Carter Interview

I was reading an interview Katie Couric had recently with former President Jimmy Carter. He starts out answering a question addressing Bush's assesment that Iraq posed a "gathering threat"

“That was a false statement. It was false to state that Saddam Hussein had a vast store of weapons of mass destruction or that Iraq was a direct threat to the security of the United States. "

But at the end of the interview, when asked what advice he'd give Kerry on his being painted as a "flip-flopper", he said,

"I know from experience that circumstances change and the knowledge that you have about an event changes. And when the times change and the circumstances change or when you learn more information, it's natural for a strong leader to say, ‘okay, my previous commitments, my previous statements were erroneous."

Wait a minute....

So you're saying it's ok to act on the information you have based on your understanding of a situation at the time you took action.

Which is what Bush says he did. The only thing that the President hasn't done is to apologize for the decision he made -- and Jimmy just established the fact that we should allow for it. It's pretty hard to apologize for removing Saddam Hussein from power. Everybody points to the WMD argument as if it were the sole reason for going into Iraq in the first place, and it clearly was not. So he didn't have stockpiles. That part was (apparently) wrong. But we thought it was right. So did the rest of the world.

But the facts remain: He did have them. He did use them. He was not complicit with the terms of the 1991 war's cease-fire agreement, he was not complicit with the UN in disarming and proving he was disarming. He kicked the UN out. He frequently shot at our planes for the 11 years we had forces over there to try to keep him from slaughtering more Kurds. He was paying for terrorism in Israel. And he would, given the opportunity, facilitate terrorist attacks inside the United States.

Anything else is political spin.

At one point in the Carter interview he is asked about security. Carter says that the insurgency and violence is there because we are there, and suggests that our pulling out will put an end to it.

That is partially true. But the bigger truth is that even if we had gone in, toppled Saddam, and pulled out, it would be there. Even if Bush had managed to get the whole world behind the effort in the first place (which obviously wasn't going to happen) -- this violence would be there. The violence is there to cause the state to fail, not to get us out. Getting us out would certainly help cause the state to fail very quickly, so certainly that is one of their goals. Certainly our presence is an aid in recruitment, but any suggestion that our pulling out anytime soon will help matters is at best naive.

There was a range of possible outcomes before we went in ranging from best case (more like Afghanistan) and worst case (Civil War) -- and Bush knew it. And he made the decision anyway. Not because he was stupid. Not because he's a war-monger. But because because the risk of not going in outweighed the risk of going in.

One of the major points of contention between Arabs and the US was a sizable US presence in the Middle East. The main reason the US was there in such numbers was Hussein's defiance of the agreements he made and the UN Resolutions passed after the 1991 war. The only responsible way to get out of there was to finish that war.

Which is what we're doing over there.

Teresa Heinz-Kerry Strikes Again

"I wouldn't be surprised if [bin Laden] appeared in the next month", she quipped yesterday at a fundraiser -- once again hitting on the "Bush is an Evil, Manipulating, Lying Son-Of-a-Bitch" conspiracy theorist theme so popular with the Anybody But Bush crowd.

Of course, that directly contradicts the "Bush is a Bumbling Idiot: I Would Vote for a Single Celled Organism Before I Vote For Bush" theme which is also popular with the Anybody But Bush crowd.

This kind of irrational/hyper-rational thought permeates leftist rhetoric. (Oddly, it also permeates far right rhetoric as well -- but you have to get much farther to the right before you get to it. I've always said the two meet and shake hands around back.)

It does fit the leftist view that

• America is bad
• Especially Bush
• It's all about the oil
• Bush is evil
• Bush is evil
• Bush is evil

did we mention

• Bush is EVIL????

Can anyone say "blinders"?

Vote for what's-his-name. No, not that what's-his-name. The one married to the Ketchup lady.

It's funny how ANYTHING Bush does can't possibly be motivated by doing what he thinks is right, but rather -- it MUST be for political gain. You know, people tend to think that everyone else thinks the same way they think. What would that say about the Left's motivation?

Dogma

Read an editorial in the paper yesterday by one of our local Professors decrying "Pious Politicians Using Abortion to Manipulate Women".

