clipped from mypetjawa.mu.nu

Jawa Report has posted this video in which Benezir Bhutto names names of who is likely to killer her — and apparently gets it right. In it, she also drops in without comment this little tidbit: Naming Omar Sheikh as the man “who murdered Osama bin Laden.”

Did she really know something? If she did, does it die with her?

Probably not. More likely, she just got the wrong name into the sentence — speculation is that she meant to say “Daniel Pearl.”

hat-tip: memeorandum

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Pakistan has released a transcript that apparently proves radical Taliban Islamists affiliated with al-Qaeda were behind the Bhutto assassination. In the transcript, militant leader Baitullah Mehsud, is referred to as Emir Sahib. The other man is identified as a Maulvi Sahib, or “Mr. Cleric.”

Maulvi Sahib: Peace be on you.

Mehsud: Peace be on you, too.

Maulvi Sahib: How are you Emir Sahib?

Mehsud: Fine.

Maulvi Sahib: Congratulations. I arrived now tonight.

Mehsud: Congratulations to you, too.

Maulvi Sahib: They were our men there.

Mehsud: Who were they?

Maulvi Sahib : There were Saeed, the second was Badarwala Bilal and Ikramullah was also there.

Mehsud: The three did it?

Maulvi Sahib: Ikramullah and Bilal did it.

Mehsud: Then congratulations to you again.

Maulvi: Where are you? I want to meet with you?

Mehsud: I am in Makin. Come I am at Anwar Shah’s home.

Maulvi Sahib: OK I will come.

Mehsud: Do not inform their family presently.

Maulvi Sahib: Right.

Mehsud: It was a spectacular job. They were very brave boys who killed her.

Maulvi Sahib: Praise be to God. I will give you more details when I come.

Mehsud: I will wait for you. Congratulation once again.

Maulvi Sahib: Congratulations to you as well.

Mehsud: Any service?

Mauvliv: Thank you very much?

Mehsud: Peace be on you.

Maulvi: Same to you.

Peace be on you … praise be to God. This is the Islamist enemy, praising God that in one blow they were able to strike out against modern roles for women, democracy (or a typically corrupt South Asian version thereof) and stability.

More on the suspect, from CNN:

Robert Grenier, former CIA station chief in Pakistan and former head of the CIA’s counterterrorism center, describes Mehsud as an Islamic radical leader in northwest Pakistan’s South Waziristan closely associated with the Taliban.

Grenier said that Mehsud spoke publicly before Bhutto’s return to Pakistan in October after her self-exile that the former prime minister was marked for assassination.

Some say the assassination is all the more reason to withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan:

We don’t know what’s going on in these volatile countries. The best thing is to stay out of the way and let them solve their own problems. …

Meanwhile, the U.S. government plants to “vastly expand” its forces in Pakistan. They’re just being sent into a rats’ nest.

Here’s a better idea: We get out of countries like this. We don’t let them come to our country. Let them stew in their own juices. If businessmen want to trade with these countries, they do so at their own peril.

America’s foreign policy should be that of non-intervention and neutrality, as our Founding Fathers, especially Washington and Jefferson, insisted. (John Seiler)

This is a chicken and egg argument, with the non-interventionists saying our presence in the Middle East caused 9/11 and interventionists saying earlier Islamists terror strikes necessitated our presence in the Middle East. Besides, that was then and cannot be undone. It is foolhardy to think that we can just withdraw from the Middle East and radical Islamism will stop fighting the West.

They have tasted power and they want more, in the name of Allah and the Islamist caliphate, which is the real lesson of the Bhutto assassination. It was not an attack on America; it was an attack on Muslim efforts to stop the jihad.

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A funny thing happens when you search for polar bear images on the Internet.

You find a lot of pictures like this one depicting the species as cute and vulnerable, in keeping with the Greenie/Warmie mantra that all nature is cuddly and in need of protection. That protection, of course, always comes in the form of the curtailment of human advancement.

What you really have to search for are pictures like this, that show polar bears as they are — majestic, for sure, but also fierce, nasty, brutally self-sufficient, and not much concerned with what people are up to.

“Oh, but it’s the bigger picture!” the Warmies cry. “The bears don’t know they’re going to go extinct unless we stop global warming!”‘

True enough. They don’t know … and neither do we. In fact, evidence is mounting that the polar poster child of the Warmie movement is not at risk at all, and that the more we study polar bears, the more the entire global warming religion seems about as sound as Scientology or Est.

