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addam Hussein’s most notorious cousin, cousin, “Chemical Ali” Hassan al-Majid, gained infamy by using modern, efficient ways to kill Hussein’s enemies, real and imagined. In the end, though, it will be the age-old rope around the neck, not some missile-born gas, that kills him.

Al-Majid was sentenced to death for the second time yesterday, along with former Baath party official Abdul-Ghani Abdul-Ghafur, this time for conspiring with Abdul-Ghafur to kill thousands while suppressing a Shi’ite uprising following the first Iraq war. His other conviction was in 2007, for the crimes against humanity he carried out in 1991 against the Kurds. He’s also on trial for orchestrating another Shi’ite massacre in 1999.

Here’s a description of the first Shi’ite massacre he commanded:

The prosecutor described the incident as one of the “ugliest crimes ever committed against humanity in modern history”. According to human rights groups, government tanks, artillery and helicopters fired indiscriminately on civilian areas and government troops rounded up and executed fighting-aged men. Estimates of the death toll vary widely, however. Conservative estimates put the number of victims in the tens of thousands, while Iraqi court officials have said that up to 180,000 died and some Shi’ite groups claim the figure exceeds 300,000.

So let’s see here. Al-Majid used WMDs in the 1980s against the Kurds, and twce in the 1990s was involved in the killings of tens of thousands of Shiites with great force, by means unspecified. Does anyone reasonably think that a regime like Hussein’s - crazed, cruel, aggressive and still, today, unrepentant - a regime that thwarted every effort for international inspections of its weapons and weapons research, a regime that elevates a man like al-Majid, would not actively pursue WMDs?

Reasonable minds would conclude that WMDs were not found because they were shuttled off to Syria, not because they were never produced.

Update:  WMDs were in the news today, and the news isn’t good:

The odds that terrorists will soon strike a major city with weapons of mass destruction are now better than even, a bipartisan congressionally mandated task force concludes in a draft study that warns of growing threats from rogue states, nuclear smuggling networks and the spread of atomic know-how in the developing world.

The sobering assessment of such threats, due for release as early as today, singled out Pakistan as a grave concern because of its terrorist networks, history of instability and arsenal of several dozen nuclear warheads. The report urged the incoming Obama administration to take “decisive action” to reduce the likelihood of a devastating attack. (WaPo)

There is no doubt in my mind that if we had not toppled Hussein, Iraq would be right up there with Pakistan as a grave concern.

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ere we go, with two more chapters of Larry Schweikart’s 48 Liberal Lies about American History (That You Probably Learned in School) - which C-SM hopes will lead to you purchasing a copy of the book for yourself and any college-age kids in your acquaintance - and two more lies liberal history profs are teaching to pollute the minds of the next generation.

Lie #16 - Prohibition Was Unpopular From The Beginning And Failed In All Its Objectives

Prohibition … offered another example of reforming zeal channeled into a drive for moral righteousness and conformity . … The Anti-Saloon League [mobilized] Protestant churches behind its single-minded battle to elect “dry” candidates. - George Brown Tindall and David E. Shi, America: A Narrative History

My grandmother was an prohibitionist and a staunchly conservative Methodist, and I thought it positively odd that my great aunt and uncle would lower their kitchen shade so grandmother wouldn’t look across the alley and see them drinking a beer with their Sunday night sausage and sauerkraut.

Be that as it may, prohibition is now offered up as a precursor to the moral battlegrounds of today - first abortion and drugs, now gay marriage - as history profs have hayseed hicks and ignorant fundamentalists battling the enlightened forces of coolness. It’s also used as an immigration lesson, with prohibition seen as the white majority forcing its will on the (then-white) immigrant populations (those drinking Irish and Italians!). And ultimately, prohibition serves as the foundation of teaching that “you cannot legislate morality.”

Temperance, in fact, was a longstanding thread leading up to prohibition. Abraham Lincoln ran on a “temperance” platform and most states had restrictions on alcohol before prohibition. Why? Because alcohol had become a huge social problem. Prohibition helped quell it, as arrests for public drunkenness and incidents of hospitalization for alcoholism and cirrhosis of the liver declined during Prohibition.

Saloons - which often offered up prostitution in addition to booze - were thought by many doctors to be the source of syphilis outbreaks and the Mann Act was passed to stop white slavery that was thriving in the saloons.

So drinking wasn’t just a nice passive pastime; it was a big social problem (as it remains today), leading to wide support for Prohibition not only among conservative Protestants, but among much of America, both urban and rural, lower class and upper.

