Where's the Outrage?

"A short conflict that used fewer missiles, sparked fewer oil field fires and created fewer refugees than anticipated produced a lower-than-expected financial cost for the major combat in Iraq," USA Today reports. The U.S. government puts the cost at "just less than the $62.6 billion Congress approved in March as emergency funding for Operation Iraqi Freedom."

As this March CNN/Money report notes, opponents of Iraq's liberation had much higher estimates of the cost of war. House Democrats said $93 billion, and William Nordhaus, a Yale professor, said the price could be as high as $1.92 trillion (he inflated his figure by including "rebuilding costs and impact of oil, economy").

This wasn't the only thing war opponents told us during the prewar debate that turned out not to be true. They said the U.S. would suffer thousands of casualties. They said ordinary Iraqis would resent American "invaders" rather than welcome them as liberators. They said the "Arab street" would rise up in outrage. They said Iraq's liberation would set off a new wave of terrorism. They said the war would be a "quagmire"--a line today's London Guardian is peddling, though even the New York Times carries an article--albeit on the op-ed page--noting that "things really aren't that bad" in Iraq.

Some war foes even said--get this!--that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and would use them on American troops. Well pardon us for asking, but if Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, where are they?

It's possible that this was all just a massive failure of intelligence, but we can't help suspecting that war opponents knew better and deliberately misled the public in an effort to establish a pretext for keeping a mass-murdering dictator in power. In either case, they now face a yawning credibility gap. The American people deserve nothing less than a full congressional investigation into the false claims of antiwar politicians, scholars, journalists and activists. If they lied to us about Iraq, how can we ever trust them to talk us out of future wars?


By JAMES TARANTO

Hamas Warns Foreigners to Leave Israel


GAZA - The Palestinian militant group Hamas vowed on Thursday to carry out further attacks inside Israel following a bus bombing in Jerusalem and warned all foreigners to leave the Jewish state for their own safety
Reuters

Where's the 'Intelligence'?
The strange postwar debate over Iraqi weapons.


To sustain one's belief in democracy, one has to think that every public debate, no matter the motive, can produce some residue of useful information. As the late aficionado of strategic facts, Albert Wohlstetter, once remarked during a dinner discussion of the global-warming debate, "At least we will learn something about the weather." And so it may be with the argument now over whether George W. Bush "overstated" Saddam Hussein's possession of weapons of mass destruction to justify the Iraq war.


BY DANIEL HENNINGER

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The return of the $2 bill



NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Very few people use it. Merchants and cab drivers are never quite sure what to do with it. And although its history pre-dates American independence, the average citizen may not even know it exists.


By Gordon T. Anderson, CNN/Money Contributing Writer


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True Grit



I COULD HARDLY breathe.
Gulping for air, I started crying and yelling,
"What do you mean? What are you saying?
Why are the Clintons back again?"


Ann Coulter

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Setting the Record Straight
An open letter to Hillary Clinton.

Dear Hillary,

In your new book, Living History, you correctly note that when you asked me to help you and Bill avert defeat in the congressional election of 1994 I was reluctant to do so. But then you assert, incorrectly, that my reluctance stemmed from difficulties in working with your staff. You even misquote me as telling you: "I don't like the way I was treated, Hillary. People were so mean to me."


By Dick Morris


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Iranians protest for second night





Thousands of Iranians have spent a second day protesting against their clerical leaders, clashing with hard-line vigilante groups in the capital, Teheran.
BBC news

developing story

The face of death


How can we expect the two sides to talk when 18 year olds like this are willing to die to kill Jews?
They're stated goal is the destruction of Israel. Not peace, not their own homeland, but the elimination of Jews on Arab lands!
How do you start negotiating?
Neil

Bush Presses for Votes on Prescription Drug Plans


"For years, leaders of both political parties have talked about these reforms. Now is the time to get the job done," Bush told cheering doctors from the Illinois State Medical Society.


By Adam Entous

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September 11 Today
Looking back, and around, 21 months after the day that changed (nearly) everything.




Someone speaking of the shooting of John Kennedy once mused on the moment when the trigger was pulled and the bullet launched. That instant bore so much weight of subsequent history that it became a kind of warp in time, a moment whose weight was so much greater than its duration that it was like a collapsing of time, a special lost moment of gravity, like a black hole in space.

