing the same around the world tonight.

And so I collected the images. I selected ones that showed the fascist smirk that always rises dark above any slaughter of innocents. I selected ones that revealed the courage of those who would try to rescue them. I found and saved some that revealed the chaos and sharp edge of the moment when all that a child may have in front of him is ripped out of him. I saved 10, saved 20, saved 40 and then came to the 41st and stopped.

I stopped because in that one image, grainy, indistinct and from the far side of the world in a situation I could not imagine, I saw the one thing I was not expecting to see at all.

No, that's not it. It was not what I saw but what I recognized.

What I recognized was something that I could not see in the picture, but a recognition that came to me through the picture. I knew it immediately and at such a deep level that my first reaction was to look away, to go on to the next picture no matter what it was, to determine to never look at the 41st picture again.

But of course I did. I did because I had no choice. I had no choice because within this one picture I could see two separate episodes of my own life somehow together in one image that depicted an outcome that terrified me to the core of my being.

This is the picture I could not look at. This is the picture I must look at. I will try to explain -- not really to you, but to myself -- why it terrifies me more than all the other pictures.
[Photo Link]

She kneels among the dead children. She has long black hair pulled back and dresses in a loose black dress as she kneels at the head of her dead boy. She reaches out to touch, or perhaps arrange the hair, of her dead child. Her dark hair is parted in the middle and her arm seems to also be downed with dark hair. Her eyebrows too are dark and her skin olive. If I were to see this woman in another context, in a different and less death dominated photograph, at this focus and at this distance, I would think, for at least a long moment, that I was looking at my first wife.

[Read the Whole Thing]

Vets For Sale

An article from the New York Post titled Vets For Sale, Ralph Peters takes John Kerry to task for his disgraceful speech in front of the American Legion's National Convention on September 1, 2004.
Ralph Peters is a retired Army officer and a regular Post contributor.
---Larry Everett

"September 2, 2004 -- YESTERDAY, in front of the American Legion's Na tional Convention, John Kerry made his most disgraceful speech since he lied about atrocities to Congress three decades ago. By making promises he doesn't mean and can't keep, he tried to buy the votes of American veterans.

Had he offered each vet a $5 bill and a shot of whisky for their support, his performance could not have been shabbier.

Before getting to a few examples of his breathtaking cynicism, let's put two crucial questions to the junior senator from Massachusetts:

First question: Sen. Kerry, will you admit that you lied to Congress and the American people when you stated that our troops routinely committed atrocities, and that rape, torture and murder were sanctioned by our military chain of command?

Second question: Will you apologize to our Vietnam-era veterans for the lies you told?

This means a direct, no-waffling, public apology. Will you tell our vets, the living and the dead, that you're sorry?

Of course not. John Kerry wants to have it both ways. But he isn't going to get the military vote. Perhaps the best line making its way around veterans' Web sites these days is: "A Kerry defeat would be the welcome-home parade we never had."

Kerry's so shameless that he once again tried to associate himself with John McCain, a true American hero, in his remarks. He almost made it sound as if they'd been in a North Vietnamese prison together. But Kerry's brother-in-arms isn't Sen. McCain. It's the naval hero of Chappaquiddick.

Kerry's speech to the veterans was condescending in other ways, too. It assumed that vets are so stupid they can't do basic math. Kerry claimed he'd reduce the deficit, while expanding the military and buying every weapons system in sight, increasing veterans' benefits, bringing health care to all Americans and, of course, creating millions of new jobs that pay phenomenally well.

Would you mind explaining how, senator?

Specific promises Kerry made were outright nonsense. He claimed he'd double the size of our special operations forces. Sounds great. But to do so would rob regular line units of critically needed, experienced NCOs and officers, fatally compromise the high standards of our special operators and take at least a decade — unless he means to ruin special ops entirely.

And Kerry's going to increase our ground forces by 40,000 troops. Good idea. But he's not going to send them to Iraq, you understand.

Having it both ways again.

Kerry said we should never go to war without a plan to win the peace. Agreed. But where was he 18 months ago, when such a criticism could have made a difference?

Back then, he was voting for the war. Before he opposed it. Before supporting it again. Now he's against it again. Although he supports our troops, of course.

Does Kerry have no shame at all? No spine, whatsoever? Is it possible to be nothing but a bundle of pure ambition, with no shred of ethics? Is Kerry so hungry for office that he'll change any position to buy a vote?

If President Bush shocks the Republican Convention tonight by coming out in favor of gay marriage, Kerry will immediately back a constitutional amendment to outlaw it.

Even on their worst day — and they've had some bad ones — the Bushies actually believe in a few things.

