January 12, 2005

Ali, formerly of Iraq the Model fame, has his own blog and it's terrific, therefore it's getting added to the blogroll!
Check out what he has to say about Iraq's upcoming elections here:
Free Iraqi

Order of the day:
Read every word, including the footnotes!
That is all.
The War Against World War IV

Josh Claybourn at In the Agora: Blogging About Blogging brings up something that's been bothering me, too:

I've written before that I really don't like blogging about blogging because the whole thing seems "incestuous and self-serving." I understand that it's necessary at times and to some degree it helps build a community in blogging. But I think this sort of thing should be kept to a minimum. It's a bit like journalists doing stories about journalists. Eventually they need to report news, and the more they focus on news the better. Similarly, I'm usually only interested in analysis, entertainment/humor, and information from websites, not who's doing a better job of rigging link rankings. Besides the uselessness of the activity, I sometimes question the motives behind those who do it. Are they truly interested in blogospheric developments, or are they actually trying to build friendships and aliances in order to increase their own power? After all, the surest way to get a link from someone is to first link to them.

I certainly don't intend to condemn "blogging about blogging" in all forms, because as I said already, it can be useful. But I fear that it's manifesting itself a bit too much. In fact, there's a whole category of blogs - metablogs - devoted solely to talking about what other blogs are doing. After a while the internet starts to feel like an echo chamber. Famed radio host Hugh Hewitt is slowly turning his site into a metablog, and I've noticed Joe Carter doing it a lot recently as well. I suppose Hugh's focus is a bit understandable, given that he's promoting a new book of his about Blogs. Thanks for the introspection, but let's move on to substance and humor.

I agree with Josh completely both about blogs in general and Hugh Hewitt in particular.
Blogging about blogging has always been a pitfall which I noticed when I began blogging almost 3 years ago and then there were only a few hundred thousand or so blogs and Rathergate, and the key role blogs would play in it, were in the future.
It is only too easy, tempting and fun to get "lost" in the blogosphere.
There are lots of fine bloggers out there and only 24 hours in a day--as fast as I read, I can't read them all.
And, as Josh says, there's the need to focus on the news, which can break quickly and furiously.
What he forgets to mention, but I'm sure he's thinking it, is that we're also at war and this, above all, is the salient fact to keep in mind.
Rathergate is a small victory, as Michelle Catalano would say, but it is a victory of that war as CBS News attempted to unseat with this non-story our wartime President who is pursuing the war against the terrorists steadily and aggressively.
There are many other battles left to fight, even on this front with the 5th column Leftist MSM:
the NYSlimes, the WashingtoncomPost, AP, AFP, the BBC and Al-Reuters stage mini-Rathergates all day, every day with the bias in their "news."
The media has, either purposefully or by happenstance, joined forces with our IslamoNazi enemy and are actively working to stop our war effort, using the power of the press to do as much damage to our troops, our President and his Administration and our country itself and what it stands for as they can.
Almost every blogger seems to have forgotten that not only was fired CBS News exec Mary Mapes behind the bogus Bush TANG story, but she was also behind the Abu Ghraib "abuses" story.
(In yet another stroke of irony, Sgt. Graner, the supposed "ringleader" of the Abu Ghraib guards, is on trial at Ft. Hood this week and he seems ready to maintain that he didn't abuse or torture the detainees at all, but followed instructions to deal with hostile, foreign (not-Iraqi) suspected Islamist murderers captured on the battle front.)
We are at war with men and women who are trying to kill us with the sanction of their religion and its holy men, yet the MSM would have us believe that we should be at war with America itself and that, really, the terrorists are right--our way of life must be wiped off the face of the earth.

My beef with Hugh Hewitt is that he has become way too lordly about blogging, especially on his radio show, as if he invented blogging and is now its monarch.
Last night, a Freeper (Free Republic denizen) called the show to tell him that he'd set up a blog because of Hugh's advocacy of the--dare I say it?--medium.
Hugh practically berated him and said that unless and until the guy had read his book on blogging, he couldn't and shouldn't blog and exhorted him to follow everything the book said to do.
This undermines the whole spirit of blogging, which is that of the individuality, personal spirit and freedom of the blogger himself (or herself), writing without the constraints of an editor, boss or even hostile peers.
To his credit, Glenn Reynolds, the Blogfather of a great many of us, including me, has never taken an imperious or bossy attitude about anyone's blog and for that I admire, respect and laud him greatly.