I am a fan of Jefferson and Paine, who she starts out her article with -- establishing their view that a Creator's works could be understood through reason. Hear here.

Then she goes on to paint all who are opposed to abortion in any way as relgious fundamentalists and goes on about how dangerous they are. I agree that religious fundamentalism can be and is often dangerous.

Now I am by no means a religous fundamentalist. I hardly fit the profile. But since I can see the valid points that the pro-life movement has, I sypmpathize with the fact that they can't even get anyone to acknowledge their valid moral points. Feminist fundamentalism therefore would lump me in as a religious fundamentalist.

She proclaimed that:

"fundamentalists do not have a monopoly on truth; they do, however, have one on self-righteousness."

I found her whole dissertation quite pious and self-righteous in and of itself.

What really got me was this statement, and it's what motivated me to write this article in the first place.

"... the abortion issue has never really been about fetuses. It is about keeping women in subordinate positions in accordance with religious fundamentalist ideology. "

Say what?

Doest I hear a tinge of dogma in there myself? I haven't been to any rallies, but I'm pretty sure if you ask anyone who is against abortion in any way they'll tell you that it is definitely about the fetuses. But apparently this lady knows better what their true agenda is than they do. Of course men don't have any right to speak on (I mean against) abortion because they can't get pregnant and they are the opressors. Women who speak against abortion are obviously religious fundamentalists and their opinions obviously don't matter. However, this pro-abortionist has no problem directly contradicting what anti-abortionists say is their motivation. Clearly, she's not one of them, so how could she possibly be qualified to speak on the subject of "what they're about"? She has read what her Women's Studies experts (clergy) who are pro-abortion have to say on the subject, and they are above question. Who will challenge her on this? Well, somebody needs to.

This kind of feminism is, in essence, its own religion with its own dogma. The priests and priestesses are the professors and authors of the books. Their churches are rallies and books, and sermons are often written in the papers.

I love women. I get along with them much better than I do with most men. I indeed do subscribe to "the radical idea that women are people, too" (to quote a feminist bumpersticker). But without even taking sides on the issue, I've really got to draw the line when someone suggests that to the anti-abortionists the issue was never the fetuses. It's so blatantly false and yet I'm sure she fervently believes it. Whether or not you think it should be legal, that's the most outrageous line I've ever heard on the subject. It's also straight out of the feminist fundamentalist bible.

The shift in focus is necessary to the apparent strategy of pro-abortionists. If it's not about the fetus, then the moral issue is solely about women's rights. If the two sides on the issue want to get any closer on any sort of compromise, the anti-abortionists have to talk about the womens' issues, and the pro-abortionists are going to have to acknowledge that there are valid moral questions to be addressed surrounding the rights of developing human beings.

Religions teach that murder and stealing and lying are bad, and yet murder and larceny and pergury are all against the law -- nobody cries about religious fundamentalists there. Many on the left decry abuse of animals, but abortion is sacrosanct. It would be unthinkable to consider that there might be an issue shredding a fetus that can feel and hear and see -- for the whole nine months of a pregnancy.

I seriously doubt Roe vs Wade will ever be repealed, as this woman warns (" ... if Bush is re-elected....")

I think she has little to worry about. I just wish the Fundamentalist Left would wake up and see their own hypocisy when it comes to labeling people with a different moral code than theirs as Self-Righteous Religous folks when they're no less self-righteous themselves.

Hostages

I saw the brother of one of the slain hostages on the news yesterday morning. It just rips your heart out.

They asked him what he had to say about the killers, and he said "They killed the wrong man" and went on to explain that his brother was there helping rebuild Iraq's infrastructure -- water, sewer, electricity... things Iraq and everyday Iraqis desparately need.

I got to thinking about that. From our point of view, they did kill the "wrong" man. But that's not the terrorists' point of view.

We (I mean the American Public) for some reason still see the fight against the US in Iraq as a fight against US aggression and occupation. Part of the reason is that's what the Left believes, and it's in all the Leftist rants you hear on the subject. In this view, Americans are agressors and the fighters are merely patriotic "minutemen" fighting for their country's autonomy. If this is true, then the terrorist kidnappers killed the wrong man.