I think 9/11 is like that. People are still changing from it, being affected by it. There are those who have wondered why 9/11 was so cataclysmic, compared with, say, the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, by essentially the same people with the same motives and intentions. One answer is that on 9/11 almost 3,000 people died, and eight years before the number was six. Another is that the Pentagon was in effect bombed on 9/11. America has two great capitals, of politics and money, and both capitals were hit.


Peggy Noonan

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Robot Rover Headed to Mars to Search for Water


Booster rockets are seen as they fall back to Earth over the Florida coastline (Lower R), after separating from the Delta 2 rocket, in this image from a rocket-mounted video camera, June 10, 2003. NASA launched the first of two robotic rovers to Mars in an international quest to determine if life ever existed on the Red Planet. After two days of weather delays, the Mars Exploration Rover nicknamed 'Spirit' lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, as part of an international fleet of probes sent to Mars. Photo by NASA TV/Reuters

By Broward Liston

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Ayatollah Ali Khamenei


Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has called on university students to "maintain their calm" in order to foil what he said was a "devilish" US plot to destabilise the Islamic republic
(AFP/File/Atta Kenare)

Monkeypox Outbreak Highlights Cottage Industry in Sale of Prairie Dogs as Pets



EL PASO, Texas (AP) - The outbreak of monkeypox in the Midwest is focusing attention on a thriving cottage industry in Texas, where a handful of operators catch thousands of the rodents and ship them to pet stores around the nation.
By Chris Roberts Associated Press Writer

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Ex-ImClone CEO Gets 87 Months in Prison


NEW YORK (Reuters) - Samuel Waksal, the founder of biotech company ImClone Systems Inc., was sentenced on Tuesday to 87 months in prison and ordered to pay $3 million in fines for tax evasion and his role in insider trading. U.S. District Judge William Pauley also ordered Waksal, whose insider trading scheme led to last week's indictment of style-setter Martha Stewart, to pay $1.26 million in restitution.


By Paul Thomasch and Gail Appleson

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Ashcroft vs. the Chicken Littles — again

Squawk, squawk, squawk. The nation's leading liberal editorial writers were in full wing-flapping mode over Attorney General John Ashcroft again this week. The latest object of consternation: an internal Justice Department report regarding the post-September 11 detention of 762 aliens— nearly all of them here illegally— while they were investigated for possible ties to terrorism.




Michelle Malkin

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Israeli Targets Hamas Leader in Missile Strike

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip--Israeli helicopters launched a missile strike on a car in Gaza City Tuesday, injuring a senior Hamas leader, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, and killing two other men, doctors and witnesses said.


Fox news

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Vote for Me, My Hubby's a Louse

Does this whole Hillary phenomenon strike anyone else as passing strange? New York's junior senator has a new book out today, and it promises to be the year's most successful celebrity memoir. It's already at No. 2 on Amazon.com (only the new Harry Potter book beats it out), and the Associated Press reports from New York that Mrs. Clinton's first book-signing, at a midtown Barnes & Noble, drew "hundreds of people" who "stood in line Monday morning, some after waiting through the night."

We haven't read the book and probably won't, though in due course we'll get around to skimming Time's 10,000-word excerpt. The magazine, which normally makes the content of its current issue available free online, is charging $2.95 to view the excerpt, though an interview with Hillary is free (and a bargain at twice the price, if we may say so).

From the news accounts we've seen, we gather that the most important part of the book is Mrs. Clinton's account of her husband's affair with Monica Lewinsky. (The husband, Bill Clinton, was president of the United States at the time.) Here's the weird part: Somehow the fact that Bill cheated on Hillary is supposed to qualify Hillary to run for president. Typical is a question CNN's Wolf Blitzer posed to "Late Edition" panelist Jonah Goldberg yesterday:

A frenzied anticipation about New York Democratic senator and former first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton's new book, "Living History." That's out in bookstores tomorrow.

Some details already have been made public. She recounts how she discovered the truth about her husband's affair with Monica Lewinsky, saying, and I'm quoting now, "I was dumbfounded, heartbroken and outraged that I had believed him at all. As a wife, I wanted to wring Bill's neck."

Jonah, is this a prelude to a presidential run at 2008?

This has got to be the non sequitur of the century. It's not as if there's an extensive history of presidents being elected after revealing that their husbands cheated on them; indeed, as far as we know, this has never happened. What's her campaign slogan going to be, "America has no better leader than a woman scorned"? One would also think that her political prospects might be hindered by the public admission that she contemplated a violent assault against the president of the United States. Is the Secret Service investigating this?

