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A raspy, scraping, screamed "kree-eee-ar"

"You know the usual argument: if you haven't enlisted in the services, you are a wimp and should shut up on all things military," writes Derek Brigham of Freedom Dogs, who designed the new insignia of the "101st Fighting Keyboardists," AKA Chickenhawks. We urge our readers to follow your conscience and sign up at Captain Ed's if you are so inclined.

"We shall fight them on the op-ed pages, we shall fight in the worldwide web, we shall fight in the internet and in the blogs, we shall fight in the Democratic Underground; we shall never surrender!" writes Dr. Sanity, announcing her decision to join the "101st Fighting Keyboardists," whose logo (above) boldly proclaims "We Eat Chickens for Lunch." Captain Ed explains:

Our friends on the port side of the blogosphere have had quite a time tossing around funny little nicknames for those of us who support the war on terror and use our blogs to express our convictions about it . . . the term "chickenhawk" has appeared more than once, and others in the blogosphere have assigned us to a unit called the 101st Fighting Keyboardists . . .

The men and women of the military do the real fighting, and we salute them and support them by supporting their mission [but] there is honor in engaging in public debate for policies which we believe are in our nation's best interest as well. For many of us, we know that without presenting our arguments in the national forum, many in the media and the public will quickly overpower the debate.

We're heading over to sign up as soon as we finish this post. The Captain & Company have chosen the estimable Red-tailed Hawk -- one of several native species colloquially know as Chickenhawks -- as heraldic bird:

Sound-wave images of the idiotarian's worst nightmare, the "raspy, scraping, screamed "kree-eee-ar" of the Chickenhawk circling in for the kill.

"A raspy, scraping, screamed 'kree-eee-ar'," the cry of the Red-tailed Hawk -- AKA Chickenhawk -- "is used in movies to represent any eagle or hawk anywhere in the world," according to the totally awesome website of Cornell Lab of Ornithology's "All About Birds":

The most common and widespread blogger hawk in North America, the Chickenhawk Red-tailed Hawk is a polemicist bird of informed and thoughtful opinion open country. It is frequently seen sitting at a computer keyboard on utility poles where it watches for idiotarians rodents in the arena of elite opinion grass along the roadside.

We are Chickenhawks, hear us scream!

Who wants to sit through another George Clooney Bush-bashing vehicle?

If it's true, as we are forever saying, that girls just wanna have fun, Victoria's Secret knows where we live.

'Wish we'd written everything LGF commenter really grumpy big dog johnson [via Winds of Change] wrote about "United 93." His words echo the conversation we had with Tuck on the ride home from the theater yesterday:

This movie is not like anything I've ever seen in my life. This is a new template for cinema, borrowing from little with which we might be familiar. Filmed in a near real-time style of cinema verite, we are subjected to an immediate style, using handheld cameras and ad lib dialogue like little else I've seen.

But what makes this film so unique is the barebones nature and utter honesty of the director's chosen style. There's no plot, no character development, no lead actors, and for that matter no recognizable actors period in this movie. There is no attempt to embellish, dramatize or otherwise turn this docudrama into a "Hollywood" movie.

It is what it is, and what it is clearly is a triumph of a movie from director Greengrass. It took my breath away, and I still haven't gotten it back.

"No lead actors" was huge. Other than our fellow Americans of the hard left and their unwitting fellow travelers looking for a pretty face, who wants to sit through another George Clooney Bush-bashing vehicle? As some reviewer we can't seem to Google up said the other day, thank God there was no Tom Hanks or Susan Sarandon to distract us from the matter at hand.

If it's true as imams are forever saying that men don't want girls to have fun, Shukr USA knows where we don't live.

Now on to the matter of the woman behind the veil romanticized in our last post. From shukronline:

Here are Qur'ans Basic Guidelines on Clothing:

Clothing should not attract attention or used to brag or show off their wealth or social status. [Stop right there. Question: What happens to "the importance of being noticed" if social display is off base? Answer: Suicide bombing.]

Clothing must cover the entire body; only the hands and face may remain visible.

Clothing must hang loose so that the shape of the body is not revealed.

One can only wonder why God shaped us in his image in the first place, only to demand that we cover it all up. Unintelligent design? Our commenters were up in arms, wondering what Sissy had been smoking:

Teresa of Technicalities:

There's something so very sad about a woman veiled head to toe in America while her husband stands right next to her in regular clothing. No matter how loved she may be, she is in shackles.