With a hat-tip to Ymarsakar, here’s a digest of an extensive post on the subject you can find at Benning’s Writing Pad:

1. Polar bears survived through a warm spell considerably hotter than predictions the Warmies make for our future. This is now known for certain because an ancient polar bear jaw was found to be 130,000 years old — dating the species to the toasty Eemian period. (source)

2. While they are obligate species, i.e., dependent on a particular environment, they are not as vulnerable as Warmies would have you think. This was demonstrated by the recent find of a polar bear/grizzly hybrid conceived in the wild — not through a chance encounter, because the polar bear female requires a lengthy mating ritual before an egg will be release.
3. While the mainstream Warmie belief is that shrinking polar ice is the result of warmer air, Benning points out that polar air remains well below freezing most of the time and blames increased undersea volcanic activity for rising ocean temperatures. Of course, removing all the SUVs and taming the Chinese beast will do nothing to curtail magma flows.
4. And, in defiance of Warmie dogma, polar bear populations aren’t dropping precipitously. As said at Moonbattery, “Even if the Goracle’s most frenetic fantasies were to come true, and the North Pole were to melt in the foreseeable future, people living in northern latitudes will still get eaten by polar bears.”

Could we send Big Al their way?

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After Ronald Reagan, Grover Cleveland just might have been the last great American president.

That sentiment would have gotten me cross-wise with my hosts last night, who would not have put in the Ronald Reagan qualifier. No, friends, the folks at the Grover Cleveland Social Club hold the 22nd president (and 24th, as Cleveland was the only president to come back after a hiatus and be re-elected) in exceptionally high esteem.

Grover was admirable, indeed, a man of character the likes of which I don’t see among any of the current candidates … although last night’s hosts would argue that Ron Paul is Grover Cleveland reincarnated.

Here’s a quote that packages Cleveland pretty niftily. In it, he is addressing his thoughts on federal aid to farmers whose crops had been damaged by drought:

“Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character….”

Prescient, huh? Especially from a Dem! The White House’s history archives, provide the following brief summary of Cleveland’s primary policy efforts:

He also vetoed many private pension bills to Civil War veterans whose claims were fraudulent. When Congress, pressured by the Grand Army of the Republic, passed a bill granting pensions for disabilities not caused by military service, Cleveland vetoed it, too.

He angered the railroads by ordering an investigation of western lands they held by Government grant. He forced them to return 81,000,000 acres. He also signed the Interstate Commerce Act, the first law attempting Federal regulation of the railroads.

In December 1887 he called on Congress to reduce high protective tariffs. Told that he had given Republicans an effective issue for the campaign of 1888, he retorted, “What is the use of being elected or re-elected unless you stand for something?” But Cleveland was defeated in 1888; although he won a larger popular majority than the Republican candidate Benjamin Harrison, he received fewer electoral votes.

Elected again in 1892, Cleveland faced an acute depression. He dealt directly with the Treasury crisis rather than with business failures, farm mortgage foreclosures, and unemployment. He obtained repeal of the mildly inflationary Sherman Silver Purchase Act and, with the aid of Wall Street, maintained the Treasury’s gold reserve.

When railroad strikers in Chicago violated an injunction, Cleveland sent Federal troops to enforce it. “If it takes the entire army and navy of the United States to deliver a post card in Chicago,” he thundered, “that card will be delivered.”

After the last several presidents’ failure to control either the size of government or its spendthrift ways, all this sounds positively delightful.

Because the hosts of the evening — OC Reg commentary writer Steve Greenhut, his former colleague John Seiler and friend Tony Bushala — are all Libertarians, big and little “L” Libertarians abounded at the event, including Art Olivier, former Libertarian candidate for California governor and U.S. Veep.

Art and I chatted for some time, and he explained why Libertarians run in the face of insurmountable odds. I thought it was to educate and educate and educate people until we get the concepts through our dense heads, a point he agreed with in more polite terms, but he said he runs to keep the party alive.

Eventually, he feels, the stars will align with the right candidate at the right time, and the Libertarians will advance beyond their current place, where they are unable to get any higher than city councils, and break onto the national scene. Until then, his job is to keep the flame burning.

All things are possible, folks. The status quo is not forever. But Libertarian naivety on foreign policy will keep 2008 from being that year.

Olivier also revealed:

• If Ron Paul doesn’t get the GOP nomination (and they view that as a big “if”), he will run for president as the Libertarian candidate.

• He believes such a candidacy will hurt both the GOP or the Dems. He feels if the Dems nominate Hillary, anti-war Dems will vote for Paul, as will GOP voters concerned more about privacy and big government than the War on Terror.
• He, Olivier, would run for Vice President.