But that ain't the case. These aren't ordinary Iraqis. Many, maybe even most of them, aren't Iraqis at all. Al-Sadr and his followers are a different story -- they're mostly Iraqis although I wouldn't call them ordinary ones.

But these kidnappers, Al-Zarqawi and his Al-Queda friends -- are not doing this to bring about Iraq's standard of living up -- they do not want the sewers to work or the electricity to work or the water to run or the oil to flow. They want this whole plan to fail so that they can supply the answer. A Democratic, free, prosperous Iraq is precisely what they don't want. And to that end, they killed the right man.

They want to intimidate in the strongest way possible anyone who is working toward a prosperous and free Iraq, be they Italian, Egyptian, Phillipino, Russian, English, Polish, and on and on.

To do this, they are kidnapping and killing mainly civilian workers. Oh sure, they make some demands, too, to see what they can get. Anyone with an independent and sound mind can see that dealing with hostage takers can only lead to encouraging more hostage taking. But in the end, it's not the deals these people are after. It's the intimidation... the sheer "terror" of it. To keep people away. To cause the new state to fail, so that it can be replaced by a Fundamentalist Islamic government.

Most Iraqis know this, and they don't want it. This is why they risk their lives anyway waiting in lines to join the police force and military.

The last thing the terrorists want is a strong, stable democracy in the middle east. And it's what the West and most of the Arab population desperately wants and needs. This is step 1 in the swamp-draining. It is a part of the Bush Doctrine, and I think there's merit in it.

All that being said, Bin Laden and Zarqawi need to be found and eliminated.

How could this have happened?

News people are beside themselves asking "How could this have happened" regarding Rathergate.

What's the simplest explanation?

What nobody in the news will say is, "There was an agenda."

Let's see, CBS says it's been working on this story for 5 years. FIVE YEARS!!!! Suddenly, somebody magically comes up with documents supporting the agenda (ahem... thesis of the story) right in the middle of a heated political campaign and right after candidate A's supprters were upset that his touted (and later denounced, but now reclaimed) war hero-hood was questioned and he fell in the polls....

...and 5 days later, the story's on the air, even after questions were raised by some who were asked to examine the supporting documents.

I heard someone on MSNBC lauding Rather and CBS for being the Gold Standard of Journalism and that this was obviously an abberation.

Really? I gotta wonder. It smells to me like this kind of stuff goes on all the time, and in their (5-1 bias) zeal to take Bush down a peg, they got sloppy and got caught.

Missing the point

Democrats who are bent on exposing Bush's Air National Guard "Fortunate Son" treatment -- whether or not it is true, are barking up the wrong tree.

As I've mentioned before, the beef over Kerry's war hero status stemmed from the fact that he chose to use it as the basis for his campaign at the DNC. So questions about it were relevant to that.

Bush has never used his military record as a central part of his campaign ... indeed, he hardly mentions it. And perhaps that is because he got preferential treatment -- perhaps not. Whatever the case, Bush doesn't consider his military service relevant to his campaign. Kerry does.

Let's not forget that Bush has had nothing but praise for Kerry's military record. The Kerry camp cried foul to Bush, not to the Swifties, when they came out with their ad campaign questioning how much of a hero Kerry was. I trust the Bush campaign will keep quiet unless strong evidence of corroboration between CBS, Burkett, and the Kerry campaign comes out. If anything, the Bush campaign should have words for CBS at this point. But I imagine they won't say much. They don't need to.

The Left, no matter who is responsible for Ra^thergate, has been shot in the foot with one of its own guns. It doesn't really matter who pulled the trigger.

Rathergate

Dan Rather, I have never blogged in my pajamas, you condescending pompous ... um... well, I won't use that word here. I'm not a leftist.

I have up to now been reluctant to completely buy into the idea that stories are consciously ignored or emphasized by the press to forward an agenda. The 5 to 1 liberal bias in broadcast news was, to me, a problem, but not necessarily a problem of intentional sin. I suspected it from time to time, but my faith in humanity kept me from buying it.

