Les Jones

News > Quick Links

Roger Simon - responding to a comment by Christopher Hitchens - notes that Israel is one of the oldest nuclear powers on the planet, having had the bomb for forty years. That's why Israel can be trusted and Libya, for instance, can't.

The Last Toryboy disputes the popular opinion that the British were defeated in Afghanistan. The history was more complicated than that. Along the way he gives a history lesson: it's easy to depose Afghanistan's rulers, but harder to rule Afghanistan.

A federal judge has ordered the Pentagon to stop treating soldiers to untested vaccines. Good. The military has been reckless with soldiers' health in the past, and the anthrax vaccine was a continuation of that.

Donald Sensing on why Saddam should be tried in Iraq. Short answer: the UN's trial of Milosevic has turned into a three-ring circus.

Tim Blair is having a contest: "It's an old-fashioned Google hunt! Your quest: To locate people who before the war argued that regime change was an issue only for the Iraqi people -- and who now argue that Saddam's trial should not be held in Iraq."

More journalists are falling for the plastic turkey story. (It wasn't plastic. It was a real turkey.) Whoops! Add Gregg Easterbrook to the list. See also Andrea Harris's post via InstaPundit.

P.S. Lots of people were willing to give Easterbrook slack during the Jew episode, but having since read his Web site I'm not willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. I haven't seen anything else that indicates he's anti-Semitic, but I've seen lots of evidence that he's a tool in general. Here's what he had to say about Saddam's capture:

Yours truly joins those Arab-world commentators who think it was a mistake for the United States to release film of Saddam having his teeth and hair checked. Maybe the intent was to show the former despot as passive and helpless but, in the tape, it's almost as if a veterinarian is examining an animal at the zoo. This is bound to make many Arabs or Muslims think America enjoys humiliating Arabs or Muslims, and, as it is, half of the distrust between Western modernity and Arabian traditionalism is based on Arab feelings of inferiority. Saddam is a horrible guy, but the United States should be treating him with the respect due the captured leader of an enemy power. In all dealings with the Arab or Muslim world, it is essential that the West show respect.

Giving a free dental exam is "humiliation." Somebody better tell Wesley Clark before he humiliates all of America.