Although the present world is fascinating place there are times when temporary escape is not only desirable but necessary. The princely sum of about eight dollars rented two movies about stirring events from another time and place. From 1938 there was the Adventures of Robin Hood with Errol Flynn, Claude Rains, Olivia de Havilland and Basil Rathbone.  As history it is bunk and totally unrealistic. But as entertainment it is absolutely first rate, principally because of the snappy dialogue, not surprising in a Michael Curtiz film.  From 1950 there was the Halls of Montezuma, with Richard Widmark, Jack Palance, Karl Malden, Robert Wagner, Richard Boone and Jack Webb.  I did not expect the film to amount to much, but it soon became apparent that it was head and shoulders above nearly other Hollywood World War 2 movie ever made.  Some reviewers have called it the inspiration for Saving Private Ryan and in some ways it is actually better.

The reason may have something to do with reference sets.

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What happened at Walter Reed? An article in USA Today suggests that events which have still to become public knowledge led to Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan’s departure from the Walter Reed Army medical center.

At issue, S. Ward Casscells told USA TODAY, “is whether the Army missed a warning signal. It’s a legitimate question.” … Casscells, who retired in April as the Pentagon’s assistant secretary for health affairs, said he had been speaking to many who worked with Hasan at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center near Washington, D.C.

Some at Walter Reed, Casscells said, was that Hasan was sent to Fort Hood for “a fresh start” after a difficult time at Walter Reed.

Hasan received a poor performance evaluation there, the Associated Press reported, quoting an official who spoke on condition of anonymity. While he was an intern, Hasan had some “difficulties” that required counseling and extra supervision, according to Dr. Thomas Grieger, who was the training director at the time. …

“Talking to people who knew him,” Casscells said, “no one thinks that this was (post traumatic stress), and they are skeptical that he was subject to religious harassment.”

“That is not tolerated in the military. The military will look at all this closely and decide if there is any mental or physical illness, whether this is just a lonely guy with a remote personality who got a bad officer evaluation report and lost the confidence of his peers, maybe withdrew into religion as solace. What could we have missed? How could we do better?”

“These are the types of questions that will be rigorously asked.”

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Regarding the post, The Armies of the Right a reader notes:

Of 412 comments, comments number 58, 64, 69, 74, 81, 83, 88, 89, 92, 98, 101, 104, 107, 111, 115, 116, 129, 131, 133, 137, 154, 157, 162, 165, 166, 167, 172, 174, 179, 180, 186, 191, 193, 195, 198, 200, 205, 206, 208, 212, 213, 215, 217, 229, 231, 234, 241, 249, 252, 253, 260, 263, 265, 267, 278, 288, 293, 295, 299, 323, 325, 326, 327, 333, 334, 348, 350, 352, 355, 358, 359, 365, 369, 386, 387, 389, 390, 392, 394, 395, 397 and 402 were made by one disrupter. That’s 82 of 412, or 20%, or 1 of every 5 comments.
The commentariat did not cover themselves with glory on this one.

Comments number 68, 72, 79, 80, 82, 84, 85, 86, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 100, 102, 103, 108, 110, 112, 114, 120, 125, 132, 136, 138, 142, 143, 155, 158, 159, 163, 170, 176, 177, 182, 185, 188, 196, 197, 199, 202, 203, 207, 209, 210, 214, 216, 218, 219, 221, 222, 226, 228, 230, 232, 233, 235, 244, 246, 251, 254, 257, 258, 286, 298, 301, 306, 308, 309, 310, 315, 318, 335, 343, 344, 346, 349, 354, 356, 360, 363,364, 366, 368, 370, 372,373, 374, 375, 377, 380, 381, 388, 391, 393, 396, 400, 401, 403, 405, 409, were responses to the troll, either to him or about him. 102 comments to be added to his 82 = 184, or 45% .

Damn near half of that post’s comments were by him or about him. That’s effective disruption.

Open thread.

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Recent news articles outline the extents of the debate over what constitutes a licit national defense. Those who are against using war as an counterterrorism method have argued that the US ought to use police and intelligence methods — rather than military solutions — when fighting al-Qaeda. An article in Wired, for example, describes a national “hit squad” that can be used instead of expeditionary forces.

CIA director Leon Panetta got into hot water with Congress, after he revealed an agency program to hunt down and kill terrorists. A recent report from the U.S. military’s Joint Special Operations University argues that the CIA didn’t go far enough. Instead, it suggests the American government should set up something like a “National Manhunting Agency” to go after jihadists, drug dealers, pirates and other enemies of the state. …

Sometimes, that will mean operating “in uncooperative countries.” In those cases, the teams must be prepared “to act unilaterally, with no support or coordination with local authorities, in a manner similar to that employed by Israel’s Avner team in response to the Munich Olympics massacre.” … Such a group wouldn’t just go after terrorists. “Human networks are behind narcotics trafficking, arms proliferation, piracy, hiding war criminals from authorities, human trafficking, or other smuggling activities,” Crawford writes. “Human networks also lie at the core of national governments, offering an increased potential to nonlethally influence state actors with precision. A robust manhunting capability would allow the United States to interdict these human networks.”

The idea that America will replace Sergeant Rock with Jason Bourne may at first seem like an enlightened one. But hold on. Weighing in on the other side was Italian Judge Oscar Magi, who sentenced 23 CIA agents to jail in absentia for allegedly taking part in the kidnapping of Abu Omar in 2003 and rendering him to Egypt. Jason Bourne had better be prepared to stay on the run from the Italian authorities.