Thank you, Dan, for opening my eyes.

How many stories did you do on the preponderance of evidence that scores of swiftboat veterans represented? Or, as I suspect (because I don't watch you mainly because of egotistical self-important, primadonna behavior I've seen you engage in in the past - another Sept 11, 1987 springs to mind for one) did you instead focus on possible connections between the Bush campaign and the swiftboat vets, or work on discrediting their stories?

Now to the crux of the matter .... you presented as physical evidence -- a linchpin argument, documents that backed up Operation Fortunate Son's (oops, no connection to you, right?) claims, aiming to convince millions of voters (I mean viewers) that it was an open-and-closed case.

The documents, as it turns out, are likely forgeries. You say "well, they might be, but that's not important."

NOT IMPORTANT? In what Universe? Saddam Hussein's? Oh, that's right, Dan. I forgot. You're buddies with the victim of America's great crime.

"Your honor, this glove was found at the site of the crime, and it belongs to the defendant"

"But the glove was manufactured two years after the crime took place."

"It doesn't matter, your honor. There was a glove that belonged to the defendant at the crime scene, take our word for it. If you don't believe us, take the word of one of the defendant's enemies. She said there was a glove, and it was his. This one merely represents it."

PS - vote for the other guy.

Dan, you Walter Cronkite wannabe, you'll never fill his shoes.

"And that's the way it would have been. If I could prove it. Which I can't ... I mean won't. Courage."

Right Wing Extremists....

I got this idea from here: CafePress

But here's my version



I love it.

"Only an Idiot"

Teresa Heinz Kerry says 'only an idiot' would fail to support the health care plan proposed by her husband, according to the Cato Daily Dispatch.

Democrats are certainly fond of calling people names.

I mean, that offends me, it should be against the National Speech Code, shouldn't it? ;-)

Bush's National Guard record... So what's your point again?

Apparently 60 Minutes ran a story "exposing" Bush's reportedly dismal National Guard record. The story portrayed him as a fortunate son who was given special treatment and skipped out on his duty.

The lynch-pin of the argument revolved around documents reportedly written by Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, one of Bush's commanders in 1972 and 1973.

My first reaction is, "so what?" Nobody ever claimed Bush's guard duty qualified him for the job of Commander in Chief, and Bush did not make it the focus of any part of his campaign, as I have mentioned before. Kerry had a whole convention about his service, and little else.

To top it all off, today we find out that there's a very good chance these documents are recent forgeries according to experts on these things, and according to document experts.

Killian died in 1984. His wife is livid that 60 Minutes did not contact her to verify the authenticity of the documents, and said he wasn't one to hold on to documents.

So, beyond my first point of "so what?" -- my second point is that this smells like fishy and desparate ... and criminally dishonest ... politics from someone on the Kerry side of the line.

New Movie

Just watched a new documentary by Evan Coyne Maloney called Brainwashing 101. It will be appearing tomorrow at the American Film Renaissance Film Festival in Dallas, TX tomorrow afternoon.

Evan is an outspoken conservative who I've followed for over a year now. He is an amateur film maker who has made several short documentaries exposing the narrow-mindedness, inane-ness, and double-standards of the acvist left.

I know, "Left" and "Narrow-mindedness" are not supposed to go together. But since the Left's heyday in the 50's and 60's, things have changed. Leftism has become indoctrinated, and now it's basically a religion with dogma and everything.

Evan's lastest effort (Brainwashing 101) is not the light-hearted "let them make fools of themselves, all I have to stand back and run the camera" kind of work (effective as it was) In this film, Evan goes on the offense a bit more. It's more serious, and it needs to be.

Here Evan takes his camera to various college campuses and takes a look at Campus Censorship, political correctness, and the repression of conservative speech and ideas at these campuses. This is something everyone who has gone to college since 1980 or so has seen, and it has gotten worse and worse over the years.

Sure, colleges have long been bastions of liberal thought. However, liberal thought used to include the high standard of open and free speech and exchange of ideas between people with different philosophies. Oh, how times have changed.