To return to the blogging about blogging, which has been particularly virulent of late, there also comes the tendency to do too much back patting, high 5-ing and self-congratulation due to the soft bomb of the CBS panel report released this week and the attendant firings that was clearly the result of supreme blogging by several great bloggers like Powerline and LittleGreenFootballs.
To them goes the glory, but the sweet smell of success is heady stuff and we all wanted to be a part of it, share the joy and join in the fun and I'm no exception.
All of sudden, people who've never heard of blogs want to know a blogger, read them like crazy or start one or all three.
Blogging is now, officially, cool.
But being a member of the Pajamahadeen is tough, hard and often thankless work--not all weeks will be heady and triumphant like this week.
There's a lot of work that lies ahead of us.
A lot of work.
This war isn't won yet and won't be won, even on the battlefield, if it's not won also in the media on TV and in the papers.
To cite just one instance, Wretchard of Belmont Club documented the "lucky" appearance of AP photographers in Baghdad when the "insurgents" murdered 3 Iraqi election officials in cold blood.
Those journalists just "happened" to be there at the right time and gave the story lots of air time, while other "good" stories about helpful and heroic American troops and America-friendly Iraqis hungry for freedom went unreported and ignored.
This is typical of the war coverage we've been getting from most of the 4th estate everyday for the last 18 months.
We'll know that we've won our war with the MSM when the Islamist enemy is called what it is and no longer dubbed "insurgents" or "militants."
We'll know that we're starting to win the war when we don't see stories like Abu Ghraib that not only undermine the President, the Secretary of Defense and our fine men and women in uniform, but that give the bad guys the benefit of the doubt ("they're innocent until proven guilty in an American court of law.") or that give their jihad moral equivalence to our just war response.
President Bush's cousin involved in power journalism, John Ellis, has some similar advice for bloggers regarding the Rathergate circle j*rk (Pardon this crudity, but it's the only description that fits!) and its aftermath:

One Last Thing.

The CBS "Panel" Report was a gem, in its lawyerly way, and well worth the wait. Since a number of you emailed to ask for Ellisblog's view, here's my ten cents:

1. Andrew Heyward must have had one good lawyer. How else to explain the apparent success of what might be called his Reverse Nuremberg defense. Or as Kaus put it: Heyward was just giving orders. Then he went to lunch. My guess is that Heyward will be "resigned" later; that the decision to keep him was tactical.

2. Dan Rather really is a pompous fool. You already knew that.

3. The blogosphere needs to get a grip. I'm not sure which was more pathetic, bloggers posting their phone numbers for "media interviews" or all the bloviating about "whitewash" and "cover-up." Memo to bloggers: (1) we don't care if you're on TV and; (2) The report is the most scathing indictment of the standards and practices of CBS News ever published, by anyone at anytime (with the possible exception of Renata Adler's work on the Westmoreland vs. CBS case).
[What is doubly ironic about this is that more than one respectable Conservative blogger has expressed far too much glee about blogs now getting the respect they deserve, a la the Godfather--or is it Rodney Dangerfield?, from the MSM. This phone number for TV interviews phenomenon is part of it.
This is a potential trap with 2 doors--With one victory, bloggers risk becoming the love-hungry minions of the very media machine they've just tried to take down.
Also, there's the risk that by wooing the blogosphere--such as the Time Magazine "award" for Blog of the Year to Powerline--the MSM can woo, win and then subdue the maverick citizen journalist bloggers who are making life difficult and non-productive for them.--Jen]
Stop preening and stop whining.

4. What did they think they were being called for, a strategy session? When the fearsome foursome was ordered to report to CBS News Headquarters at 8am on Monday morning, they were apparently surprised to learn that they were being fired. I'm told these aces of investigative journalism believed that Mapes would buy the bullet and everyone else would be spared. Hello? Out in the real world, the only question was whether Heyward would be fired on the day of the report's release or a couple of months later. Disconnected from reality is a weird place to be for people who claim to be "plugged in."

5. No evidence of political bias. This was the only major short-coming of The Panel's report, since everyone in the real world (and especially the political world) knew and knows that CBS News was gunning for President Bush big time. It was an open secret in August that the DNC and the media would re-raise the TexANG service issue immediately following the Labor Day weekend. Indeed, Ben Barnes was telling people over the summer that CBS would take the lead in that attack.

