The GOP had its "Contract With America" 12 years ago. The Democrats of 2006 are offering their "Suicide Pact With America."

I'm reading Mark Steyn's book, AMERICA ALONE, and he makes a solid case that Europe, with its statism, its multicultural equivalency, its cradle-to-grave social programs, its radical secularism, its pacifistic appeasement, and particularly its less-than-replacement birth rates, is a collection of dying nations.  John Kerry made a big deal in 2004 that the US should become more like Europe.  Steyn makes the point that most of Europe will be overrun with Muslims within a few decades, and what we now consider to be the cradle of Western Civilization will be dead.  Democrats in this country would have us go the route of Europe, and join its suicide pact.  No thanks.

The GOP in Congress has been a disappointment on a number of fronts, but anyone who is mad enough at the Republican Party to consider sitting on the sidelines this election, or who plans to make a protest vote which will allow the Dems to regain power in Washington, is allowing the US to be turned back over to those who have adopted nihilism and hopelessness as their formal political ideology.  Allowing the Dems to regain power is a ticket to the demise of the American culture and nation.  This isn't hyperbole; this is the way it is.

A Danish scholar believes that Islam is dying, but "Christian Europe" is already dead, and the terminal ideology of Islam may fill the void before it, too, goes belly-up.  (Click on the link for the full article.)

Is Islam Dying? Europe Certainly Is
Brussels Journal ^ | 21 September 2006 | Paul Belien

Dr Koenraad Elst, one of Belgium’s best orientalists and an occasional contributor to this website (if I had time I would translate more of his Dutch-language contributions into English), told me last week that he thinks “Islam is in decline, despite its impressive demographic and military surge” – which according to Dr Elst is merely a “last upheaval.”

He acknowledges, however, that this decline can take some time (at least in terms of the individual human life span) and that it is possible that Islam will succeed in becoming the majority religion in Europe before collapsing.

I am not a specialist of Islam. Hence, I do not know what to think of this analysis. Perhaps it can be argued that Islam is in agony, and that this is precisely the reason why Muslims reacted so sensitively to twelve, mostly inoffensive, Danish cartoons earlier this year and why they respond in a fury beyond all reason to the words of a 14th century Byzantine Emperor quoted last week by Pope Benedict XVI. The Pope emphasized that he did not approve of the quote, but the reactions of Muslims to the Emperor’s words “Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman,” only lends credibility to what the Emperor said.

If a person is incapable of tolerating criticism, including mild criticism, and especially if he perceives criticism where there is none, this is often a sign of this person’s deep psychological insecurity. Rude aggression and wild rage, too, are usually not the normal behaviour of a self-confident person, but rather of someone who knows that he will lose an argument unless he can bully others into silence.

Last Sunday, Catholics going to Holy Mass in London’s Westminster Cathedral were confronted by Christophobic Muslims, carrying hate posters such as...“Benedict watch your back,” “May Allah curse the Pope,” “Jesus is the slave of Allah, “Islam will conquer Rome,” and the like. An English blogger has some photos here. What must one make of these Muslim protestors? Do they look like self-assured people?

It looks as if Muslims cannot cope with an open society and the modern globalized world. Should we interpret their aggression – the result of their inability to cope with the world – as a token of strenght, or rather as a sign of inherent weakness – a sign, as Dr Elst says, that the decline of Islam has visibly begun?...

Perhaps, as Dr Elst fears, Islam in its stage of decline might, by the mid-21st century, succeed in conquering Europe and becoming the old continent’s dominant religion. In this knowledge one slogan of last Sunday’s Islamic hatemongerers in London may be more than just hate speech: “Islam will conquer Rome” may be prophetic. Here, however, we ourselves are to blame, because Islamists will not find it difficult to conquer Europe. Christianity in Western Europe has virtually ceased to exist. The spirit of secular relativism that originated from the French Enlightenment has persuaded Europe (including Europe’s churches) to commit a protracted, two centuries long suicide, the symptoms of which were visible in Communism, National-Socialism and moral relativism in general.

