Redstate

Posted at 12:18pm on Sep. 14, 2004 Message from Victory South -- 2

By tacitus

The latest message from Mark V. Rogers, currently with KBR at Victory South in Iraq, follows.

Yesterday, I took a sightseeing tour of Baghdad, at least as much of it as I could take in through a tiny, four-inch thick slab of glass.  Armored buses led by sharp shooters riding atop humvees now comprise the passenger convoys to and from the Green Zone.  In times past, some folks made the trip in soft cars (i.e. unarmored vehicles).  Jay tracked down one such SUV at the motor pool and took pictures of it.

Through a shattered window, I could see that the interior roof had been stained with blood and brain matter.

At Victory, I heard that the trip to the Green Zone was one of the most dangerous trips in Iraq, despite that it only covers a few miles.  We just hoped that the insurgents had run out of ammunition the day before in their all-out assault on the Green Zone.  A few days before that, one of the luggage vehicles in one convoy got hit by an RPG.  A friend of mine who rode in that convoy said they kept moving to avoid an ambush.  Someone later returned to rescue the injured driver of the disabled vehicle.

I slept last night in a large tent in Saddam's former front yard in downtown Baghdad.  I wonder if Saddam ever let young Uday and Qusay camp out in the yard.

Perhaps he inspired their love of nature.  At Victory, Saddam built a series of lakes, one of them stocked with bass, another with trout, and one with walleye.

I'm not sure whether Uday preferred catching the fish or feeding them.  Someone showed me the spot at the edge of one lake where he fed dissidents feet-first into a wood chipper.  No doubt, some of the victims came from his nearby "Perfume Palace", apparently so dubbed because it housed many of the girls he had kidnapped and forced into unmentionable service.

As of late, the situation in Iraq has greatly destabilized.  Two days ago, an unseen enemy force staged a successful invasion of my gastro-intestinal track.  At some awkward hour last night, I had to talk my way past one of the Gurkhas guarding the palace, because in a mad effort to find a restroom, I had forgotten to carry my badges with me.  The one benefit of Saddam's megalomaniacal dictatorship has to be his palatial toilet stalls.

Despite an increased schedule of visits to said palace, I had hoped to sponsor my own immune system in a counterstrike.  However, all of my experienced coworkers warned me that it would last for weeks.  So, I found myself sitting in the medic's office (sitting is better than lying on a table).  A newspaper article pinned to the wall warned me all too late not to eat native Iraqi food.  In a sidebar, it listed common symptoms of tapeworms, cholera, and a few unpronouncables.  If, a year from now, large abdominal cysts rupture and cause me organ failure, you might want to warn a guy named Steve that he's got the same fate coming.

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Posted at 1:15pm on Sep. 12, 2004 Message from Victory South

By tacitus

A few weeks ago, my friend Mark V. Rogers signed up with KBR to do IT work in Iraq.  Barely a month later, he is stationed at Victory South.  We will be featuring intermittent e-mails from him as they arrive.  They are reprinted only with his explicit permission, and all copyrights are his.  If you have questions or comments for Mark, please leave them in comments here, or feel free to e-mail me.

Greetings from Victory South!

A heightened sense of alertness hung over the camp yesterday as the terrorist calendar marked a commemorative occasion.  Out here, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to fire a rocket, but an attack on September 11th seemed too obvious.  They waited to wake me up just before 06:00 on September 12th.

Thank goodness for the jarring sound of explosions, because my new alarm clock failed to go off.  I might have overslept.  By the fourth and closest bang, I had thrown on my PPE (personal protective equipment) and joined my buddy P.J.  We crouched behind a towering concrete barrier and waited for our third companion Jay, who apparently took the time to put on matching socks.

Some people joke that smoking saves lives because a week or two before I arrived here, a guy stepped outside for a cigarette just before his bedroom was blown to pieces.  However, P.J. tells me the story of a guy he knew who stepped out on his porch for a cigarette shortly before his porch was blown to pieces.  The consensus here is that God has either signed your name on a mortar or He hasn't.

Several days ago, I met a Texan named Monty, who works in the Green Zone.  When asked why he parades about in a 10-gallon hat, he replied, "They can't shoot worth shit, and I'm hoping they're aiming at me."

Remind me never to stand next to a cowboy.

....

I've heard that our radar tracks incoming mortars, but I don't know that we have any counterbattery fire.  The helicopters are usually pretty quick to the skies.

Our morning was quiet compared to what happened in the Green Zone.  A friend of mine there said it was hell.  Supposedly, we had five unexploded ordnances on the ground somewhere, but I guess they got that cleaned up already....

I have an Iraqi friend who gives me the low-down on local sentiment.  She believes Iran has a lot to do with Iraq's problems today.  That corroborates what my Iranian friend told me last December.

More as it comes.

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Posted at 10:04pm on Sep. 11, 2004 Heads up.

By tacitus

No confirmation, of course -- and catastrophic accidents are no stranger to this benighted land -- but I suspect the North Koreans have just detonated a nuclear weapon.