To Schweikart’s view, Prohibition failed primarily because sufficient enforcement was never funded, and because the media turned against it, followed by … sound familiar? … the intellectual elite in NY and DC. And finally, it was the desire for those lucrative liquor tax revenues during the Depression that ended the social experiment.

I’m not a fan of heavy-handed government policies like Prohibition, but I am a fan of having them taught in the proper context and not misused. If historians used Prohibition as a lesson about America’s strong and ongoing moral fiber, and against over-reaching regulation, that would be fine with me.

#17 - Sacco And Vanzetti Were Innocent And Wrongly Executed

The excesses of the fundamentalists, the xenophones, the Klan, the red-baiters, and the prohibitionists disturbed American intellectuals profoundly. … Sacco and Vanzetti were anarchists and Italian immigrants. Their trial was a travesty. Mark C. Carnes and John A. Garraty, American Destiny.

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti may be lost in the mist of time to most readers, so the easiest way to put them into perspective is to consider that the anarchists of the early 20th century were akin to the terrorists of our time. Their act of violence - killing a guard and paymaster in the midst of a robbery - was just another of anarchist actions against America: They had assassinated President William McKinley, had nearly killed a Carnegie Steel exec in his office. They shot people, made bombs, and blew things up, all in the name of bringing down all government.

From the 20s until they were replaced by the Rosenburgs in the 40s, Sacco and Vanzetti were the cause clebre of the American left. Future SCOTUS Felix Frankfuter wrote a book calling for a new trial, socialist author Upton Sinclair took up their cause, and as recently as 1977, then-Governor Michael Dukakis of MA called S&V innocent, saying “any disgrace should be forever removed from their names.” Says Schweikart of that proclamation:

Unfortunately for Dukakis, a firearms panel would meet only a few years later and virtually reattach the disgrace to the names of the two murderers.

But long before recent forensic tests put this issue to rest, a fair jury did the same based on overwhelming evidence that the Left would have you ignore.  Nine eyewitnesses ID’d Sacco as being at the scene; four ID’d Vanzetti.  Both defendants were caught in lies on the witness stand.  Alibi witnesses proved not to be credible.

As recently as 1985, liberals have published books coughing up “new evidence” to show S&V were good guys put down by an evil system.  But the evidence against this view is overwhelming:  Forensic tests have proved Sacco’s revolver fired the shot that killed one of the victims, that defense arguments that bullets were switched are specious, that Sacco was a participant, and separate from these tests, that Vanzetti also was guilty.  This has long been proven to such an extent that even Upton Sinclair admitted as much, saying he was “completely naive about the Sacco-Venzetti case, having accepted the defense propaganda completely.”

But some Leftist profs continue to profess their innocence, and they can no longer be called merely naive.

The Lies They Teach: #13 - #15
The Lies They Teach #11 And #12
The Lies They Teach: #9 And #10
The Lies They Teach - #8
The Lies They Teach: #6 And #7
The Lies They Teach: #4 And #5
The Lies They Teach: #1 - #3

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orry I’ve had no posts today.  The crisis communications project I’m working on post-Yorba Linda fires continues …

As progressives moan that they’ve done the unthinkable - elected a centrist - the depth of radicalism at the core of Prez-elect Obama’s health care initiative is coming to light.  The Wall Street Journal reads the tea leaves (”The Obama Health Plan Emerges“) and foresees trouble; lots of trouble.

It all comes down to two words:  Max Baucus.  The Montana senator, as Senate Finance chair, controls the pursestrings that will have to be ripped open for a universal (or universal-ish) plan, and also recently released a health care policy blueprint.  It’s close to Obama’s plan and it’s close to the heart of the money-man, so let’s take a look:

First, Democrats want the government to create a national insurance exchange, or marketplace, in which all comers could buy into a range of heavily regulated private policies at group rates. These private plans would then “compete” with a new public insurance option, i.e., a program managed by the government and modeled after Medicare. Lower-income earners would get subsidies to make coverage “affordable.” Businesses that didn’t cover their employees would pay a tax on some portion of their payroll.

The last cog is the “individual mandate.” This requirement that everyone buy coverage has grabbed most media scrutiny of the Baucus plan, because Mr. Obama opposed it during the campaign. But the many moving parts don’t work together unless the young and healthy foot the bill for care of the older and sicker — one reason Hillary Clinton kept nagging Mr. Obama about the individual mandate during the primaries.

The campaign over, reality strikes.  Interestingly, the WSJ sees the public component, not the mandate, as the more radical element of the Baucus proposal.  It says the plan would be “extraordinarily” expensive because it would lead to growth in government’s share of health care spending - and there’s a lot of potential growth here, as health care represents over 17 percent of the US economy.