Miss Kelly, who found "an extremely modest Muslim bathing suit in a National Geographic article yesterday:

IMHO, women who cover themselves head to toe are objectifying their bodies every bit as much those the women who are walking around skantily clad. To different effect, obviously, but similar dynamic.

We totally agree, but here's our point. Take it or leave it, how we women look is part and parcel of what David Attenborough in his awesome "The Trials of Life" BBC series calls "the relentless drive to continue the bloodline." Our purely speculative theory is that keeping the women's physical charms under wraps feeds the Muslim man's desire. How else to explain the explosion of the Muslim demographic worldwide, most alarmingly in Europe, where the native populations aren't having enough offspring to replace themselves?

Laura Lee Donaho of The Wide Awake Cafe brings up another important issue evoked by "United 93":

I feel like United 93 is a national memorial service and that so many Americans think it is too soon to be viewed is at the very least incredibly disrespectful. It's something brave people confront, and I used to think we were the home of the brave. But no more. There are so many squishy September 10th people in this land.

"The home of the brave" . . . that was Francis Scott Key's phrase in the song he composed on the morning after the Battle of Baltimore in 1814, when against all odds in the face of the British juggernaut, "our flag was still there," the very hymn to freedom now under assault by our amigos from south of the border who want to bypass our laws to grab a piece of the pie in the land of the free. Patrick Poole of Existential Space has the history:

Many Americans forget the circumstances surrounding the British assault on Fort McHenry in the misnamed War of 1812. Just weeks before the attack on Baltimore, the British had sailed up the Potomac and put Washington D.C. to the torch, forcing President James Madison and his Cabinet to flee for their lives. The burning of Washington in August 1814 was a demonstration of British military power intended to show America’s impotency. The British quickly sailed back down to Chesapeake Bay to capture the strategic port of Baltimore to issue the coup de grace and bring America to its knees and back under the dominion of the British crown . . .

But the British miscalculated. They didn’t underestimate the number of men or firepower of the American troops huddled inside Fort McHenry; it was the spirit and resolve of the American forces that the British misjudged.

Be sure to read the whole thing. It will renew your pride and faith in the "Shining City Upon a Hill." We're certain we could never be so brave. Here once more with feeling:

O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming!
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there:
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

Michelle Malkin has documents and a clearinghouse of "United 93" takes from the blogosphere at her new blog Hot Air.

When love comes so strong . . .

"Living here, you never know what you will see when you look out the window," said Tuck this afternoon, opening a metaphorical window onto a little known aspect of our working waterfront. Usually it's oil tankers heading up the creek or salt ships berthing across the street and unloading their cargo at Eastern Salt, but today something tender and personal that stopped us up short. Tuck just happened to notice it when he glanced out the window this afternoon and "thought that the woman [above] at a distance had an unusual garb." Out came the binoculars, and sure enough the woman in question was veiled from head to toe. She and her companion were fishing in the Chelsea Creek, and Tuck just happened to catch the moment when the significant other was reeling in a 15-inch fish. Moments later, when we caught the shot above, she was holding the pole, his tender hand on her shoulder.

"In Greenglass's hands the mythic Flight 93 catchphrase -- 'Let's roll!' -- becomes a throwaway line as the anxious passengers gather their resolve," writes Arianna Huffington, who uncharacteristically gets it just right (until the final boilerplate BDS paragraph) in her rave review of "United 93," which opened today at a theater near you.

The view from our porch this afternoon, framed by the lilacs just leafing out touched our mind and heart.

Tuck and ourselves were the first on our block to see it -- 'caught the 12:20 p.m. first showing at the Showcase Cinema in Revere -- and found ourselves agreeing with much of what the old gal had to say:

As the chilling, soul-wrenching, and unglamorously heroic events play out, the controversy that has surrounded the film -- is it too soon? is it exploitative? -- seems ludicrous. Too soon? It's been nearly five years since the terrorist attacks. Exploitative? What is exploitative is the way the events of 9/11 have consistently been exploited for political purposes. In fact, the film comes across as determinedly unexploitative. The forty ordinary people on the ill-fated flight -- 33 passengers and 7 crew members -- acted in an extraordinary manner. It's offensive to suggest that we are somehow collectively too squeamish to watch what they went through.