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Posted at 1:26pm on Sep. 9, 2004 Dear Wolves

By tacitus

Sheep here.  Trying hard to keep fellow sheep in line.  Doesn't help when you eat us.  We promise to try harder so you won't.

Sincerely,

Sheep

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Posted at 10:37am on Sep. 8, 2004 Now that's what I call pro-life governance.

By tacitus

The Netherlands, whatever its glorious history as a bastion of pro-Americanism and Protestantism, is in the modern day a sad bastion of some of the more barbarous manifestations of secular Western culture.  More pernicious than the infamous red-light district of Amsterdam is the growing Dutch fascination with the institutionalization and promotion of -- there is no other way to put it -- death.  The grotesque spectacle of the Netherlands's euthanasia regime is perhaps the most prominent example; but where there is killing of the old and sick, there is inevitably killing of the young and well.

And so we get the abortion ship.

The ship itself is an unremarkable craft; the organization that operates it, Women on Waves, is reminiscent of nothing so much as the pre-Civil War American pro-slavers, desperate to expand their evil institutions to free lands -- lest its fruitful absence anywhere discredit them and their worldview.  And so the vessel travels to nations with a strong pro-life traditions -- Ireland, Poland -- and, within sight of those shores, takes in women and kills their unborn children at their request.  It is a veritable floating abbatoir, and hitherto the frustration of pro-life governments unable to stop its pernicious work so long as it circles in international waters.

"Hitherto" because the Portuguese are having none of it.

Portugal, with some of the strongest pro-life laws in Europe, is blocking the abortion ship from coming close enough to perform its work -- and threatening to sink it if it tries.  Pathetically, while conceding the Portuguese right to do this, the Dutch government has interceded on behalf of the maritime symbol of what its once-proud nation has become.  But Portugal will not bend: Portuguese courts have endorsed the stance, and it looks as if a lonely battle for life in Europe may here be won.

The fight goes on.  But for now, bravo to tiny Portugal for standing firm where other nations and American courts flounder and fail.

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Posted at 6:39pm on Aug. 27, 2004 Drone and idiot

By tacitus

Please, please, let left and right agree that defaming the United States for the benefit of foreign audiences is a loathesome idea:

Police used tear gas Friday night to disperse more than 2,000 demonstrators who lit fires, smashed windows and beat up journalists while marching through downtown Athens to protest the weekend visit of Secretary of State Colin Powell.

The demonstrators, who scuffled with police in front of the Parliament, fought running battles with riot squads trying to prevent them from reaching the U.S. Embassy....

The protesters marched in front of Athens University, beating drums, spraying graffiti on the walls and unfurling banners criticizing President Bush.

"Powell is the man who peddled Bush's lies on Iraq," said protest organizer, Yiannis Sifahakis. "He is a murderer and we don't want him here."

....Among those who joined in before the violence broke out was Andrea Murray, 22, who graduated from Duke University in North Carolina. She said she was looking for Athens' National Museum and instead found the demonstration.

"I found this and I thought, like wow! I am participating because I am American and I want Greeks to know that not all Americans are drones or idiots," Murray said.

"I'm no drone, nor an idiot -- and I'll prove it by joining this passing mob!"

What's a Duke education worth these days?

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Posted at 10:36am on Aug. 26, 2004 Strange happenings in the Diablo Range.

By tacitus

I post the below without attribution or comment.  It is, however, legitimate.  Read on.

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Posted at 3:48pm on Aug. 24, 2004 Terror attacks probably underway in Russia

By tacitus

At this moment -- and kudos to this fellow for staying hot on it -- we've got two passenger aircraft down, both within four minutes of one another and having taken off from the same airport.  Furthermore, there is a report of a bomb having exploded in Moscow proper.

The bomb is obviously terror-related -- my guess is that the aircraft are as well.  Stand by for updates.

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Posted at 11:16am on Aug. 24, 2004 Life's unfair

By tacitus

Kos is griping that ABC News will dare to cover the RNC beyond a point which, say, he would prefer.  Ergo, ABC News bad, they're hacks, SCLM, damnable White House pressure, etc., etc.

Hm.  How did the love affair between the major media and the rabid left go so badly wrong?

Maybe he's really upset because ABC News isn't unethically forwarding him inside info anymore.

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Posted at 6:30pm on Aug. 13, 2004 The glory and the dream

By tacitus

The Olympics begin.

I'd say make us proud, but I already am.

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Posted at 7:58am on Aug. 9, 2004 Red State in Wired

By tacitus

Red State has been featured in Wired News.  It's a generally fair writeup (even if it does leave out one-third of the RS founding team), more or less accurately portraying the emergence of right-wing blogospheric communities as something nascent, essentially untapped by the formal party organizations, and playing catch-up to the organizationally admirable examples of their left-wing predecessors.

The real gem in the story is the arrogance and ignorance of one Markos Moulitsas Zúniga:

"[The Republicans] don't need Red State or any other 'little person' with a website. They've got plenty of Enrons and Halliburtons to keep writing $2,000 checks."