Kerry's the guy who, at the beginning of August, stated that we need to withdraw troops from Germany and South Korea. Then, as soon as President Bush announced a plan to do so, Kerry thundered against the idea. Confronted with his own remarks — made only two weeks earlier — he claimed that, well, yes, he thought we should withdraw troops, only not the way the president proposed to do it.

The guy is an eel in a vat of olive oil.

Yesterday, John Kerry tried to pander to America's heroes, conveniently forgetting that he'd trashed them for political gain, then shortchanged them throughout his Senate career. Suddenly, Kerry was the man who had fought for benefits for his fellow Vietnam vets, the man who felt their pain (Kerry makes Bill Clinton look like a paragon of integrity).

The only veterans' benefit young John Kerry fought for was the right of vets to be spit upon in public."

Updated Links to Videos

Links to videos haven't been working. Sorry 'bout that. They're being fixed. If the one you're looking for doesn't work yet, check back later. I need to find the original URL and it takes time.
You can still view the videos by saving the page and opening it in Windows Media Player. The page of symbols you're getting is actually the video in character form.
---Larry Everett

It's Miller Time

Democrat Zell Miller gave an impressive speech at the Republican National Convention. Below is an excerpt from that speech. Click here for the complete transcript. It's not very long and well worth the time it takes to read it.

Chris Mathews of MS-NBC had an interview with Miller after his speech. Mathews was his usual self, talking over the response to the questions he asks. Check out this video of that interview and see how an ex-marine handles a loud-mouthed and belligerent interviewer. It's too good to miss. The Zell Miller\Chris Mathews mix-up
Michelle Malkin is the person Miller is talking about in this quote from the interview :

"You are not going to do to me what you did to that young lady the other day, browbeating her to death."

Stop by Ms. Malkin's page to see what she has to say about the speech. She picked out a few quotes from the very quotable speech. A few here :

"Look at his record. A man's record is what he is"

"I didn't question their patriotism, I question their judgment"

"That was a metaphor, do you know what a metaphor is?"

"Get out of may face. If you're going to ask a question you let me answer."

"I wish we lived in the day that I could challenge you to a duel."

"Are you going to shut up after you ask the question?"

Editor & Publisher has more on that interview. An excerpt :

"Probably the most incendiary moment in all of the television coverage of the Republican National Convention so far occurred shortly after 11 p.m. Wednesday night, during a Chris Matthews interview with Senator Zell Miller on MSNBC, which started hot and then grew even hotter after a question about reporters and freedom the press."

---Larry Everett

Zell Miller Speech at the RNC

"What has happened to the party I've spent my life working in?

I can remember when Democrats believed that it was the duty of America to fight for freedom over tyranny.

It was Democratic President Harry Truman who pushed the Red Army out of Iran, who came to the aid of Greece when Communists threatened to overthrow it, who stared down the Soviet blockade of West Berlin by flying in supplies and saving the city.

Time after time in our history, in the face of great danger, Democrats and Republicans worked together to ensure that freedom would not falter. But not today.

Motivated more by partisan politics than by national security, today's Democratic leaders see America as an occupier, not a liberator.

And nothing makes this Marine madder than someone calling American troops occupiers rather than liberators.

Tell that to the one-half of Europe that was freed because Franklin Roosevelt led an army of liberators, not occupiers.

Tell that to the lower half of the Korean Peninsula that is free because Dwight Eisenhower commanded an army of liberators, not occupiers.

Tell that to the half a billion men, women and children who are free today from the Baltics to the Crimea, from Poland to Siberia, because Ronald Reagan (news - web sites) rebuilt a military of liberators, not occupiers.

Never in the history of the world has any soldier sacrificed more for the freedom and liberty of total strangers than the American soldier. And, our soldiers don't just give freedom abroad, they preserve it for us here at home.

For it has been said so truthfully that it is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech.

It is the soldier, not the agitator, who has given us the freedom to protest.

It is the soldier who salutes the flag, serves beneath the flag, whose coffin is draped by the flag, who gives that protester the freedom to abuse and burn that flag.

No one should dare to even think about being the Commander in Chief of this country if he doesn't believe with all his heart that our soldiers are liberators abroad and defenders of freedom at home.

But don't waste your breath telling that to the leaders of my party today. In their warped way of thinking America is the problem, not the solution.

They don't believe there is any real danger in the world except that which America brings upon itself through our clumsy and misguided foreign policy.

It is not their patriotism - it is their judgment that has been so sorely lacking. They claimed Carter's pacifism would lead to peace.

They were wrong.

