Earlier, I had mentioned an episode in which Bill Clinton, boosting his anti-crime bona fides, had signed off on the execution of a black murderer who had lobotomized himself with a gun, rendering him incapable of understanding his sentence.  Some argued that he deserved death anyway, for what he’d done in cold blood beforehand.  I’m rather a stickler this way, and a death-penalty opponent as well, but I find it reprehensible.ÂÂ
So it interests me that today, in the wake of two bombings in the pet markets in Baghdad in which mentally disabled people–Down’s Syndrome sufferers, apparently–were used as mules to carry the explosives and remotely detonated, killing dozens, brings, not condemnation and outrage from the media and from lefty bloggers, but satisfied derision toward those who say we are winning in Iraq.ÂÂ
 I see now that Bob Owens is writing on the same issue at his blog, and probably doing so better, noting that this aspect of the attacks is suppressed in the NYT version.  What I’d like to remind the lefties who derive pleasure from this, is that the very same thing could easily occur in a mall in the US.  And then . . . well, I suppose the Little Eichmanns would have deserved it.ÂÂ
I wrestled for years with angst about the death penalty and finally, after years of examining my beliefs, came to the conclusion tha it is, in limited circumstances, the only just and appropriate action.
The one element about which I’ve never experienced a moment of confusion, is the execution of the mentally incapacitated.
Geez. I feel all queasy just thinking about it.
Where’s the Outrage? You know where it is — it is directed at BushCo. ‘Cause they’re, like, so evil, y’know?
What I’d like to remind the lefties who derive pleasure from this, is that in this country, due to the way our society protects the mentally deficient, AQ would have to resort to the next best available source of “volunteers”, Liberals.
Dan, I see you had a buddy in Bob’s comment section.
As for the post, AQ is inhuman so no surprise there. The BDS afflicted left’s biggest boogeyman, no matter the situation, is President Bush, so no surprises there, either. AQ and the whacky left are both really consistent in their stupidity.
I don’t get the outrage in the Clinton case. It’s not like the guy didn’t know what he was doing when he did it. Also, as his lobotomy was self-inflicted, it seems akin to pleading for mercy as an orphan when one has killed one’s parents.
I can understand your POV, Techie, but I think it’s important not to cross this particular line, no matter what the circumstances are.
I see you’re point as well, Dan. Dunno, that’s why we have juries, I gues.
Puzzling behavior in Iraq from those Freedom Fighters I thought we were supposed to rally behind.
No, this needs wider examination. The terrorism in Iraq is becoming a sick proxy escalation. To use mental incompetents is to use children, and what then? They are either failing miserably or trying to extend the jihad using involuntary marks. But I’m not there, so I don’t know.
They’ve used children, women, and Democrats as tools. They are now almost out of tricks. Can anything else come along?
We should stop being surprised. The human mind, when Godless, can be surprisingly devilish.
We’re not just going to shoot the bastards, we’re going to cut out their living guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks…
Or do you think that might upset them?
Killing innocent people isn’t eviler cause you trick someone retarded into helping you. What’s odd is that everyone seems to think it is. I blame tv and movies for making it how we like our evil to have a certain aesthetic I guess. I can’t fix that but this now they’ve really gone and done it stuff is kind of hard for me to get exactly. I mean really. It’s not like the people who were trying to figure out how to kill the innocent people even knew they were being graded on style.
I guess mostly if you kill innocent people in a novel way maybe you figure you’ll get more press.
this needs wider examination
Ok, cynn.
How about, “If we don’t cut out their living guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks before they do it to us, we lose?”
Or camels, as the case may be.
I just can’t believe anyone would use the innocents among us to perpetuate violence from a cozy distance. Stupid, I know. What else can I say?
….And I would be stupid.
I think people are mistaking an increase in the quantity of evil involved in the act, for an increase in the quality of evil.
So what now, brave Iraqi warriors? Kill every slightly suspicious person because they might be a terrorist?
#12, I think that what makes this particularly heinous is the thought that the cowardly bastards, who proclaim to desire the virgins bestowed by Allah, instead use as live ammunition two (seemingly) child-like innocents.
A homocide bombing is always an evil deed, but I don’t think that anyone is less the wiser for feeling a certain cringe at how low the animals will stoop. Throw two more innocents on the pile….
It’s just I spect it’s as much titillation as cringeyness, really. Maybe I’m just no fun.
No, cynn.
Just rough them up a bit.
guinsPen: and how does one tell: could be a useful mental incompetent. Could be a useless know-nothing. Beat em up either way. Form follows function.
Cynn, it may be that those who are there, with the military training and experience, are a little better at identifying who really needs to be roughed up, than you’re giving them credit for.
Maybe.
Just a thought.
Really?
That just takes cynical to an extraordinary level.
To whom is this addressed?
cynn — shorn of the snark, the question you ask in #19 is now being addressed by literally hundreds of people, many of them in uniform. And yeah, some of them are gonna suggest shooting everybody. They’ll get slapped down hard, because despite the stereotypes American soldiers nowadays are not trigger-happy loons.
The right way to do it is what they’re doing now — concentrate on intelligence gathering and on rooting the bastards out of their holes. Of course it’s unAmerican and unConstitutional to listen to their phone calls, and if they don’t respond to “pretty please” we have to let them go, but there are still ways, largely dependent on the Iraqis, which is as it should be.
In the meantime, al Qaeda and the NYT will be working overtime to produce an Iraqi Tet, with lots and lots of bloody photos, above the fold in the Sunday edition, in nicely saturated color so the blood shows, for the ghoulish to slather over. What’s remarkable to me — not just about you, but about myself in retrospect, on another subject — is how the successes in that respect fail to challenge the stereotype you apparently hold. If the American soldiers in Iraq genuinely were ready to kill anything that moves, as you seem to believe, a lot of this stuff would get nipped in the bud.
For myself, I wonder if millimeter wave imaging radar might fit in the countermeasures mix, but then I do tend to look for tech solutions.
Regards,
Ric
cynn, roughing-up does not equal beating-up.
Tuning-up would.
#16 Cynn, this isn’t a new tactic, you just became aware of it because the media finally reported it. follow this link, read it and note the date.
http://iraqthemodel.blogspot.com/2005/02/new-techniques-of-resistance.html
Sorry, McGhehee, I was addressing comment #21.
S’cool. I know I don’t always make it clear who I’m responding to either.
So what now, brave Iraqi warriors? Kill every slightly suspicious person because they might be a terrorist?
What now, cowardly surrenderbot? Put on your burqa and STFU?
At a pet market, no less. Mentally disabled women weren’t enough, they had to throw kittens and puppies in the mix. How can they sink lower? Rape a unicorn? And somehow we’re still the assholes.
KKK burns yet another cross.
Cynn’s grandmother: What now Freedom Riders? Take over the entire education infrastructure so you can indoctrinate every kid who might grow up a racist?
Doh!
Um, hey, Dan? Unless you have reading problems, I think you’ll find that very NYT article Bob Owens cites for ‘suppressing’ the mentally-challenged detail actually contains that very piece of information. Explicitly, in fact.
For guys like you and Bob, leaving a detail out at press time, and then adding it a few hours later constitutes “suppressing” it.
Nah, who are we kidding? If it were a right-wing publication, such an oversight would never be mentioned. It’s mentioned here and by Gun Counter Gomer because you’re frantic to confirm your own biases. All in a day’s work for the Citizen Journalists!
As for your own comments, can’t you people stop snarling and spittling for one damn day?
STOP MAKING FUN OF THE NEW YORK TIMES!!! IT’S NOT NICE!!!
Um, hey, Dan? