Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican secretary of state;

Now, in light of the post-war chaos, Cardinal Sodano has announced a newly hawkish line on Iraq from Rome. “The child has been born,” he declared recently on behalf of the Vatican. “It may be illegitimate, but it’s here, and it must be reared and educated.”

Despite the backhanded nature of his statements, this is significant.

With the voting over in the first presidential election in the history of Afghanistan, the media is virtually unanimous in declaring failure. Google News search results tell the story.

Results 1 – 10 of about 720 for afghan election fraud.

Jeff Jarvis is confused and dismayed at the negativity. One can only conclude he’s been hiding under a rock for the past three years.
So I tried a few others….

Your search – “Afghan voters killed in blast” – did not match any documents.
Your search – Afghan “polling station blast” – did not match any documents.
Your search – Afghan “polling station violence” – did not match any documents.

Reuters couldn’t even dig one up, though they did record a possible interception.

Results 1 – 1 of about 1 for afghan voters-killed. (0.10 seconds)

Bloomberg.com:

Afghans turned out in “massive” numbers for the nation’s first direct presidential election, a United Nations spokesman said.
“We don’t have numbers have yet, but there was a massive amount of voters and a great deal of enthusiasm,” Manoel de Almeida e Silva said by telephone from Kabul, the Afghan capital. A preliminary count may be ready within two days, and a total count may take up to three weeks, he said.
[…]
There were no reports of voters killed or injured, U.S. Maj. Scott Nelson, spokesman for the Combined Forces Command, said by telephone from Kabul. There was a report of an ambush in Uruzgan province by suspected Taliban militants that left three police officers dead, he said.

I call that a success. And so would the New York Times, WaPo, the LA Tmes and every other major media outlet in North America had it happened with a Democrat in the White House. Get with the program, Jeff!

Just in case you haven’t noticed, there’s a big poof of smoke there at the moment.
BIG POOF.
update – in case you missed it, right click on the thumbnail to get the full size version

I didn’t hear the full debate – I caught bits and pieces over the radio via am border stations, by virtue of a very cold night and the extended wavelength it grants. Bits and pieces, because the reception was uneven, switching back and forth between stations (in my truck, then at home) as the signal waxed and waned.
Because I had no visuals to distract from the actual content, I didn’t conclude that Kerry had won the debate. I didn’t know it was a game, so I didn’t keep score. I was listening – not watching facial expressions, or counting the seconds of pause or wondering what was in the notes I didn’t know Kerry was writing. I was just listening to the words.
Little of what I heard surprised me. I’ve been following the candidates too closely over the past couple of months for that. I heard portions from both that I knew were scripted, framed with the expected “talking points”. It was all relatively predictable.
Except for this. I was in the truck, and I remember sitting up straight in my seat and looking at the radio in disbelief. I couldn’t believe what I had just heard. Hugh Hewitt can’t believe it either and he’s inviting further commentary. And like me, he’s not so sure that Kerry won this debate. No one is talking at all about the content of Bush’s remarks. It’s all about delivery. Kerry had “better style”. Smooth and polished. “On the offensive”.
Now that a couple of days have passed, the discussion is moving to the details of Kerry’s statements, the contradictions and factual errors – the things I noticed at the time because reception was sketchy and I was trying hard to listen. The questions are coming from unfamiliar and usually friendly places.
Style mattered in the post Cold War decades, when Clinton debated Bush, when Dole debated Clinton. Smooth delivery and facial expression and reaction mattered when Bush debated Gore (*sigh*). Style got you before the camera, a night in the Lincoln bedroom, invited to the important parties. Average Americans in peacetime focused on fashion, on affluence, on upward mobility, and when those things are important, style is important.
Then, Islamic terrorists flew three commercial jets into the heart of the free world. And they scored style points, huge style points, style points to end all style points…. even if the actual substance of the attack boiled down to taking advantage of a few sleepy security screeners and an uncomprehending crew. They framed their argument in spectacular, riveting, technicolor style. Wow. People sat up and paid attention. It was “just like a movie”.
Yet, even before the morning ended, the substantive weakness was realized. Without camera coverage, or eloquence, or focus groups to poll, the last intended victims – ordinary citizens – interrupted the message, ovewhelmed what little substance there was, and slammed it into the dirt in a field in Pennsylvania. The era of “style over substance” felt the impact.
John Kerry didn’t.