Basically, hate speech and offensive behavior are ok if they are directed at campus conservatives, and the liberals get to define what constitutes hate speech and offensive behavior. Even after doing this, they don't apply their own rules equitably.

You can download the film and watch it (it's about 45 minutes, 80 megabytes) or you can order it. I recommend it, especially if you are a good liberal and routinely question your own ideas.

I have always found Evan's work to be well researched, fair-minded and civil, be it in his commentaries or films. This film is no exception. Evan is my kind of conservative. I have as little use for bandwagon, slogan-chanting "rightists" as I do for the much more common bandwagon, slogan-chanting leftists. Evan consistently stays above all of that.

Good luck to Evan, and I hope a lot of people either see or hear about this film.

Negative Campaigning

The cries of "foul" about negative campaign rhetoric in recent RNC speeches rings hollow.

Certainly they brought up a lot of negative points about John Kerry, but they had to do with his senate record and things he himself has said in public, and they are relavent.

Nobody called him Hitler or a facist or a dumb cowboy or anything like that. They called him a flip-flopper and someone who consistently votes against military enhancement and made their case with facts.

His military record was noted and praised. They made the "unfit to command" argument not with facts from his Vietnam record, but with facts from his Senate record.

If Senator Kerry feels that airing out his Senate Record is negative campaigning, he has only himself to blame.

Just because an argument can be made ...

... doesn't mean it's a good argument.

I've been doing a lot of thinking about this for a long time (as in years). I can see examples of it throughout my own education, and I'm pretty sure it's only gotten worse. But here goes:

In Liberal education, people are encouraged to make connections between things. This is not a bad thing, in itself. It's actually a good skill to have. It gets you thinking about "possible" explanations and can lead to finding a better solution faster.

However, what's sorely missing in American (and probably other countries') liberal education systems is training in scientific method -- which basically amounts to applied skepticism, for those of you who are scared of the word "scientific".

I think everyone should have, at least three times in their primary and secondary education, a class in basic scientific method -- without necessarily using it for science, mind you. It should be "Scientific Method for Poets". Very general, and appropriate to the different age groups you teach it in.

It should be like a Philosophy course. "Philosophy of Scientific Method 101". For certain, EVERY journalist should have to take it and pass it to get his/her Journalism degree.

Scientific method demands you be skeptical of your own ideas and other data you collect, and that you run it through some basic testing and ask "devil's advocate" questions about it until you are satisfied that what you have is probably really true.

When we're trying to figure something out, a theory on say, who should we villify for the deaths of a set of Russian school children, we brainstorm some theories.

But this is where far too many people stop. They stop when they get a theory that fits the dogma of the world view they have aligned themselves with, and hold that theory to be self-evidently true. People want to believe whatever will reassure them in their world view.

Well people can come up with some really wild theories, as I've seen on both the left and the right. This explains the popularity of conspiracy theories.

What you should do is pick a theory that you want to test, one you think for whatever reason is likely to be true, and start asking questions about it. The first question is "Is the explanation simple?" Usually (though admittedly not always) the most simple explanation is going to be pretty close to the truth. Are your facts verifiable? Theories based on "facts" that are really only other unproven theories leave you baseless.

For instance:

• John Kerry voted against a bill to provide support equipment for soldiers that he voted to send to war.

These are verifiable facts. You can go to the senate record and look them up.

• Bush Lied. Thousands Died.

"Bush Lied" is not a verifiable fact at this time. It is based on several theories that Bush would have invaded Iraq no matter what, for reasons ranging from revenge for the assasination attempt on his father to "helping his oil buddies out" -- which are themselves unproven theories. It is supported by the fact that one of the main justifications for the war was that Saddam Hussein probably had bio/chemical and possibly nuclear weapons and that have been found to date. At this point it is relatively conclusive evidence that Bush (and the CIA and MI5 and the KGB and most other world intelligence organizations) were likely wrong, but it most definitely not prove that anyone lied.

"Thousands Died" is certainly indisputable. It is used here both to provide some truth to the argument and to worsen the baseless charge that "Bush Lied." But it doesn't make it any more true.

