GayPatriot

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Good News from Iraq

by

Here’s some news you won’t see on CNNBCBSABC since they are too busy justifying the cause of Hezbollah 24/7.

Via US Central Command email:

July 13, 2006 BAGHDAD – Iraq witnessed a historic event today with the transfer of security responsibility in Muthanna Province from the Multi-National Force – Iraq (MNF-I) to the Provincial Governor and civilian-controlled Iraqi Security Forces.  The handover represents a milestone in the successful development of Iraq’s capability to govern and protect itself as a sovereign and democratic nation.  Muthanna is the first of Iraq’s 18 provinces to be designated for such a transition.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Comments

  1. Seems as though the free and civilized world is waking up to the fight that must be joined against the terrorists. Note the Saudi and Jordanian attitude against Hezbollah. Keep your fingers crossed but the month of July is shaping up to be one of the lowest in USA casualties in a very long time. Did the rot of terrorism reach a tipping point. Where other nations couldn’t ignore it any longer? Seems poor Lebanon wants to be rid of these madmen.

  4. Should morality not trump science? Science makes it possible to exterminate entire populations with ruthless efficiency, and amoral politicians… Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot… have used it for that purpose.

    Science without morality = Mengele.

  5. VdaK… with due respect and going off topic (sorry) those despots didn’t “use” science as a premise to engage in horrific crimes against humanity. They used a perverted sense of morality, racial superiority, and politics to succeed in their violence against others. The Nazis are a good example.

    “Science” –not unlike “Architecture” or “Cinema”– was an artificial construct employed by the Nazi to justify/validate that violence.

    To imply that Josef Mengele’s “experiments” at Auschwitz are scientific is to defame the work of real scientists and true research. Or that science without morality led to something like Mengele being created is about as unfair as saying Josef Mengele was just following the core traits of any German at the time… sick, sadistic, brutal, murderous, egotistical, strutting, pedantic, pontifical, condescending –wait those last 5 are raj baby’s traits… I digress.

    I think it’s like someone postulating that what Jeffrey Dalhmer did in his parents’ home and his Milwaukee flat is what being gay is all about.

    Science without morality doesn’t equal Mengele. False science used to justify morality does.

  7. Meanwhile, yesterday was the anniversary of the hanging of the two gay teens in Iran. Odd that GP doesn’t mention it seeing has how he so prominently and with such graphic detail brought it to our attention last year as an example of Islamist barbarism.

    Could it have anything to do with the fact that there is now going on in Iraq an even worse example of Islamist barbarism? Namely the “cleansing” of gays and lesbians in Iraq under the watch of that wonderful Iraqi Government that they just turned over a part of the country too? You know, the Iraqi Government that we have given so much money and blood to already? Who welcomed the militias into their ranks?

    I doubt your “good news for Iraq” is all that good for the gays and lesbians that live in that area of the country. Since withdrawal of US/British forces essentially means the militia are now virtually free to to their work in that area even unfettered than before. But I guess you couldn’t mention that, seeing as it would screw up your “good news from Iraq” little postcard from hell.

    But of course, by bringing up “gay”, I’m no doubt just being yet another Bush-Hater. A “one-issue” voter.

    But even besides the “gay” thing. Its pretty clear, not from press reports, but just from body counts, that the Iraq the country has gone to hell. When it comes to “success in Iraq”, GP displays a deliberate moral blindness that is breathtaking in its scope and delusion.

  8. Matt, I didn’t intend to let the troll’s comment segue into a complicated debate, but let me explain my point maybe a little better.

    One expression of science is technology. So, it is science expressing itself through technology that enables dictators to pursue pogroms, for Hezbullah to rain rockets down on Jewish schools, and perhaps some day for some Islamo-fascist to acquire a pathogen that ends the human race. It is because Hitler and Stalin were amoral that they used technology to assist them in exterminating people.

    Now, I’ve been to the Holocaust Museum (chaperoned a 7th grade field trip, no less) and I’ve seen the Mengele exhibit. Your point is well-taken, but human experimentation in the name of science is not unknown. The Soviet Union practiced it, Communist China still does. Even in this country, we had the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. It is through morality that we are appalled when we learn of these things.

    Science is, essentially, a process, a tool. In and of itself, neither moral nor immoral. Morality is necessary to temper both the means of conducting science and the application of scientific knowledge.

  10. #4 V the K — July 20, 2006 @ 8:39 am – July 20, 2006

    Should morality not trump science?

    Pardon me, but just what does this have to do with the post or comments 1-3?