Man is a religious being and needs religious faith. If European Christianity had still been healthy today it would have proselytized, it would have reached out with missionary zeal to the millions of Muslims who migrated to Western Europe since the 1970s, it would have offered them Christ. Instead, it’s churches became bastions of religious relativism. Europe offered the newcomers only cultural decadence, from which decent people want to shield their children, and spiritual emptiness, which one can only despise....

I was perusing a copy of Andrew Murray's book, The Two Covenants, and was again struck that Christ's "secret" for living his life on earth wasn't to draw upon his divine attributes (he'd surrendered most of those anyway to take on human flesh), but to walk every moment of every day in dependence upon the Father --

It is not long since I had occasion, in preparing a series of Bible Lessons for our Students Association here, to make a study of the Gospel of St. John, and of the life of our Lord as set forth there. I cannot say how deeply I have been afresh impressed with that which I cannot but regard as the deepest secret of His life on earth, His dependence on the Father. It has come to me like a new revelation. Some twelve times and more He uses the word not and nothing of Himself. Not My will. Not My words. Not My honour. Not Mine own glory. I can do nothing of Myself. I speak not of Myself. I came not of Myself. I do nothing of Myself....

...this Son, who hath life in Himself even as the Father has, immediately adds (v. 30): "I can of mine own self do nothing." We should have thought that with this life in Himself He would have the power of independent action as the Father has. But no. "The Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He seeth the Father do." The chief mark of this Divine life He has in Himself is evidently unceasing dependence, receiving from the Father, by the moment, what He bad to speak or do. Nothing of Myself is manifestly as true of Him as it ever could be of the weakest or most sinful man....

Let us make Christ's words our own: "I can do nothing of Myself." Take it as the keynote of a single day. Lookup and see the Infinite God waiting to do everything as soon as we are ready to give up all to Him, and receive all from Him. Bow down in lowly worship, and wait for the Holy Spirit to work some measure of the mind of Christ in you. Do not be disconcerted if you do not learn the lesson at once: there is the God of love waiting to do everything in him who is willing to be nothing. At moments the teaching appears dangerous, at other times terribly difficult. The Blessed Son of God teaches it us-this was His whole life: I can do nothing of Myself. He is our life; He will work it in us. And when as the Lamb of God He begets this His disposition in us, we shall be prepared for Him to rise on us and shine in us in His heavenly glory.

Just out of curiosity, did any mainstream news organizations report this? --

Iraqi Official Testifies to Links Between Saddam and Al Qaeda

By ELI LAKE - Staff Reporter of the Sun
September 14, 2006

WASHINGTON — A deputy prime minister of Iraq yesterday offered a sharp contradiction of the conventional wisdom here that Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Al Qaeda had no connection before the 2003 war, flatly contradicting a recent report from the Senate's intelligence committee.

In a speech in which he challenged the belief of war critics that Iraqis' lives are now worse than under Saddam Hussein, Barham Salih said, "The alliance between the Baathists and jihadists which sustains Al Qaeda in Iraq is not new, contrary to what you may have been told." He went on to say, "I know this at first hand. Some of my friends were murdered by jihadists, by Al Qaeda-affiliated operatives who had been sheltered and assisted by Saddam's regime."

A Kurdish politician who took his high school exams from inside a Baathist prison, Mr. Salih said he was the target of the alliance between jihadists, Baathists, and Al Qaeda in 2001, when a group known as Ansar al-Islam tried to assassinate him. In 2002, envoys of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of the two Kurdish parties sharing sovereignty over northern Iraq between the two Iraq wars, presented the CIA with evidence that the organization that tried to kill Mr. Salih had been in part funded and directed by Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard....

“Talk-Like-a-Pirate Day” is observed on September 19th. On “Talk-Like-a-Pirate Day,” everyone talks as if they were a pirate. For instance, instead of saying something like this…

Pope Benedict commented yesterday on the rise of mankind through the means of evolution.  A loose translation of his comments:  "Baloney!"

