This one will hardly get any media attention, I predict. For all the hullabaloo of Iran going nuclear, I’d say Egypt doing the same is equally bad.

Egypt will build a 1,000-megawatt nuclear power plant at al-Dabaa on the Mediterranean coast at a cost of between 1.5 and two billion dollars, Yunes told the daily.

…

On Thursday, Francis J. Ricciardone, the US ambassador to Egypt, said that the United States would have no objection to Egypt’s peaceful use of nuclear energy.

Speaking to Egypt’s al-Mehwar television, Ricciardone said that “the United States encourages the peaceful use of nuclear power for civilian purposes throughout the world”.

There’s no proof that Iran is going to build nukes, and in fact they’ve said they won’t multiple times and the IAEA is showing zero evidence that they’re trying to. Egypt is an equally fundamentalist regime (you can be arrested for speaking out against Islam), and unlike Iran they are considered a major source of terrorism as I’ve written before.

[tags]egypt, iran, nuclear[/tags]

The NYT has been under attack by the right for a while, and when I was at Starbucks today (damn, I really am a liberal, aren’t I?) I caught an article claiming the Iraq War was making the terror threat worse. Great, I thought, this certainly won’t cause a firestorm. As my sarcastic comment to myself hinted, it certainly did.

“The National Intelligence Estimate provides jarring confirmation that the disastrous policy in Iraq is a giant recruiting poster for terrorists,” Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, said in a statement.

Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee, acknowledged on CNN that “the war in Iraq has intensified Islamic fundamentalism and radicalism,” although he added “that’s a problem that nobody seems to have an answer to.”

But the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist of Tennessee, used language that echoed that of President Bush, saying that “either we are going to be fighting this battle, this war overseas, or it’s going to be right here in this country.”

That’s some hefty rhetoric. And you really do have to hand it to Frist, it’s got to be difficult to completely ignore such a damning report and reply with a bumper sticker slogan.

[tags]terrorism, war, iraq[/tags]

Videos are back, thank you Matt.
Here you go. Comments of mine can basically be summed up in two points. One, Wallace claims that he told Clinton he’d do 15 minutes on the initiative, 15 as a free-for-all, and says the interview is proof that Clinton didn’t want to talk about anything but bin Laden. However, had Wallace started with the Global Initiative and then talked about bin Laden, I’m sure the interview would have gone very differently.

Two, Watch Wallace frantically try to get out of the bin Laden talks after roughly 10 minutes of talking about it. Even allowing the 15-15 rule, he’s desparately trying to squirm out of what was intended to be taking Clinton to task for not catching bin Laden. Poor guy, I guess they weren’t aware of what a real president is like.

Part 1

[youtube]S6tosfl3Bmk[/youtube]

Part 2

[youtube]AmlIfo_Bgk8[/youtube]

That the nice folks over at Free Republic are mildly unhinged shouldn’t be news to anyone. Their comments over coming out to your children were… well let’s just be honest. They were vile.

So with all the talk about Clinton and his efforts or lack thereof with catching bin Laden, it’s funny that the Freepers should weigh in on his “wag the dog” claims.

Conservatives did use the wag the dog reference numerous times, not in reference to bin Laden, but in reference to Clinton’s massive bombardment of Serbia, which had absolutely nothing to do with bin Laden.

Claiming that ‘right wing conservatives’ were complaining that Clinton was obsessed with bin Laden is an outright lie. But to try and prove it by using the wag the dog reference was a stupid move on his part and illuminated his lack of facts to back it up. And in my view, invalidated the rest of the rant, er interview.

Hell of a bombshell of an accusation. Is it true? Did Clinton just make it up that the redcoats were accusing him of wagging the dog with going after bin Laden in order to retroactively make himself look better?

It’s certainly an accusation supported by the various comments, take this fella for one:

Yes you are correct. “Wag the dog” was not about OBL, it was about bombing Serbia to take the news stories away from Monica. I was as interested in politics then as I am now, I don’t recall even knowing anything about OBL at that time.

So that’s the main thesis, then. The main criticism had nothing to do with Osama and Afghanistan, it was about bombing Serbia. In fact, Clinton never actually talked about bin Laden, right? Right?

No. Nope, sorry, that is actually how it happened. In fact, you can take a look at Free Republic’s own site back in 1998 when the bombing in Afghanistan started up. And the title just sums it up perfectly: Wag The Dog ! Wag the Dog! We are bombing Afganhistan! Onto the comments:

Please pray for our pilots and sailors and that this does not escacalate. This is so sad. Afgahnistan ought to be our ally.

Important point: Islamic extremists are Islamic first, very tight knit. I grudgingly respect their unity. This could spill over to many other countries. Our only hope is that the Islamics believe our administration was righteous in what it did. This is a litmus test of Clinton’s ability ot handle a diplomatic mess. PLEASE PRAY.

If the Islamics are too outraged, we need to get the bum out. If he doesn’t resign, he needs to be impeached. This is absurd. We have NEVER had a military leader asked if “this was wag-the-dog”. This can’t be good for foreign affairs or for our troops.

Possibly the most ironic thing ever uttered:

The real question is what we’re NOT hearing is if the strikes were conducted with the approval of Afghanistan & Sudan; and IF those other soverign states KNEW of our intention to launch attacks inside their territory. If not, slick has now marked America as a terrorist nation and committed an international act of war. This absolutely AIN’T no coincidence, folks. BC is dangerous and must go NOW!

Amazing. Back in 1998 they were angry that he attacked the country without their approval, that he didn’t try to fix things diplomatically, and said Afghanistan should be our ally.In 2006, they want to bomb the hell out of the Middle East at large, don’t care about allies, and are saying Muslims are too savage and bloodthirsty to be able to have peaceful talks with.

Now, a more jaded person might suggest that they just were against anything Clinton did and support anything Bush does. Hm.

Oh, and if you’re wondering why the page from 1998 isn’t on Free Republic’s own site, there’s a very simple explanation for that: in order to protect themselves from simple investigation on their “we never said that claims”, they erased the page. Incredible.

UPDATE: A rather astute reader has brought it to my attention that not only is THAT article gone, but it seems that their entire pre-1999 archives are gone. So, in the interest of adhering to the razor, my thesis is now updated: the Freepers, purging out their old posts and articles (which is probably for server reasons), are helping themselves forget their own history and that’s how we find ourselves in a situation like this.

Incredibly convenient on their part (since the archives that are missing are going to be full of their baseless attacks on Clinton such as this), but nothing malicious.

A tip of my hat to Kev in the comments. It took a little work for me to verify the claim as a bunch of the pages, oddly, weren’t archived by WayBack. Regardless, I stand corrected. Don’t get too confident, though, it’s just that last paragraph. The main thesis is the contradiction, durnit.
[tags]clinton, bin laden, republicans[/tags]

It’s late and I can’t sleep, so tell me something interesting. If you need inspiration, check out this article via AmericaBlog: who dropped the ball on catching bin Laden again?