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August 25, 2005

The Lessons Of Fallujah, Forgotten: Why Is Moqtar "Mookie" Al-Sadr Still A Free, And Living, Man?

The politics of it are difficult, to be sure, but plainly this is a dangerous and murderous man who threatens Iraq -- and our troops.

posted by Ace at 07:00 PM

Comments

Funny you should mention, though. While I was brushing my fangs this morning, the radio news was talking about a hopeful sign: an Iraqi leader encouraging his people to vote in the constitutional election, calling it "the jihad of words" as opposed to "the jihad of swords." Or something like that. It was considered a hopeful crack in the recalcitrance of some Iraqis to participate in the process. Yup, it was al Sadr.

Posted by: S. Weasel on August 25, 2005 07:35 PM

An American general suggests we might have to whack Al-Sadr (a good idea when it was suggested), but that idiot Robertson suggests whacking Chavez (not a bad idea really) - one gets a free pass, the other is excoriated.

WTF?!? Can someone please explain the media to me.

Posted by: Tony on August 25, 2005 07:52 PM

S. Weasel--

And Dennis Rader was heard today to speak out in favor of women's throats, saying that he was all for them and that they were fascinating things.

Posted by: See-Dubya on August 25, 2005 07:55 PM

Why?

Because Dubya is a flaming wimp, that's why.
Because he's got less actual resolve in his entire body than most true leaders have and had in their little fingers.
Because he's more concerned with chasing his legacy, his book deals and his speaking tours after his time at the wheel is up.
Because he seems to think that losing is OK, as long as you make sure you can claim that you were the nice guy.
Because he's like any other flim-flam politico that ever rose to the surface of the political swamp: Apperance is everything, anything else is secondary.

That's why.

Now you know.

Posted by: Misha I on August 25, 2005 08:24 PM

Obviously, I won't discount the deaths of those affected by this snot's recent shananigans, but in terms of strategy, al-Sadr is once again showing impeccably stupid timing.

Right before the Iraqis are ready to sign a constitution, he splits the majority party. This is Kos stupid. First of all, he's going to get his fat face beat in, secondly, he is going to rally the moderates behind his opposition. If there was ever a case for the "Federal" Iraq and opposition to Islamic Conservatives, this schmuck is the poster boy.

He has absolutely no chance of succeeding, and I thought he was far more dangerous as an elected official in the government versus dropping his gloves and choosing the duke it out.

The best part about it will be watching the Iraqis deal with him.

Posted by: TF6S on August 25, 2005 08:27 PM

To me a fate worse than death would be to have that guy's ugly stinking foul breath mug coming at me. I find him so repulsive I can't even describe it. It must be hell to be a female in those countries.

Posted by: on August 25, 2005 09:44 PM

The ugly truth is that no moslem Iraqi is a friend of this country nor of the American people. Al-Sadir is just one of many many many evil religious bigots. The liberals, libertarians and some conservatives have the notion that there are "good" moslem Iraqis known as MODERATE moslems. Wrong ,wrong, wrong. I am amazed at the faith so many have in the innate goodness of mankind. The Iraqis will at best be a geopolitical ally against other middle east countries. They will never be trustworthy where our safety or survival is concerned. The iraqis would snuff us all out in a heart beat if they had the means.

Posted by: john on August 25, 2005 09:48 PM

Maybe we can get Pat Robertson to call for Mookie Tater's assassination. I was asking for more snipers over a year ago when this crackpot first caused trouble. Why he's still breathing is beyond me, but it's probably too late to snuff him out -- no matter how much he deserves it.

Posted by: SomeJoe on August 25, 2005 10:09 PM

They will never be trustworthy where our safety or survival is concerned.

Who cares?

Any country that stakes its survival on the performance of others is stupid and deserves extinction anyway if the feces really ever does hit the fan.

They will however be quite faithful to their own wallets.

Why would anyone "snuff out" the largest oil customer on the planet?

Posted by: Tony on August 25, 2005 10:09 PM

Tony--I agree with all you have said. My point was that Al-sadr is not the real problem in dealing with the Iraqis and that we will always have to have our guard up whether Al-sadr is alive or dead..

Posted by: john on August 25, 2005 10:29 PM

Al-Sadr - A prime candidate for a retroactive abortion.

Maybe the reason he ain't dead is cuz we ain't found him yet.

Posted by: Partisan Pundit on August 26, 2005 12:41 AM

Don't be silly. If we capped his ass his followers would go apeshit. You'd have an insurrection on your hands that would make the current one look like that rave bust in Utah.