He would be an asset to any ticket — tall, handsome, well-spoken, personable and approachable. I only wish I would have asked him how he feels about the 9/11 Truthers’ Moonbats’ attraction to Paul. Who in the world would want to get into office on the shoulders of that sad bunch?

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Bookworm’s fabulous essay, Judeo-Christian Doctrine and Moral Values, handily won this week’s Watcher of Weasels-hosted blogfest. Despite its stodgy title, it’s a perfectly Bookish entry — crime as seen by Islam and Leftism, captured via Officer Krupke.

Runner-up honors were split between Done With Mirrors’ Ron Paul and Soccer Dad’s First let the lawyers kill us all. The former was fine backgrounding for me, as I spent yesterday evening in a swarm of Ron Paul followers. The latter revealed that lawyers vetted every action by Israel in its recent war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, managing to screw up everything, both militarily and politically.

On the non-Council side, a rather lengthy but totally compelling piece by Silver Bullet, Fear, was the runaway winner. The piece addresses and rebuts the Left’s allegations that the Bush Administration has employed fear tactics in the War on Terror.

Coming in second was Watcher’s Council alum Eternity Road with Laughter and Tears, a temporary, thank God, goodbye from the Curmudgeon Emeritus, describing the heavy burden we defenders of truth and liberty must carry.

See all the winners here, where you won’t find your humble author, who got a skunking for a Christmas/birthday present from his fellow Council members.

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Read this passage from Counterterrorism Blog ..

The Syro-Iranian move to crush their opposition using the “window of opportunity”, created by the NIE and the “talk-to-Syria-and-Iran” campaign in Washington and Brussels, is not confined to these countries. This week, the “axis” war room delivered a deadly blow to the Lebanese Army, which is considered by Hezbollah as the only native force capable of engaging its militias at some point. The assassination of Brigadier General Francois Hajj is increasingly perceived as a preemptive strike by the Pasdaran-controlled Hezbollah against a future commander of the Lebanese Armed Forces. Hajj was the chief operations officer who planned and led the campaign to defeat Fatah al Islam in Nahr al Bared.

… and ask yourself: What are the odds that the Syria-Iran Axis is behind the assassination of Bhutto?

What better way could there be to destabilize American interests in Muslim South Asia than to create turmoil in Pakistan? And if Pakistan’s nukes were to fall into Islamist hands, how much better would that be for Iran and Syria, both of which clearly want nuclear weapons?

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I was tempted to title this post, “Did Bush Kill Bhutto?” on the heels of yesterday’s post about Jamie Lynn Spears and the media’s desire to discredit Bush’s abstinence program, but the subject is too significant for such a headline.

Dec. 26, 2004: The tsunami. Dec. 27, 2007: The Bhutto assassination. The two events mingled in my mind as I read the news accounts, because both are epochally bad news events. The impact of the first we now understand well; the impact of the second is anyone’s guess.

I assume that many of Bhutto’s inner circle were in fact physically close to her in Rawalpindi when the attack occurred, so her party will be more than merely leaderless going into the elections scheduled next month. Nevertheless, it’s hard to imagine Pervez Musharraf surviving today’s attack politically. I doubt the attack had any Musharraf fingerprints on it — save for not providing enough government security for Bhutto — but the nation will turn against him even more now.

The assassination probably also spells doom for radical Islamic parties sympathetic to al Qaeda, since many Pakistanis will blame Islamist terrorists for the attack. Still, the attack shows how long the road will be in the war on terror:

The lesson for the West is that the war with the Islamists is not only far, far from over but in fact may be accelerating, and that more leaders with the sort of courage, resolve and energy displayed by Bhutto are needed now more than ever.

President Musharraf must take the war to the ungoverned places of the country or see such atrocities continue. Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is the most inviting goal for the al Qaeda cells, an issue which could have used a lot of attention in the presidential campaign reaching its crescendo. (Hugh Hewitt)

It is on that note that I circle back to the lead, and how the media addressed Bush in its coverage of the Bhutto assassination. In the first round of reporting, all but one of the US’ major news outlets covered the story responsibly. Guess which one didn’t.

Yes, the NY Times, whose story included these decidedly non-objective and wholly inappropriate paragraphs:

The assassination also adds to the enormous pressure on the Bush administration over Pakistan, which has sunk billions in aid into the country without accomplishing its main goals of finding the Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden or ending the activities of Islamic militants and the Taliban in border areas with Afghanistan.

and

Bush administration officials began working behind the scenes over the summer to help Ms. Bhutto and Mr. Musharraf create a power-sharing deal to orchestrate a transition to democracy that would leave Mr. Musharraf in the presidency, while not making a mockery of President Bush’s attempts to push democracy in the Muslim world.