I was asked about this point blank at a pre-GOP convention election briefing that I did for a major NYC financial services firm. Specifically, I was asked: Do you think the story (amazingly similar to the one that appeared on CBS News Sixty Minutes Two) is true and do you think it will be harmful to the President's re-election hopes? To which I replied: I can't believe that CBS News would bet its credibility on Ben Barnes. (Talk about disconnected from reality!)
[One of the high points of the break in the Rathergate non-story was when Barnes's own daughter called Conservative radio station WBAP in Dallas to say that her own father was indeed a liar and that he was lying about Bush!--J.T.]

I think The Panel understood that there was a lot of back-channel stuff (between CBS News and the Kerry campaign and the DNC and the like) going on, but that to delve into it would have required a much larger inquiry. Which was not what they had been contracted to do. So they punted. It would have been better had they avoided the bias issue altogether. Too bad they didn't, but really, so what?

6. Colonel Hackworth. Pages 95 and 96 of the report are simply brilliant.

7. How Evil is Mary Mapes? Don't ask me. Ask her colleagues, present and former.

And I have one final thing to add to Ellis's: No discussion of Rathergate should be had without mention of its distaff story--the Swifties and their treatment by the MSM and the devasting effect they had on the Kerry campaign.
Everything that could be said about Rathergate was the exact opposite in the Swift Boat Veterans's case--everything they said was true and was backed up by facts, there were 260 living witnesses among them and they weren't "politically partisan."
These fine men--which included a group of POWs who were held for years in North Vietnam and tortured because of what John Kerry said in Congress--merely wanted to have their say about the unsuitability of Kerry to be Commander-in-Chief, especially in wartime, based on what they'd seen him do and say in the Vietnam War.
Yet, when they did get their story on the air or in the press (and most of the time, they did not), they were vilified as partisan Bushie liars and slanderers.
Miraculously, Kerry managed to get through the campaign without releasing his military or medical records to disprove what the Swifties were saying--because he couldn't-- or without addressing the charges they levelled but it meant that he never held a press conference with the media again after the Swifties came forward.
So, no, our work isn't done and the War isn't won.
Stop the whining and preening and blog on.
Rathergate is one small victory and we should all be proud and satisfied as Conservative warbloggers, but let's not win this battle and then lose the war.
With the Inauguration next week and then the Iraqi election at the end of the month and everything that happens in between and thereafter, we should all be too busy chronicling the rest of the war to do any more preening, whining or bloviating about the obvious bias of CBS News and Dan Rather.

24's' Latest Plot Twist Pains Some Muslims*
[WARNING: Use another browser beside IE when trying to access the article.
When I tried to view it on IE, rather than my usual Safari, it had been "wiped" at the LATimes online.]

The one TV show I absolutely do not miss is "24." Nor can I in good conscience speak ill of it.

The Fox drama with the ticking digital clock delivers crackling political intrigue, unpredictable plot twists and a bevy of memorable characters, both good and deliciously bad.

Season four premiered Sunday and Monday nights, and I'm hooked again.
[Me, too, and I hadn't really watched "24" until Sunday night.--Jen]

Premiering against the backdrop of post-Sept. 11 America, "24" has always been about figuring out terrorist plots, but this year it will test viewers in a different way.

The story line so far: A seemingly normal, upscale Muslim family is a sleeper terrorist cell. We've learned that Mom and Dad are knee-deep in a plot that has resulted in a train derailment and the kidnapping of the U.S. defense secretary. And that they've actively involved their teenage son. Not to mention that in Monday's episode, they ordered him to shoot his non-Muslim girlfriend because she stumbled onto information that could prove dangerous to them.
[If there was any reference to this family being Muslim, I must have missed it;
there was no Koran, no reference to "Allah," no prayers or prayer rugs.
The "Arabic" family was dark and swarthy and "Middle Eastern looking."
According to the script, they and the terrorists are "Turkish" which is as close as Hollywood comes to dealing with the fact that we are at war with IslamoFacism.
The treatment of the "Muslims" in this show remind me of our TSA security measures--and not in a good way.--Jen]

"24" comes through again. Can't wait till next week.

Then again, I'm not the Muslim living next door. I'm a blue-eyed boy from Nebraska, immune to cultural stereotypes.

Thus, the test. In an era where Americans are fearful of attack from Islamic fundamentalists, will a TV show depicting "normal" people as terrorists deepen our paranoia? Will it lead to violence against Muslims or Middle Easterners?
[The really frightening thing is that I could imagine Mohammed Atta and the other 9/11 hijackers blending in and seeming to be "normal" to my fellow Americans just like the men in this show while they planned and plotted and prepared for their dark day of death.
I think the show should deepen our paranoia of those among us who fit the...racial profile (Gasp!) of our terrorist enemy.
Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims.]