Pope Preaches Against Chance Evolution: "Man is Not the Chance Result of Evolution"

REGENSBURG, Germany, September 12, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - This morning Pope Benedict XVI discussed evolution in his homily at the outdoor Mass celebrated in Islinger Field.  In a direct attack on the concept of random chance evolution, Pope Benedict asked rhetorically: "What came first? Creative Reason, the Spirit who makes all things and gives them growth, or Unreason, which, lacking any meaning, yet somehow brings forth a mathematically ordered cosmos, as well as man and his reason."

The Pope explained that the belief in God as Creator comes in the most ancient profession of faith known to Christians, the Apostles' Creed.  "As Christians, we say: I believe in God the Father, the Creator of heaven and earth - I believe in the Creator Spirit. We believe that at the beginning of everything is the eternal Word, with Reason and not Unreason," he said.

While faith is not opposed to science, the Pope noted that some scientific endeavor is aimed at opposing faith.  "From the Enlightenment on, science, at least in part, has applied itself to seeking an explanation of the world in which God would be unnecessary," he said.  The Pope added, "And if this were so, he (God) would also become unnecessary in our lives."

Man, "would then be nothing more than a chance result of evolution and thus, in the end, equally meaningless," said the Pope.

However, Benedict XVI, noted assuredly that attempts to show God as unnecessary in the explanation of the universe are futile.  "But whenever the attempt seemed to be nearing success - inevitably it would become clear: something is missing from the equation!," he said.  "When God is subtracted, something doesn't add up for man, the world, the whole vast universe."

The debate that won't end.  It's almost been 150 years since Darwin's "Origin of the Species," and Darwinists were of the consensus view at the 100 year anniversary back in 1959 that all discussion was over, that Darwinism had triumphed, and had defeated the forces of "magic and superstition."  Well, doubts about evolution rage more today than at any time since Darwin stepped off the Beagle.  And for good reason.  That evolution occurs on a small scale, e.g., minor modifications within a population, is beyond debate.  That evolution occurs on a larger scale, bringing rise to new species, is far from established fact, regardless of what the Darwinists say.  What Darwin's theory concludes is:

• That something can rise from nothing. 

• That life can rise from non-life. 

• That multi-celled organisms can rise from single-celled organisms. 

• That intelligence can rise from non-intelligence. 

• That everything is the product of chance.

...and the Darwinists accuse creationists of believing in fairytales!

One of the most curious things about the evolution debate is that the ardent defenders of evolution protest that "Darwinism is science!" Hardly.  Darwinism is today as much a political/social/theological movement as it is a scientific theory. The Darwin defenders are highly organized and clearly dedicated to promoting their viewpoint, to such an extent that one has to wonder what their agenda really is.

The kind of "enthusiasm" we see from the Darwin-apologists can only be described as *religious fervor*.  As Robert Koons, a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas has said, "The evidence for evolution seems far from compelling. It seems compelling only to those with a prior commitment to metaphysical materialism, for whom Darwinism is practically the only reasonable explanation available for life as we know it." I suspect the prime motivation for such rigid dedication to this "theory" has less to do with science, and more to do with adherence to a particular view of morality.

David Berlinski, in an article in the March 2003 issue of Commentary, wrote that...

“The term ‘Darwinism’ conveys the suggestion of a secular ideology, a global system of belief. So it does and so it surely is. Darwin’s theory has been variously used – by Darwinian biologists – to explain the development of a bipedal gait, the tendency to laugh when amused, obesity, anorexia nervosa, business negotiations, a preference for tropical landscapes, the evolutionary roots of political rhetoric, maternal love, infanticide, clan formation, marriage, divorce, certain comical sounds, funeral rites, the formation of regular verb forms, altruism, homosexuality, feminism, greed, romantic love, jealousy, warfare, monogamy, polygamy, adultery, the fact that men are pigs, recursion, sexual display, abstract art, and religious beliefs of every description.”