The guy is garbage, no doubt, but he can be counted upn to serve himself first and foremost. Being Iran's pawn will only take him so far, and the supposed empathy Iraq's Shia have for Iran is overstated from what I can see.

Split him off, use him, tempt him but don't kill him.

Unless you can make it look like someone else did it.

Posted by: spongeworthy on August 26, 2005 11:17 AM

Note that Mookie is now calling for peace between his guys and the Sistani faction. Judging by past behavior, this translates to "We're getting our asses kicked and/or I'm afraid someone's about to have me whacked."

Posted by: David C on August 26, 2005 12:15 PM

Mutater al Satyr --the Arlen Specter of Iraq

Posted by: on August 27, 2005 01:27 AM

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Kid punks CNN chump by speaking truth to retard

Podcast: CBD and Sefton talk birthright citizenship, the 14th Amendment and SCOTUS, no boots in Iran, Artemis II and refocusing NASA, the NBA's hatred of everything non-woke, and more!

In more marketing for Project Hail Mary, scientists say they've found the biosigns indicating life growing on an alien planet. It's not proof, just signatures of chemicals that are produced by biological metabolism, and it could be nothing, but scientists think it's a strong sign that this planet is inhabited by something.

In a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, a team of scientists announced the detection of dimethyl sulfide (along with a similar detection of dimethyl disulfide) in the atmosphere of an exoplanet called K2-18b. This is actually the second detection of dimethyl sulfide made on this planet, following a tentative detection in 2023.
Tons of chemicals are detected in the atmospheres of celestial objects every day. But dimethyl sulfide is different, because on Earth, it's only produced by living organisms.
"It is a shock to the system," Nikku Madhusudhan, first author on the paper, told the New York Times. "We spent an enormous amount of time just trying to get rid of the signal."

He means they tried to prove the signal was caused by things other than dimethyl sulfide but they could not.

Artemis moon shot a go, scheduled for 6:24 Eastern time tonight
Great marketing arranged by Amazon to promote Project Hail Mary. Okay not really but it does work out that way.

TJM talks John Boorman, director of Excalibur

Good rickroll

What? Skeleton of the most famous Musketeer, D'Artagnan, possibly discovered in Dutch church closet.
Dumas picked four names of real musketeers out of a history book, D'Artagnan, Athos, Aramis, and Porthos. So there was an actual D'Artagnan, though he made most of the story up. (Or, you know, all of it.)*

Charles de Batz de Castelmore, known as d'Artagnan, the famous musketeer of Kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV, spent his life in the service of the French crown.
The Gascon nobleman inspired Alexandre Dumas's hero in "The Three Musketeers" in the 19th century, a character now known worldwide thanks to the novel and numerous film adaptations.
D'Artagnan was killed during the siege of Maastricht in 1673, and there is a statue honoring the musketeer in the city. His final resting place has remained a mystery ever since.

A lot of Dumas's stories are based on bits of real history. The plot of the >Three Musketeers, about trying to recover lost diamonds from the queen's necklace, was cribbed from the then-almost-contemporaneous Affair of the Queen's Necklace. And the Man in the Iron Mask is based on real accounts of a prisoner forced to wear a mask (though I think it was a velvet mask).
* Oh, I should mention, Dumas says all this, about finding the names in an old book, in the prologue to his novel. But authors lie a lot. They frequently present fictions as based on historic fact. The twist is, he was actually telling the truth here. At least about these four musketeers having actually existed and served under Louis XIV.
Fun fact: You know the beginning of A Fistful of Dollars where the local gunslingers make fun of Clint Eastwood's donkey and Eastwood demands they apologize to the donkey? That's lifted from The Three Musketeers. Rochefort mocks D'Artagnan's old, brokedown farm horse and D'Artagnan is incensed.