  12. VdaK, I now better understand your point and agree completely. I have no problem with demonizing men/women who commit these horrible crimes against humanity –but they aren’t representatives of science as your further comment points out… science is a tool for them.

    Morality and science, like religion and science, can operate and have operated well. It’s only when a small segment in our society wish to viscerate science of all humanity and morality that we get into trouble… aside from the usual rantings of radical religious bigots that populate any discipline.

    I’ve been to the DC museum –but also Michigan’s museum and Yad Vashem. All 3 were compelling, cauterizing experiences that help me better understand our moral obligation to Israel and her enemies –in our country and abroad. Thanks for the clarification.

  13. This is good news. Now we wait to see the next test: Can they establish / keep the peace in the province?

    Do our troops move on to reinforce hot spots elsewhere in Iraq?

  16. #11 V the stupidKow — July 20, 2006 @ 12:16 pm – July 20, 2006

    I don’t know raj, ask Ian.

    Oh, so in addition to admitting to being someone whose girth would be such as to subject one to being ridiculed, you are now also admitting to being Ian.

    Interesting.

    Do you actually read your comments? Doubtful.

  19. Guys, guys leave the raj alone –he’s having a bad day, week, month, season, year, decade… the world is marching to the Right and his beloved Germany won’t let him become a German. The Left is in decline, AirAmerica is in its final throes, there is no savior on the horizon to lift the angry raj out of the carnage now called the Welfare State and Blue America. “An ambulance. An ambulance. My kingdom for an ambulance” cried King Raj the Third.

  20. #9: You wingnuts are so obsessed with sock-puppetry, probably because one of your own – John Lott – famously got caught red-handed. Yet you are too technologically illiterate to realize that a common IP address does not say ANYTHING about who the person actually typing a comment submitted from that address is. Of course, this all assumes that the wingnut claims of identical IP addresses can even be trusted – a rather risky assumption indeed. Few if any on the right can be trusted. I, for example, know for a fact that V the K is lying about me being involved in any way with sock-puppetry on this or any other blog. And don’t get me started on any of the other proven right-wing liars who frequently comment here.

  24. And now the funny part, Calarato and VtheK:

    Yet you are too technologically illiterate to realize that a common IP address does not say ANYTHING about who the person actually typing a comment submitted from that address is.

    Ian, why would you be trying to assert that a common IP address does not mean you and Raj are the same person……unless you and Raj have the same IP address?

    It’s like the old adage goes; those who are loudest in denying their guilt invariably are the first to give it away.

  25. And now – Leaving aside the Ian/raj/sockpuppet (whoever he/she/it is), and turning to the actual subject of #9, the Greenwald sock puppets –

    Patterico best summarizes the state of play. I will quote him here, with a few explanatory additions.

    The basic state of the evidence is this:

    Greenwald (and nobody else) used one IP address to make five comments on my site on July 13. He (and nobody else) used the same one to make 2 comments on Villainous Company. “Ryan” used that IP address to post 3 comments [of a strongly pro-Greenwald nature, with content/style amazingly similar to Greenwald’s previously mentioned comments] at Riehl World View. And “Ellison” posted a comment [ditto] using that IP address at Ace’s. And “Thomas Ellers” posted numerous comments [ditto] using that IP address at Q&O.

    Greenwald (and nobody else) used a second IP address to post 3 comments on my site on July 12. He used the same IP address to post as himself at Confederate Yankee. And that same IP address was used by “Wilson” at Jeff Goldstein’s site [again to post pro-Greewald comments, with content/language amazingly similar to Greenwald’s].

    Greenwald’s defense makes things interesting. But there are at least two separate IP addresses that were shared by him and his sycophants. That makes it trickier for him to explain. And (other than denying that he engaged in sock-puppetry) he hasn’t really told us anything specific about how this could have happened, has he?

    Patterico neglects to remind people (or to repeat), in the above text, that both IP addresses track back to Greenwald’s household in Brazil. Patterico indicates that aspect, and shows the amazing similarity of the content/comments under question, here.

    Now as to the various defenses of Greenwald –

    Many attempt to make much of the fact that multiple people can have the same IP address based on sharing an ISP, company firewall / proxy server, etc. True – But not an applicable defense here.

    Why inapplicable? Because real people posting from behind a common IP address (for whatever reason) don’t coincidentally just happen to all be defending Glenn Greenwald, at the same time, in the same style and talking points, without some form of prior coordination – i.e., the issuance of formal talking points to the members of a single household – or, in the alternative, bald-faced sock puppetry from one member.