"Bush Lied" fits in with the Leftist Dogma that the Republicans are out to exploit the environment and the underpriviledged of the world to benefit the rich. So the left accepts "Bush Lied", and keeps repeating it hoping that if they do it enough, it will simply become true.

Russian Kids Hostage Situation

I keep hearing references to this on the news, and read some of the comments on the BBC on this. Most people's comments were sane, but the people who want to blame the deaths and injury on the Russian Government -- I don't get it.

My comment to the BBC (don't know if they'll publish it)....

It baffles me that people can deflect blame from the terrorists who took the hostages with the intent to kill and blame Putin for the injuries and death. Putin did not kill these people. The freaking terrorists did. What is the problem in this world where people can't see who the bad guys are even when it's this plain?

Zell Miller for President

Wow. Zell's speech, whether you liked it or not, was a blisteringly powerful, well-delivered speech.

I, for one, liked it. Hell, I loved it.

(if you didn't hear it, go out to NPR or CSPAN or some other news site and listen to the streaming audio. I taped it. I have it in MP3 format).

No mish-mash, mamsy-pamsy walking on eggshells. It was obviously heartfelt and passionate. He didn't resort to wild name-calling, and he based his arguments on facts. Those facts happened to come mostly from over 20 years of Senate voting records for John Kerry. Refreshing to hear something about John Kerry at either convention that didn't involve his Vietnam service. Chris Matthews of MSNBC argued after the speeches that Zell was "over the top", and that now he had seen two conventions about John Kerry... the Democratic one and the Republican one.

This is pretty unfair in two respects -- one, while last night was one night dedicated largely to John Kerry's record, this is a 4 day convention. And two, John Kerry's convention was not really so much about John Kerry as it was about John Kerry in Vietnam. Conspicuously missing from the Democratic convention was discussion of the years between Vietnam and his running for president.

So America wasn't going to hear it from the Democrats, Kerry left the door wide open for the Republicans to fill America in, and fill it in Zell Miller (ironically a Democrat, but not a happy one) and Dick Cheney did.

In short, Kerry's myopic focus on Vietnam in his convention is going to cost him this election. It might not have had it not been for his actions from 1971 until now.

Up to now, John Kerry's "positive" message hasn't been much of a message it all. It has been ambiguous and it sounds prohibitively expensive. It sounds like big government to the rescue, "fixing" stuff. Which I think as far as economics have shown over the years never fixes anything and often makes things worse... oh yeah, and permanently raises our taxes.

John's going to "create jobs", "give" us national healthcare, subject our foriegn policy to the UN, and fight a "more sensitive" war on terrorism.

He'll lay out that plan after he's elected. Great. Sounds like Bill Starbuck from "The Rainmaker". Snake oil anyone? It's good for what ails ya!

Kerry-ites (really mostly anti-Bush-ites) have and will cast this as "being negative". This sounds disingenuous coming from people with bumperstickers that say "Bush Lied" and "Mission NOTHING Accomplished" (with the word "Mission" crossed out). It's pretty hypocritcal coming from MoveOn.Org folks who ran the Bush/Hitler ads and questioned Bush's military record. And it's ludicrous coming from people who defend Michael Moore's "Farenheit 9/11" which is clearly a huge negative anti-Bush campaign commercial, not a documentary.

Of course, accusing a campaign of "being negative" is now also used as a negative indictment of that campaign.

So doesn't that mean whining about the others' "negativity" is negative campainging as well?

Indeed, the Left's campaign against Bush (oops, I mean for Kerry, sorry) has been driven by, as Zell Miller put it, "...manic obsession to bring this President down". It has not been about jobs, or about the war on terror, or its Iraq sub-issue, it has been about any and every possible negative interpretation of anything that this administration has done or can be tourturously tied to it by the most twisted conspiracy-theory logic.

When the Swifties came out, there was both thunderous objection to the Vets' ads and a deafening silence from the Left (especially from the Kerry campaign) about this nearly year-long drumbeat of negativity that helped Kerry to get up as high in the polls as he was in the first place.

When the tables were turned, it was "Ooh! Meanies! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! You're so negative!"

Whiners.