How extraordinarily expensive will it be?  The draft ballparks the “investment” at as much as $150 billion a year, and WSJ says that’s conservative, since subsidies would go to families earning up to 400% of the federal poverty level. That’s 61.5% of Americans, or about 184 million people — less those already on Medicare and Medicaid.

Medicare is currently $36 trillion short of meeting its obligations, and its board acknowledges that the actual number, given current trends, is probably several trillions higher.  But, the WSJ points out, the Baucus plan “doubles down” on the Medicare option nonetheless:

The Obama-Baucus solution to this slow-motion catastrophe is to add tens of millions more people to the federal balance sheet. Because the public option will enjoy taxpayer sponsorship, it will offer generous packages to consumers that no private company could ever afford or justify. And because federal officials will run not only the new plan but also the “market” in which it “competes” with private programs — like playing both umpire and one of the teams on the field — they will crowd out private alternatives and gradually assume a health-care monopoly.

So, without ever calling it universal health care, the plan would eventually accomplish it by making the government plan the only alternative, whether it’s fiscally viable or not.  One wonders if there’s enough high income and business tax income to be generated to fund the plan.

Is the Baucus plan the Obama plan?  Since it is the more economically realistic of the two, it’s probably closer to what the Dem-dominated Congress will pass if Obama continues to push his health care proposal.

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‘ve been out of the office since Monday working on this crazy crisis situation for one of my clients - 8 to 16 hour days.  I hope it’s calming down and I’ll have a chance to post a bit more … there’s a lot on my mind, although I’ve missed most of the news for the last few days (other than that related to the Yorba Linda fire). Did ya miss me?

Who cares if the economy is sucking air? Certainly not federal employees, who received letters from Barack Obama on the eve of the election reassuring them that their jobs are safe and the federal government will be expanded during his term, at your expense.

The letters, sent to employees at seven federal agencies, were a cooperative effort between the Obama campaign and the American Federation of Government Employees, reported WaPo in a non-critical article earlier this week.

The letters describe Obama’s commitment to greater levels of government regulation andd scaling back on contracts to private firms (another anti-business plank in Obama’s platform).

To Department of Housing and Urban Development employees, he promised a big role in restoring public confidence in the housing market - “We’re from the government and we’re here to help.” To Social Security Admin workers, he promised more staff to deal with backlogged disability claims, which worries me because I think over-employment at the agency and over-indulgence in disability claims to druggies and alcoholics are part of the Social Security problem. And, signaling a major reversal of one of Bush’s rare battles for fiscal conservatism, Obama promised Transportation Security Admin workers the same bargaining rights and bennies as other fed workers.

His letter to Labor Dept. employees signaled higher costs to employers, another anti-business plank in the Obama house of cards. It promised to set new policies requiring longer paid family leave and more “flexible” work schedules - with the federal government leading by example. Oh boy! More paid time off and less time at the desk when I’m not paid to be off - think I’ll Go with O.

Of course they’re all nothing more than campaign promises, so Obama will either deliver, driving up governmental overhead when he’s promising the rest of us he’ll cut it, or he’ll add more names to the long list of those disappointed that Mr. Manna can’t deliver the miracles.

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ne of the public agencies I provide PR services to is a bit in the media spotlight as a result of this weekend’s SoCal fires, so I’ve been working all day on crisis containment. It’ll probably continue into or maybe through Wednesday, and I won’t be posting much until things calm down.

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he name of the author of the Newsday piece Entrenched Majority and Obama cracked me up: Les Paine. This black columnist is definitely not ready for less pain in America, and he’s swinging with big roundhouse punches:

After voting heavily against the first black U.S. presidential candidate, the white majority in this country seems bent now on declaring Sen. Barack Obama’s victory as the end of racism in the republic.

As the world celebrates this historic ‘08 election, the media downplay the fact that were it left to whites alone, John McCain and Sarah Palin would be heading to the White House, accompanied, we assume, by Cindy McCain as first lady. [We assume? What the heck does that mean?] Instead, pollsters and pundits seem hell bent on placing on the defensive those blacks and Hispanics who voted for Obama in record numbers.

Paine dismisses a 96% black vote for Obama as the continuation of a strong Dem minority vote - 90% for Johnson some 44 years ago and 88% for Kerry, for example. That’s defensible to an extent, but in presidential elections nowadays, swings of one or two percent are significant, so a bump of 8% in four years cannot be so easily dismissed as being wholly without racial motivation.

