Various Items on the Net

Plot to attack US Embassy in Karachi, Pakistan reported by AP in Yahoo! News.
Excerpt:
Homeland Security officials say there is no specific evidence about an attack using small aircraft in the United States. But the advisory says al-Qaida could try to use such planes because they are easily available and require less pilot skill than large jets.

Security procedures also are less rigorous for small aircraft, there would be no need to attempt to control a large group of passengers and a credit card could be used to rent such a plane, the advisory said.
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By all accounts the various arrests of Al-Qaida have disrupted them. At some point, hopefully, their numbers would be so reduced they give up the fight. Unfortunately, it doesn't take too many people to cause damage and disruption. Remember, the DC area sniper? Two men essentially paralyzed a major metro area.




Got this item in the emailbox from a friend: columnist Horowitz takes on columnist Huffington about the Iraq war.
Excerpt:
They argued that the death toll would be prodigious; that Iraq might even be another Vietnam; that costs were so high not even the freedom of 18 million Iraqis was worth it. The military operation would be so difficult and consuming, they warned, that pursuing it would cripple the “other war” on terrorism. This, of course, was disingenuous since they had not notably supported the war on terrorism (with some exceptions). There had been 150 “peace” demonstrations in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. These demonstrations were organized to protest in advance any armed American response to the attacks. But in the prologue to the Iraq war, the same “anti-war” forces pretended that they had not opposed the retributive (and preventive) war on al-Qaeda and the Taliban and argued instead that a war on Iraq would hinder the efforts to complete that task.
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Breathtaking geopolitical ignorance abounds in all of the left’s critiques of the war, but especially in Huffington’s. “Unilateralism” (ill-defined) is invariably bad, for example, no matter what circumstances recommend it. Huffington deplores it not only in so far as the Russians and French are concerned, but the Arabs as well. “Back in 1991, more than half-a-dozen Arab nations were part of our Desert Storm coalition. Operation Iraqi Freedom’s ‘coalition of the willing’ had zero.” Well, not quite zero. Huffington seems not to have noticed that the command headquarters for the war (CENTCOM) was based in Qatar, an Arab state, and the ground war was launched from Kuwait. Worse, she ignores the enormous benefit resulting from the fact that Arab states like Saudia Arabia were not part of the American coalition.
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I think Huffington can be pretty hit or miss in her commentaries. She has been big on pointing out corporate corruption and corporate welfare which is right on target. But on other stuff, sometimes she misses the mark. And on the war, she was typical of the anti-war crowd. And so in this article, Horowitz, as bloggers say, gave a "Fisking" to Huffington for many many paragraphs. FYI, I'm told a "Fisking" is to pummel somebody in writing. The term is in honor of Robert Fisk and anti-war colunmist of the UK paper the Guardian. If somebody could tell me more about the origin of this strange phase, I'd love to hear it.



Hugh Hewitt wonders why there has been so little coverage of the recent White House Correspondants Dinner. Usually, this big affair gets a certain amount of buzz. But this year its been strangely quiet.

Excerpts:

On Saturday night, President Bush spoke at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. He included in his remarks a moving tribute to Michael Kelly, columnist and editor of the Atlantic Monthly, and NBC's David Bloom, both of whom had died in the war in Iraq.

The president quoted Kelly's father and the praises of his colleagues, and held Kelly's intellectual honesty and fearlessness up for the approval of the audience, and the audience clapped.

The president then read from David Bloom's last e-mail home, in which the rising star of NBC wrote to his wife that he cared not much for his professional achievement compared to his love for three things: Jesus, her and their daughters. The audience again expressed approval of the president's tribute.

Moving words by a world leader to a moved audience. But I doubt you saw them on your television or read of them in a prominent place in your paper.
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My suspicion is that the news executives who decided not to run it did so out of a personal disapproval of the message, generally, and Bloom's last letter, specifically. I have worked in newsrooms for a dozen years, and the hostility to religious belief within those quarters is intense and widespread. The president's remarks did not get much airtime because they were so powerful, not because they were dull.
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A couple of months ago, the National Security Adviser gave a wonderful address at the National Day of Prayer which addressed her faith and its origins. I played the entire speech and again my audience loved it.

I doubt you heard or read a word of it. Producers seem to have agreed that it couldn't be newsworthy because it addressed matters of faith.
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Indeed, it is strange how little God shows up in the media (news or entertainment) given how many people in the US believe in God and actively go to church. But sometimes the news can't escape God and faith. Do you remember the live coverage as the news was breaking that the POWs were rescued? The news reporters would visit the parents, friends and family of the POWs when they were rescued to get their reaction. So many talked about prayer and God and the support of the church members. They talked about it naturally because it was an important part of their lives.