Ode o’er Teddy (an Irish jig):

OOOOhhh;
mebrotherisdead and
mefatherisdead and
mebrotherisdead and
mewifegivesbadhead and
mecardoesntfloat.

***

Now where is Michael Flatley when you need him?

UPDATE: It turns out that it is incomplete. The updated version:

Oooooooohhhhh,
Your brother is dead,
And your brother is dead,
And your brother is dead,
And your father is dead,
And your mother is dead,
And your nephew is dead,
And your son is a gimp,
And your car doesn’t float.

-- UNIQUE --

1. Nervous Habits? I bite my nails occasionally.
2. Are you double jointed? No.
3. Can you roll your tongue? No.
4. Can you raise one eyebrow? Yes.
5. Can you blow spit bubbles? Not while I’m awake.
6. Can you cross your eyes? Yes.
7. Tattoos? None now, and none planned.
8. Piercings and where? No. See ‘Tattoos’.
9. Do you make your bed daily? My wife would prefer it that way. Sometimes.

-- CLOTHES --

10. Which shoe goes on first? Right
11. Speaking of shoes, have you ever thrown one at anyone? Only once.
12. On the average, how much money do you carry in your wallet? $25.
13. What jewelry do you wear 24/7? My wedding ring.
14. Favorite piece of clothing? My “lots-of-pockets” shorts.

-- FOOD --

15. Do you twirl your spaghetti or cut it? Twirl.
16. Have you ever eaten Spam? Yes. The minced Spam spread on saltines isn’t bad, every now and then.
17. Favorite ice cream flavor? Chocolate. Haagen Daaz Chocolate.
18. How many cereals in your cabinet? One.
19. What’s your favourite beverage? Mt. Dew.
20. What’s your favorite restaurant? Outback.
21. Do you cook? 4-5 times per week.

-- GROOMING --

22. How often do you brush your teeth? After every meal.
23. Hair drying method? Towel, then air-dry.
24. Have you ever colored/highlighted your hair? No.

-- MANNERS --

25. Do you swear? Like a well-mannered sailor. (It depends on the people around me.)
26. Do you ever spit? No.

-- WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE --

27. Animal? A cat (Felis Domesticus).
28. Food? Beef. Or chicken.
29. Month? May
30. Day? Wednesday.
31. Cartoon? Fox Trot.
32. Shoe Brand? I have no idea.
33. Subject in school? Anything.
35. Sport? Baseball
36. TV show? The West Wing. (I like to keep an eye on what the Dems are thinking.)
37. Thing to do in the spring? Watch the birds outside my window.
38. Thing to do in the summer? Stay indoors.
39. Thing to do in the fall? Watch the World Series.
40. Thing to do in the winter? Try to hurt as little as possible.

-- IN AND AROUND --

41. The CD player? Pink Floyd, Dark Side Of The Moon.
42. Person you talk most on the phone with? My wife.
43. Ever taken a cab? Yes.
44. Do you regularly check yourself out in store windows and mirrors? No, not regularly.
45. What color is your bedroom? Brown with lots of wood grain.
46. Do you use an alarm clock? Yes, but I’m married to her.
47. Window seat or aisle? Aisle.

-- LA LA LAND --

48. What’s your sleeping position? On my side.
49. Even in hot weather do you use a blanket? No. (A sheet? Yes.)
50. Do you snore? How would I know? I’m asleep! (My wife says, ‘like a rusty saw’. Thanks, dear...)
51. Do you sleepwalk? Never.
52. Do you talk in your sleep? I’ve been told that I do, but subaudibly.
53. Do you sleep with stuffed animals? No.
54. How about with the light on? Only if I absolutely have to.
55. Do you fall asleep with the TV or radio on? Sometimes with the TV on.

Well, that’s it… Pass it on…

I am going to post it here in BOLD text, and fisk it in regular text.  It’s long, but bear with it....because it is important. It is important because this guy is a big voice in the blogsphere, and he doesn’t just share his opinion, he creates and changes opinions.  He knows this, of course.  And, given his distain for the President on a personal level (because of his traditional Christian worldview), it isn’t past AS to try and turn opinion against Bush, for whatever reason he can, so that someone more friendly to homosexual marriage can assume the Presidency. 