    From what I understand, Greenwald’s own defense of himself basically concedes the “single household” issue, and implies (through passive voice / weasel words) that it may have been his lover or some other household member who posted the comments. (Greenwald is openly gay.) Who knows? We’ll see. All I know is, I’d hate to be the lover / other household member getting the blame.

    At this point, the simplest and most plausible explanations for the accumulated evidence appear to be one of:

    (a) Greenwald playing sock puppets;
    (b) Greenwald’s lover, or other household member, playing sock puppets;
    (c) Greenwald issuing a “talking points memo” to multiple friends / household members, who then post while sitting around in Greenwald’s house.

    Take your pick.

  26. #24: Another proven liar pops his head in, willfully ignoring comment #9 by liar #1, V the K. For the dishonest and/or simply lazy, comment #9 links to the brou-ha-ha re Glenn Greenwald and my comment was in relation to that. As for raj and me having the same address, no doubt Dan could clear that up with a simple yes or no. Not that it would really mean anything since if I were going to engage in sock-puppet games like wingnuts are wont to do, I’d certainly use one of the other IP addresses available to me.

  29. #25: Greenwald has stated he did not engage in sock-puppetry and has implied that others who have made comments supporting him may have done so accessing the internet via his IP address. There is no evidence whatsoever of any sock-puppetry let alone any by Greenwald himself. It’s all just a standard wingnut smear job as can be seen by all the other lies about Greenwald that have been debunked. Sadly, it is an all too common trait among wingnuts judging by the liars attempting the same smear against me on this blog. It shows a clear inability to refute one’s arguments when the opponents lie in an attempt to impugn one’s character.

  30. “Greenwald has stated he did not engage in sock-puppetry and has implied that others who have made comments supporting him may have done so accessing the internet via his IP address. There is no evidence whatsoever of any sock-puppetry…”

    Surely I won’t be the only one who sees the flagrant, blatant, shameless contradictions contained in that statement before our eyes?

    That would be an additional little piece of the evidence: The simple fact that Greenwald, and his supporters, are making absolutely no sense in their pronouncements on the subject.

  32. (P.S. hint for the logic-challenged… having “others… ma[k]e comments supporting him… via his IP address”, is sock puppetry, in a less-direct or more broadly-construed form! please see the idea (c) that I had offered as a possibility, in #25; our Ian/raj sockpuppet essentially just endorsed that)

  33. #28: You misinterpreted what raj said – he was clearly referring to another quote – he references his comment #39 in that thread – that he himself had indeed made and that the proven liar NDT had taken out of context. I can see where a hasty read of the comment you link to might lead to your error but nonetheless, it is an error on your part.

  34. “Sock puppetry”, narrowly construed, is when you make up multiple Internet identities to cheerlead for you and make it look like you have way more support and fandom than you do.

    What I offer in option (c) in #25 – namely, giving a talking points memo to your friends and telling them to defend you from the memo – is only marginally different/better.

  36. #32: OK, I can excuse you making an error but I will not excuse your lying. By slyly mixing a quote from my comment with your own completely unsupported claim that Greenwald had others make positive comments about him, you demonstrate a breathtaking degree of dishonesty in concluding I endorsed your ridiculous claim. For shame!

  37. #36 – ??????????????????????????

    As I said: Greenwald’s supporters aren’t even making sense now. They’ve gone stratospheric. Somebody please try to tell me what the Ian/raj sockpuppet meant to refer to there.

  39. So, let’s try to reset.

    We have 2 separate discussions/issues of sock puppetry going on here.

    One is the raj/Ian thing. The fact that the 2 identities agree with each other so much, does NOT (by itself) prove sock puppetry. But then NDT caught the recent case where the “raj” identity messed up and pointedly claimed as his own, something written under “Ian”.

    So there’s that. And at present, we don’t know which is the real person.

    Then, the other sockpuppet issue is the Glenn Greenwald issue brought out today by Patterico and others.

    Again, the fact that Greenwald’s 6+ (documented to date by Patterico) Internet identities / sycophants agree with each other so much, does NOT (by itself) prove sock puppetry. The additional combinatorial evidence lies with the fact that the 6+ identities / sycophants post, in near-identical content and linguistic style, from behind just a couple of IP addresses in Brazil.

    Even then, pure sock puppetry is not proven. Greenwald could have made a self-defense talking-points memo, and given it to a bunch of his local friends (in his Brazilian household). Or Greenwald’s lover could be the culprit (with or without Greenwald’s authorization). The point here is simply that Greenwald hasn’t come close to providing an adequate explanation.

    The comment system is probably going to start bugging me soon for posting too many comments in this thread, so I’m signing off for the night.