“the United States is pursuing a new set of nuclear weapons.�It doesn’t make sense.“

Nuclear weapons are substance. They may represent the very epitome of substance. No one has ever had to debate the finality and deadly effectiveness of a nuclear weapon to enhance its military authority.
Caught in the tortured convolution of his logic centers, Kerry doesn’t comprehend this.

“You talk about mixed messages.”

Nuclear weapons as “messages”?
John Kerry would be commander in chief of the most powerful military the world has ever known. He will defend his nation with resolve and dedicate himself to winning the war against Islamic terrorism.

“We’re telling other people, “You can’t have nuclear weapons,” but we’re pursuing a new nuclear weapon…”

He pledges that he will support the military with all the resources required to get the job done. He has the experience, has the means, he has the will to achieve victory.

” that we might even contemplate using“.

Just let him be very clear with the enemies of the United States about one important principle – that there are some weapons that the President only keeps around for show.

Toronto Star;

“It makes me sick,” Dallaire said yesterday in an interview. “It burns inside and the sentiments or the feelings that I had of abandonment in Rwanda are exactly the same that I feel today in regards to the Sudan.”

Of course they are.

“I am just disgusted with the lame and obtuse responses coming from Canada and the Western world..”

Same actors, same play.

Italian journalist and former war correspondant Oriana Fallaci’s new book Oriana Fallaci Interviews Oriana Fallaci which warns of an Arab invasion of Europe and criticises authorities for allowing it to become ‘a colony of Islam’, has sold 500,000 copies of in a single day. They have begun reprinting a second edition.
The Belmont Club notices the kneejerk reaction that the work is evidence of racism.

Instead of meeting these serious accusations head on, the Left declares the
entire argument malformed, haram, taboo, inappropriate and therefore inadmissible. Fallaci’s propositions are never allowed to evaluate to a definite value; they must remain, on pain of breaking the world, forever null. Like the old jailhouse story of prisoners being forced to drink out an unflushed toilet unless they confessed, where one prisoner complains that his rights are being violated because there’s a fly in it, these newspaper responses miss the point by such a margin that one suspects they are on another planet; in a universe where Islam can never, like Christianity before it, consist of humans struggling to reform their faith. That would grant unacceptable equality to those who are fated to play the role of victims. In that twilight, blinkered world, Darfur, Kashmir, Ambon, Mindanao, Nigeria, Madrid and 9/11 disappear entirely while mock horror at racism fills every available space. And the toilet is fine but for the fly.

“This was another reminder that in Western Europe there is sympathy for dead Jews; it’s just the live ones that they cannot tolerate.”

Hat tip – Allah, via Inoperable Terran.

Glenn Reynolds highlights this Kerry memory hiccup.

The Swift Boat Vets:

In reality, Kerry was at Sa Dec – – easily locatable on any map more than fifty miles from Cambodia. Kerry himself inadvertently admits that he was in Sa Dec for Christmas Eve and Christmas and not in Cambodia, as he had stated for so many years on the Senate Floor, in the newspapers, and elsewhere. Exhibit 27, Tour, pp. 213- 219. Sa Dec is hardly “close” to the Cambodian border. In reality, far from being ordered secretly to Cambodia, Kerry spent a pleasant night at Sa Dec with “visions of sugar plums” dancing in his head. Exhibit 27, p. 219. At Sa Dec where the Swift boat patrol area ended, there were many miles of other boats (PBR’s) leading to the Cambodian border. There were also gunboats on the border to prevent any crossing. If Kerry tried to get through, he would have been arrested. Obviously, Kerry has hardly been honest about his service in Vietnam.

These guys aren’t caving to the threats of suit from the Kerry campaign – read the rest at the Captain’s Quarters.
Powerline Blog highlights another much-discussed problem with Kerry’s story;

Richard Nixon was not the President in December 1968. Lyndon Johnson was. It is simply incredible to me that for many years, reporters have mindlessly repeated this obviously false story without, apparently, noticing that it couldn’t possibly be true.