They claimed Reagan's defense buildup would lead to war.

They were wrong.

And, no pair has been more wrong, more loudly, more often than the two Senators from Massachusetts, Ted Kennedy and John Kerry (news - web sites).

Together, Kennedy/Kerry have opposed the very weapons system that won the Cold War and that is now winning the War on Terror."

Swiftboat Veterans Films

The latest Swiftboat Veterans ad titled "Medals" is out. Just click on the link, or the title, to see all of them. SwiftVet-films
---Larry Everett

Open Letter to Senator John McCain

Another general officer(Marines)that doesn't have anything good to say about John Kerry in a letter critical of John McCain's support of him. John McCain has since changed his stance regarding John Kerry. In the case that anyone thinks this is a hit piece on John McCain, it's not. I have much respect for John McCain as a person, a military man, and a politician.
You can read the Bio of Lt. General John Hudson, USMC(Ret.)here. This is an excerpt of his bio :

"Returning to the United States in December 1964, he reported to the 3d Marine Aircraft Wing in El Toro, California, for duty as Aviation Safety Officer of Marine Aircraft Group 33, a billet he held for the next year and a half. During this period, he was promoted to major in November 1965, then assigned briefly as Executive Officer then as Commanding Officer of VMFA-122, until February 1967, when he was reassigned as the S-4 Officer of MAG-33.

Ordered to Vietnam in November 1967, he spent tours as the Executive Officer, MABS-13; Executive Officer, VMFA-115; and Commanding Officer, VMFA-115; before being ordered back to Cherry Point, as G-3 Training Officer, 2d Marine Aircraft Wing. For his combat service in Vietnam, Major Hudson was awarded a Bronze Star Medal with Combat “V”; and 25 Air Medals."

---Larry Everett

Open Letter to Sen McCain--LtGen John Hudson, USMC (Ret.)
30 March2004

Senator McCain,

I am very disappointed in your statement yesterday (March 18th) that Senator Kerry is not weak on defense issues. Senator Kerry has voted against just about every major new weapons system, voted against most military pay raises, voted against the building of new housing for our troops and their families, voted to reduce spending for intelligence efforts. As far back as 1994 Senator Kerry voted to practically "gut" defense and spending for intelligence. At that time he was taken to task by his fellow Democrats, Senators Inouye, Byrd and DiConcini: but you say he is not weak on defense issues. Will you please tell me who, in the U.S. Senate, has a worse voting record regarding defense, support for our service personnel and support for our national intelligence than Senator Kerry?

Senator McCain, I have not always agreed with you, but I have stuck with you I have been proud to be able to refer to you as a friend. I have carried your petitions and have defended your sometimes questionable positions and have voted for you on every occasion. Four years ago I supported you financially to the maximum allowed by law at that time, and caused others to do the same not only from Arizona, but from states like New York, Missouri!, Kentucky and Florida as well. You know that, Senator.

Now, Senator, I have no idea what you are doing or why. It seems to me that you have become so drawn by the magnetism of being a "newsworthy" individual that you now more enjoy being the maverick who will be interviewed and photographed than in working for the good of our country. I hoped you had gotten over your disappointment of four years ago that you were in New Hampshire several weeks ago to really support our President and not just for your own "photo ops", but that obviously is not the case. I was shocked last week when it was reported that you would "consider" an offer to be Senator Kerry's running mate. But I was devastated yesterday at your defending the defense voting record of Senator Kerry. Once again I ask you, Senator; please tell me which Senator has a more dismal record on defense or intelligence.

You say that you decry the vicious nature of the current presidential campaign. Why, Senator, did you wait to state your distaste for such a campaign until President Bush began firing back after 8 continuous months of nasty, personal attacks by Senator Kerry and his Democrat rivals? How should President Bush have responded to attacks on his record of service in the National Guard, his being accused of being a liar to get us into war with Iraq, accused of sending young Americans to die for his own personal reasons, and all the other ridiculous things that could be said? President Bush released his service medical records: do you know, Senator, how many days of duty Senator Kerry lost while collecting three Purple Hearts and a Silver Star -- in four months?? Senator, I share your distaste for nasty political campaigns and wish candidates for the highest office in th! e land could rise above that level. But it is not to be unexpected to answer such accusations in the manner -- somewhat restrained in my view -- that President Bush has done.

