No Mercy

When the military learns that taking prisoners only leads to hassle, bad publicity, and lawsuits, how do they respond? Well, like this, for starters:

Caught in the middle of the Helmand river, the fleeing Taliban were paddling their boat back to shore for dear life.

...

As the boat reached the shore, Captain Larry Staley tilted the nose of the lead Apache gunship downwards into a dive. One of the men turned to face the helicopter and sank to his knees. Capt Staley's gunner pressed the trigger and the man disappeared in a cloud of smoke and dust.

By the time the gunships had finished, 21 minutes later, military officials say 14 Taliban were confirmed dead, including one of their key commanders in Helmand.

The mission is typical of a new, aggressive, approach adopted by American forces in southern Afghanistan...

Aircrews say they have been told to show no mercy, but to press home their advantage until all their targets have been destroyed.

It's hard to file habeus corpus when the corpus is just a cloud of dust.

Midnight Cowboy Talks Sense

It's sad that we have reached the point where it's shocking just to hear someone talking common sense. But that's what happened to me when I saw Jon Voight talking about the war on terror. I've never thought he was exceptionally crazy (except maybe when he took that role in Baby Geniuses 2), but still, as a Hollywood type, you don't expect his thoughts to bear any relation to reality. I was pleasantly surprised, and I need all of that I can get.

Please note, I don't think this means Jon Voight is anywhere close to being conservative, even by Hollywood standards. But like I always say, I don't need you to be conservative, I just need you to be reasonable.

The Template

In the wake of the attack at Virginia Tech, conservative commentaters are commentating about how the mainstream press is covering events using it's standard template. But what is that template, exactly? Through hard work and derring-do, jaceonline spies have managed to obtain The Mainstream Media Tragic Event Template(tm), which we share with you below.

Steps to Take In Case of Tragic Event (i.e., someone is dead where they aren't supposed to be dead)

Question: Who is the victim?

-- If victim is a criminal who was shot by a law-abiding gun owner, ignore story completely. Run feature story about Jennifer Anniston's boobs.
-- If victim is from an approved minority group, begin preparations for Movie of the Week. If victim is woman, call Mary Louise Parker; if gay, call Rob Lowe.
-- If unsure, send every available reporter for wall-to-wall coverage; hope to turn up somebody who is part Mexican on his mother's side. Also gay.

Question: What is the cause of the tragedy?

-- Natural disaster: Blame Bush.
-- Terrorist attack: Blame Bush.
-- Lone wacko: Send every available reporter for wall-to-wall coverage; hope to find something you can blame on Bush. Also gun nuts.

Question: Who is the perpetrator?

-- If name sounds foreign, suppress it for as long as possible, especially if "Mohammed" is anywhere in there.
-- If perpetrator looks ethnic in any way, take no pictures of him. Publish no pictures that already exist, unless they show him handing out flowers in a nursing home on Mother's Day.
-- If perpetrator is definitely a white male, try to reposition a satelite so you can take pictures of him from orbit 24 hours a day.

Question: What weapon did the perpetrator use?

-- If a gun, JACKPOT! We have so much anti-gun stuff we can't wait to print!
-- If a bomb, print the anti-gun stuff anyway.
-- If a knife, rock, or ax handle, move story to "Wacky News" section.

Question: What was the perpetrator's motivation?

-- If a Republican is in the White House, explore the possibility that the attack was an understandable response to the corrosive social environment created by racist, oppressive govenment policies that further enrich the wealthiest one percent and leave the rest of us wallowing in fear and despair.
-- If a Democrat is in the White House, just say that Rush Limbaugh probably told him to do it.

Judges Matter

The Supreme Court upheld the partial-birth abortion ban. There's going to be a lot of commentary, but there's only one thing I'm dying to know: What does Harriet Myers think about the decision?

Someone Else! Someone Else!

The Weekly Standard has an interesting profile of Fred Thompson.

According to an adviser to one of the leading candidates, the rationale for a Thompson run is best illustrated--as so many things are--by The Simpsons. In one episode, Homer Simpson's civic-minded neighbor Ned Flanders tells a large crowd of fellow Springfield citizens that they must choose someone to lead an anticrime campaign in the town.

"Who should lead the group?"

"You," shouts a man from the crowd. The entire mob begins to chant.

"Flanders! Flanders! Flanders!"

When Flanders humbly begins to explain that he doesn't have much experience in such matters, Moe the Bartender cuts him off.

"Someone else!"

The crowd joins in.

"Someone else! Someone else! Someone else!"

One obvious advantage Fred Thompson has is that he's someone else.

To be honest with you, I'm a little tingly about the prospect of a Thompson candidacy. But I'm concerned that my tingles are caused by the fact that he is just someone else. Thompson is famous, but we don't really know that much about him. When that happens, we tend to fill in the blanks with what we hope is true. But I haven't seen anything that's scared me off yet, and that's more than I can say about any of the other Republican candidates. We'll see.

The Real Battleground

Jason Whitlock comments on the Imus hoo-ha and hits the nail on the head:

I don’t listen or watch Imus’ show regularly. Has he at any point glorified selling crack cocaine to black women? Has he celebrated black men shooting each other randomly? Has he suggested in any way that it’s cool to be a baby-daddy rather than a husband and a parent? Does he tell his listeners that they’re suckers for pursuing education and that they’re selling out their race if they do?

When Imus does any of that, call me and I’ll get upset. Until then, he is what he is — a washed-up shock jock who is very easy to ignore when you’re not looking to be made a victim.

No. We all know where the real battleground is. We know that the gangsta rappers and their followers in the athletic world have far bigger platforms to negatively define us than some old white man with a bad radio show. There’s no money and lots of danger in that battle, so Jesse and Al are going to sit it out.

"WMDs Found"

Stanley Kurtz makes an excellent point about the threat coming from Iran:

In the debate to come over Iran’s nuclear capacity, there will be constant references to our intelligence failure in Iraq. The dispute will be about exactly how close Iran is to a bomb. But let no one forget that Iran is already at a point that would easily have justified the overthrow of Saddam.

Who Wants to Drive Through the Cactus Patch?

I stumbled across the the Wikipedia entry for the Simpsons episode "Cape Feare," which explains, among other things, the legendary rake sequence. Thank you, Internet!

Lovely, Angry Lady Lumps

Here's Alanis Morissette's version of "My Humps." Never before have I been so haunted by the question, "What you gonna do with all that junk?"