And these observations as well:

The facts that the Swift Vets are prepared to prove are nuclear, far worse than one would assume from reading general newspaper coverage of the controversy. It is not enough to say that the Vets’ evidence shows Kerry to be a liar. That is an understatement. In my opinion, they show Kerry to be a sick, deeply delusional man whose tenuous connection to reality would make a Kerry presidency an unacceptable danger to our country.
One of the Swift Boat Vets has said that he and his colleagues–who represent nearly all of the surviving veterans who served with Kerry in Vietnam–feel that they have been called to serve their country a second time. The veterans’ problem, of course, is that they don’t have any money. While borderline-criminal multi-billionaires like George Soros and spoiled entertainers like Ben Affleck have the Democrats’ coffers overflowing with tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of dollars, the veterans have been able to raise only a pitiful $150,000– most of it from a single home-builder in Houston, who has been slandered for his efforts.

Update – Aug.27 – The entire text of John Kerry’s out of print book “The New Soldier”, as well as links to free chapters from “Unfit For Duty” can be found here

The same press that peppered the news with questions and allegations about George Bush’s record in the National Guard are surprisingly unsurprisingly sluggish in picking up on what John Kerry’s swift boat comrades have to say about his self-promoted Vietnam heroism. The story has been circulating on the blogosphere for months (I mentioned it in May) , Drudge has been headlining it for days – but still no search hits on the CNN website.

Swift Boat Veterans for Truth has been formed to counter the false “war crimes” charges John Kerry repeatedly made against Vietnam veterans who served in our units and elsewhere, and to accurately portray Kerry’s brief tour in Vietnam as a junior grade Lieutenant. We speak from personal experience — our group includes men who served beside Kerry in combat as well as his commanders. Though we come from different backgrounds and hold varying political opinions, we agree on one thing: John Kerry misrepresented his record and ours in Vietnam and therefore exhibits serious flaws in character and lacks the potential to lead.
We regret the need to do this. Most Swift boat veterans would like nothing better than to support one of our own for America’s highest office, regardless of whether he was running as a Democrat or a Republican. However, Kerry’s phony war crimes charges, his exaggerated claims about his own service in Vietnam, and his deliberate misrepresentation of the nature and effectiveness of Swift boat operations compels us to step forward.
For more than thirty years, most Vietnam veterans kept silent as we were maligned as misfits, addicts, and baby killers. Now that a key creator of that poisonous image is seeking the Presidency we have resolved to end our silence.

Stay tuned.
Or, maybe do your own tuning. When the time comes that they can no longer ignore it (ads begin appearing today in the US) the pro-Democrat media is going to work overtime to buffer this story in anti-Bush spin.
update = Let the games begin. Kerry campaign threatens to sue stations who air the ad.

(Click on the pic to see more fabulous Pol:Spy stuff.)

Further to this, David Warren at the Ottawa Citizen:

With the sort of arrogance made visible even to Canadians in the recent “trial” of suspects in the murder of Zahra Kazemi, the regime’s officials from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei down have been making bellicose declarations against America, Israel, and the West generally.
“Today we have in our possession long-range smart missiles which can reach many of the interests and vital resources of the Americans and of the Zionist regime in our region,” writes Yadollah Javani, political head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in the daily Kayhan, which has become the Iranian “Pravda”.
General Javani was echoing remarks made by Ayatollah Khamenei in Hamadan a week earlier, in more Koranic language. “The entire Islamic Middle East is now a volatile and tangled trap, and will be set off by the smallest bit of silliness,” Javani declares. “Indeed, the White House’s 80 years of exclusive rule are likely to become 80 seconds of Hell.”
Translations on the excellent MEMRI website (see Internet) flesh out such threats. Recent announcements include: the recruitment and training of thousands of Iranian volunteers for suicide attacks against U.S. and other targets in Iraq; the resumption of work on Iran’s long-range Shihab 4 and 5 missiles, capable of reaching targets in Europe and the U.S.; and references to a “master plan” to eliminate “Anglo-Saxon civilization” with missiles and martyrdom, mentioning “29 sensitive targets”.
These threats are not uttered from a cave in the Hindu Kush. They are official Iranian state announcements. The ability of the Western media to ignore them is astounding.