Darwinism has become a catch-all, the way that materialistic naturalists describe everything.

David Berlinski again:

"Darwin's theory of evolution is the last of the great 19th century mystery religions. And as we speak it is now following Freudianism and Marxism into the nether regions, and I'm quite sure that Freud, Marx, and Darwin are commiserating one with the other, in the dark dungeon where discarded gods gather. The problem facing us at the [beginning of a new century] with a magnificent body of theoretical accomplishments in physics and mathematics, and a very rich body of descriptive material in biology, is to come to an understanding that when it comes to the large global issues that Darwin's theory is intended to address, we simply do not have a clue. This is a daunting admission to make, but if we're intellectually honest, we should make it. The mechanism that Darwin proposed, that of random search or a stochastic shuffle in known to be inadequate in every domain in which it's applied. It's known to be inadequate in linguistics, and it's certainly inadequate when it comes to the overwhelming complexity of living forms. There is no reason on earth to believe that this mechanism is adequate to the task that it sets itself.

 

The following article appears in today's Washington Post:

Bush Tells Group He Sees a 'Third Awakening'
Washington Post ^ | September 13 2006 | Peter Baker

President Bush said yesterday that he senses a "Third Awakening" of religious devotion in the United States that has coincided with the nation's struggle with international terrorists, a war that he depicted as "a confrontation between good and evil."

Bush told a group of conservative journalists that he notices more open expressions of faith among people he meets during his travels, and he suggested that might signal a broader revival similar to other religious movements in history. Bush noted that some of Abraham Lincoln's strongest supporters were religious people "who saw life in terms of good and evil" and who believed that slavery was evil. Many of his own supporters, he said, see the current conflict in similar terms.

"A lot of people in America see this as a confrontation between good and evil, including me," Bush said during a 1 1/2-hour Oval Office conversation on cultural changes and a battle with terrorists that he sees lasting decades. "There was a stark change between the culture of the '50s and the '60s -- boom -- and I think there's change happening here," he added. "It seems to me that there's a Third Awakening."

The First Great Awakening refers to a wave of Christian fervor in the American colonies from about 1730 to 1760, while the Second Great Awakening is generally believed to have occurred from 1800 to 1830.

Some scholars and writers have debated for years whether a Third Awakening has been taking place, although some identify other awakenings in U.S. history. Bush aides, including Karl Rove, have read Robert William Fogel's "The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism."

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...

Bush's comment probably won't get much media attention (unless it's to criticize him for again "wrapping America and his policies with the Bible"), but these comments are significant.

It's been my conviction for some time that the great divide in our nation isn't simply a political divide, or a divide between ideologies, or a cultural divide alone.  The chasm that divides the nation is primarily a spiritual one.  The major divide in America is between people of faith and radical secularists.  The divide is between those who look to God and who incorporate their convictions into their opinions and their lives, and those who consider that the material world is all there is.  The secularists rage over the influence (which appears to be growing) of faith and religious convictions in our national life.  Secularists accuse the "religious right" of wanting to set up a theocracy as oppressive as the Taliban. 

Secular materialism, on the other hand -- a worldview that rejects God and religious teachings in general -- has a poor track record when it comes to the affairs of men and nations.  While the secularists appeal to what they view as "enlightment," to the elevation of reason, knowledge, and tolerance, history has shown that when the reality of God is dispensed with, and the belief that life has no special origin and no special purpose, and that man is accountable to no one but himself, mankind spirals down into chaos and unimaginable inhumanity and brutality.  While secularism claims for itself enlightenment and tolerance, secularists are appallingly ignorant of religious conviction and are intolerant of people of faith.

Something has to give in this struggle between faith and secularism, and if I understand the signs of our times correctly, faith has the momentum at the moment, because what the secularists have to offer isn't enlightenment and tolerance, but nihilism.  And the "weapons" of our struggle, because it's a spiritual struggle, are the resources of the Spirit -- praise, worship, prayer, and revealed truth.  This struggle certainly shows up in the battles of the "culture war," and within our political contests, but the struggle is, primarily, spiritual in nature.  And it's still unclear which viewpoint will emerge as the dominant one.