Our heart stopped when the mysterious woman across the street looked back at us through her veil. The body language of her man had already told us all we needed to know. 'Wish we could know the recipe for the fish they're having tonight.

"Made with enormous respect for the real passengers (and their surviving friends and family), United 93 also manages to portray the four hijackers as something more than cutout jihadist madmen," writes Steven Rea of the Philadelphia Inquirer:

In one small but telling, and compelling, sequence, Greengrass intercuts shots of passengers reciting the Lord's Prayer with shots of the hijackers murmuring Islamic incantations.

That's the one that caught us up short too. As we told our Sub Rosa group last night at our second secret meeting, some of our best blogfriends are Muslims. The beautiful people on Neil Cavuto's show this afternoon seemed to think this movie was going to be good for Wall Street. We can't help but agree. Bottom line is that there are no atheists (except for ourselves) in the trenches.

A catwalk on the wild side

Tiny makes a daring run for the top of the 12-foot-high retaining wall behind the house, taking advantage of having more tether than usual while Tuck was out there stacking the wood he split yesterday.

If she'd had free range, she would have made a cakewalk of catwalking along the whole 60-foot length of the wall -- a favorite travel corridor of neighborhood cats -- to where it passes behind the neighbor's house, but her tether got stuck in the underbrush partway, so Tuck had to stage a daring rescue.

Realizing that further adventures were out of the question for the immediate future, Tiny beat a hasty retreat back down to the yard to regroup.

Update:  Further faunal feats now playing at Modulator's Friday Ark and at the109th Carnival of the Cats at animal family, in memory of Rambo Rambeet, their precious rabbit, upon whom the Father of All Catbloggers has bestowed "Honorary Feline Blogging Citizenship on behalf of all catbloggerkind."

"A genius version of the little old lady in tennis shoes"

Why it's better for "older" -- in pre-pc days known as "old" --  women to go the brain-in-a-jar route. Jane Jacobs (above), who just died, made her sparkling, indelible mark with The Death and Life of American Cities, but her image as a "little old lady in tennis shoes" is writ large in the image above. (Aaron Harris - AP) You don't want to go there. Update: Apparently Ms. Jacobs herself would have begged to differ with us, having told the photographer Alex Waterhous-Hayward ten plus years back "Don't try to soften up my face, this is who I am." On the other hand, reports the NYT, "Roger Starr, a former New York City housing administrator and sometime opponent of Ms. Jacobs, keenly noted the steel just beneath her folksiness. 'What a dear, sweet character she isn't,' he said." Nobody's perfect.

"In a way, she's a genius version of the little old lady in tennis shoes -- the cranky broad in the visor cap who hangs out at the library, and who shows up at every town meeting to let her views be known," wrote Michael of 2blowhards just two months ago before the timely death Tuesday -- she was a grand old 89 -- of Jane Jacobs.

"We're still living in the shadow of this gigantic mistake, just as we're still living in the shadow of Vietnam," Michael wrote recently re the unintended consequences of the "pave-the-country-over hyperdrive" known as "urban renewal" that ran roughshod over the rich tapestry of our nation's urban landscape a couple of generations back. As far as we know, that movement reflected the unforeseen consequences of good intentions, but we can't help but think of the intentional Gramscian infiltration of our intellectual institutions during the same period that led to the politically correct anti-Americanism that infects our nation's intelligentsia in academia and the media to this day. Michael continues:

What in God's name were they thinking of? In short order, steel-and-glass towers were being thrown up all over the country; the 1956 Federal-Aid Highway Act was signed into law, leading to the biggest engineering feat in the country's history; and the atrocity known as "urban renewal" was set in train. Plow it under! Build it anew!

. . . Thousands of communities were destroyed. Millions of people were forcibly relocated. So many of these people were black that black people joked about urban renewal, bitterly calling it "Negro removal." Tens of billions of dollars were spent in an almost entirely destructive fashion . . .

Has anyone ever fully explained what was going on in people's minds during those Le Corbusier-besotted/big-project/top-down years? As far as I can tell, the country was high on its victory in World War II, was thrilled to be done with the Depression, was delighted by the new and the shiney, couldn't have liked automobiles better, and was feeling even more can-do than usual. Still, is that enough to explain how far things went?