Just a question… how much airtime over the past 6 months do you suppose has been devoted in the national news airwaves to the current NHL player-owner stalemate by CTV and CBC? To Todd Bertuzzi? How many man hours spent bringing us stories about former figureskaters turned boxers? To stupid pet tricks and the threats of sun exposure and uncooked meat?
What are we going to say about the seriousness of our press, when the day comes that a major metropolitan area is laid waste, and we know more about obese film makers than we do the formally sworn enemies of our civilization?
Hat tip – Occam’s Toothbrush

What looks to be an amateur car bomb has detonated near Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center in Nashville. Fortunately, the only fatality was the driver. Via James Joyner, who observes:

But, had this been a sophisticated terrorist operation, a lot of the people in those 2881 rooms and the adjacent shopping mall could have been killed. If we can’t stop amateur suicidal nuts–and we can’t–then we can’t stop committed professionals.
The day is coming.

James Joyner: “So, he accidentally took documents more than once, and only after a pattern emerged did the staffers report him.”
Sandy Berger was National Security Advisor. What the hell was going on?
Update – Glenn Reynolds has extensive followup this morning., and on the further collapse of Joe Wilson’s credibility.
This email he recieved is enlightening:

Just to back up some of your other correspondents. I spent 27 years total in the AF – with a Top Secret clearance. I had at times, specific appended code word clearances, which are controlled on a strict need-to-know basis – because they often involve sensitive sources (say, you are getting data from a mole in the Itanian Gov. – that particular data would be graded TS and then given a code word to further identify it as very sensitive and to restrict access from those with just general TS clearances). In a nutshell, the security system from least classified to most classified was: Confidential, Secret, Top Secret, Top Secret codeword). When we worked on Top Secret codeword (it might read something like Top Secret Fishhook), it was in a vault and our notes were put in burn bags. We were not allowed to take any notes out -period. We clearly understood that you didn’t screw around with Secret, much less TS or TS codeword. For us a slip-up meant the slammer. What Berger did is so far removed from accepted security procedure, that I can only see two possible explanations: dishonesty with an ulterior motive (political CYA, I would guess) Or he’s crazy. There is no way a veteran in the security business doesn’t understand the gravity of walking out with TS codeword data.
Doug Rivers
USAF Ret.

“Will too.”
“Will not.”

President Clinton’s national security adviser, Sandy Berger, is the focus of a Justice Department investigation after removing highly classified terrorism documents and handwritten notes from a secure reading room during preparations for the Sept. 11 commission hearings, The Associated Press has learned.
Berger’s home and office were searched earlier this year by FBI agents armed with warrants after he voluntarily returned documents to the National Archives. However, still missing are some drafts of a sensitive after-action report on the Clinton administration’s handling of al-Qaida terror threats during the December 1999 millennium celebration.
Berger and his lawyer said Monday night he knowingly removed handwritten notes he had made while reading classified anti-terror documents at the archives by sticking them in his jacket and pants. He also inadvertently took copies of actual classified documents in a leather portfolio, they said.

That’s a lot of inadvertant.
Update – Notes inadvertantly found their way into his socks, too.
And, Hugh Hewitt reminds us to apply the “Rice test”.

Even if the Commission was a genuine non-partisan effort instead of a show trial designed to keep the eye off of Clinton’s indifference to al Qaeda throughout the ’90s, it would still have needed all the records, and in an untampered form. How can anyone think it was a good idea to let a potentially responsible party review the evidence against him and his colleagues?�
[…]
Had Rice been the one caught tampering with the records of the Bush Administration relating to terrorism, Rice would already have been forced by a baying press to resign, and Bush would be threatened with a Watergate-style meltdown.� But it is a pro-Kerry media, so watch for Berger’s attempted cover-up to get its own cover-up.

Another update – Berger has stepped down from the Kerry team.
Well, duh.