Antiwar.com Blog

Glenn Reynolds, citing some less successful blogger:

“The groups that will gather in Washington DC for a major anti-war protest this weekend have financial ties to major leftist fundraisers like George Soros and Theresa Heinz Kerry, and beyond them to communist organizations and radical left-wing groups, the Washington Times reports today. The conduits for the rallies appear to be the ubiquitous front groups International ANSWER and the UPJ.”

But the press reports will say that the marchers are ordinary Americans, not MoveOn and A.N.S.W.E.R. astroturf.

CNN, citing, um, America:

A CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll released Thursday indicated fewer than half of Americans believe the United States will win the Iraq war, and 55 percent of those surveyed said it should speed up withdrawal plans. …

The results followed others this week that found only 32 percent of those interviewed supported President Bush’s handling of the war, 63 percent supported a full or partial withdrawal and and 54 percent favored cutting spending on the conflict to pay for rebuilding the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina. (Full story.)

The American people: a buncha no-good commies. Whatever gets you through the night, dude.

Thought for the day, from Gene Healy:

I love technology, really I do. Ipod. Internet. Modern dentistry. Not starving to death. We live in a world of ever-increasing technological miracles, and if we really appreciated it as much as we should, we’d walk around all day like a kid on Christmas morning.

Nonetheless, goofy neolibertarian futurism really sticks in my craw. A number of my ideological cousins–and I’m not naming any names–seem to look forward to the day when our clone armies will use their nanoweapons to bring open markets to Mali or when we’re able to give ourselves a third nipple at will. Feh.

The blahgosphere is all a-blurber this week with talk of this Singularity thing. “There is no clear definition, but usually the Singularity is meant as a future time when societal, scientific and economic change is so fast we cannot even imagine what will happen from our present perspective.” It’s, like, Super-Dynamism! …

LOL. Need I even sketch out the foreign policy tendencies of the Singularity crowd? What is it about gee-whiz techno-Whiggery that makes its adherents so prone to bellicosity? If you really believe that humanity is just a few pills or microchips away from perfection, why not just sit back and let events unfold as peacefully as possible? Why the Leninist insistence on making the “inevitable” happen by force of arms?

Andrew Sullivan finally catches up on the story of a porn site that allows US soldiers free entry for posting photos of dead and dismembered Iraqis and Afghans. Better late than never, I suppose, but Eric Muller did not “sound the alarm.” I wrote about it here a month ago, after having read this post by Helena Cobban.

But no matter. Now that all the occupation-supporters and squishes have almighty Andy’s permission to address the topic, I’m looking forward to their thoughts.

The Battle of Basra, where British troops “rescued” two out-of-uniform British soldiers who’d gotten into a contretemps with Iraqi police, gets more fascinating by the moment. A news item put out by China’s Xinhua News Agency’s contains the following fascinating paragraph:

“‘Two persons wearing Arab uniforms opened fire at a police station in Basra. A police patrol followed the attackers and captured them to discover they were two British soldiers,’ an Interior Ministry source told Xinhua. The two soldiers were using a civilian car packed with explosives, the source said.”

By “Arab uniforms” they no doubt mean traditional Arab dress, long flow-y Lawrence of Arabia drag, but as for the explosives ….

I’m not sure how much truth there is in this report, but the source doesn’t necessarily rule it out. After all, what were those two Brit Special Forces types doing out of uniform — and seemingly gone native? They were apparently riding around Basra, with whatever it was they had in their car: explosives, surveillance devices, or maybe just candy to hand out to children….

The more we learn about this war, the more sinister the picture that emerges. Check out my recent column on this subject, but here I’m talking about an aspect of the Basra incident that deserves particular attention. What sort of mission were those two British soldiers, from an elite unit, embarked on before they were spotted and arrested? If Iraqi “sovereignty” doesn’t deserve the ironic quote marks, then an explantion, preferably one that sounds like an apology, will be forthcoming.

However, if I were an Iraqi government official, let alone a relative of those killed, I wouldn’t hold my breath.

Writing on his famous weblog, Andrew Sullivan has always tried to balance his various manias — the wonders of homosexuality, the glories of war — so that one didn’t necessarily overshadow the other. Now, however, he’s shown us where his priorities are with this blog entry hailing Harvard for caving in to the Pentagon’s threat to invoke the evil Solomon Amendment — cutting off federal aid — if they didn’t let in military recruiters. In any conflict between c*cksucking and warmongering, with Sullivan the latter wins out. Now thats what I call true patriotism.

I see that Arianna Huffington has finally discovered the John Bolton -Plame scandal connection. Of course, Antiwar.com’s readers were in on this waaaay back in July:

“After the War Party met in solemn conclave, and the command went out from Cheney: ‘Bring me the head of Joe Wilson!’, there was only one logical place for Cheney’s minions to go. Who in the administration would’ve had access to the specific information regarding Plame-Wilson’s role in a deep-cover CIA operation involving nuclear proliferation? Why, the man who was the State Department deputy secretary in charge of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ – the somewhat irritable if not downright reckless John Bolton, would-be ambassador to the UN, who played a central role in promulgating the Niger Uranium Myth.”

Not to denigrate Arianna’s gossip grapevine as a source of news, but only to point out that it merely confirms what in-the-know cognoscenti read here first.

Now if only Arianna hadn’t kicked me off her blog for not being appreciative enough of Israel — not to mention dissing Huffpuff contributor Mrs. David Frum — Huffpuff’s readers would have had this story months ago.

Oh well, what was that old adage about pearls and swine ….?