The goal of our aide to Pakistan is not to catch Osama bin Laden, but to win the larger War on Terror and contain the nation’s nuclear arsenal. The NYT’s blind focus on negatives puts it in a place which would have the paper declare the capturing of Hitler to be the prime reason why we spent so much money on WWII, and because he was never found, the whole bloody affair was a waste and an embarrassment to America.

And whether the NYT likes it or not, Pakistan is a Muslim democracy today. Not ideal by any reckoning, but in recent months, the government has functioned well enough. The Supreme Court stood up to Musharraf, who then acted dictatorially, but had to back down due not to the UN for cryin’ out loud, but due to the will of the Pakistani people, who made their voices heard, so an election was set for January.

Does the NYT not see the benefit of trying to bring democracy to the Islamic world? Or is it just too lazy and shortsighted to go for anything valuable that requires a long slog?

Compare the NYT’s snideness to the reporting of AP and MSNBC. The AP account is straightforward, reportorial, despite a long history of anti-Bush reporting from the wire service:

Pakistan is considered a vital U.S. ally in the fight against al-Qaida and other Islamic extremists including the Taliban. Osama bin Laden and his inner circle are believed to be hiding in lawless northwest Pakistan along the border with Afghanistan.

The U.S. has invested significant diplomatic capital in promoting reconciliation between Musharraf and the opposition, particularly Bhutto, who was seen as having a wide base of support in Pakistan. Her party had been widely expected to do well in next month’s elections.

MSNBC also raised the same points as the NYT, but again without the cheekiness. These level-headed paragraphs are from a media outlet that has openly positioned itself as the anti-Fox, pro-left cable outlet, but today at least, the staff at MSNBC appears to understand the requirements of objective reporting:

Bhutto’s return to the country after years in exile and the ability of her party to contest free and fair elections had been a cornerstone of Bush’s policy in Pakistan, where U.S. officials had watched Musharraf’s growing authoritarianism with increasing unease.

Those concerns were compounded by the rising threat from al-Qaida and Taliban extremists, particularly in Pakistan’s largely ungoverned tribal areas bordering Afghanistan despite the fact that Washington had pumped nearly $10 billion in aid into the country since Musharraf became an indispensible counter-terrorism ally after Sept. 11, 2001.

The LA Times coverage was similar to AP’s and MSNBC’s, while WaPo and CNN reported the story without reference to Bush Administration policies.

Against this background of responsible reporting of a tragedy with potentially inconceivable consequences, the NYT stands out as an immature, inappropriate and unruly guest at the party, hardly differentiated from the Kos-tic rants of the leftyblogs.

Isn’t there someone who can spank their bottom and send them to their room?

hat-tip: memeorandum

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Is abstinence education to blame for Jamie Lynn Spears’ teen pregnancy?

There’s plenty of reason to believe it is not. Jamie Lynn has received plenty of real-life sex education from her older sister, whose two babies weren’t brought by storks after the birds and bees did their thing. Plus, as a TV star, Jamie Lynn has hardly had a typical classroom education, where curricula teach abstinence.

And besides, California is one of a growing number of states that doesn’t teach abstinence, despite the loss of some federal education dollars. (I’m presuming that as a TV star, Jamie Lynn lives in California, but I admit I an no expert in the lives of celebrities.)

But to read today’s USA Today editorial on the horrors of abstinence education, you would think it was the teaching of abstinence that got Jamie Lynn pregnant, and that it’s to blame for a rising tide of teenage pregnancies:

For Christian conservatives, the pregnancy, at 16, of Nickelodeon actress Jamie Lynn Spears — the wholesome star of Zoey 101 and younger sister of troubled singer Britney Spears — poses a good news-bad news dilemma.

“We should commend girls like Jamie Lynn Spears for making a courageous decision to have the baby,” summed up Bill Maier, vice president of the conservative ministry Focus on the Family. “On the other hand, there’s nothing glamorous or fun about being an unwed teen mother.”

No one would argue with that sentiment. For teens of lesser means, pregnancy takes away much more than fun and glamour. It greatly reduces chances that the young mother will ever escape poverty.

For all the agreement about the problem, however, a failure to recognize facts appears to be interfering with finding solutions. The Bush administration is sticking adamantly to abstinence-only sex education, which was adopted at the urging of religious conservatives, even as evidence mounts that such programs are failing.