Let’s get on with it:

Monday, May 10, 2004

THE CHASTENING: The question I have asked myself in the wake of Abu Ghraib is simply the following: if I knew before the war what I know now, would I still have supported it?

If he cannot say “Yes” to that....given the clear reasoning of Bush, WMD’s included OR not, then he either has changed his mind (he was vociferously in favor of the War before)...no...wait....it seems that he did change his mind, in about the same timeframe that the whole Same-Sex Marriage thing erupted.  Is this a coincidence?  Take a look and see yourself, but to me, it seems so. 

I cannot deny that the terrible mismanagement of the post-war - something that no reasonable person can now ignore - has, perhaps fatally, wrecked the mission.

Obviously, this is hyperbole.  The mission isn’t wrecked, the cause is just, and the problems at the prison are, like I said in my previous posts on the subject, both inevitable and inexcusable, but not crippling to the effort there.  Do you think anyone is ignoring this?  I think that the leftist media is pounding at this event...like Sullivan is...to make a point, and doing their bit of overreacting, but no-one is ignoring it.

But does it make the case for war in retrospect invalid? My tentative answer - and this is a blog, written day by day and hour by hour, not a carefully collected summary of my views - is yes, I still would have supported the war. But only just. And whether the “just” turns into a “no” depends on how we deal with the huge challenge now in front of us.

Um...what?  “Only just...” 300,000 civilians murdered.  “Only just...” A million and a half dead in the Iran-Iraq War.  “Only just...” Kurds gassed with WMD’s.  “Only just...” People stuffed into plastic shredders for fun and to instill terror.  “Only just...” Proof that the Islamofascist Hussein HAD WMD’s, USED WMD’s, supported Palestininan homicide bombers, genocide, and hosted members of terrorist groups.  “Only just...” My God....

THE CASE STANDS - JUST: There were two fundamental reasons for war against Iraq.

WRONG.  Holy cow...you think this guy hasn’t changed his opinion?  Look:
1.  WMD’s/development of WMD’s
2.  Support of Terrorist groups.
3.  Genocidal government
4.  Install democracy--change the fact of Middle East
5.  Enforce UN and UNSC Resolutions that Hussein violated.

Let’s go on with this....heh.

The first was the threat of weapons of mass destruction possessed by Saddam Hussein, weapons that in the wake of 9/11, posed an intolerable threat to world security.  That reason has not been destroyed by subsequent events, but it has been deeply shaken.

Ah, yes.  This is true.  And, please remember, that this reason has not been disproven yet.  Don’t think that Syria hasn’t been let off the hook yet, or that we haven’t finished looking.  Don’t discount this yet....we are still looking. 

The United States made its case before the entire world on the basis of actual stockpiles of dangerous weaponry. No such stockpiles existed.

Again, the stockpiles have not been found....yet.  If they don’t exist, then fine.  However, just about everyone believed that Hussein had them.  We believed that he had them.  He had used them before, and that is a pretty good indicator that he would use them again. 

Yes, the infrastructure was there, the intent was there, the potential was there - all good cause for concern. Yes, the alternative of maintaining porous sanctions - a regime that both impoverished and punished the Iraqi people while empowering and enriching Saddam and his U.N. allies - was awful. But the case the U.S. actually made has been disproved. There is no getting around that.