  41. #39, re: Greenwald, Ace dissects the Greenwald defense pretty convincingly. (Quoting now)

    “This theory requires multiple rabid Glenn Greenwald fans, all living in Brazil, of all places, all frequenting the same conservative blogs Greenwald is known to, all defending Greenwald in much the same languange, and, furthermore, all doing so in perfect, unaccented, idiomatic English, and lastly, all having been just been coindentally assigned the same IP address as Glenn Greenwald during the times and dates he was known to be posting on conservative blogs, coincidentally being assigned the same IP’s out of the many thousands of dynamic IP addresses available at any time.”

    Occam’s razor is not Mr. Greenwald’s friend.

  43. #42
    And if you forgot why the right never gets it right it’s because of things like this. You cite a right wing blog that takes less than 10 COMMENTS, and posts them with an inflammatory invective, of an AOL public board with over 126 THREADS. What I admire about the right is that you are so much better at spin and propaganda than the left is.

    And you, vthek, are referencing the reference of screened statements.

    Love that!
    –

  44. #39 Calarato — July 21, 2006 @ 1:07 am – July 21, 2006

    So, let’s try to reset.

    Yes, let’s try to reset. You linked to NDT caught the recent case where the “raj” identity messed up and pointedly claimed as his own, something written under “Ian”.

    Sorry, but that is bullcrap. Let’s actually look at what NDXXX posted:

    I said: On a slightly different topic, I am amazed that CT law does not preclude someone who has gone through a party’s primary election from having his name on the ballot as an “independent” candidate, since, obviously, he wasn’t an “independent” candidate.

    NDXXX said: Were you unaware that your fellow leftist liar Ian said this?

    Somebody else said: Nothing there whatsoever about him legally being prevented from doing what he’s doing.

    Apparently you nutters are unable to understand where the punctuation mark “?” appears. NDXXX, in his “were you unaware” rant was clearly referring to what I had said. That is, the paragraph above. If the idiot NDXXX had meant to indicate that the next paragraph was what “(my) fellow leftist liar Ian” had said, he would have used a colon (you know, “:”) not a question mark.

    I’m sure that grammar and punctuation are lost on y’all. No surprise. You can’t actually reference the actual background, and you can’t communicate using the written word.

    Pathetic. BTW, just which private school did you attend?

  45. #41: Greenwald has stated that he did not post under any other name but his own. He does not deny that others using computers accessing the internet via his IP address supported him with their comments. The simplest explanation is that members of his houshold and/or neighbors, after hearing of the outrageous ad hominem attacks against him, wanted to voice their support and used computers on a local network with a static IP address to do so.

    Your quote claims the comments were “unaccented” which is an outright lie: accents are not transferred via the written word unless the author intentionally uses misspelling to do so. The notion that people from Latin America can’t write decent English borders on racism. I have met many people from South America and most can write better idiomatic English than many Americans I know. If you read the actual comments, the language was most definitely not the same. That the responses brought up similar points is because they were responding to the same ad hominem attacks.

    Greenwald himself has not been reticent to use his own name when defending himself on other blogs. Nor has he been unwilling to inform his many activist blog readers and provide links when he’s been attacked. Whatever need would he have to create sock puppets? No, Greenwald is telling the truth but it’s really no surprise the habitual liars on the right have so much difficulty realizing that.

  47. #41 V the stupidKow — July 21, 2006 @ 7:42 am – July 21, 2006

    Occam’s razor is not Mr. Greenwald’s friend

    Some of us who actually are trained in science know that Occams razor doesn’t mean very much. A starting point perhaps, but nothing more.

    Next you’ll be bloviating about creationism.

  48. #44 – raj/Ian, well at least now you are following the strategy I advised you to follow in #28. Though a bit late.

    #45 – raj/Ian, your whole defense of Greenwald amounts to “He says he’s telling the truth and I choose to believe him, despite the evidence.”

    You have added no new insight, evidence or logic to the debate.

    I personally can think of multiple reasons why Greenwald would, in fact, have a need to defend himself with sock puppets.

    And that’s enough time I’ve spent on you in this thread. Bye now.

  51. I love how Raj flails, trying to defend himself and his sock puppetry, by quoting the wrong post.

    Of course that’s because the right post follows his own rules of directly citing comment number, proving beyond a doubt that he himself slipped and admitted that a statement made ostensibly under the identity of “Ian” was in fact his own.

    Bye now.

  52. #48: “I personally can think of multiple reasons why Greenwald would, in fact, have a need to defend himself with sock puppets.”

    …and then runs off without stating any.