Not at all. The All-American love affair with the automobile had nothing to do with it. Transportation innovations, from the trolley and railroad to the SUV have always enticed our fellow Americans to head out of the city to greener pastures:

Planners and bureaucrats were determined to "rationalize" everything they could get their hands on. Where cities were concerned, this meant separating functions out from one another. Places where people lived were to be made distinct from the places where they worked. "Open space" -- open space in the abstract -- was considered to be everywhere and always a good thing. After all: sunlight, fresh air, etc. In practice many of the new "open space"-style parks simply didn't work. Not a surprise: Parks need to be crafted as carefully and respectfully as buildings do. Many of these new-style empty-space parks quickly turned into windswept blights: garbage-dumps and crime-nests.

We trace it back to Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "noble savage," unwitting progenitor of  "post-modernism, Communism, Socialism, Nazism, Transcendentalism and both Thoreau and avant-garde art," according to Mark Brittingham. Their Utopian dreams imagined wiping the slate clean and recasting the future in their own image.

These sad and horrifying developments brought out the best in Jane Jacobs. While the experts (and their propagandists) grew ever more drunk on their do-gooding, egomanical, sci-fi visions, Jacobs went out and looked at what was actually happening. The new towers, the freeways, and the slum-clearances were pitched as efficient and hygienic solutions to the chaos of urban life. But where clarity, order and ease were promised, Jacobs saw monocultures going quickly to seed. Where new blocks of apartments were announcing that "we got it under control," Jacobs saw over-regimented, inhuman nightmares. The slums that were being plowed under for redevelopment struck her as anything but hopeless. They struck her, in fact, as functioning neighborhoods, even if poor ones. Where the planners saw mess and disorganization, Jane Jacobs saw life and vitality.

Lots of good planning ideas listening to what folks really want since then, from Seaside to our own Harvard Design School smart growth project, Mass Bay Commons. Adam Smith still has the last word.

Update: The NYT obit brought blogging to mind:

At a time when both common and inspired wisdom called for bulldozing slums and opening up city space, Ms. Jacobs's prescription was ever more diversity, density and dynamism -- in effect, to crowd people and activities together in a joyous urban jumble.

Ms. Jacobs was able to summon a freshness of perspective. Some dismissed it as amateurism, but to many others it was a point of view that made new ideas not only thinkable but suddenly and eminently reasonable.

"When an entire field is headed in the wrong direction, when the routine application of mainstream thinking has produced disastrous results as I think was true of planning and urban policy in the 1950's, then it probably took someone from outside to point out the obvious," Alan Ehrenhalt wrote in 2001 in Planning, the magazine of the American Planning Association.

'Reminds us of the effect of blogging is having on the conventional wisdom of  the intellectual powers that be.

Update II:  Be sure to check out Witold Rybczynski's appreciation of "original thinker" Jacobs at Slate:

Death and Life, which is still in print, went on to change the way that succeeding generations of architects and planners thought about cities . . . That vision of the urban good life had wide appeal, but the supply of old cities that offered the requisite mix of street life, architecture, and diversity was limited. The lively city districts that Jacobs championed, including her beloved Village, have become exclusive enclaves, closed to all but the extremely wealthy.

Those pesky unforeseen consequences.

It takes focus and muscle

Tuck rents a log splitter from Rent-a-Tool for all those logs the tree surgeons left in the wake of the blowdown of a Tree of Heaven (Ailanthus altissima) across our driveway in that wicked windstorm a few months back.

Woodman, spare that tree? Not:

She: Log splitting must be fun, if one were a man. I remember when Dad had one, and it WAS fun to watch. I admire inventions that make life easier, but don't turn the task into "no labor involved, whatsoever."

We: Yes. The best of both worlds.

She: Except for indoor plumbing.

We: Yes re IP. Last week when Tuck went to pick it up, he had to return home empty handed because there was something wrong with the engine.Then today, after a period of work, he ran out of gasoline and had to go get some more.

She: GEEZ. Much more labor-intensive than it looks at first blush.

We: It takes focus and muscle.

She: PLUS, with the cost of gasoline. Get out that old-time Abe Lincoln chopping block?

We: I'm hoping he won't have to gash his leg.

The Rent-a-Tool folks are the best. It took an extra week, but they delivered -- right to our doorstep -- this morning.