Hold on....my head is going to explode.....What is Sullivan saying?  He has completely discounted the very reason we had to go to war with Hussein to begin with.  The United Nations had NO urge to maintain and enforce the various imperatives that they claimed to have where Saddam was concerned.  16 Resolutions were ignored and laughed at, and the top offices of the UN were being bought off by Food-for-Oil money.  Same goes for the wonderful, impartial members of the UNSC that opposed us...Russia, China, France, and Syria, all bought with oil money, or held by huge debts owed them by Saddam for weaponry he used against US.  If the UN was the great enforcer of international order that WE attempted to establish in the wake of WWII, we would have been in Iraq (on the ground, with a quarter-million UN troops) six years ago.  However, it is clear that the UN had no urge to do the morally and ethically right thing.  We did, because the UN had no stomach for it, and because Hussein only had to prove that THE WEAPONS WERE GONE.  If you had a gun, and everyone knew you had a gun, and I made to take the gun away from you, but found that it wasn’t loaded.....is that wrong?  Or, does that make me the only one with the friggin’ fortitude to do something about it?  How long would Iraqis have had to die before the UN took the chance that Hussein was lying to them?  AND, again, nothing has been 100% disproven...yet, since you could hide enough concentrated nerve gas to kill the population of the US in a friggin 2-car garage. 

The second case, and one I stressed more at the time, was the moral one. The removal of Saddam was an unalloyed good. His was a repugnant, evil regime and turning the country into a more open and democratic place was both worthy in itself and a vital strategic goal in turning the region around. It was going to be a demonstration of an alternative to the autocracies of the Arab world, a way to break the dangerous cycle that had led to Islamism and al Qaeda and 9/11 and a future too grim to contemplate. The narrative of liberation was critical to the success of the mission - politically and militarily. This was never going to be easy, but it was worth trying. It was vital to reverse the Islamist narrative that pitted American values against Muslim dignity.

I 100% agree with AS on this...he is dead-on right, and he says it in a way that I could only dream of doing.  The invasion was a part of a larger plan to destroy the root causes of terrorism, those causes being Islamofascist governments, economic slavery, and theocratic dictatorships that rule by fear.

The reason Abu Ghraib is such a catastrophe is that it has destroyed this narrative. It has turned the image of this war into the war that the America-hating left always said it was: a brutal, imperialist, racist occupation, designed to humiliate another culture. Abu Ghraib is Noam Chomsky’s narrative turned into images more stunning, more damaging, more powerful than a million polemics from Ted Rall or Susan Sontag. It is Osama’s dream propaganda coup. It is Chirac’s fantasy of vindication. It is Tony Blair’s nightmare. And, whether they are directly responsible or not, the people who ran this war are answerable to America, to America’s allies, to Iraq, for the astonishing setback we have now encountered on their watch.

OK...now, the reason I disagree with this is not because AS is 100% off-base, but because of the scale he gives it.  Is the ‘humiliation’ of these prisoners bad?  Sure is.  However, there is already information that shows that the Iraqis are taking this situation better than the rest of the Arab world. They (Iraqis) understand that a lot of these prisoners are the exact reason that parts of their nation continues to be full of strife, and they see what we are doing to those guards that are guilty.  And, of course, it really doesn’t matter what the rest of the Arab world’s governments think....just the Iraqis.  When they (the Iraqis) are free and prosperous, the Arab peoples will make their opinions known, and the governments over them will have to adapt, or die.

THE INEXCUSABLE: The one anti-war argument that, in retrospect, I did not take seriously enough was a simple one. It was that this war was noble and defensible but that this administration was simply too incompetent and arrogant to carry it out effectively. I dismissed this as facile Bush-bashing at the time. I was wrong. I sensed the hubris of this administration after the fall of Baghdad, but I didn’t sense how they would grotesquely under-man the post-war occupation, bungle the maintenance of security, short-change an absolutely vital mission, dismiss constructive criticism, ignore even their allies (like the Brits), and fail to shift swiftly enough when events span out of control.