  54. RWP, although this is all a long way from the Good News From Iraq post, I always smile broadly when the GayLeft is caught in a little sockpuppetry. I mean, the lust to be seen as being right must be at a feverpitch for guys who resort to sockpuppetry.

    A few months ago, a new commentator here going by God Of Biscuits… complete with his own BushHatred Blog… did something similar to back up or add some validation to comments he made earlier but were disputed. What a void in character.

    When we called him on the dual-name game dishonest posting thing, you’d have thought he was a sacred cow in Congress (no, raj, not Senator Stupid Cow Stabenow) getting gored-up. The very shrillness of his protest gave him away and he later admitted to the deception… seemingly never to post again.

    Sockpuppetry happens when an intellectually dishonest debater feels the need to shift the debate in a postive turn toward their position by misleading others with hollow validation. Shallow stuff. In forensics, we called that “going political” –and appropriately passed out demerits, then asked them to leave the debate until they got a hold of some character, some honesty, some balance.

    To need to be validated that bad is a vainty akin to narcissism.

  55. #51 North Dallas Thirty — July 21, 2006 @ 12:15 pm – July 21, 2006

    Poor baby. Another lie. The correct post is the one that I quoted. If you are now going to claim that the post did not mean what you intended it to mean, so be it: you are unable to write coherently. Take heart, you are not the only one in the right blogosphere who is incapable of writing coherently, so you are among many compatriots.

    On the other hand, if you are going to claim that the post meant what you claimed that it meant, then you are a liar.

    It really is as simple as that. And, no, you aren’t going to get an email address out of me. And, just to let you know, it is highly unlikely that GPW is the webmaster here, so don’t bother asking him for my IP address. Contact the webmaster.

  57. P.S. Since we’ve been speaking of SPs… and since the Devil sometimes appears when you speak of it… let’s see now… shouldn’t DSH / David / Stephen / Dave / Steve be re-appearing in four, three, two…

    LOL

  58. So let me get this straight, some leftists type similar comments under diff names so as to show a thread of dissent? Diabolical. And they accuse Republicans of tampering with voting machines. Note the similar screwey mindset. They’re funny and sad at the same time.

  59. Well, Gene, they figure since they’ve been cheating by stuffing ballot boxes since time immemorial, other people must be cheating as well.

    You note that the one thing Democrats all oppose is requiring people to show identification and proof of citizenship to vote — despite the fact that no one can legally hold a job in this country without having and showing both.

  60. Now NDXXX, you and I both know that the Left won’t support requiring voters to produce picture ID because they fear BigGovt’s intrusion into their lives… except when it’s to overturn the ballot box by judicial fiat

    or take your tax dollars and spend it on their policy priorities

    or force you to send your neighbor’s kids to a racially mixed school 10 miles away

    or deny you a place in law school so an academically inferior student from a protected minority can grab the seat

    or prevent you from bidding on a govt contract so a female contractor can have the upper hand to place a higher, more expensive bid

    or ____________ gheez, fill in the blank… there are a million reasons why the Left is BigGovt’s best friend, soulmate, sex toy, and civil partner.

  61. Sockpuppetry happens when an intellectually dishonest debater feels the need to shift the debate in a postive turn toward their position by misleading others with hollow validation.

    Yes, back in the 80s, in the Usenet era before the Web, the closest equivalent to sockpuppetry was, “I got lots of private email telling me I’m right!”

  62. #58 Gene in Pennsylvania — July 22, 2006 @ 12:05 am – July 22, 2006

    And they accuse Republicans of tampering with voting machines.

    Actually, they accuse Republican-near purveyors of computerized voting machines of supplying computerized voting machines that do not provide a paper trail. And that’s aside from the fact that it is demonstrably impossible to prove even that a computer is running a program that it is allegedly running.

    Note to “RightWingProfessor”: just to remind you, it is demonstrably impossible to even prove that a computer’s program counter is actually pointing to the instruction that it is allegedly pointing to. And that’s notwithstanding the fact that the purveyors of these computerized voting machines refuse to make public the source code for the programs that are allegedly being run on their computers.

  63. LOL……the reason you oppose computerized voting, Raj, is because it makes it impossible for low-skilled Democratic operatives like yourself to stuff boxes.

    Paper ballots can be faked far more easily than can computerized voting; the only safeguard is in requiring identification and proof of citizenship to vote, and you call that “racist”.

    So if you want a paper trail, we’ll give you one; each receipt would have both your name as registered, your address, and your results. You look it over, then sign it and drop it into the bin.

    You would oppose that, because the point of paper trails is not to positively identify votes; it’s to introduce an element that you can easily forge into computerized voting. With that, you couldn’t.