I can't say with confidence that America is in the midst of, or is about to enter, a period of awakening.  I pray that's the case.  But it should be remembered that awakenings, historically, are first and foremost spiritual awakenings, revivals and reformations, that expand and strengthen the influence of Christianity and Christian spirituality within the American culture.  A spiritual awakening tends to result later in social reforms.  From the following review found on Amazon, Fogel  seems to view the historical awakenings as primarily social, not spiritual, reformations.  It's an interesting consideration, even if Fogel's perspective is too narrow:

Fogel's purpose is to provide "a framework for analyzing the movements that shaped the egalitarian creed in America." Throughout U.S. history, there have been several of these movements ("Great Awakenings") which help to explain all manner of major transformations. The First (1730-1820) is manifest in the American Revolution. Fogel observes: "Steeped in the rationalism of the Enlightenment, and harboring suspicions of the established churches, the leaders of the Revolution tended to view all political issues through the prism of natural rights rather than divine revelation."

As Fogel explains, the leaders of the The Second (roughly 1800 until 1870) "preached that the American mission was to build God's kingdom on earth....An array of reform movements [eg temperance, abolition of slavery, elimination of graft in government] sought to make America a fit place for the Second Coming of Christ." The Third (from about 1890 until the 1930s) involved a continuation of certain reforms as well as the introduction of others led by modernists and Social Gospelers who "laid the basis for the welfare state, providing both the ideological foundation and the politic drive for the labor reforms of the 1930, 1940s and 1950s, and for the civil rights reforms of the 1950 and 1960s, and for the new feminist reforms of the late 1960s and early 1970s." 

In Fogel's view, the Fourth Great Awakening now underway has resulted in attacks on material corruption, the rise of pro-life and pro-family movements, campaigns for values-oriented school curricula, an expansion of tax revolt, and an attack on entitlements. Fogel observes: All of the Great Awakenings are "not merely, nor primarily, religious phenomena. They are primarily political phenomena in which the evangelical churches represent the leading edge of an ideological and political response to accumulated technological, economic, and social changes that undermined the received culture."

(Since the mainstream media is "all anti-American/bad news, all day, all the time," this hasn't shown up in the mainstream press, so I'm posting it here).

Grief Tear Memorial
Siberian News Online ^ | September 12, 2006 | N/A

The "Grief Tear" Memorial to the victims of 9/11 terrorist attacks made by Russian artist and sculptor Zurab Tsereteli opened to state anthems of Russia and the USA in Bayonne, New Jersey, on September, 11.

The "Grief Tear" Memorial, situated on the bank of the Hudson River, is a split 30-meter bronze plate with a giant tear made of titanium. The names of almost 3 thousand people killed on September, 11, 2001, are engraved on the monument. The memorial is the gift of Russian people, so Zurab Tsereteli and his colleagues paid all the expenses to ship it to the US.

Not able to intimidate ABC into pulling "Path to 9/11," Bill Clinton is now saying that his administration successfully thwarted major terror attacks.

Clinton 'not soft on terror'
Austrailian ^ | 8/13/06 | staff

NEW YORK: Former US president Bill Clinton said yesterday that his administration had thwarted a number of large-scale terror attacks, but he acknowledged its efforts were "not enough" to prevent the horror of September 11.

Mr Clinton would not comment directly on the mini-series, which aired in two parts on Sunday and Monday in Australia, that suggested he was soft on al-Qai'da, but he said his administration had stopped other similar attacks.

During his administration "some attacks were prevented, a couple that would have done as much damage as 9/11", he said, at the dedication of a September 11 memorial in Bayonne, New Jersey.

****************************

Now, what are the odds, you suppose, that this is a true statement?

