Unqualified Offerings

A Big Budget Anti-Suicide Bombing PSA.
Intended for viewing on Iraqi satellite TV:
Onlookers were later asked to stand back as the pyrotechnic crew blew up a poor old Yugo coupe and stunt men and women, padded under their Arab garb, were thrust into the air with ropes and pulleys to simulate the impact of a bomb [...]

Interesting IHT article on the attempt to retake Ramadi running in parallel with the more hyped efforts in Baghdad.

Thomas Nephew’s not the only one who found himself wondering “Whatever happened to accused spy Susan Lindauer?” as he read about the Seas of David case. But he’s the one who actually did some work on the question. His update is fascinating and worrisome stuff. Lindauer is in the process of discovering that being declared [...]

Beating; punching with fists; use of truncheons; kicking; slamming against walls; stretching or suspension (to tear ligaments or muscles to cause asphyxia); external electric shocks; forcing prisoners to abase and to urinate on themselves; forced masturbation; forced renunciation of religion; false confessions or accusations; applying urine and feces to prisoners; making verbal threats to a [...]

Tomorrow the deal by which McClatchy Newspapers buys out Knight-Ridder will close. Knight-Ridder has been the only Establishment Media Enterprise (EMETM) to acquit itself with consistent honor in the GWOT era, so I worry. The Herald piece suggests that “not much” is likely to change for the first couple of years. May it be so.

Larry Cohler-Esses has brief but jam-packed chronicle of the serial mendacities of Amir “Dress Code” Taheri. The provable lies stretch back to at least 1989, and implicate his patroness as well. She herself responds with the Bedwetter Creed:
“As much as being accurate is important, in the end it’s important to side with what’s right. What’s [...]

Jennifer at Feral Genius has your creepy oedipal media phenomenon of the week. Okay, of human history. I think if my mom e-mailed me pretending to be a sixteen-year-old girl named “Candy Sweetness” and then wanted to put us all on television about it I would catch The Gay superdoublequick.

It’s storming so hard around my area Angry Liberal Bloggers must be responsible.

The Miami Herald and Chicago Tribune offer quickie profiles of the Miami Seven, especially Chicago transplant Narseal Batiste, proprietor of Azteca Stucco and Masonry and accused terrorist hopeful. It’s a story of downwardly mobile losers a step – at most – ahead of the repo man. It’s all merely pathetic until you recall John Allen [...]

Brooke Oberwetter names her price for waging Jihad. Meanwhile, Hammer of Truth espies a strategery.
There’s absolutely a reality show in all this: America’s Next Terrorist!