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There was a subtle difference between the slogans chanted by two groups of street marchers marking the 30th anniversary of the takeover of the US Embassy in Iran.

TEHRAN became a battleground again last night between supporters and opponents of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as Iran marks the 30th anniversary of the storming of the US embassy. … Protesters chanted “Death to the dictator” while a pro-government group that had also gathered at the square chanted “Death to America”.

The differences had as much to do with present politics as it did with history, with each side trying to harness history for their own ends. “Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the former prime minister defeated by Mr Ahmadinejad in June, had urged supporters to make the day a reminder that “it is the people who are the leaders”. Mehdi Karroubi, another defeated presidential candidate, was expected to march through the capital. … Meanwhile, in a sign of a hardening stance on nuclear talks, Iran’s supreme leader accused the US of trying to strong-arm Tehran.”

“Whenever the US offers a smile, it hides a dagger in his back,” Ayotollah Khamenei said, according to the state news agency IRNA. He rejected “talks in which the US decides about its results in advance.”

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Political pundits were divided over the significance of Doug Hoffman’s successful bid to grab the “conservative” banner from Dede Scozzafava in the race for New York’s 23rd Congressional District. Scozzafava withdrew after finding herself trailing badly in three way polls between Hoffman and Democratic Candidate Bill Owens. The National Review saw Scozzafava’s defeat as the “first Republican scalp” of the Tea Party Movement, itself a kind of insurgency within the GOP demanding a return to the principles of small government and low taxes. Certainly Hoffman’s candidacy seems like perfect evidence for the proposition that both the Republican and Democratic Party leadership are the same class of people divided by cosmetic differences. For one, Scozzafava was hardly the stereotypical conservative. The National Review wrote:

Her sympathies — pro-choice, pro-homosexual marriage, weak on taxes, sticking by the Teamsters and the SEIU on the “card check” program, which would deprive workers of a secret ballot in union-organizing votes — found her to the left of many Democrats and most Republicans. It was no surprise, then, that she enjoyed the support of such hard-Left elements as ACORN, the government-employee unions, and Daily Kos honcho Markos Moulitsas Zúñiga.

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The mother of a woman who died from a drug overdose blamed the BBC for not saving her daughter from its “cocaine culture”.  Natasha Collins was found dead “after she and her fiance, children’s TV star Mark Speight, had spent the evening taking ‘significant’ amounts of cocaine.”

Last night Natasha’s mother, Carmen Collins, said she believed the couple would still be alive had they not worked in television. And she attacked the BBC for not doing more to tackle the problem of drugs in the media industry.  She said: ‘I do think they have a responsibility to their staff and random checks could help save a lot of people’s lives. The BBC should do random drug-tests on all its staff. …

‘There is a huge cocaine culture so it should look out for its employees. … Two weeks ago the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee inquiry into the cocaine trade was told by former BBC producer Sarah Graham that she was offered the drug on her first day at the Corporation.

‘The BBC executives must know it is happening and should protect people like my daughter when they enter the industry.’ …

[Collins said] ‘People need to know that going into the TV industry, there is a massive chance they will be exposed to drugs.  ‘In hindsight, I’d love it if Natasha had chosen to go into teaching like her sister and not into TV. But she had this dream of being an actress and the drug culture in the industry killed her.’

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Here is the final poll for the Best Commenter on the Belmont Club. I’ve tabulated the data from the nominations in a table shown below the Read More. Some of the nominations were ambiguously stated, but I did my best to decipher them.

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Peggy Noonan adopts a meme that has been sweeping the blogs of late, the idea that America’s elite is broken; so broken she says, that it doesn’t know it’s broken. In a WSJ article, she describes the current and disastrous reign of “callous children”; people who have “never seen things go dark” and are leading their nation into the abyss.  For the first time, she says, the national mood is one of despondency. There are no solutions because the problems come from within. The heirs have grown strange and wayward. They have gone off into the dark to return at whiles speaking in odd voices.  Noonan describes the sense of loss she feels in the current economic and political crisis.

Everyone had a path through.

Now they don’t. The most sophisticated Americans, experienced in how the country works on the ground, can’t figure a way out. Have you heard, “If only we follow Obama and the Democrats, it will all get better”? Or, “If only we follow the Republicans, they’ll make it all work again”? I bet you haven’t, or not much.

This is historic. This is something new in modern political history, and I’m not sure we’re fully noticing it. Americans are starting to think the problems we are facing cannot be solved … from the White House through Congress, and so many state and local governments … they are not offering a new path, they are only offering old paths—spend more, regulate more, tax more in an attempt to make us more healthy locally and nationally. …

Rep. Barney Frank had just said on some cable show that the Democrats of the White House and Congress “are trying on every front to increase the role of government in the regulatory area.” The executive [Noonan spoke to] said of Washington: “They don’t understand that people can just stop, get out. I have friends and colleagues who’ve said to me ‘I’m done.’ ” He spoke of his own increasing tax burden and said, “They don’t understand that if they start to tax me so that I’m paying 60%, 55%, I’ll stop.”

The bipartisan urge to tax and spend has become an addiction. And amazingly enough, the addicted think the music will never stop. Those words: “I’ll stop” are a phrase that the people in power — “the children” in Noonan’s words — never thought to hear. What? Stop? How can you stop? How can you say there’s no more money? Where have you hidden the money? Those in power think there’ll always be more money, Noonan believes, because there’s always been money. All they had to do was cry louder to make it come.  They’ve come to imagine they’ve come into possession of a magic orange. All you have to do is squeeze harder and the juice keeps flowing out.  She continues: (more…)