Paine assures us blacks aren’t racist - but whites most definitely definitely are:

“In four Southern states, Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi,” [Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies pollster David] Bositis said in his prepared remarks, Obama “received a smaller share than John Kerry received in 2004. Given the political environment of 2008, those declines can only be attributed to race.”

Only. Attributed. To. Race - in the four most southern of southern states. Worries about Obama’s associations or inexperience had nothing to do with it? If Bositis is as “respected” as Paine says he is, then the pollster would have weighted his conclusions with data on the comparative experience of the long-termer Kerry and the neophyte Obama. But no. (The Joint Center, BTW, is a think tank dedicated to providing services to black elected officials - a group that happily plays the race card whenever and however it suits their re-election or political purposes.)

Bositis refused Paine’s requests to call white voters in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Virginia and North Carolina racist, even though they voted in the majority for McCain/Palin? No, “those whites’ voting for Obama was cause for optimism.”

I don’t get it. If Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas whites vote McCain, it’s racism, but in other states where the same phenomenon occurred, there’s optimism to be found in the whites who voted there for Obama. My only conclusion: Paine is right - America is a racist country, and the effort to keep it that way is being led by Les Paine, Jeremiah Wright and others who loudly protest calling the election of a black president proof that the old American racism is dead or dying.

hat-tip: RCP

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couple weeks late, Incredible Wife and I are finally getting away for our 26th anniversary, so I won’t be posting this weekend.

One quick note while she does her make-up: Last year, for our 25th, we spent 10 days in Savannah and Charleston - creating our own little tourism economy there in the process. This year, things are very different, and with Obama coming into office with all the economic dread he brings with him, we’re spending two nights in a local beachfront resort - and no, we can’t afford what AIG can afford, so it’s not the St. Regis. We’re up in Huntington Beach, at about half the rate.

And in closing, I could care less whether we’re there or here. I’m getting to spend a couple days with my favorite person on the planet and I’m happy as a clam! Here’s Incredible Wife, in a photo we took this spring at our property in the Sierra foothills:

Continuing with Larry Schweikart’s 48 Liberal Lies about American History (That You Probably Learned in School) here are the next two lies Schweikart lists in his review of what liberal revisionist history profs are doing to despoil the proud history of our nation.

Lie #6: Richard Nixon Expanded the Vietnam War

[I]n April 1970, Nixon sent American forces on a sweek through Cambodia … A seeming Escalatino of fighting, this move electrified the anti-war movement.” - Irwin Unger, These United States

A brief history of Vietnam:  Kennedy put the first troops in, and there were probably about 25,000 American troops in Southeast Asia, primarily Vietnam, when he was assassinated.  In 1969, when Lyndon Johnson left office after deciding not to run for a second term, there were 553,000.  That is an expansion.

By 1971, Nixon had cut the number of troops down to 200,000, and down to 155,000 in 1972.  At this time, 65 percent of Americans approved of the way Nixon was handling the war - way up from Johnson’s ratings, which forced him not to consider a second term.  By 1973, Nixon  had withdrawn all but about 50,000 troops.

Still, in American text books on Vietnam, it is Nixon how is the villain of the war, not Johnson and certainly not Kennedy, who, Schweikart points out, “receives almost no blame or criticism for his actions, while the man who extracted us - in line with, supposedly, the wishes of the liberals - is routinely portrayed as though he started, rather than ended, the conflict.

Lie #7: The “Peace Movement” Activists Were Not Dupes of the KGB

During 1983, the antiwar and nuclear disarmament movements, in exlipse since the end of the Vietnam War, revived explosively. … [T]here were demonstrations in major cities to protest the arms race adn demand a “nuclear freeze.” - Irwin Unger, These United States

This is the most fascinating chapter in the book thus far.  Personally, this was the point where I began to see the leftists, with whom I had previously affiliated, as dangerous loons, so the chapter illuminates that gut decision - which leads to the second thing that makes it fascinating:  It is based in large part on KGB documents smuggled out of Russia by a KGB archivist, Vasili Mitrokhin.

Mitrokhin’s documents show the KGB worked to spread rumors that Lee Harvey Oswald worked for “the military industrial complex,” that the AIDs virus was invented in Fort Detrick MD and spread by us to third world countries, and that they invested heavily in funding the left to discourage further development of American nuclear campability.

This money - including $2 million to the Communist Party here, 5 million deutsch marks annually from East Germany’s Stasi to the German Peace Union and $50 million a year to the World Peace Council - may explain why the left was so quick to attack America while leading the totalitarian Brezhnev regime uncriticized.

The Lies They Teach:  #4 And #5

The Lies They Teach: #1 - #3