BOOM!  There went my head.  It is amazing that the Administration became incompetent and arrogant when they started doing things that AS doesn’t like (read:  FDMA).  The fact is that we have been fighting gangs, groups of Syrians, Iranian-backed theo-punks, and al-Qaeda operatives and plans while simultaneously building schools, immunizing three million children, repairing the petroleum industry, restoring and improving all the infrastructure, and rebuilding the Iraqi society and defensive capability.  I have no idea where Sullivan gets this info, since the only groups that have retreated from Iraq are the UN and those nations intimidated by Islamofascist terrorists.  And, please, forgive Bush and Co. if they ignore Kofi Annan and the rest of the UN, who are hoping that we fail, and the Left in our own country, who are passively rooting for death and failure so that their own ‘committer of atrocities’ can become President.  If people think that we don’t act swiftly or surely, then they are ignoring pragmatism (immediately leveling Fallujah with 2000-lb. bombs would have been far, far worse for us than what we did, which is wait a week before blockading the city, and far worse then what happened in this prison), or realism, because the problems in Iraq are NOT widespread.  Sullivan is looking for fault, because he, himself, is anti-Bush.  That point cannot be ignored. 

This was never going to be an easy venture; and we shouldn’t expect perfection. There were bound to be revolts and terrorist infractions. The job is immense; and many of us have rallied to the administration’s defense in difficult times, aware of the immense difficulties involved.

OK....you know that there is a ‘But...’ coming, don’t you? 

But to have allowed the situation to slide into where we now are, to have a military so poorly managed and under-staffed that what we have seen out of Abu Ghraib was either the result of a) chaos, b) policy or c) some awful combination of the two, is inexcusable.

Sullivan is ignoring realism again.  The military isn’t poorly managed, it’s in a WAR.  In war, the enemy has to be dehumanized.  That is realism.  That is reality.  However, reality doesn’t blame Bush, but poor management would.  The situation didn’t slide...in truth, the situation at the prison was immediately addressed, months before we heard about it.  The Army was addressing this before Christmas! Man....

It is a betrayal of all those soldiers who have done amazing work, who are genuine heroes, of all those Iraqis who have risked their lives for our and their future, of ordinary Americans who trusted their president and defense secretary to get this right. To have humiliated the United States by presenting false and misleading intelligence and then to have allowed something like Abu Ghraib to happen - after a year of other, compounded errors - is unforgivable.

See how Sullivan is painting this?  It’s BUSH’S FAULT!  I wrote about this last week....Bush had nothing to do with it.  He is only responsible as the leader of the Armed Forces, and he has done the correct things to this point.  He had addressed Rumsfeld, told the world (and, directly, the Arab world) that the actions of the guards was not right, and that he would act to make sure that the wrongs would be made right.  Then, Rumsfeld went and took the hit that he needed to take.  He made a mistake by keeping this from the President.  Bush should have immediately addressed this, and he did....when he learned about it.  Bush did not ‘humiliate’ the United States...that is absolutely wrong of Sullivan to say, especially since the UN has proven to be in bed with the Food-for Oil program, and since all things point to the fact that Bush acted on the best info possible.  If that info was wrong (and we are not proof-positive that it was 100% wrong), it wasn’t Bush’s fault.  He has his own, personal, emotional reasons to want Bush out of office, and he is using the Iraq situation to further those points.  His intellectual dishonesty in parts of this piece betray this fact. 

By refusing to hold anyone accountable, the president has also shown he is not really in control. We are at war; and our war leaders have given the enemy their biggest propaganda coup imaginable, while refusing to acknowledge their own palpable errors and misjudgments.

Again, IT’S BUSH’S FAULT!  Has it occurred to Andrew Sullivan that if the President went on the TV, and admitted a mistake every time something went kinda/sorta wrong, his prestige (and the way he needs to look to the people that oppose us) would be reduced?  It isn’t about apologizing.  Though I would say that he needed to say something about the prison situation (and I have), having a public display of emotion at every negative turn is a Clintonian nuance that isn’t constructive in this situation.  Bush is an emotional man, but he’s mature.  He isn’t a fake, false, emotional demonstration waiting to happen.  We don’t need the President to slobber out an apology each time an Iraqi dies.  If Roosevelt had to apologize for mistakes in WWII, we would never have heard the end of it.  That point is more a demonstration of Sullivan’s worldview than what the President is doing. 

They have, alas, scant credibility left and must be called to account. Shock has now led - and should lead - to anger. And those of us who support the war should, in many ways, be angrier than those who opposed it.