A commenter asked which should be read first, The Hobbit of LOTR?
Easy, no question -- read The Hobbit first. It's actually the start of the story and comes first chronologically. It sets up some major characters and major pieces in play in LOTR.
Also, the Hobbit is Beginner-Friendly, which LOTR isn't. The Hobbit really is a delightful book, and a fast read. It's chatty, it's casual, it's exciting, and it's funny. In that dry cheeky British humor way. I love that the narrator is constantly making little asides and commentary, like he's just sitting next to you telling you this story as it occurs to him.
LOTR is a very long story. Fifteen hundred pages or so. The Hobbit is relatively short and very punchy and easy to read. If you don't like The Hobbit, you can skip out on LOTR. If you do like it, you'll be primed to read LOTR.
Oh, I should say: The Hobbit is written as if it's for children, but one of those smart children's stories that are also for adults. Don't worry, there's also real fighting and violence and horror in it, too.
LOTR is written for adults. (It's said that Tolkien wrote both for his children, but LOTR was written 17 years later, when his children were adults.) Some might not like The Hobbit due to its sometimes frivolous tone. Me, I love it. I find it constantly amusing. Both are really good but there is a starkly different tone to both. LOTR is epic, grand, and serious, about a world war, The Hobbit is light and breezy, and about a heist. Though a heist that culminates in a war for the spoils.

The Hobbit Challenge: Read two more chapters. I didn't have much time. Bilbo got the ring.
I noticed a continuity problem. Maybe. Now, as of the time of The Hobbit, it was unknown that this magic ring was in fact a Ring of Power, and it was doubly unknown that it was the Ring of Power, the Master Ring that controlled the others.
But the narrator -- who we will learn in LOTR was none of than Bilbo himself, who wrote the book as "There and Back Again" -- says this about Gollum's ring:
"But who knows how Gollum had come by that present [the Ring], ages ago in the old days when such rings were still at large in the world? Perhaps even the Master who ruled them could not have said."
In another passage, the ring is identified as a "ring of power."
I don't know, I always thought there was a distinction between mere magic rings and the Rings of Power created by Sauron. But this suggests that Bilbo knew this was a ring of power created by Sauron.
Now I don't remember when Bilbo wrote the Hobbit. In the movie, he shows Frodo the book in Rivendell, and I guess he wrote it after he left the Shire. I guess he might have added in the part about the ring being a ring of power created by "the Master" after Gandalf appraised him of his research into the ring.
I never noticed this before. I know Tolkien re-wrote this chapter while he was writing LOTR to make the ring important from the start. And also to make Gollum more sinister and evil, and also to remove the part where Gollum actually offers Bilbo the ring as a "present" -- Bilbo had already found it on his own, but Gollum was wiling to give it away, which obviously is not something the rewritten Gollum would ever do.
But I had no memory of the ring being suggested to be The Ring so early in the tale.

Finish the job, Mr. President!
Melanie Phillips lays out the case for the total destruction of the Iranian government and armed forces. [CBD]

TJM acts like he knows anything about John Wick and screenwriting. It's embarrassing, really.

Podcast: Sefton and CBD talk about how would a peace treaty with Iran work, Democrats defending murderers and rapists, The GOP vs. Dem bench for 2028, composting bodies? And more!

Oh, I forgot to mention this quote from Pete Hegseth, reported by Roger Kimball: "We are sharing the ocean with the Iranian Navy. We're giving them the bottom half."

Batman fires The Batman
Batman is disgusted by the Joachim Phoenix version of Joker
Batman tries to fire Superman
Batman is still workshopping his Bat-Voice

Forgotten 80s Mystery Click: Red Leather Suit and Sweatband Edition
And I was here to please
I'm even on knees
Makin' love to whoever I please
I gotta do it my way
Or no way at all

Tomorrow is March 25th, "Tolkien Reading Day," because March 25th is the day when the Ring is destroyed in the book. I think I'm going to start the Hobbit tomorrow and read all four books this time.
The only bad part of the trilogy are the Frodo/Sam chapters in The Two Towers. They're repetitive, slow, and mostly about the weather and terrain. But most everything else is good. Weirdly, the Frodo-Sam chapters in Return of the King are exciting and action-packed and among the best in the trilogy. (Though the chapters with everyone else in Return of the King get pretty slow again. Mostly people talking about marching towards war, and then marching towards war.)

Sec. Army recognizes ODU Army ROTC cadets for their bravery and sacrifice in private ceremony
[Hat Tip: Diogenes] [CBD]

TJM gives you a brief tour of his movie collection.

Forgotten 80s Mystery Click
One day I'm gonna write a poem in a letter
One day I'm gonna get that faculty together
Remember that everybody has to wait in line
Oh, [Song Title], look out world, oh, you know I've got mine

US decimation of Iran's ICBM forces is due to Space Force's instant detection of launches -- and the launchers' hiding places -- and rapid counter-attack via missiles
AI is doing a lot of the work in analyzing images to find the exact hiding place of the launchers. Counter-strikes are now coming in four hours after a launch, whereas previously it might have taken days for humans to go over the imagery and data.