If you agree with me, and you know anyone who agrees with you on this who is thinking of NOT voting, see what you can do to get them to vote. Kerry must be kept out of the White House. Our cultural future, as well as our safety, is in the balance.

Footnote to last post....

From Reuters:

Protesters Stone Nepal Mosque After Iraq Killings
Wed Sep 1, 2004 02:22 AM ET
KATHMANDU (Reuters) -
Dozens of people threw stones at a mosque in Kathmandu and tried to set it on fire on Wednesday to protest against the killing of 12 Nepalis in Iraq.

Nepali police lobbed teargas shells as more than 1,000 demonstrators, some carrying Buddhist flags, burned tires at a main intersection 200 yards from the Jame Masjid mosque in the heart of the capital, Kathmandu.

Police cordoned off the mosque, which was obscured from afar by thick clouds of smoke rising from burning tires on roads leading to the building while riot police put up barricades on nearly empty streets.

"Demonstrators entered the mosque, threw stones and partially damaged it," police official Binod Singh told Reuters.

"They tried to set the building on fire but police intervened and prevented them. The building has been cleared. No one was injured.

It ain't just dumb cowboy American rednecks getting fed up. According to Al-Jazeera the protesters were chanting "Down With Islam".

According to the same article..

[..]
About 3.5 percent of Nepal's 27 million people are Muslim.

"This inhuman act is against Islam," a Nepali Islamic group said in a statement on the killing of the 12, the largest number of foreign captives killed at one time by militants in Iraq.

We need to be hearing a lot more of that. Like in big demonstrations by Muslims who feel that way against the terrorists. I'm waiting....

Terrorism and Islam

Chechen rebels (I'm sure it will be verified) have taken about 150 school children hostage in Russia, threatening to kill "x" number of children for each "y" demand not met.

Targeting civilians to attain your goals makes you the lowest form of human being (actually, I don't even like using that term to describe this kind of homo sapiens). Targeting children makes you worse than that.

Are all Muslims terrorists? Absolutely not. I'm sure the vast majority of them are not, and most of those don't approve of it. I have moderate Islamic acquaintances. They seem like nice enough people. But I'm going to be politically incorrect here for a minute and put this topic out for discussion -- and its a discussion that Muslims need to have.

When you reverse that question... Are all terrorists Islamic? What's the answer?

Well, technically it's "no", but it's too close to "yes" to ignore the question. The Leftists will say that (once they get done with their faulty moral equivalencies about war in general) that WE cause it by oppressing and exploiting them (or supporting regimes that do). Of course, according to them America (and others, but especially America) exploits and oppresses people all over the world, leaving millions poor and frustrated with no other way to "fight back".

Let's suppose for argument's sake that that's true. Then there should be Christian terrorists in Central and South America then, and Buddhist and Hindu terrorists in the Far East, right? But there aren't any, by and large**. And I think it's legitimate to ask -- why not?

Does something in Islam provide something easily interpreted as justification for these acts? If so, Muslims around the world should either start questioning their beliefs, and if not..... if not, I'd like to not only hear a loud, strong, wild-eyed world-wide Islamic cry of "ENOUGH" to these people. Good Muslims should rat these people out, or take action themselves.

If they do not, and this kind of thing continues (and continue it will if they do not) people other than rednecks will come to see the whole religion as complicit, and when that happens ... and I ask this question to get everyone to think about it (including Muslims) what real choice will mankind have but to surgically remove it from humanity?

I'm not advocating this -- I just want people to think about the logical conclusion. If Islamists insist on trying to bring civilization down by terrorizing the world population, and the rest of the Muslim world stares at its feet and blows on its nails ... while the oppressed of other religions work with more humane and civilized means to fight their oppression -- then either we all become Islamists, or we just live with people killing us every day and "tolerate" them, or ....

Think about it.

Come on, Muslims. Time to get outraged with your alleged brethren. Let's hear it. Say it LOUD!

** There have been Christian terrorists of a sort in Ireland (we haven't heard from them in a while) but (and I'm not saying this is legitimate, just "less bad") they tended to target politicians and police rather than ordinary civilians.