She Misses The Point-Again

McBride is still trying to rationalize a way to start a war with Iran, even though recent reports show that the rights' main argument for it was just another lie. She's so upset that she is calling Iranian President Ahmadinejad an anti-Semite. (Hellooo! We've been through this already, Jessica. Ahmadinejad is a Semite. How can he be anti-himself?)

Anyway, she goes on to list a number of quotes that she attributes to Ahmadinejad. Whallah! would like to point out a number of (paraphrased) quotes by another world leader:

"I will restore integrity to the White House."

"Iraq is trying to get nucular weapons."

"Those aluminum tubes...they're for launching nucular weapons."

"We know where those weapons of mass destruction are."

"I stopped drinking alcohol."

"We will help New Orleans rebuild."

You see, Jessica doesn't get what we already know. One shouldn't put too much stock in the rantings of an ultraconservative, theocratic, and insane person who doesn't speak English very well.

There Are Mandates, Then There Are Mandates

McBride, along with the rest of the right side of the blogosphere, is celebrating the failed refernda of various school systems. In her post, she cites a quote from the Hartford School Board President saying that they would have to come back at another time with another referendum. McBride responds to the quote with this:

Um, no, Ms. Carroll. The vote's a mandate to try something else - say cuts, efficiencies - not shove another referendum down people's throats.

Unfortunately, McBride's view of a mandate is rather myopic. She apparently forgets that last November, there was another mandate by the entire country. One that told the Bush misadministration that they should try something besides starting and perpetuating unjust wars, and not continuing to try to shove other wars down the people's throats.

Put Paddy Mac in the pro-Iran War camp

Apparently unhappy with the war we already have in Iraq, the Journal Sentinel's Patrick McIlheran is signaling he wants one with Iran as well.

That's the only way to read some recent posts from Paddy. Just the other day he praised Norman Podhoretz's "World War IV: The Long Struggle with Islamofascism," a book he was reading as he dispensed candy to trick-or-treaters. The book -- as does Podhoretz in speeches and interviews -- calls for a conflict with Iran before it goes nuclear. "Truly frightening" Paddy says of the book -- and the Brawler agrees, albeit for what he suspects are different reasons.

And on October 29, Paddy approvingly quoted Mark Steyn who said this:

The difference between the old Indian territory and the new is this: No-one had to worry about the Sioux riding down Fifth Avenue ... But Iran has put bounties on London novelists, assassinated dissidents in Paris, blown up community centres in Buenos Aires, seeded proxy terror groups in Lebanon and Palestine, radicalized Muslim populations throughout Central Asia — and it's now going nuclear.

Of course, Paddy Mac -- who has a nasty habit of conflating differing groups of people in the Middle East (including some who hate each other) into a monolithic Islamofascist threat -- has hyped the Iranian threat before. And he's intimated, without coming right out and saying so, that he wouldn't mind a tactical nuke or two thrown at Iran. Back in January, Paddy wrote:

“The Israelis believe that Iran’s retaliation would be constrained by fear of a second strike if it were to launch its Shehab-3 ballistic missiles at Israel,” writes the Times: That is, the Israelis feel they have the threat necessary to make Iran accept that it can’t actually do what its president says he will, wiping Israel off the map. ...

Yeah, we’ve heard the arguments that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad doesn’t really mean it or somehow doesn’t count, despite being Iran’s president, and despite the other big power in Iran, supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei, also calling for Israel to be nuked -- one simply needs to state these arguments to see them as nonsense.

Hmm. Some people don't think these arguments are nonsense -- and some think going to war, or "merely dropping bombs" on Iran -- is a horrible idea.

Like this guy:

Any attempt to disarm Iran through the use of military options would in all likelihood damage America’s interests in the region. While a military option might inflict significant damage on Iran’s infrastructure by damaging or destroying its nuclear weapons program, disrupting its regional ambitions, and possibly serving as a deterrent to future proliferators, the likely costs would far outweigh the benefits.

First, any military action against Iran would send seismic shocks through global energy markets at a time when the price of oil is already at record highs. ...

Any direct military action against Iran could also have a significant impact on America’s war on terrorism. Such action would only serve to confirm many of Osama bin Laden’s statements that the United States is at war with the world of Islam. This charge would be difficult to counter, given the fact that the United States has looked the other way for years with regard to Israel’s nuclear program, accepted India as a legitimate nuclear-state, and is negotiating with North Korea regarding its nuclear ambitions.

Any military action against Iran would also undermine America’s nation-building efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, due to possible Iranian retaliation in both countries. While Iranian efforts toward stabilizing these two states have been sporadic at best, and purposively obstructive at worst, there is little reason to doubt that Iran could make achieving US objectives in Iraq and Afghanistan far more difficult.

Military strikes against Tehran would also undermine Washington’s long-term goal of seeing reform movements succeed in Iran. If the history of military incursions and the Iranian nation teach us anything it is the fact that intervention is likely to solidify
support for the current regime. The idea that the Iranian people would react to a military strike by advocating the overthrow of the existing regime is delusional.

Moreover, any preventive attack, no matter how effective, is only a temporary fix. First, such a campaign will eliminate only that portion of Iran’s nuclear program known to intelligence agencies. Even after the extensive bombing campaign of the 1990-1991 Gulf War, subsequent inspections discovered large parts of Iraq’s unconventional weapons programs that were previously unknown.

More importantly, even if such an attack succeeded in eliminating significant facets of Iran’s nuclear program, it would do little toward discouraging Iran from rebuilding those assets. Thus, even after a fully successful denial campaign, the United States, in a number of years, would likely face the prospect of having to do it all over again."