Senator McCain, I will always hold you in the highest esteem for the great sacrifices you made for our nation. That service remains undiminished in my view. But I can no longer support you for any public office or service. Your petitions were already on my clipboard, but now they will go in my shredder. I am disappointed that you still call yourself "...a Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt Republican..." as I heard you say yesterday, because you shame the Party. The greatest disappointment though, Senator, is that your reckless statements now become a threat to the security of our Country. I can think of no greater harm to our nation at this crucial time than to have a shameless charlatan like John Kerry to be elected president. Unfortunately, Senator McCain, the Democrats are correct in referring to you as their favorite Republican: you could do no better job for them nor ! worse for our country.

John I. Hudson Lieutenant General U.S. Marine Corps (Retired)"

Colonel George "Bud" Day's Letter to Joe Scarborough

From Frontpage Magazine
Colonel George "Bud" Day is one of America's most decorated living warriors. A Vietnam POW from 1967- 1973, he is the proud recipient of a Medal of Honor. (USMC- USA- USAF- Attorney 1949-2004).
Here is his letter to Joe Scarborough of MSNBC:
---Larry Everett

A True War Hero Speaks on Kerry
By Colonel George "Bud" Day
FrontPageMagazine.com | September 1, 2004

Dear Joe:
The major issue in the Swiftboat stories is, and always has been, what John Kerry did in 1971 after he returned from Vietnam. Kerry cast a long dark shadow over all Vietnam Veterans with his outright perjury before the Senate concerning atrocities in Vietnam. His stories to the Senate committee were absolute lies… fabrications… perjury… fantasies, with NO substance. That dark shadow has defamed the entire Vietnam War veteran population, and given "Aid and Comfort" to our enemies... the Vietnamese Communists. Kerry's stories were outright fabrications, and were intended for political gain with the radical left… McGovern, Teddy and Bobby Kennedy followers, Jane Fonda, Tom Hayden, and the radical left who fantasized that George McGovern was going to be elected in 1972. Little wonder that returning soldiers from Vietnam were spit upon and castigated as "baby killers".
A returned war hero said so. Kerry cut a dashing figure as a war hero, lots of medals, and returned home because of multiple war wounds… even a silver star. His Senate testimony confirmed what every hippie had been chanting on the streets..."Hey hey LBJ…How many kids did you kill today"????? He obviously was running for political office in 1971.
Until Lt. John O' Neil, himself a Swiftboat commander, spoke out before the 1972 elections against Kerry's outright deceptions, there was no one from the Swiftboat scene that could contradict Kerry's self serving lies.
I was a POW of the Vietnamese in Hanoi in 1971, and I am aware that the testimony of John Kerry, the actions of Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden, and the radical left; all caused the commies to conclude that if they hung on, they would win. North Vietnamese General Bui Tin commented that every day the Communist leadership listened to world news over the radio to follow the growth of the anti-war movement. Visits to Hanoi by Jane
Fonda and Ramsey Clark gave them confidence to hold in the face of battlefield reverses.
The guts of it was that propaganda from the anti-war group was part of their combat strategy.
While the Commies were hanging on, innumerable U.S. Soldiers, Sailors, Marines and Air Foce members were being killed in combat. Every battle wound to Americans after Kerry's misdirected testimony is related to Kerry's untruthfulness. John Kerry contributed to every one of these deaths with his lies about U.S. atrocities in Vietnam. He likewise defamed the U.S. with our allies and supporters. His conduct also extended the imprisonment of the Vietnam Prisoners of War, of which I was one. I am certain of at least one POW death after his testimony, which might have been prevented with an earlier release of the POWs.
My friend and roommate Senator John S. McCain denounced the Swiftboat video by John O'Neil. I have a different take on the Swiftboat tape and disagree with my good friend John.
John Kerry opened up his character as a war hero reporting for duty to the country with a hand salute...and his band of brothers...of which he was the chief hero. Most of his convention speech was about John Kerry...Vietnam hero, and his band of brothers. John Kerry's character is not only fair game, it is the primary issue. He wants to use Bill Clinton's "is", as an answer to his lack of character. The issue is trust. Can anyone trust John Kerry?? "Never lie, cheat or steal" is the West Point motto. When a witness perjures himself at trial, the judge notes that his testimony lacks credibility. Should we elect a known proven liar to lead us in wartime??
I draw a direct comparison of General Benedict Arnold of the Revolutionary War, to Lieutenant John Kerry. Both went off to war, fought, and then turned against their country. General Arnold crossed over to the British for money and position. John Kerry crossed over to the Vietnamese with his assistance to the anti-war movement, and his direct liaison with the Vietnamese diplomats in Paris. His reward- Political gain. Senator…United States. His record as a Senator for twenty years has been pitiful. Conjure up, if you will, one major bill that he has sponsored.
John Kerry for President? Ridiculous. Unthinkable. Unbelievable. Outrageous.