Of course, Enron doesn't exist, and hasn't for some time; Halliburton is staggering under a combination of massive fines and a second-quarter loss, with the prospect of more to come.  Meanwhile, hapless John Kerry is benefitting from the paltry largesse of small-time businessmen George Soros and Warren Buffett.  To say nothing of a very few other small business owners.  The man is struggling, I tell you, while the well-monied right wing attack machine churns relentlessly on.  Or something like that, in the land of relentless self-pity and embitterment that is the American left.

Are we "little people"?  Yeah.  The three founders, twenty-five editors, and one-thousand-plus registered readers of Red State (in less than a month of existence!) are ordinary Americans from all walks of life.  Little people?  Sure.  And who could be smaller than us?

The man who mocks the "little person," for one.

But little is not powerless.  And it is not voiceless.  You, the "little people" of Red State, are going to get your chance to show what little people can do.  And you'll get it this very morning.

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Posted at 3:09pm on Aug. 8, 2004 The world according to Kos.

By tacitus

Is a non-terror-supporting, pro-American, non-genocidal, non-foreign-agression-supporting, non-dictatorial regime with some serious human rights shortcomings preferable to its terror-supporting, anti-American, genocidal, aggressive beyond its borders, dictatorial predecessor with massive and systemic human rights problems? Seems obvious, doesn't it?  

Not if you're Markos Zuniga.

Note this well: the critique here is that the current regime in Iraq is the moral equal of the Ba'athist tyranny.  Ergo, the war has accomplished nothing beyond killing a thousand-odd Americans and allies.

In a season where Vietnam, as the proving ground of the heroic young patriot John Kerry, is so very much back in the public eye -- and in a season wherein the peace-at-any-price wing of the Democratic Party once more rears its bloody head -- it is notable that we once more see this manner of fool's calculus emerge.  We've seen it plenty of times before: it is the calculus by which Nguyen Ngoc Loan's execution of a Viet Cong murderer is more a cause for outrage than mass graves in Hue; it is the calculus by which an Indochina staggering under Communist genocide and slavery is preferable to an Indochina with a fighting chance for freedom; it is the calculus by which the perfect is the enemy of the good.

It is, in short, at once the most juvenile and deadly mindset possible when it comes to wars like that in Iraq.  For what, after all, is Zuniga's alternative?  Whom better is there to turn Iraq over to than the stand-up, assertive, consultative arrangement extant?  The Sadrists?  The Sunni Islamists?  The Ba'athists?  Is his outrage at some prison abuse -- detestable prison abuse, mind you -- so great that he's willing to abandon the only indigenous force standing against a total descent into tyranny and slaughter in Iraq?  Is his hatred of Bush so great he's willing to consign the innocents of Iraq to murderous theocracy in the interest of a ham-handed notion of moral purity?

Well.  Of course he is.  Bashing the President is everything.  As for the people of Iraq -- screw them.

I give you the base of modern Democratic Party.

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Posted at 8:58am on Aug. 8, 2004 A few thoughts on party differences.

By tacitus

When was the last time you encountered....

 Republicans organizing en masse to disrupt the other party's national convention?

 Republicans discussing, even jokingly, the possibility of emigrating to Canada or Europe if the other party wins?

 Republicans expressing a belief in American declinism as an active principle of international politics?

 As a corollary, Republicans declaring any American endeavor abroad as inherently unwinnable?

 Republicans asserting a belief in a non-American nation or institution as a moral superior to the United States?

 Republicans expressing an active fear of or a belief in the invalidity of American democracy or electoral processes?

 Republicans promising to raise taxes on anyone at all?

Now, when was the last time you encountered a Democrat doing any of these things?  Right.  And they're the optimistic ones?

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Posted at 3:21pm on Aug. 5, 2004 The victims

By tacitus

Sometimes you think the American left has learned to curb its excesses.  Indeed, this is what the likes of the Kerry campaign want you to think.  And then you see things like the DNC, and the idiot contretemps over Instapundit's egregious racism, and you realize that at bottom it hasn't changed at all.

You can read the links to Atrios and Gilliard for yourself.  Suffice it to say that a man who hammered at the Trent Lott story and called for his resignation again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again  -- and then expressed satisfaction when the resignation occurred -- probably isn't a racist.  (That's maybe half of Reynolds's Lott posts, by the bye.  I got tired of copying the URLs.)

Oh yeah, and then there's his family.  Well.

It's the classic leftist mindset in action: dour, humorless, paranoid, endlessly ready to proclaim righteous victimhood on the thinnest pretext -- and assuming the most vile of evils (no, not killing the unborn -- racism) of its ideological opponents.  Surprising?  No.  A useful reminder, in fact.  Seeing the likes of Atrios and Gilliard in high dudgeon initially inspires feelings of high dudgeon in return.  But upon reflection, a more considered response emerges to the tomfoolery and smears that are so edifying to the rest of America:

More of this, please.

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Posted at 7:02pm on Aug. 1, 2004 In other news, Voyager is still crap.

By tacitus

And Chiang Kai-Shek is still dead.

Anyway, yet another nail in the coffin of the worst Trek series ever may be found here.

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