Smoking gun - er - letter:

Halfway down the middle column is written: ''Abid Al-Karim Muhamed Aswod, intelligence officer responsible for the coordination of activities with the Osama bin Laden group at the Iraqi embassy in Pakistan.''

Why do I have the feeling a lot more stuff like this is going to come out about Saddam pretty soon? There's no political reason for Bush to release every piece of information that has come out of Iraq. No reason at all not to keep it and make sure it's correct, unless some reporter gets wind of it. And knowing something the Osamas and Saddams of the world don't know you know could come in handy. The opponents aren't going to believe anything the administration trots out anyway, so it's better to keep cool and release the confirmed, fully utilized information after the Democrat dwarves have had ample opportunity to make idiots of themselves. Not that they need much help. This political poker session could be one of the most artistically executed ever. Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of Democrats. I just wish I trusted the Republicans to stay away from collectivist domestic policy. I know. Dream on.

I agree ...
OK, last Coulter post for now, I promise. This article in Newsmax.com does the best job I've seen yet of refuting Coulter's - and McCarthy's - critics. I still find it a little hard to believe that I now believe Joe McCarthy, when for decades I thought of him as the Antichrist. I demonstrated against the Vietnam war and for socialism, I blush to admit. I took it for granted that the HUAC and McCarthy's Senate committees were Star Chambers picking on innocent lefties, destroying lives in order to get power. I never could see, somehow, that Communist spies did harm the United States and the cause of Freedom. I mean, after all, Nixon, the other Antichrist, was on McCarthy's side. It is clear to me now, though, that the prevalence of Communists around the centers of power in the US in the late Forties did cause immense injury to our country's interests.
Just imagine if the Rosenbergs and Hiss and the like had not given atomic secrets to the Russians, because they had been stopped by people like Joe McCarthy. Just imagine if the Russians had not had atomic weapons at the time of the Korean War. The North Koreans, with their newly empowered Chinese and Russian supporters just might not have dared to cross the Thirty-Eighth parallel into South Korea. What if Truman had been able to allow - if he would have - MacArthur to use atomic weapons on the Red Army with no fear of retaliation? The Chinese would never have dared attack, since they would obviously have been told of the possibility. Then there would have been no Korean War. Tens of thousands of US soldiers would not have died, and hundreds of thousands of Korean and Chinese. Even if the nuclear standoff had only been postponed by a few years, that might have been enough time for the South Korean economy to develop to the point where it could defend itself.
But no. Thanks to the socialist traitors, a bloody stalemate was the best we could do. And the Communists discovered something about Truman. He would not push back beyond a certain point. As Coulter mentions, it's not a coincidence that the Korean armistice talks started when it was clear Eisenhower was to be President. It's also not a coincidence that the Communists started pushing again, in Laos and then Vietnam, when another Democrat, Kennedy, came into office and was succeeded by Johnson, who was pushing Socialism at home as forcefully as he was lackadaisically allowing it to gain ground abroad. Then when Nixon came into office in 1969, peace talks happened. Coincidence?
Democratic Presidents are all liberals. And they employ people like Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White and Dean Rusk and Dean Acheson and Walt Whitman Rostow - and Eugene V. (named for Eugene V. Debs) Rostow. Meaning traitors. I agree also with Coulter on this. Saddam knew Clinton wouldn't attack him for real. Perhaps the only benefit of having eight years of Clinton was that it lulled Saddam into a false sense of security. But the price for that lack of preparation was 9/11. And thousands of dead Iraqis as well.

More Coulter-mania
I'm still ticked off at the way "conservatives" like Sullivan and Reynolds and the Wall Street Journal are excoriating Ann Coulter's effective and generally true and needed comments on fifty years of liberal perfidy. The Curmudgeon (emeritus) appears to agree. Can you think of any time when "mainstream" Democrats attacked their own hatemongers, such as Michael Moore? Does Jonathan Alter apologize for Moore's lies? Does Lieberman or Daschle tut-tut about Carville's and Sidney Blumenthal's outrageous, false and stupid stereotypical attacks on President Bush?
I can't think of a single instance where a Democratic columnist or media guru has admitted that Chomsky, Said and the assorted Palestinian apologists have gone too far in criticizing Israel. I haven't heard anyone except "conservatives" criticize the various European idiots whose wacko theories about 9/11 are the toast of the "idiotarian" left. Your average Democrat just snickers in his sleeve and enjoys the spectacle of conservatives rising to the bait Moore and company throw out with no thought at all to whether it's true or civil. The notion of being civil to their ideological enemies hasn't ever existed in the liberal consciousness. Coulter should not be protected from having any purposely false statements or any outrages she may have committed pointed out - although I don't see any in her latest book. But she should not be attacked just to show the Left that Conservatives are really moderates. That's telling them that we will stop pointing out their warts when we start to become effective and noticed. That's nuts.

Update
Thank you, Mr. Horowitz! I knew the criticism of Coulter was off the mark. Maybe a wave of backlash will inspire examination of the double standard the Dem-libs have been getting away with for decades. And maybe someday we'll actually see a Democrat admit the lefties have been wrong about some other things, like, say, global warming, acid rain, the "ozone hole", Malthus, Marx, Mao and matrimony!

I'm for Coulter
I finished Ann Coulter's book TREASON the other day. It's great. I don't know why Sullivan and Mean Mr. Mustard are criticizing it so much. Why is it those on the libertarian right get all nervous and indignant when someone effectively attacks the noxious left? Coulter makes a lot of great points and obviously ticks off the Democrats and many "centrists". So what's not to like? I've been trying to get the following comment onto Mean Mr. M., but comments don't seem to be working so well.

I must disagree. Andrew Sullivan today compares Coulter to Michael Moore. As I emailed to Sullivan, these criticisms ignore the fact that Coulter is basically correct. Most liberals do hate America or, at the very least, tend to agree with America-haters more than those who support freedom. And McCarthy HAS been demonized with a half-century of lies and insults. So where's the "extremism"? Rabinowitz's column has precious few facts. It just repeats the liberal mantra, "Of course, everyone knows McCarthy was a monster". Coulter points out that what "everyone knows" might not be true. The "moderate" attack on Coulter only makes me think she must be even more right than she sounds.

I also emailed Sullivan. Just the fact that people are actually debating whether McCarthy is really a monster makes my day, week, whatever.

Not unexpected
Perhaps it's early yet, but the popularity of gay marriage in Canada is about what I thought it would be - below the radar. It never made any sense. The only problem I have with the Kay column is that it doesn't specifically enough condemn the betrayal of principle that laws permitting gay marriage represent. And for what? The civil union approach isn't any better. It still is mostly useful for horning in on government benefits meant for real families with real children, a traditional if in my view illegitimate subsidy. But why is it a surprise that few gay "couples" want to go through an embarrassing and meaningless ceremony? Given the level of promiscuity among gay men, especially, allowing the necessity of providing such a "right" borders on hallucination. I've often thought the whole gay marriage movement was just another way of attacking heterosexual marriage. The attempt to prove that traditional marriage is just a vehicle to oppress women and indoctrinate children has been a constant theme of the left for forty years now. Maybe gay marriage, though, will be the step too far that derails the entire movement. One can dream.

Misha's good tonight, in't he?
Get yer "yeah, yeah, yeah!!"'s out for the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler's clearest explanation yet of just exactly why Thatcher and Reagan should have statues in every capital of Europe. And why Michael Moore should be met everywhere he goes by the ghosts of the victims of socialism. Or at least their surviving relatives. Great comments, too.