The author is Christopher Hemmer, who currently serves as an Associate Professor of International Security Studies at the Air War College and has studied and written on the Middle East. The article was published in the Autumn issue of Parameters, the Army War College quarterly.

Of course, in Paddy's world, a guy like Hemmer has less credibility than ideologues such as the Podhoretzes and Steyns of the world.

Crazier Than Thou

Jessica the Prolific makes this job easy. Just hang around the tree and the fruit sorta drops.

Case in point is her post contrasting the Republican presidential candidates vs the Democratic contingent on the "threat" from Iran. She of course credits those throwbacks from the fabulous 50's on the GOP side with strength on this ginned up issue.

Never mind that the good order takers that the Republicans are, they are tumbling over the cliff while their Pied Piper George Bush calls the tune. The trouble is they want to take the rest of us with us.

Been there done that. The American people are not as twitchy as they were in the year following 9/11 (I can feel John McAdams heading to the keyboard already), so the public won't be spooked into supporting another bogus reason to invade or in this case bomb a country as with the Iraq screw up. In fact one could bet that pulling this antic would doom the GOP to minority status for a generation -- if we survive Armageddon.

This one has disaster written all over it. Bush, Cheney and their mesmerized crowd of followers are scream that the Iranian leader Ahmadinejad -- the guy who looks like a restaurant car hop -- needs to be feared despite the fact that he is no where near a nuclear capability (sound familiar), is in fact not really in control of his country's military and that his destroy Israel rantings are simply playing to his base. Nothing original here.

And of course they will dial it up with the Hitler comparisons. But there really are none since Adolph represented a real threat, not a conjured up one.

Yes, we should keep an eye on that country's nuclear capabilities, as we should with all countries that want to enter the nuclear club. But since this cruise over the cliff is so appealing to Jessica, let's point out how supremely stupid it would be to make real this juvenile rhetoric.

Our economy already is starting to sour. As an example one US dollar now buys only 97 Canadian cents. Not to long ago a buck would get you one loonie and 40 cents.

We disrupt the delicate balance in the Middle East with some cowboy excursion and the price of oil will soar. Oddly enough when you have the former head of the KGB thinking that the saber rattling here is nuts even though they would greatly benefit from the rise in oil crisis than you have an idea how crazy -- and those who support it, truly are. That is just picking one reason out of the dozens why moving militarily on Iran would be senseless, from an administration that does neither perspective nor rationality very well.

Fortunately for her someone replied to the post who is even crazier, maybe. The reply is so out there that one wonders if they guy is doing a parody of the GOP.

McBride Admits Her Views Are "Over The Line"

In yet another post about Iranian president Ahmedinijad's appearance at Columbia University, McBride gives the following quote:

There is no value in it. Some repugnant viewpoints don't deserve the legitimacy
accorded by such a forum. I acknowledge that defining viewpoints as "repugnant"
can be a slippery slope. But virulent anti-Semitism and homophobia of the sort
spouted by AhMADinejad should be obviously over the line. A society that has
lost the ability to recognize that fact is a society without an internal
compass.

By McBride distorting Ahmedinijad's name into a schoolyard taunt, she is practicing anti-Semitism, as all Arabs are also Semites. And McBride's homophobic tendencies are evidenced in her posts about Sen. Larry Craig.

Whallah recognizes the truth in that these types of views are over the line, and will continue to point them out until McBride finds her internal compass.

She Doesn't Teach History Either

McBride, in yet another poorly written rant, discusses the issue of Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, being invited to Columbia University to speak. She blasts the university and brings up that they would invite Adolph Hitler, then adds an update at the end of her rant stating that Hitler actually did appear at Columbia U., which is an allegation Other Side points out as being completely false:

Jessica McBride really should be sure of what she is posting before doing so. In this case McBride, as an update at the end of a rant about Columbia University inviting the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to speak, informs us that Hitler once did visit Columbia University. She gives a hat tip to that intellectual, Michelle Malkin (though no link) for leading her to that fount of accurate info, Little Green Footballs. It is there, she says, where the truth of the University's dalliance with the enemy is revealed.

Well, not exactly. Little Green Footballs reveals that it was the German ambassador to the United States, Hans Luther, who was invited to speak, not Hitler. In fact, the closest Hitler ever came to the United States was probably in some trench during WWI. Something the eternally clueless McBride could have discovered if she had checked. Something, you know, a lecturer in journalism at a major university might have done.What gets me the most, though, is not this yet-another-example of McBride's sloppy writing, it's the fact that she really does not understand how a free society operates ... you know, that marketplace of ideas thing that she should be promoting as (I shudder to write this again) a lecturer of journalism at a major university. ...

McBride is not a person who should be complaining about who universities allow to speak, else she finds herself out of another job.

So much for diplomacy; Let's kill 'em!

McBride on the warpath, as usual:

You know how the big Democratic criticism of President Bush has been that his administration won't talk to Iran?

Guess we're already trying that. It's not going too well. Since that was the big Democratic plan for what we should do about Iran - talk to them - what's their big plan going to be now?

The story she links says there have been two meetings since May, and describes the two countries as "arch enemies." It might be just a little early to give up.

But McBride's true sentiments come out in the comments section, as she responds to a critic:

If Iran is responsible for the killing of American soldiers in Iraq, I want to do more than talk to them.

It's a big IF she offers. There have been a lot of claims and little evidence that the Iranian government has been involved in Iraq warfare.

What does she want to do besides talking to them? Scream at them? Bomb them?

If the Iranians are responsible for some American deaths, as she believes, when the Iranian delegation shows up for the meeting, does she think the US should slaughter them? Capture them? Torture them?

Or kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out?