The light was truly fantastic mid afternoon, and Tuck's decision to wear his C.F. Jameson & Co., Inc. hat with its magenta visor was sheer genius:

Charles F. Jameson, a WWI veteran, was our paternal grandfather, a distant man we knew personally only as a little girl when he honored us with praise -- and a crisp dollar bill -- for our excellent wrapping of his birthday presents one summer long ago. Goomp took over the firm Grandfather and an associate had founded, and now our totally awesome brother Ben is Prez of C.F. Jameson & Co, Inc. Grandfather was Goomp's hard-task-master pater, who lost the love of his life -- Goomp's precious mother, Lucie Adele Chesterton -- to TB way back when their son, little Arthur -- AKA Goomp -- was only five years old. No one lovelier than she.
Woods and the man. Check out the ratio:  Tuck = a man. The garage (background) + the pipe (in his mouth) + the log (in his hands) = wood. Wood=3, Man=0. Let's call the calling off off?

"You can't hit what you can't see"

Displaying the very latest in "Fractal Camouflage and New Digitized Tiger Stripe Camo Patterns," Baby (left), facing south, sniffs the breeze coming off the Chelsea Creek, while Tiny checks out the latest scent messages left by members of the faunal community on the Multiflower Rose that volunteered years ago along the edge of the brick terrace.

Neighborhood cats, squirrels gray and black, raccoon mothers with their kits, skunks and -- of course -- mice among the mammals, the occasional opossum among the marsupials, plus the usual complement of our feathered fellow Americans -- mockingbirds, cardinals, bluebirds, crows, starlings, sparrows and the occasional red-tailed hawk -- have been spotted -- and occasionally attacked or been attacked -- by the Chelsea Grays in carrying out their territorial imperative through the years.

"You can't hit what you can't see," notes Defense Review re digitized camouflage.  (Tigerpat Plus jacket, above left and full uniform, right)

Digitized camo is impressive, but nobody does it better than the animals. (Peppered moth -- Biston betularia -- above, "mascot" of evolutionary theory)

"What do Creationists and Islamists have in common besides a willful misunderstanding of the scientific method?" was the teaser in our post "Like moths to defame" of a couple of years back.

From our house to the White House

From our house to the White House, the People's Choice is now the President's Choice. The host of The Tony Snow Show will now host Helen Thomas, David Gregory and the other strange bedfellows of the White House Press Corps at weekly briefings, the President will announce today. (Aljazeera file photo) For a look into the future, check out David A. Lunde's gorgeous Photoshopped image of Tony in his new digs [via Michelle Malkin].

"That’s another thing that’s tremendous about Tony’s becoming the White House Press Secretary," writes blogfriend Laura Lee Donaho, using a personal anecdote to reveal something important about "Good Natured Tony Snow," who has officially answered the President's call:

This person was talking to Tony [on his radio show] about the weapons of mass destruction that hadn’t turned up in Iraq and explaining to him that while he had been stationed in Europe he had been on the V CORPS Headquarters staff and had seen a great deal of classified information that had convinced him that Saddam was a threat whether or not the WMD were ever found. Tony engaged him in conversation for quite some time, and as I listened I realized that it was my husband Tony was speaking to.

. . . The man has spoken to so many Americans through his many broadcasts on the Fox News Channel and Radio Network. He understands our viewpoints and possesses similar opinions. He will represent us to the Bush administration and to the national media better than any elected official ever could.

Aljazeera gives a fair and balanced report:

The Washington Post said Snow decided to accept the job after top officials assured him that he would not be just a spokesman but an active participant in administration policy debates.

The Post quoted sources as saying that Snow views himself as well-positioned to ease the tensions between the Bush White House and the press corps because he understands both politics and journalism.

Snow has written and spoken frequently about the current president -- not always in a complimentary way. The Center for American Progress [a great place to meet up with all the usual suspects], a liberal think tank, has circulated unflattering observations by Snow about Bush.

We agree with Michelle Malkin that "He's exactly what the White House needs." Besides, Mr. Bush isn't afraid of a little constructive criticism. His choice of our beloved Tony is more proof, if it were needed, of the President's character -- not to mention his street smarts.

Resting comfortably

Baby Cakes checks out the western forty this evening out the kitchen window after returning home in triumph from an unanticipated visit to Dr. Lewis of the Chelsea Animal Clinic. He's the one who attends the Iditarod doggies in his spare time. All vital signs are lookin' good.