The first half of this statement is wrong, the second half is right.  I am very angry about the prison guards’ idiocy.  They should be punished.  However, the credibility of the President is intact where the War on Terror is concerned.  He continues to be a leader, just not like what Andrew Sullivan believes to be correct.  However, what AS wants the President to do has nothing to do with Iraq. 

WINNING THE WAR: But we must still win. This isn’t about scoring points. It should not be about circling partisan wagons. And it must not mean withdrawal or despair. Much has also gone right in Iraq. Saddam is gone; the Kurds are free and moving toward democratic rule; in many areas, self-government is emerging. The alternatives to regime change, we should remember, were no alternatives at all. Civil war is neither inevitable nor imminent. Before the Abu Ghraib disaster, there were encouraging signs that Shiites were themselves marginalizing al Sadr’s gangs; and that some responsible Sunnis could be integrated into a new Iraq. We have time yet to win over the middle of Iraqi opinion to the side of peaceful democratic change. How to do it? We need to accelerate elections; we need to show the Arab and Muslim world that we will purge our military and intelligence services of those who perpetrated these obscenities and those responsible for them; we must spend the money to secure the borders, police the power-lines, and bring measurable prosperity to a potentially wealthy country; and we have to eat even more crow to get the U.N. to help legitimize a liberation that most Iraqis now view as an intolerable occupation.

This is how I read the last paragraph: Good....good....good....good...WHAT?  “and we have to eat even more crow to get the U.N. to help legitimize a liberation that most Iraqis now view as an intolerable occupation.” NO, NO, NO.  LOOK AT WHAT THE IRAQIS SAY. Please, look at this poll....Question 13, to be specific. 6% of the respondents have had personal contact with the Allied troops.  Look at Questions 22, 23, and 24.  The Iraqis think that the UN, and the governments around them, helped Saddam!  They don’t want us to necessarily leave...Question 16 is a very telling question in this poll.  And...the UN LEFT!  The UN left when it got rough, they ignored the genocide in Iraq, they starved the Iraqis for graft and payoffs, and were ready to deny the Iraqis relief from their homicidal dictator.  Bush is absolutely correct, right, and ethical is telling the UN to stay away from the big things, and I don’t see us asking the UN to take over anything of importance until after the Iraqis choose their own government.  That is, unless Kerry wins the Election.  At that point, all bets are off.....but there will be a closer-to-pro-gay marriage guy in there, won’t there? 

To my mind, these awful recent revelations - and they may get far worse - make it even more essential that we bring democratic government to Iraq, and don’t cut and run. Noam Chomsky is wrong. Abu Ghraib is not the real meaning of America. And we now have to show it - in abundance. That is the opportunity this calamity has opened up.

Right on, brother.  Keep preaching the truth.....

And then, when November comes around, we have to decide whether this president is now a liability in the war on terror or the asset he once was.

When did he become a liability?  When has he changed course?  When?  I think he has been very sure-footed and he has maintained a very even path.  I think, however, Andrew Sullivan’s opinion has changed where the President is concerned.  Over FDMA. 

How he reacts to this crisis - whether he is even in touch enough to recognize it as a crisis - should determine how the country votes this fall. He and his team have failed us profoundly. He has a few months to show he can yet succeed.

“Whether he is even in touch..” What is this?  It is nothing but a personal crack on Bush.  It’s like the President scoring a 95% on a test, where the best grade to date was a 50%, and reporting that “President fails to get it right.” A 95% isn’t a failure, and that is what the President has earned, both in my opinion, and by any objective, non-personal measure.  He told us this was going to be hard, long-term, and a lot would happen without a lot of publicity.  He also knew, believe you me, that the press (and anti-Bush commentators) would report and preach what they wanted to, not everything that happens.  Sullivan is trying to cast the worst possible light on the President, sharing his opinion that Bush has “failed us profoundly.” Bullshit.  Bush has done everything to make US more secure, and he has succeeded.