This is the official fishkite plug for a new website we’ve launched, Memphis Redblogs, a collaborative blog featuring conservative and libertarian-minded rightwing types in the Memphis area. We are five bloggers strong and growing, and we welcome new members. In the spirit of memorial day - get thee to thy nearest recruiter. I guess that would be me, or Mike, who created the lovely motivational graphic at left.

It is now buried in the archives, but there is an interesting debate forming in the comments on this post, between Marc Krug (PdD, JD) and me. Krug must have been doing some ego-surfing late last night and found where I linked an article he wrote for Buzzflash.com (my post comes up in the 5th spot when you do a Google search on his name, just below his buzzflash article). He also has an interesting comment on the post just below this one. Mr. Krug, I welcome the challenge, and I hope you enjoy your visit here.

Al Gore:

The President convinced a majority of the country that Saddam Hussein was responsible for attacking us on September 11th. But in truth he had nothing whatsoever to do with it. The President convinced the country with a mixture of forged documents and blatantly false assertions that Saddam was in league with Al Qaeda, and that he was “indistinguishable” from Osama bin Laden.

Once again, I offer a challenge to Gore - find one instance where Bush linked Saddam Hussein to the terrorist attacks on September 11th. That’s an outright distortion on Gore’s part.

But, as it turns out, we’ve found more evidence of the links to Al Qaida than we have of the WMDs. Here’s some new evidence that offers a direct link between Saddam Hussein’s government and the terrorists who planned 9/11.

Now there’s something you won’t C on CNN.

Overnight blogging success Robert Cox from The National Debate emailed me to let me know he had posted a correction at my (and another reader’s) prodding. I have to give him props… his blog became popular recently when he posted a fake New York Times correction page and was subsequently threatened with a lawsuit, which was later dropped. Mr. Cox rightly offers a correction when he is wrong, unlike the media he skewers on a regular basis. Keep up the good work, Robert.

Aside: Good luck trying to get the fake NYT correction page to load. For whatever reason, it wouldn’t open for me, and neither would another one that is mirrored on another site.

CNN:

A businessman sued the promoters of the Atkins Diet and the estate of founder Dr. Robert Atkins, alleging that the low-carb, high-fat meal plan clogged his arteries and threatened his health.

The suit by Jody Gorran, filed Wednesday in Palm Beach County Circuit Court, seeks $15,000.

Gorran, 53, said Thursday he started the diet in May 2001 because his weight had risen from 140 to 148 pounds. In two months, he said, his cholesterol rose from a normal 146 to an unhealthy 230, and by October 2003, he needed heart angioplasty to clear his arteries.

Pioneer Press: Tammy Lafky, a sugar mill worker and single mother in Bird Island, a farming community 90 miles west of St. Paul, became the first Minnesotan sued by name by the recording industry this week for allegedly downloading copyrighted music illegally.

…The lawsuit has stunned Lafky, who earns $12 an hour and faces penalties that top $500,000. She says she can’t even afford an offer by the record companies to settle the case for $4,000.

…Lafky says she doesn’t download free music. Her daughter did last year when she was 14.

another “Bushism” gone bad: “I’m honored to shake the hand of a brave Iraqi citizen who had his hand cut off by Saddam Hussein.”

Volokh writes, “Bush was holding a ceremony involving several Iraqi men who had their severed hands replaced with high-tech prosthetics. …So Bush’s statement is an error / humorous gaffe / telling of his supposed inarticulateness because…?”

My theory was correct: this is the new front on the terror war; it’s the latest skirmish between the Als and the Bushes…

AP: Former Vice President al Gore placed blame for the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal

directly on the Bush administration officials, who he believes put in place policies of “dominance and the disregard for the policy of law.” …Gore [claimed] that those policies are what led soldiers to abuse prisoners, and that top officials are therefore responsible for the scandal.

From Gore’s MoveOn speech:

“[Bush] decided not to honor the Geneva Convention. …Private Lynndie England did not make the decision that the United States would not observe the Geneva Convention. …These policies were designed and insisted upon by the Bush White House. Indeed, the President’s own legal counsel advised him specifically on the subject. His secretary of defense and his assistants pushed these cruel departures from historic American standards… Nor did these abuses spring from a few twisted minds at the lowest ranks of our military enlisted personnel. No, it came from twisted values and atrocious policies at the highest levels of our government. This was done in our name, by our leaders. …The same grotesque misunderstanding of what is really involved was responsible for the tone in the memo from the president’s legal advisor, Alberto Gonzalez, who wrote on January 25, 2002, that 9/11 “renders obsolete Geneva’s strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions.” …The abhorrent acts in the prison were a direct consequence of the culture of impunity encouraged, authorized and instituted by Bush and Rumsfeld in their statements that the Geneva Conventions did not apply. The apparent war crimes that took place were the logical, inevitable outcome of policies and statements from the administration. …he should apologize to the American people for abandoning the Geneva Conventions.