Or will we realize that "24" is just a TV show?

The show also tests Middle Easterners in America. After three seasons in which "24" terrorists have included Eastern Europeans, traitorous U.S. government agents and the blond-haired daughter of a CIA contractor, will they accept a Muslim family as a terrorist cell?

Will they realize that "24" is just a TV show?
[Is it??? Time will tell.
These IslamoNazi jihadis either are or are not are trying to kill us and some of them live among us, just as the 9/11 killers lived, worked and moved among us.--J.T.]

The easy answer is to say that of course, everyone realizes that. But it's not quite that simple, says Sabiha Khan, a spokeswoman for the local chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), headquartered in Anaheim.

She's not a "24" fan but has seen this year's episodes and is worried. Today, in fact, she and other CAIR officials will take their concerns to Fox in Los Angeles.

CAIR doesn't want to curtail Fox's creative license, Khan says. However, CAIR is concerned that the depiction "will contribute to an atmosphere that it's OK to harm and discriminate against Muslims. This could actually hurt real-life people."

CAIR doesn't expect Fox to dump the story line but might ask that it consider ways to mitigate it in future episodes. "We're realistic," Khan says. "We're not asking for something that can't be done."

It would be naive to dismiss Khan's concerns. At this point in American history, it's an unfortunate fact of life that some people harbor unfair suspicions of Muslims in our midst.
[The whining Libs at the LATimes should be glad we didn't put Middle Eastern Muslims into detention camps after 9/11, the way they did the Japanese--primarily in California, ironically-during WWII.]

So while I tout "24," how does my favorite show look like through Khan's eyes?

"It was almost like a heart-sinking, crashing feeling down to the floor," she says. "Just being attacked, seeing your religion attacked, which, if it is the essence of your being, is a very difficult thing to take. You feel mixed emotions — anger, disappointment, hurt."
[I didn't see or hear their religion attacked once on this show!
If I missed it, please email to let me know when it was.--Jen]

The "24" terrorist family, she says, "is not a family I've ever known. None of the 9/11 hijackers had that kind of family…. It's not really based on any reality of what we [in America] are going through."
[What does this mean, because it beats me!]

It's just TV. We all know that, right?

Khan can only hope that Americans won't stereotype Muslims any more than they typecast whites after Timothy McVeigh's terrorist bombing in Oklahoma City.
[As I said several times on this blog, there is reason to believe that McVeigh was working with Iraqi terrorists and that the OKC bombing was another IslamoFacist/Al Queda-linked attack on America, after the first WTC Center bombing in '93.
President Clinton used it as an opportunity to smear "Christian, white, right wing militia members" and Rush Limbaugh and Conservative talk radio.] "Unfortunately, there are only 7 million of us in America and not everyone knows one of us," she says. "That's the reality we're dealing with."

Correct me if I'm wrong on this, too, but to the best of my knowledge, there are nowhere close to 7 million Muslims in this country--Thank God.
There are only 1 million, but that's enough: if only 1% of them are jihadi murderers, that's 10,000.
This show was terrific!
On the first night, Kiefer Sutherland's character was forced to use "abuse" to get information out of the dark, swarthy, Turkish (Is he Muslim?) terrorist they got in custody;
"Jack Bower" has a file on this man's previous terrorist activities and knows that he's involved with a big attack that is already underway.
To try and stop it, he slaps around and then shoots the terrorist in the leg and threatens to shoot him in the other leg when the bad guy finally confesses that they're going to attack/kill/kidnap the Secretary of Defense.
Horrors!
Yep, using violence, pain and threats actually worked to get the guy to talk!
Given that this show came on the heels of the Senate hearings on Alberto Gonzalez's confirmation and a virtual Inquistion on him about his alleged legal sanction of "torture" and "abuse" of WOT detainees at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo for interrogation purposes, I thought it spoke volumes about what actually works and it also spoke truth to power that I want my government and its agents and troops to use whatever means they deem appropriate in interrogating and detaining WOT prisoners to save American (and especially my own!) lives.
I don't think that getting down and dirty with the IslamoNazis like that "says anything" about us and our culture except that we value ourselves and our lives and want to live, whereas these evildoers seem more than happy to die and take everyone with them.
(BTW, "Jack" doesn't get the info about the attack on the SecDef in time and the Islamist thugs shoot up a quiet, middle-class neighborhood in L.A. and leave lots of dead bodies in their wake.
Charming.)
I can't wait for next week's show and I can only hope that CAIR doesn't succeed in getting this show shut down--This is what Hollywood needs to be doing now that we're fully at war and so far, "24" is one of the few shows or movies dealing with the subject at all.

