Meet your new thread, same as the old thread.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Cletus Miller
This is the only link in your post:

http://hotair.com/archives/2007/08/...robert-spencer/

Not his firm bio. Perhaps a mistake?

ETA: Or you're the poster "Bryan" at hotair.com?

http://www.sandlerreiff.com/bio_sandler.htm sorry. i meant to include this.

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by ltl/fb
What do you have against ball-sucking? Wow.

Have you seen the Young Americans for Freedom on most campuses?

And I _said_ "NTTAWWT" !

S_A_M

[ltl/fb]

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
Have you seen the Young Americans for Freedom on most campuses?

And I _said_ "NTTAWWT" !

S_A_M

People who suck balls are unattractive? NTTAWWT to me indicates that in absolute terms, it's fine, but you don't like it.

I did once end up (long story) at a Federalist Society thingy. Oy. Blech.

[Diane_Keaton]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
Once we get to the election you'll lose again, not because the Rs will defame your candidate's weakness on terror, but because your own Party needs to be so "big umbrella" that you actually would be. You GC is CAIR's attorney. that is scary.

In all fairness there have been bi-partisan condemnations of CAIR. See below. Still, there are lots of dems that need to shake their association with dhimmi-ish views.

Schumer: "we know that CAIR has ties to terrorism"

Boxer (taking back award she gave to CAIR): "To praise an organization because they haven't been indicted is like somebody saying, 'I'm not a crook'" (Um, whatever).

Article speculating whether other Dems will follow her lead:
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/default.aspx

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
You're going to hold his legal clients against the party? Quick, someone get me a copy of Fred Thompson's talking points. "The flies buzz louder in the summer." There we go.

Let's see -

Hank could (a) talk about how well everything is going in Iraq; (b) talk about Bush's other foreign policy successes; (c) talk about Bush's domestic policy successes; or (d) try to create bizarre, substanceless issues and throw mud at the Democrats.

You see, if we want Hank to post at all, he really doesn't have any other options than to post Penskes like this.

But if we want to talk about substantive issues, how 'bout that Alberto, with his "confusing" testimony. Yes, Alberto, it was, uh, pretty confusing.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
Let's see -

Hank could (a) talk about how well everything is going in Iraq; (b) talk about Bush's other foreign policy successes; (c) talk about Bush's domestic policy successes; or (d) try to create bizarre, substanceless issues and throw mud at the Democrats.

You see, if we want Hank to post at all, he really doesn't have any other options than to post Penskes like this.

But if we want to talk about substantive issues, how 'bout that Alberto, with his "confusing" testimony. Yes, Alberto, it was, uh, pretty confusing.

• 29. Three To Get Ready
  Gilligan finds a rare gemstone and according to its legend, is granted three wishes.
  The first two he wastes on ice cream that mysteriously floats ashore. Finally for
  his last wish, Gilligan wishes the Castaways off the island. The patch of land
  they're standing on separates into the lagoon.
  Directed by Jack Arnold

[Tyrone Slothrop]

For the right-wing crazies, mission accomplished on the Beauchamp thing. His story checks out, but they've successfully punished him for saying things they didn't like, a message that other soldiers serving in Iraq will surely read loud and clear.

[SlaveNoMore]

Tyrone Slothrop
For the right-wing crazies, mission accomplished on the Beauchamp thing. His story checks out...

No, it doesn't.Ace of Spades

I'll start with this:

• In the first, Beauchamp recounted how he and a fellow soldier mocked a disfigured woman seated near them in a dining hall. Three soldiers with whom TNR has spoken have said they repeatedly saw the same facially disfigured woman. One was the soldier specifically mentioned in the Diarist. He told us: "We were really poking fun at her; it was just me and Scott, the day that I made that comment. We were pretty loud. She was sitting at the table behind me. We were at the end of the table. I believe that there were a few people a few feet to the right."
  The recollections of these three soldiers differ from Beauchamp's on one significant detail (the only fact in the piece that we have determined to be inaccurate): They say the conversation occurred at Camp Buehring, in Kuwait, prior to the unit's arrival in Iraq. When presented with this important discrepancy, Beauchamp acknowledged his error. We sincerely regret this mistake.

Error? Mistake? He was off by an entire country and something like nine months?

This is what TNR terms an "error," a "mistake"? And when they "fact-checked" this beforehand, how did their "rigorous editing and fact-checking" miss the fact this took place in another country, before actual deployment?

I'm reminded of Steven Wright's joke: "The other day I was... oh wait, that was someone else."

Could happen to anyone, really. Common mistake.

What made this tall tale smell (and not "smell good," per TNR's standard of "fact-checking") was that no one could figure out what the hell a badly disfigured woman -- obviously a medical evacuation case -- was doing wandering around a Forward Operating Base in the first place. A med-evac was there... why? In the thick of combat and high-tempo activity... why? What is FOB Falcon, a goddamned sanitarium/spa? Do they have lovely regenerative baths there?