I challenge the F.V.P. to find a single line of the Geneva Conventions that has been abandoned by the Bush Administration. Actually, al Gore is upset because Bush hasn’t offered an unilateral amendment to the Geneva Conventions that would protect terrorists and illegal combatants, while undermining the international treaty system. I wish Gore and his crew were half as interested in stopping foreign terrorism and terrorist acts such as the murder of Nick Berg (not once mentioned in the speech) as they are in placing the blame for snafus like the one at Abu Ghraib (a term specifically mentioned 10 times in his speech) on their domestic political opposition.

Here are some other Gore comments, sprinkled with fact-check hyperlinks:

The war plan was incompetent in its rejection of the advice from military professionals and the analysis of the intelligence was incompetent in its conclusion that our soldiers would be welcomed with garlands of flowers and cheering crowds.

…Zinni’s book will join a growing library of volumes by former advisors to Bush — including his principal advisor on terrorism, Richard Clarke; his principal economic policy advisor, former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, former Ambassador Joe Wilson…

Finally, al Gore quotes David Kay and the President on Iraqi WMDs. Let’s see how these quotes look in context:

David Kay concluded his search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq with the famous verdict: “we were all wrong.” And for many Americans, Kay’s statement seemed to symbolize the awful collision between Reality and all of the false and fading impressions President Bush had fostered in building support for his policy of going to war.

Vs.

“In my judgment, based on the work that has been done to this point of the Iraq Survey Group, and in fact, that I reported to you in October, Iraq was in clear violation of the terms of [U.N.] Resolution 1441. Resolution 1441 required that Iraq report all of its activities — one last chance to come clean about what it had. We have discovered hundreds of cases, based on both documents, physical evidence and the testimony of Iraqis, of activities that were prohibited under the initial U.N. Resolution 687 and that should have been reported under 1441, with Iraqi testimony that not only did they not tell the U.N. about this, they were instructed not to do it and they hid material.” - David Kay

Next:

…[The President] asked the nation, in his State of the Union address, to “imagine” how terrified we should be that Saddam was about to give nuclear weapons to terrorists and stated repeatedly that Iraq posed a grave and gathering threat to our nation.

Vs.

“I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force - if necessary - to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.” - Senator John Kerry, Oct 9, 2002

And here’s the quote to end all quotes:

“Iraq’s search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power.” - Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002

Explain that one, pal.

Lots of recent posts over at my Iraqi WMD Blog, which has benefited from a layout update.

It should be noted that I use the word “blog” loosely there, because I offer little to no analysis beyond the occasional boldface and snarky comment.

Ok, follow me on this…

CNN: “John Kerry may postpone accepting his party’s presidential nomination at the July Democratic convention — a tactic aimed at reserving his campaign war chest for the fight against President Bush. Under federal campaign rules, once a candidate accepts the party nomination, the campaign is limited to spending around $75 million.”

Democratic National Committee spokesman Jano Cabrera: “As a party we are committed to ensuring that we are not fighting with one hand tied behind our backs.”

Kerry spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter: “We are looking at this and many other options very seriously because we won’t fight with one hand behind our back.” No timetable has been set for a decision, she said. “Regardless of the final decision, the Democratic convention will continue to be a celebration of the next president of the United States.”

Guardian: “The Bush campaign is planning how to counteract a convention without a nomination, including the possibility of a separate political rally with Bush elsewhere and demanding equal coverage.”

Bush-Cheney campaign manager Ken Mehlman: “Only John Kerry could be for a nominating convention, but be against the nomination. This is just the latest example of John Kerry’s belief that the rules are for other people, not for him.”

Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt: “If John Kerry doesn’t accept the nomination, it’s not a nominating convention. It’s a consistent pattern of John Kerry believing the rules don’t apply to him.”

It seems both parties are working from talking points, and my fellow conservatives seem to be taking this news at face value. But if Cutter intended it to be, this is a brilliant political move. It could be a total smokescreen, designed to put Kerry back in the headlines and pump some excitement into the normally dull party convention. This sets up the press to report a shocking and triumphant “I accept” speech by the monotoned Kerry, a live-television twist like Schwarzenegger’s announcement on Leno. If the Democrats manage to 1. make the convention interesting and 2. make the candidate’s speech interesting, they’ve stumbled onto a very clever plan. All the free press Kerry would get from something like that would make up for the money he loses by accepting the limited general campaign fund as normal.

If that’s the gameplan, you saw it here first.