Antiwar.com Blog

From Ann Coulter’s latest:

Press passes can’t be that hard to come by if the White House allows that old Arab Helen Thomas to sit within yards of the president.

Via James Wolcott.

Today on the Weekend Interview Show (4-6pm Eastern Time), I’ll be talking with civil rights attorney and author Elaine Cassel about the case of Lynn Stewart. The lawyer for the bomber of the World Trade Center in 1993, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, Stewart was convicted on February 10th of “providing material support” to terrorism.

In the second hour, I’ll have war correspondent, author and columnist Eric Margolis from the Toronto Sun on to talk about Middle East Policy.

Update: Show’s over. Archives here

For the past couple of years, we have repeatedly heard spokesmen from the National Guard and the reserve aver that they were continuing to meet their basic recruitment goals within a few percentage points. It never ceased to amaze me that there were so many who would sign up even as the debacle in Iraq went from bad to worse and record numbers of guardsmen and reservists were being called up for long deployments in combat zones overseas.

Well, maybe those assurances were not quite as optimistic as they had sounded. According to US Sen. Lindsey Graham (SC), who has just returned from a visit to Iraq:

Increasing bonuses and benefits will attract recruits, he said, noting there has been a 75 percent drop in the number of active duty personnel who subsequently go into the National Guard and reserves.

Naturally though, he does note that he still doesn’t think there will be a draft and apparently believes that the Administration will be able to contiually pull live rabbits out of a empty magician’s hat.

How sincere is Walid Jumblatt’s much–hyped conversion to the Bush Doctrine? Well, according to a FrontPageMag article just two months back, Jumblatt told a Saudi daily:

We are all happy when U.S. soldiers are killed [in Iraq] week in and week out. The killing of U.S. soldiers in Iraq is legitimate and obligatory.

Is it conceivable that these days, old Walid is just using a credulous media to manipulate America into doing his dirty work? That he doesn’t mind the prospect of more U.S. soldiers dying – this time in Syria – so that he can spew his syphilitic garbage in an independent Lebanon?

Nah. Can’t be. All is well, warbots. Reality is whatever you need it to be.

The Canadian government has rejected US orders that it comply with the incredibly dangerous and wrongheaded waste of resources euphemistically called the “missile defense shield”;

Prime Minister Paul Martin said Thursday that Canada would not join the contentious U.S. missile defense program, a decision that will further strain brittle relations between the neighbors but please Canadians who fear it could lead to an international arms race.

Let’s go back in time a bit. Early in the Cold War era, a problem developed for Canada. In the event of a Soviet bomber attack against the US, the bombers would have to fly east to the north pole, and then south over Canada, to get to the targets in the US. It was decided that Canada should help its partner to the south by constructing some sort of defense (My solution would have been to tell my friends the Americans “Hey hosers, about this cold war thing, cut it out willya? Thanks, eh?”). In 1954, development began in Canada, on a homegrown project which would, within four years, produce the greatest warplane of it’s era. Continue reading “US bully losing influence over Canada”

Yet another crazed Jumblatt quoter pops up and is efficiently dispatched by lenin.

One of the Harry’s Place commenters appeals for mercy for the Jumblatteers, “Oh, leave HP alone! Can’t you see they’re hanging to reality by their finger-nails? :)”