Another period of worry turns out fine. A couple of days ago, the Babe started sneezing. Then came the runny eyes. Having just gone through something similar with Tiny the week before, presumably a flareup precipitated by the stress of driving Down Maine that essentially healed itself in a couple of days once she was back home, we were kind of all worn out to start with. But a trip to the local vet put everything back into perspective. He thinks it's an allergy thing. Bedside manner leaves everyone feeling much better.

The truth will rout

"He served his purpose -- he damaged Bush, he tainted the liberation of Iraq . . . what matters to the media and to Senator Kerry is that he helped the cause of (to quote his book title) The Politics Of Truth, and if it takes a serial liar to do that, so be it," wrote Mark Steyn of Valerie Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson in the long hot summer leading up to the last Presidential election. ("The Three Faces of Joe" photomontage triptych above from our campaign-season post of July 2004 casts light on The Holy Father (left), Satan (center) and Speaker of Truth to Power.) An unholy trinity?

"As of this writing, McCarthy 'categorically denies' being the leaker, according to former counterterrorism official/Kerry campaign staffer Rand Beers. So the jury’s still out," writes Allahpundit in his must-read-to-get-up-to-speed "CIA Leak: A Blog Primer" at Michelle Malkin's new Hot Air Internet Broadcast Network. Newsweek had the bare bones:

A national security advisor to Democratic Party candidate John Kerry during the 2004 presidential campaign, Beers worked as the head of intelligence programs on President Bill Clinton’s National Security Council staff and later served as a top deputy on counter-terrorism for President Bush in 2002 and 2003. McCarthy, a career CIA analyst, initially worked as a deputy to Beers on the NSC and later took over Beer’s role as the Clinton NSC’s top intelligence expert.

Allahpundit takes us along for the bumpy ride of the right blogosphere's chase after the smoking gun. No dead bodies yet, but did you know that Beers also starred in "Uncovered: The Whole Truth about the Iraq War," a Bush-bashing flockumentary co-produced by MoveOn released during the Republican National Convention? As we blogged at the time:

Screened at Cannes and set for release during the Republican National Convention, ["The Whole Truth"] stars, among others, Scott Ritter, The Honorable Henry Waxman, Rand Beers and -- could anything be more soft and fuzzy? -- Joe Wilson, the recently defrocked priest of The Church of Bush Lied™.

You are known by the company you keep, Ms. McCarthy. Speaking of which, a commenter to Allahpundit's primer asks

Does Ms. McCarthy know John Kerry personally? Did she ever have occasion to brief him (as was his right as the Dem presidential candidate or as senator)?

We don't know, but here's an interesting tidbit from that August 2004 post linked above that we'd forgotten all about:

Anti-Operation-Iraqi-Freedom Rand Beers co-teaches a course at Harvard's Kennedy School with former counterterrorism czar Richard Turncoat Clarke and may have been instrumental in changing Clarke's mind about who was responsible for 9/11.  As we blogged here, Clarke had told Jane Meyer in a New Yorker interview last summer that GW and Bubba were both "deeply committed to stopping bin Laden; nonetheless, Clarke said, their best efforts had been doomed by bureaucratic clashes, caution and incessant problems with Pakistan."  Then last March, as Clarke plugged his "nobody-listens-to-me" book on "60 Minutes" and prepared to testify in public hearings before the 9/11 commission, he was singing a different tune, placing all the blame on GW for failing to recognize the al Qaeda threat before 9/11 and then manipulating America into war with Iraq.

Hmmm. Neo adds more tantalizing appetizers in "The long long reach of Vietnam: Ellsberg's Truth-Telling Coalition and the encouragement of national security leaks," another must-read:

I have no idea whether Ellsberg's Truth-Telling Coalition had any part to play in the CIA detention center revelations. Maybe it did, maybe it didn't. We simply do not know, just as we don't know the identity of the leaker. But there is no doubt that the Coalition was designed to foster just such leaks in order to undermine the war in Iraq, and that it's not hiding that fact, but proudly broadcasting it to the world via its website and press releases.

What is it with these persons of the left and their fantasizing identification with "the" truth vs. Bush lied, people died™ for us unwashed on the other side of the aisle? As Dr. sanity is forever trying to patiently explain, defense mechanisms rule.