January 11, 2005

JURY PROBES EX-BILL AIDE'S 'SOCKS DOCS'

The criminal probe into why former Bill Clinton aide Sandy Berger illegally sneaked top-secret documents out of the National Archives--possibly in his socks--has heated up and is now before a federal grand jury, The Post has learned.

The "Socks Docs" probe forced Berger, who was President Clinton's national security adviser, to step down as Democrat John Kerry's top foreign-policy adviser last summer.
[But I think he snuck back on sKerry's staff because the MSM deep-sixed this story!--Jen]

"It may have been off the front pages, but the investigation has been active," said a source with knowledge of the probe.

"[Berger] has been interviewed several times by federal agents--FBI and prosecutors."

Berger admits removing 40 to 50 top-secret documents from the archives, but claims it was an "honest mistake" made while he vetted documents for the 9/11 commission's probe into the Twin Towers attacks.

Berger has also acknowledged that he destroyed some documents--he says by accident.

It's unclear if he destroyed documents with handwritten notations that don't appear on other copies.

Some Republicans, such as House Speaker Dennis Hastert, have charged that Berger pilfered the documents because they were embarrassing to Clinton and Clinton aides such as Berger.
[And I'm another one of those Republicans, but I think they were more than embarassing and even damning to the Clinton Administration!--J.T.]

Asked if Berger has gotten a letter formally notifying him that he is the target of a criminal probe, a source close to him said, "He has not received any such letter."

So far, Berger hasn't testified under oath to the grand jury, the same source said.

The probe is being conducted by career prosecutors at the Justice Department, sources say.

The documents include multiple drafts of a review of the 2000 millennium threat said to conclude that only luck prevented a 2000 attack.

That story conflicts with Berger's own testimony to the commission, in which he claimed that "we thwarted" millennium attacks by being vigilant--rather than by sheer luck, as the review reportedly suggests.

The probe was touched off last spring when stunned archives staffers reported seeing Berger sneak classified documents out of a top-secret reading room in his pants and socks while vetting Clinton-era items for the commission.

They then ran a sting operation in which they coded some documents and confirmed they were missing when Berger left.

The documents were classified Code Word, the highest security classification, above Top Secret.

The commission report makes clear that Berger had a habit of writing candid notes in the margin of memos, sometimes flatly rejecting plans for action.

He nixed a plan to capture Osama bin Laden with one word: "No."

Oooh, Delicious and about d*mn time!
I'm sending up novenas now for Sponge Sandy Stuff Pants to get indicted!
What a lot of good news lately about our resident Dimocrat "insurgents" getting caught doing bad things--first, the gang at CBS News yesterday and on Friday, Hillary's bag man campaign finance guy was indicted on Friday in Los Angeles for making a $250,000 "mistatement" about a Hillary fundraiser!
How could Her Heinous's indictment be far behind?
Maybe 2005 really is gonna be a very good year!
Then again, I may be too optimistic about Hilliary getting her just comeuppance--she'll probably pull her "You know, I don't recall." routine again and skate one more time but I wouldn't bet on it in Vegas.
Rosen's got company--to wit, Friends of Hillary Peter Paul and already-convicted Aaron Tonken, too--and somebody's doing some singing or they wouldn't have gotten this indictment!

Here's George Neumayr over at the The American Spectator on the Thornburgh panel:
The American Spectator

CBS's blue-ribbon panel on journalistic fraud at the network has extended rather than ended the fraud. Instead of exposing a fraud the panel advances a new one: that Dan Rather's fabricated National Guard story wasn't influenced by liberal bias. The panel's report contains a heading called "Factors that Support a Conclusion that a Political Agenda Did Not Motivate the September 8 Segment." Guess what the panel puts under it? "The Previous Work of Rather and Mapes." In other words, the panel considers their previous stories evidence of political neutrality. Are they kidding? The previous work of Rather and Mapes is a glaring factor that supports the conclusion of motivating liberal bias.
[We know, George, we know.--Jen]
[...]
But while Boccardi and Thornburgh are skeptical to the point of stupidity on the question of CBS's political bias, they have no problem dismissing those who first exposed the forgery as "bloggers with a conservative agenda." CBS's panel can authoritatively muse on the motives of Rather's critics while interpreting his motives in the most generous light possible.