The article then swings into a statistical analysis of teen pregnancy rates “which declined 34% from 1991 to 2005, increased 3% in 2006.”

As a PR guy, I know statistical manipulation when I see it, and this is gross and deliberate manipulation. Down 34% vs. up 3% seems to be a huge swing, until you recalculate the first figure to represent an annual fall, not a 14-year fall, and you find that the rate was dropping 2.4 percent annually over that period, on average.

Besides, a one-year change in a 14-year trend is inconclusive; more data is needed before we will know whether the 3% increase isn’t an anomaly. Only the hysterical media would be interested in such a statistic.

Here’s a comprehensive table that verifies the drop in teenage pregnancy rates, and shows that it impacted all demographic categories. It is astoundingly good news.

The table shows that from 2000 to 2004, the years of the first Bush term and the push for abstinence, the teen pregnancy rate has continued to drop, from 47.7 births per 1000 teenage girls in 2000 to 41.2 in 2004.

If abstinence education doesn’t work, why was it working in these years? And why doesn’t USA Today take into account that now 14 states are no longer teaching abstinence — a new high which could, by itself, explain the increase?

Besides, a good argument can be made that abstinence education didn’t become popular because of Christian morality; rather, it gained traction only because sex education had become extremely radicalized and pro-carnality in its teachings. By the end of the Clinton years, the pro-abortion Planned Parenthood faction controlled sex ed curricula and it showed in the classroom, where sex ed started with the assumption that all teens would have sex, and lots of it.

The media hasn’t asked many questions about why Planned Parenthood and its ilk, which stood to gain from government-purchased birth control and government-funded abortions for teens, was allowed to turn sex education into a how-to guide for debauchery.

The carnal left had pushed too far and traditionally conservative America pushed back with the promotion of abstinence. Then, the left pushed back again with pressure to drop abstinence programs.

Through all this time, the Clinton free-for-all days and the more constrained Bush days, the teen pregnancy rate continued to drop, which to any clear-headed observer would appear to be proof that something other than classroom sex education was at work educating our young people. Incredible Daughter #1, who’s 21, says television programming and social networking all play up the downside of teen pregnancy, and virtually no one gets pregnant today because they didn’t understand the physical process.

All of which just goes to show that we can’t count on left-leaning editorial writers to think through situations when blind promotion of their agendas will do.

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In yesterday’s Christmas celebrations, my laptop sat idle, tucked under the couch in the family room, so I didn’t send in my nominations for this week’s Watcher’s Council blogfest. Fortunately, the Watcher selected a pretty good post of mine and put it in the running.

Here are the nominees; the Council’s vote will be posted Friday morning.

Council links:

1. A Tale of Two Iraqs & Two Wars
   Wolf Howling
2. Ron Paul
   Done With Mirrors
3. The Arrogance
   The Colossus of Rhodey
4. Nuclear Weapons Policy in the 21st Century
   The Glittering Eye
5. What Would Jesus Say To Those Who Defame His People?
   Joshuapundit
6. Judeo-Christian Doctrine and Moral Freedom
   Bookworm Room
7. A Holiday Primer for Ron Paul Supporters
   Rhymes With Right
8. First Let the Lawyers Kill Us All
   Soccer Dad
9. George F. Will Gets Beyond NCLB
   The Education Wonks
10. Lame Duck Crushes Christmas Turkeys
    Big Lizards
11. Cross About Huckabee’s Cross Ad
    Cheat Seeking Missiles
12. Huckadumb
    Right Wing Nut House

Non-council links:

1. Saudi Libel Terrorism Must Be Stopped
   The Terror Finance Blog
2. Fear
   Silver Bullets
3. Pilger and His Public
   Oliver Kamm
4. Home For Christmas
   Villainous Company
5. Syrian and Iranian Axis Terrorize their Opposition
   Counterterrorism Blog
6. Iraq Portrait: How the Press Has Covered Events on the Ground
   Pew Research Center
7. Must Police Be Representative? Whom Do They Represent?
   Discriminations
8. Arabs in Israel
   The Volokh Conspiracy
9. “We Will Never Recognize… Reality”
   Dr. Sanity
10. Democrats’ 2007 Report Card
    Human Events
11. Laughter and Tears
    Eternity Road
12. How the Democrats Must Love the Republican “Base”
    Classical Values
13. MMOs Bad for Planet?
    Dodgeblogium

You might also want to read what would have been my nominee, Whitewash, by Bruce Bartlett at Opinion Journal. Bloggers, check out the Watcher’s offer of link whorage if you’re interested in self-nominating.

Thanks, Watcher, for watching over me this week!

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