A while ago I received a comment from one who felt put-off by a political comment made during a formal presentation at a college Christian outreach ministry meeting:

A sermon I heard awhile back contained the factoid that 1500 pastors a month (nationwide, I assume) leave the pastorate. I have no idea where the preacher got this figure, but I'm not surprised by it. Today, among evangelicals, success is defined as something that has nothing to do with the heart of pastoring -- it's church growth, "seeker-friendliness," giving that meets the budget, etc.  Anyone with the true heart of a pastor must feel unprepared to fulfill his responsibilities as the church's "CEO." Tied to this is the fact of the growing phenomenon of "Christless" preaching from many pulpits, which for some pastors must make it an excruciating ordeal to have to come up with a bowl of irrelevant pablum every week.  

I suspect that many of the 1500-or-so pastors who leave each month either find it impossible to fit-in with the contemporary concept of "success," or are preaching a powerless Christianity, unrelated to the true gospel of Christ, largely because the power of Christ isn't evident in their own lives.  In the former case, this is tragic; in the latter case, good riddance.

David Limbaugh's column yesterday discusses the release of a Senate Intelligence Committee report on pre-Iraq war intelligence on Saddam's links to terrorism, specifically al Qaeda.  As Limbaugh writes:

"Once again the Democratic leadership is giddy about yet another smoking gun "proving" what a liar President Bush is. This time, the Senate Intelligence Committee has issued two "Phase II" reports concerning pre-war intelligence on Iraq that supposedly cast doubt on the administration's claim there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.

"This has Democrats dancing in the streets, kind of like they were with news of a delay in the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, which they gleefully attributed to Republican racism...."

Limbaugh goes on to suggest that the Bush Administration is being sandbagged by the committee staff:

"...Let's not overlook that Republicans don't have a real majority on the committee, as several of the GOP committee members are decidedly antiwar and the staffer for one of them -- Sen. Chuck Hagel -- is reputedly a strong Democrat partisan, having worked on Sen. Kerry's presidential campaign.

"The Democrats have continually politicized the committee, especially with this latest release. Committee Chairman Pat Roberts said, 'I have some real concern with the final version of this report. Very simply, the conclusions are misleading and are not supported by the facts.' Roberts added, 'Overall, I am disappointed that some of my colleagues have twisted the facts to reach conclusions that support other agendas.'"

Indeed.

Saddam's links to terrorism, including al Qaeda, have been well-documented, regardless of what the Senate Intelligence Committee has concluded.  One of the more disturbing reports of al Qaeda's operation within Saddam's Iraq has to do with a thwarted chemical weapons attack against Jordan in April 2004 -- a plot which began to take shape before Coalition forces deposed of Saddam.

On April 13, 2004, Jordanian security forces foiled an al Qaeda plot against the nation’s intelligence agency. The plot, reported on April 26 by Agence France-Presse (AFP), involved a plan to use trucks packed with 20 tons of chemical explosives, including blistering agents, nerve gas and choking agents. Jordanian officials estimated that had the attack been successful, the amount of chemicals involved had the potential of killing up to 80,000 people.

Six members of the terror network which planned to execute the plot were arrested and four others were killed in a series of raids in Jordan which concluded on April 20. The ringleader of the terror network was a Jordanian, Azmi al-Jayussi. Jayussi had been recruited for the operation in Iraq by al Qaeda leader Abu Massab al-Zarqawi. Zarqawi was identified by Jordanian officials as the mastermind of chemical weapons plot.

According to a Jordanian security official interviewed by AFP, “Jayussi started to plan for the operation in Iraq where he had moved to from Afghanistan. He received direct orders from his leader, Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, to whom Jayussi had pledged allegiance and absolute obedience since he met him in al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan.”

In a taped statement, Jayussi related how his first encounter with Zarqawi had been in Herat, Afghanistan, and how he later connected up with him again in Saddam’s Iraq. He stated that it was Zarqawi who had trained him in the use of “explosives and strong poisons.” Excerpts of Jayussi’s taped statement, which were aired on ABC’s “Nightline” on April 26, 2004, revealed that the planning and training for the WMD plot took place in Iraq more than a year before the US-led coalition invasion.