There are also elements of cynicism and hypocrisy here that should not go unremarked. Mrs. Clinton complains in the Time excerpt that "his [Bill Clinton's] privacy, my privacy, Monica Lewinsky's privacy and the privacy of our families had been invaded in a cruel and gratuitous manner." We have some sympathy on this score, but her husband was the defendant in a sexual-harassment lawsuit, and such invasions are routine in these cases. So far as we know, Sen. Clinton has not advocated any legislative measures to protect sexual-harassment defendants from similar excesses. She seems to think only that her husband should be above the law.

CNN reports Mrs. Clinton "was paid a $2.85 million advance on the book, part of an $8 million deal." Well, far be it from us to disparage the profit motive, but her complaints about losing her privacy ring rather hollow now that she's decided to sell it. And it's worth noting that the Starr report is in the public domain--available free of charge even on the Time magazine Web site.

Great Orators of the Democratic Party

"One man with courage makes a majority."--Andrew Jackson


"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."--Franklin Roosevelt


"The buck stops here."--Harry Truman


"Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."--John Kennedy


"What is shameful is a national party that 'misplaces' its moral compass and cannot provide strong direction to its candidates, members and donors."--Howard Dean


"If I can slap this donkey I can make it kick George Bush out of the White House."--Al Sharpton


"I'm not going to be Bush-lite."--Dick Gephardt


"I know a lot of hard-working Americans who are tired of getting trickled on, and we're going to stop it."--John Kerry

By JAMES TARANTO

Alert Issued as U.S. Monkeypox Cases Grow to 37



CHICAGO - Officials in three states tried on Monday to track down pet prairie dogs believed spreading "monkeypox," a smallpox-like illness not seen before in the Western Hemisphere that may have infected 37 people. More...




(Reuters)

U.S. says Iran harbors al Qaeda 'associate'


A top al Qaeda associate in Iraq has fled to neighboring Iran, where he and several senior al Qaeda leaders apparently remain under the protection of the Iranian government, U.S. intelligence officials say.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi fled Iraq within the past several weeks and is in Iran, the officials told The Washington Times.


By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES


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At the box office

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at North American theaters, according to Exhibitor Relations Co. Inc. Final figures will be released Monday.

1. 2 Fast 2 Furious, $52.1 million.

2. Finding Nemo, $45.8 million.

3. Bruce Almighty, $21.7 million.

4. The Italian Job, $13.3 million.

5. The Matrix Reloaded, $9.1 million.

6. Daddy Day Care, $4.8 million.

7. X2: X-Men United, $3.05 million.

8. Wrong Turn, $2.65 million.

9. The In-Laws, $2 million.

10. Bend it Like Beckham, $975,000.

'Right Wing Media' Called 'Steamroller' of Liberalism

Washington (CNSNews.com) - The author of a book denying the existence of a liberal media in America declared that the right wing media "machine" is now so powerful that it acts as "a steamroller" of liberal ideals.



By Marc Morano


Read the whole article, some might find some words offensive.

The Death of France?


The notion of the death of France is not, by any means, an absurd notion. To the contrary: it is an increasingly plausible possibility - or a reality occurring right before our eyes, according to some. The presence of a huge and growing Muslim population in France has fundamentally altered the identity of the nation. Anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism have become endemic, as France chooses Islamicization and friendship with Arab dictators over friendship with America and Israel.


Jamie Glazov


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Evil tyrant/Radical religion?
Somewhwere inbetween maybe?

Executioner Proud to Do 'God's Work'

"I sleep very well," Arab News daily quoted executioner Mohammed Saad al-Beshi as saying Thursday in a rare interview that offered an insight into a job that is much-criticized in the West and by human rights groups.

"It doesn't matter to me: two, four, 10. As long as I'm doing God's work, it doesn't matter how many people I execute."


(Reuters)

Read more of this sick story

Hillary Has the Chilly Deportment Down Cold


Two first ladies got together for a chat on national network television last night, one of them the former first lady of the land and the other the reigning first lady of network news. It was by no means a contest, but Barbara Walters came away from it looking better than Hillary Rodham Clinton, the celebrated interviewee.

By "better," I think what I mean is "more recognizably human."



By Tom Shales


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