Mark Steyn:
Happy St. Patrick's Day to my fellow hyphenated Irishmen. And the good news about this St. Paddy's Day is that for the first time in a decade the official observances will not be disfigured by the presence at the White House of Gerry Adams.
Adams is usually billed as the "President of Sinn Fein," which in turn is usually billed as the "political wing" of the IRA. This artful form of words is supposed to suggest some kind of distinction between "President" Adams and the murkier fellows who do all the bombing and killing and knee-capping. In fact, as the Irish government recently revealed, "President" Adams is a member of the Provisional IRA's ruling "army council" -- i.e., the fellows who order all the bombing and killing and knee-capping.
So instead of one more chorus of "The Wearing of the Green," it's the wearing out of the welcome for Adams at the White House. In his place, President Bush will welcome the fiancee and five sisters of Robert McCartney. McCartney was a Belfast Catholic and a Sinn Fein supporter, but he made the mistake of getting into an argument with a Provisional IRA big shot in a pub in January. The other "Provos" present grabbed McCartney, beat him with iron sewer rods, slit him open from his neck to his navel, severed his jugular and jumped on his head, causing what was left of it to lose an eye. There were 70 witnesses in the bar but none of them saw a thing.
...
Bridgeen Hagans, the late McCartney's fiancee, and his sisters are in America as part of their campaign to persuade some of the dozens of witnesses to his killing to come forward. They're reluctant to do so because, as in any third-rate gangster state, testifying against the local warlords can be severely injurious to one's own health. Recognizing that they had a public relations disaster on their hands, the IRA then offered to make amends to McCartney's grieving loved ones. You're right, they said, it was all a mistake, but don't worry, we're really sorry about it -- and, just to show how sorry we are, we'll murder his murderers for you. As an afterthought, they acknowledged that, as a lot of folks were upset by the brutality of the McCartney whack job, when they got around to murdering his murderers, they'd eschew the sewer rods, abdomen-slitting, etc., and just do it nice and clean with a bullet straight to the head. Very decent of them.
There's a lesson there in the reformability of terrorists. The IRA's first instinct is to kill. If you complain about the killing, they offer to kill the killers. If you complain about the manner of the killing, they offer to kill more tastefully -- "compassionate terrorism,'' as it were. But it's like Monty Python's spam sketch: There's no menu item that doesn't involve killing. You can get it in any color as long as it's blood-red.
Do you support the troops or the ravings of the Italian commie?
Jack Kelly:
...What is missing?
Sgrena said "the tank" fired 300-400 shots at her car. But photographs of it published March 8 by the Italian newspaper La Repubblica indicate the vehicle suffered remarkably little damage for such a fusillade. There is a single bullet hole in the windshield, but the window glass and the fenders are otherwise intact, as is the hood.
Perhaps the soldiers were remarkably lousy shots. But if they were trying to kill Sgrena, why did they take her to the hospital instead of finishing her off?
There are questions that need answers. The Italians say they notified the Americans of Sgrena's release, but the Americans deny it. Was the car going "slowly," as the Italians claim, or was it trying to run through the checkpoint, as the Americans say?
But there is no doubt about the credibility of Giuliana Sgrena. She entitled her story "My Truth," perhaps to distinguish it from the bourgeois concept of truth that depends on adherence to fact.
Many on the left in America embraced Sgrena's "truth," while refusing to give their countrymen the benefit of the doubt. But hey, liberals support our troops. They say so all the time.
The NY Times has a story on how several dual use facilities were looted near the end of major combat operations in Iraq. While a lot of space is spent speculating about the missing equipment and even reviving some of their al Quaqua story, the Times does not consider that if this much large equipemnt could be removed and disappear, why could not the same thing have happened the Iraq's WMD which is still unaccounted for?
Comments
Post a Comment