In Iraq, Zarqawi introduced Jayussi to another of his Jordanian followers, Muwafaq Adwan. Muwafaq was killed in a shootout with Jordanian police in Amman on April 20. Jayussi told Jordanian security officials that Zarqawi had ordered Muwafaq and him to Jordan where “[o]ur mission was to instigate military work” in the country.

In Jordan, Jayussi was aided by several Syrians under Zarqawi’s direction. The aim of their operation was to attack Jordan and its ruling family as part of a “war against crusaders and infidels.”

Anti-terror experts said that the network’s 20 tons of explosives would have caused “two explosions: a traditional one and a chemical in an area of two square kilometers.”

“The chemical explosion would lead to the emission of poisonous chemical gasses which would have caused physical deformities and direct injuries to the lungs and eyesight,” said one of the experts on a Jordanian news program. “Outside this circle, the human loss would amount to around 80,000 people dead and 160,000 injured.”

To fund the operation, Jayussi said that he received the equivalent of $170,000 (US) in installments from Zarqawi, sent through messengers, most of them from Syria.

Another arrested suspect, Ahmed Samir, told Jordanian security that he had been trained in Iraq by a Zarqawi aide and worked on explosives for two months in a factory in Ramtha, near the Jordanian-Syrian border. (http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=482512004)

News of this foiled plot should have provided conclusive proof that what President Bush feared, and which justified the effort to take Saddam down, was real – that Saddam allowed the operation of terrorist groups, especially al Qaeda, within Iraq, and that terrorists trained in Iraq and supplied with a significant quality of WMD materials from Iraq, could have international reach. News of this foiled terrorist plot to use WMDs in a spectacular attack in Jordan received scant attention in the US media. While ABC’s “Nightline” carried the story, and similar stories appeared in articles published in the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal, the American news media did not give this news the significant level of attention it deserved. The news media’s mantra is that the failure to find stockpiles of WMDs in Iraq is a scandal that rests on the head of George W. Bush. “Bush lied!” The real scandal here is the failure or refusal of the American news media to report and pursue events which give credence and justification to President Bush’s policies in Iraq.

...Today, half of America will go back to forgetting.

From Mark Steyn's column yesterday:

Five years on, half America has retreated to the laziest old tropes, filtering the new struggle through the most drearily cobwebbed prisms: All dramatic national events are JFK-type conspiracies, all wars are Vietnam quagmires. Meanwhile, Ramzi Yousef's successors make their ambitions as plain as he did: They want to acquire nuclear technology in order to kill even more of us. And, given that free societies tend naturally toward a Katrina mentality of doing nothing until it happens, one morning we will wake up to another day like the "day that changed everything." Sept. 11 was less "a failure of imagination" than an ability to see that America's enemies were hiding in plain sight.

 

Rather than behave like spoiled children, the Democrats would have been smart to have let the ABC broadcast of the miniseries "The Path to 9/11" go by without comment, because all their complaining has now raised questions about just what the Clinton Administration did and didn't do in the years leading up to 9/11.  

By the way, the unrestrained hissy-fit the Democrats are having over the ABC film is another example of the negligence of the mainstream media.  If I was a reporter and there'd been a Democrat congresswoman screaming at me about how this film is a disgusting re-writing of history, as I heard on the radio last evening, I would have asked 1) have you seen the film, and 2) how, specifically, did the film distort the historical record?  There are a lot of people hyperventilating about this film who haven't seen it.

Which brings me to this:  All of the hysterics started in earnest yesterday after Bill Clinton complained about the film. What is it with Clinton that he doesn't seem to be on top of his game unless he's emersed in some crisis or scandal? This is characteristic of someone who is deeply dysfunctional. And what is it with the Democrat Party and the left in general that they all start salivating whenever Bill Clinton brings a bell? This Pavlovian response indicates a level of dysfunction and codependency that is truly disturbing.

The left appears to be more upset over what they think this ABC film contains than they are about the Islamist threat to America.