The American Spectator

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A Clinton Portfolio

3.19.07 @ 12:01AM

(Page 2 of 5)

In one dispatch Bill Tucker mentioned that everyone he saw, American and Iraqi, carried machine guns. They're not; they're magazine-fed automatic rifles. Iraqis carry the 7.62 mm fully automatic AK-47, although perhaps every tenth one will indeed have a 7.62 belt-fed machine gun. Americans carry either the 5.56 M-16 or a shortened version, the M-4 carbine. Both fire either single shots or three-round bursts. Again there will be the occasional machine gun, either the 5.56 mm M-249 Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW) which uses a belt carried in a box or the belt-fed 7.62 mm M-240B.

As to the weight of body armor, it's not 40 pounds but rather with ceramic plates front and back about 16.5 pounds. Add side plates, which few journalists do, and it's 25 pounds. That said, I don't doubt it FEELS like 40 pounds to Bill! But you get used to everything.
-- Michael Fumento
www.fumento.com

Re: "Patrolling Tikrit" by William Tucker.

To redo John Lennon regarding Iraq:

All we are say-ay-ing, is give Pace a chance.
And for Petrae-ay-us, give him a chance."
--
Dubuque Iowa

ON THE OTHER HAND
Re: Mark E. Hyman's Inspector Valerie Clouseau:

Regarding Mr. Hyman's assertion: "The Review of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction, chaired by The Right Honorable Lord Butler of Brockwell (the 'Butler Report'), was Britain's own '9/11 Commission Report.' The Butler Report concluded that the original British report of Iraq seeking uranium ore from Niger, which led to the 16-word sentence used in the 2003 State of the Union address, was 'well-founded.'"

Please note: "Nuclear expert Norman Dombey has pointed out that the information relied upon by the Butler Review on the Niger issue was incomplete; as he noted, 'The Butler report says the claim was credible because an Iraqi diplomat visited Niger in 1999, and almost three-quarters of Niger's exports were uranium. But this is irrelevant, since France controls Niger's uranium mines.'" (Independent, 25 July 2004). And when asked by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to discuss the conclusions of British intelligence, Deputy Director of Central Intelligence John McLaughlin stated, "The one thing where I think they stretched a little bit beyond where we would stretch is on the points about Iraq seeking uranium from various African locations. We've looked at those reports and we don't think they are very credible. It doesn't diminish our conviction that he's going for nuclear weapons, but I think they reached a little bit on that one point" (from Wikipedia).

This is just one example of a number of conspicuously flawed contentions. Mr. Hyman's article is spurious, based on "cherry-picked" references. But this is the style of today. One cannot invent one's own facts, but one can certainly pick-and-choose which ones to cite.
-- Bruce Foster

GOOD DAY FOR A HANGING
Re: Quin Hillyer's Bumbling Into a Scandal:

Mr. Hillyer, does as good of a job as could be done at exempting Mr. Bush from the incompetence, which he then tries to limit to the Dept. of Justice and the White House legal staff. I am really sorry, Quin, but it just doesn't wash. If you wish to restrict the conversation to the USAs firing alone, then I can go with your analysis.

If we bring into the discussion the Harriet Meyers fiasco, then the White House Chief of Staff and Bush, himself, are implicated. Andrew Card may have been the originator of the idea of nominating Ms. Meyers, I don't know. We do know, however, that George Bush was an enthusiastic supporter of the idea at the very least.

Then there is the absolutely shameful way that Bush nominated judges to the various courts, and then promptly moved on to other things, leaving them to flounder in the angry seas that are the partisan Senate confirmation process. No Dem would have behaved thusly. They would have fought for their nominee tooth and nail from the time of nomination to confirmation or rejection by the Senate, and they would have used every weapon in their arsenal.

But you say that was all legal stuff concerning the Justice Dept. and the White House legal staff. Can I mention Katrina. That mess was screwed up from day one, and had nothing to do with the legal side of things. Bush allowed the New Orleans Mayor and the Louisiana Governor to take over center stage and successfully deflect blame from their own incompetent blunders to the operation of FEMA, Homeland Security, and the White House. Meanwhile Bush went in and stroked their egos, soothed their feelings, and almost ignored Mississippi and its Republican Governor, who was quietly going along getting a job done.

Additionally, we have had the absolutely inept way that SecDef Rumsfeld was fired. That was handled in such a way that the Dems could claim that they finally got a scalp they were after, whether that was true or not. So a dedicated public servant that had remained true and steadfast to the administration and its wishes was left drawn and quartered.

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