I wonder what the Kossites will think when they read (if they bother to) Omar Fahdil’s wry account of the search of his Baghdad house by US troops last night. Last week, after the Fadhil Brothers were quoted by President Bush, several choir members at the Daily Kos started singing a full-blown oratorio (accompanied by various backup performers in the MSM) asserting that Omar and Mohammed must be CIA agents or the like. They couldn’t possibly hold such pro-democracy views on their own. After all, they’re Iraqis!

And now they have been searched by the US Military. What are we to make of this? I’m sure any upstanding Kossite would agree that this is an obvious set-up – a disinformation effort in the grand tradition of similar operations we all know from LeCarré novels. Omar knew all along that the Americans would be showing up! Why else would he have had a barbecue going?!

Now accusations of the Fadhils being in the CIA – because they happen to like democracy – are not new. (Would that the CIA liked democracy as much as they do.) They were already occurring back in December 2004 when I had the pleasure of hosting the brothers at my house. (Here is a Cathy Seipp article – touch my heart – for NRO about the occasion.) But what’s truly interesting about the reaction to Omar and Mohammed is how they create an inability-to-hear among the self-described “progressive” elements in our society. Cognitive dissonance, the term I used in the title of this post, is perhaps not entirely accurate. It may be something closer to good, old-fashioned shame. When confronted with the Fadhils, they are face-to-face with the best in human idealism, something our soi-disant Left lost decades ago. No wonder the Kossites want to disbelieve Omar and Mohammed. I would too were I in their shoes.

I wish the South Park guys would do an episode on Nancy Pelosi “fact-finding” in Syria. The comic potential is immense.

Another take would be to give Nancy a pop quiz on the plane over. “Nancy, what’s an Alawite?” or “What’s Hama?” I’d bet my house (and, yes, it’s intact) you’d get a blank stare and response similar to this one. So maybe it’s a good thing she’s doing a little fact-finding. Bashar Assad will set her straight.

I took this photo in front of my house at 2:40PM Pacific on Friday. Helicopters are flying over head – the Hollywood Hills are once again on fire.

[Do you have insurance?-ed. Yes, and a deductible, alas.]

UPDATE: All clear on the Hollywood front…. I guess God doesn’t want to punish Sean Penn (not that it was very close to his house).

Thanks to Claudia, I finally got a look, late to the party, at this great website. Don’t miss it.

I’m having “anger management” problems over the obscene display of the captured British sailor Faye Turney forced to wear a head scarf on Islamic TV. I feel like smashing the television. One thing about those mullahs – no matter what their apologists in the West are like – they are not cultural relativists. They know how a woman should dress and the devil (literally) take those who disagree.

Of course this kind of battering ram approach to religion and women betrays an obvious psycho-sexual sickness in Islam that goes back to Mohammed that polite society dares not speak aloud. Polite society better wake up. Nothing could be more explicit. Not far away from dressing women like that is the freedom to rape and beat them. Also to remember is that this is just what Khomeini intended for all of us. This is the point of the Islamic revolution.

Gareth Smyth, Tehran correspondent of the Financial Times, has this to say about the current crisis in Iran: For many viewers in Arab and Muslim countries, the contrast with the treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay or Abu Ghraib would have been self-evident.

Say what? I thought this guy was Tehran correspondent. As every citizen of that city (evidently except Mr. Smyth) knows full well, their Evin Prison is one of the worst hellholes on the planet, from which many people never emerge alive. It makes Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo seem like country clubs. (Indeed reports from Guantanamo indicate it really is.)

In fact, the presence of places like Evin Prison are what keeps the Iranian regime in place. I recently (last week) met a man who spent many years there, one of the leaders of the Iranian student movement. They used to torture his brother (also a student leader) in front of him. Then switch back and forth. The man now has his face entirely pushed in and looks like a Picasso. The brother was ultimately murdered in that prison. The man I met escaped with the aid of friends through Kurdish territories. I wonder if Mr. Smyth would like to interview him. It could be arranged. But then he might have trouble holding onto his press clearances in Tehran.

Pathetic. Predictable. Pusillanimous.

The Democrats were in a bind. They had to … or thought they had to…. push this vote to appease their base at very moment the situation may be improving in Iraq. In fact, the bind was so tight most of these supposedly progressive politicians probably didn’t want to examine the situation with any care or specificity because it would only confuse them and cause ambivalence, second thoughts, all those uncomfortable feelings.

Now, since it is clear (and always has been) Bush will veto this legislation, the Democrats are more than ever in the position of having to root for an American defeat and the defeat of democracy in Iraq. They have bet their political lives on our failure.

Pathetic. Predictable. Pusillanimous.

The Democrats were in a bind. They had to … or thought they had to…. push this vote to appease their base at very moment the situation may be improving in Iraq. In fact, the bind was so tight most of these supposedly progressive politicians probably didn’t want to examine the situation with any care or specificity because it would only confuse them and cause ambivalence, second thoughts, all those uncomfortable feelings.

Now, since it is clear (and always has been) Bush will veto this legislation, the Democrats are more than ever in the position of having to root for an American defeat and the defeat of democracy in Iraq. They have bet their political lives on our failure.

Pathetic. Predictable. Pusillanimous.

The Democrats were in a bind. They had to … or thought they had to…. push this vote to appease their base at very moment the situation may be improving in Iraq. In fact, the bind was so tight most of these supposedly progressive politicians probably didn’t want to examine the situation with any care or specificity because it would only confuse them and cause ambivalence, second thoughts, all those uncomfortable feelings.

Now, since it is clear (and always has been) Bush will veto this legislation, the Democrats are more than ever in the position of having to root for an American defeat and the defeat of democracy in Iraq. They have bet their political lives on our failure.

Riots and euphemisms return to Paris. [Still the "youths," huh?-ed. Makes me remember Frankie Lymon - "No, no, no, no...no, I'm not a juvenile delinquent."]