Divide And Conquer

Some of the strain is starting to show among our Arab “friends.”

Sheikh Ahmed stormed out into a media scrum. As panicky Qatari security guards tried to pull the cameras away, he proceeded to denounce Iraq and say that time was running out. ?Today the Iraqi regime showed what is really in its heart ? the hatred of its neighbours. Now it will take a miracle to stop what is happening and we are not living in an age when miracles take place.?

Looks like at least some of them can see the handwriting on the wall.

They have some samples of past intramural abuse as well:

Arab summit, 1970: Colonel Muammar Gaddafi on inviting King Hussein of Jordan: ?What?s the use of getting him? He?s crazy. Isn?t his father in an asylum in Istanbul??

August 1999: Mustafa Tlas, Syrian Defence Minister ?The difference between Yassir Arafat and a stripper is that she becomes more beautiful with every piece of clothing she removes; Arafat gets more ugly with every concession he makes to Israel?

Arab summit May 1989: Tariq Aziz addressing Farouk Charaa, the Syrian Foreign Minister ?The honorable minister, the demagogue and the liar”
Mr Charaa replied, calling Aziz ?his excellency, the minister and terrorist?

Boy, I thought that Arabic was supposed to be such a flowery and eloquent language. Tim Blair can come up with much better insults than this. The comparison between Arafat and the stripper was particularly lame. Maybe they come out better in Arabic.

The Excellent Adventure Continues

You know, this is going to make a great National Lampoon movie. The script writes itself. Time to bring Chevy Chase out of retirement.

When we last left our intrepid, noble (albeit dimwitted) human shields, they were high tailing it out of Baghdad, having belatedly discovered that the Iraqis wanted them to shield actual targets, instead of hospitals and orphanages.

“We painted a huge sign on the roof saying human shields, so when any planes bombed the target, they’d see they were killing us — Englishmen and Finns and Turks.”

Yes, right next to the words “Baby Milk Factory.”

Some 50 other Swedish anti-war human shield activists who had traveled to Iraq began to leave on Monday, saying they had wanted to protect hospitals and schools but had been forced out to refineries, power plants and water works.

But now, the owner of the double-decker buses, having driven west from Baghdad, ran into a problem–the Mediterranean Sea. His buses aren’t amphibious, so he’s driven as far west as he can go, and is stuck in beautiful downtown Beirut, Lebanon, with no funds to ship the buses home.

“The buses have to be shipped back. It’s just not practical to drive them…I am not even really sure how much money I’ve got, but I’m sure it’s not enough,” said owner Joe Letts, adding that he would fly to London on Thursday to try to raise cash.

“I thought I would let people know it’s a problem,” he added, sitting in a makeshift kitchen on his bus in central Beirut.

No problem for us…

He didn’t seem to manage his money very well. But we’re not surprised about that, are we?

When he left London, he thought he had enough money to pay to ship the buses home, but ended up spending his personal finances to help pay for the trip.

But here’s his real problem:

“I own these buses and they are my livelihood and my family’s livelihood. And all along I was there really to take the people down and then come back,” he said.

…”I had promised my wife I would get the buses home,” he said. “If I don’t get them home, we’re absolutely stuck.”

All of a sudden that busless trip to London to raise money isn’t looking very fun. Wives and mothers of the ancient Spartan warriors admonished their men to come home “with their shield, or on it.” I guess for this modern (or postmodern?) warrior, it’s more like, “with your bus, or in it.”

Maybe he’s just better off setting up residence in Lebanon. Plenty of work for human shields there, from what I hear, especially in the south.

Another Leftist Turns Reluctant Warrior

For those who aren’t insane with hatred of Amerikkka and George Bush, at least the moral case for removing Saddam is apparently compelling.

Assos Hardi, the editor of Hawalati, the liberal newspaper in Sulaimania, was more mathematical in his appraisal. He said: “How many people do you think will die if America attacks Saddam? It will probably be less than the number of people he kills in a single month.”

As the drums of war beat ever louder, I am still unsure of the strategic wisdom of opening a second front in the war against terror. But of the moral rectitude of such a course, there can be no doubt.

Gulled

Andrew Sullivan points to this picture over at Rush Limbaugh’s site, ostensibly of the north Atlantic, Europe and Africa, as the terminator crosses them, taken from the Columbia on its last mission.

I thought it looked a little suspicious. The altitude seems much too high, and it would be amazing to see this much of the earth at once with absolutely no cloud cover. Also note that you can see the mid-Atlantic ridge, which shouldn’t be viewable through thousands of feet of water.

Keith Cowing over at NASA Watch confirms my suspicions. Both Andrew and Rush were taken in. It’s a computer simulation. You can find it at this cool site (they do it for the Moon as well), and the particular view on Rush’s site can be generated here, with real-time lighting conditions.

Rush needs to verify his sources a little more carefully.

[Update at 3 PM PST]

Snopes has it wrong, too.

The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea

Glenn points to a couple links to discussions as to whether our latest war trophy should be tortured to garner requisite information from him, both to gather up members or terrorist cells and, more immediately, to prevent attacks that may be planned and imminent.

I don’t have any firm opinions on the subject, at least at this late hour, but I do wonder–once we’ve squeezed all the information out of him, and he’s a dessicated lemon, what then? What punishment should be in store for him?

I’m not into Biblical, or Hammurabian justice myself, but if you’re an “eye for an eye” type, it seems to me that an appropriate retribution might be to take him up to the observation floor (86th) of the Empire State Building, and face him south, toward downtown, so he could view the site of his atrocity. Confront him with a flamethrower, and offer him a choice, just as his victims had…

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!