It also didn't help that no one -- no one spoken to -- could remember seeing such a woman on the base.

TNR calls this an "error." As you like it.

Read the whole link. He slays Ty's assessment.

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
No, it doesn't.Ace of Spades



Read the whole link. He slays Ty's assessment.

Just so I can follow, is this essentially the Christmas in Cambodia thing? Or does the corroborating witnesses saying, "yeah, we treated the woman that way, but it was in Kuwait" make it different at all?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
He slays Ty's assessment.

From the crowd that thinks we're winning in Iraq, this makes perfect sense.

[SlaveNoMore]

Gattigap
Just so I can follow, is this essentially the Christmas in Cambodia thing? Or does the corroborating witnesses saying, "yeah, we treated the woman that way, but it was in Kuwait" make it different at all?

Um, one witness confirms that he and the author made fun of a woman before they ever stepped foot in Iraq.

Hardly the meme of the story - that the war is turning soldiers into beasts. More like the author and his corroborating friend are and were dicks long before they got to Iraq.

And this being the case, why would you publish an article by a total dick irrepresentative of the Armed Forces, other than sheer nepotism obviously.

on the same theme, from the weekly standard:

So just to be clear, the first line of the original piece stated that Beauchamp “saw her nearly every time I went to dinner in the chow hall at my base in Iraq.” That turns out now to be a blatant lie–and one that Beauchamp stuck with after THE WEEKLY STANDARD first asked Foer to reveal the base at which this incident occurred. Further, TNR says in this new statement that “Shock Troops” “was about the morally and emotionally distorting effects of war.” But now we find out that Beauchamp hadn’t even gotten to Iraq when this incident allegedly took place. He was, in fact, a morally stunted sadist before he ever set foot in Iraq.

After recounting this tale, Beauchamp asks a rhetorical question:

Am I a monster? I have never thought of myself as a cruel person….I was relieved to still be shocked by my own cruelty—to still be able to recognize that the things we soldiers found funny were not, in fact, funny.

Relieved that he was still shocked at his own cruelty? After his tour in Germany and the long flight to Kuwait? This whole essay was meant to demonstrate the damage war does to our own troops–but if this incident occurred at all, it only proves that Beauchamp was a vile creep to begin with.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore, quoting The Weekly Standard
This whole essay was meant to demonstrate the damage war does to our own troops–but if this incident occurred at all, it only proves that Beauchamp was a vile creep to begin with.

I personally will pay $3 -- or whatever it takes -- so that whoever wrote this crap can watch Full Metal Jacket.

[SlaveNoMore]

Tyrone Slothrop
I personally will pay $3 -- or whatever it takes -- so that whoever wrote this crap can watch Full Metal Jacket.

Another excellent piece of fiction. Touche

[Diane_Keaton]

Originally posted by Gattigap
Just so I can follow, is this essentially the Christmas in Cambodia thing? Or does the corroborating witnesses saying, "yeah, we treated the woman that way, but it was in Kuwait" make it different at all? So all of Beauchamp's moral decay occurred before he ever saw combat. Before he entered the theater. Before the grind and inhumanity of war had its way with his tender soul.

This story was not about a cynical, war-weary soldier losing sight of humanity - it was about a newbie who had just finished training and was on his way to his first duty station. His behavior wasn't a result of the hardships of the combat environment - it was a result of his being an innate asshole. A huge, insensitive, loutish asshole.

Not much difference if he was fighting in Kuwait, which he wasn't. The point of the essays was how the war in Iraq is causing moral decay among troops. The dude hadn't even been to Iraq (or fought) yet when the incident allegedly happened.

Junk Yard Blog said it best:

So all of Beauchamp's moral decay occurred before he ever saw combat. Before he entered the theater. Before the grind and inhumanity of war had its way with his tender soul. So all of Beauchamp's moral decay occurred before he ever saw combat. Before he entered the theater. Before the grind and inhumanity of war had its way with his tender soul. This story was not about a cynical, war-weary soldier losing sight of humanity - it was about a newbie who had just finished training and was on his way to his first duty station. His behavior wasn't a result of the hardships of the combat environment - it was a result of his being an innate asshole. A huge, insensitive, loutish asshole.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Diane_Keaton
Junk Yard Blog said it best: "So all of Beauchamp's moral decay occurred before he ever saw combat."

Well, damn, a bunch of right-wing bloggers have proved that combat doesn't cause moral decay. They ought to win the Nobel Prize for this. Once they finish kicking the shit out of Beauchamp, they can turn to Shakespeare, Ernst Junger, Stephen Crane, Ernest Hemingway, Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, and all the others.