Yes, bloggers were "partisan" -- partial to the truth. But so what? CBS's blue-ribbon panelists can turn up their noses at pajama-clad partisans on the Internet, but the fact is they ferreted out a forgery liberal partisans faked up -- and CBS's unpunished star reporter still won't admit it.

George gets this exactly right!
I'm proud to call myself a blogger and a member of the Pajamahadeen after this rout of CBS, although I take no credit for our end of the story, except blogging it--all the credit should go to the Powerline boys and Little Green Footballs' proprietor Charles Johnson, whom I support, laud and admire enormously for their work.
I do count myself as a member in good standing of the group of "bloggers with a conservative agenda," however and one of those poor slobs who've been blogging the War (both fronts: the culture war and the WOT) in my pajamas for almost 3 years!
Even with this major victory against Gunga Dan and his minions, this is only the first battle and there's lots more work to be done, so the Good Guys need everyone of us--bloggers and their readers--to keep slogging away.
For today, though, enjoy reading about the machinations of the MSM trying to deal with their mess (like a bad kitty in the sand box);
Be sure to surf over to Powerline (Time's Blog of the Year, you know!) and to Discarded Lies where Charles Johnson is posting while LittleGreenFootballs is having a DDOS attack.
Also, don't miss the extensive coverage over at Rather Biased.com, then go to RatherGate.com and also check the excellent Wizbang blog, too (He's got a link to a paginated version of the CBS report) to name just the hottest ones covering the breaking news that the one of the MSM's darlings has been caught being partisan and biased!!
Who knew?
(I still won't be truly happy until CBS admits the documents were forged, that they knew they were forged and that they were trying to sabotage President Bush's re-election.
An apology to President Bush and we, the people, would be nice, too.
I'll wait... **crickets**)

January 10, 2005

Get a load of this hilarious headline, as if they don't have any idea how to find "the truth:"
MSNBC - In media, truth is the goal, but how to get there?
How to get there?
How about by not running a "story"--which you have good reason to know isn't true--based on forged documents (which 3/4 of your own experts say aren't genuine) and your own partisan agenda to influence a presidential election?
The fact that BSDNC MSNBC and the AP are doing these stories shows that they're running for cover.
After CBSNews, they're next.
Or you could say that their journalistic standards are every bit as scrupilous as those of CBS News...

Baghdad Deputy Police Chief Assassinated

Gunmen assassinated Baghdad's deputy police chief and a suicide bomber driving a stolen patrol car killed three people at a police station on Monday as insurgents pressed a campaign to wreck Iraq's Jan. 30 election.
[...]
The shooting of Brigadier Amer Nayef, the second-ranking police commander in the capital, came just six days after guerrillas assassinated Baghdad's provincial governor.
[...]
With three weeks to go before the election, insurgents have stepped up their drive to cripple the U.S.-backed interim government and scare away voters. Iraqi leaders say Sunni-led guerrillas also want to provoke sectarian civil war.
[That's a 10% Sunni minority that's making war on a 60% Shi'ite majority...and the other 30% are the Kurds.--J.T.]

A senior U.S. commander said last week that four of Iraq's 18 provinces, including parts of the capital, were still too insecure to hold elections and predicted a surge of violence as the ballot approached.
[...]
A group of leading Sunni Muslim clerics meeting a senior American official offered to call off an election boycott in return for a U.S. timetable for a withdrawal from Iraq, an embassy spokesman said.

But chances of Washington setting such a schedule for the withdrawal of roughly 150,000 troops are all but nil as U.S. forces are still struggling to get Iraqi security services in shape to take over when they leave.

We're not withdrawing, killers, so go suck on your prayer rugs!
I hate to see either our U.S. troops or freedom-loving Iraqis get hurt and killed, but this is what the Enemy does: They murder people to stop the advance and enjoyment of Liberty.
Rest in piece, Mr. Nayef.
It was clear to me when the evildoers murdered the governor of Baghdad that the terrorists don't want this vote to happen in Iraq or anywhere else in the Arab world!
(They only let the elections go forward in the Paleostinian areas because all the candidates were Arafat-cloned, ineffectual, Islamist killers-- especially Abu Mazen*--who aren't going to change Arafart's original goal of wiping Israel and Jews off the map.
*Never forget that Abbas/Mazen financed the kidnapping and murder of the Israeli atheletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972 and he also wrote a book saying that the Holocaust was a "lie.")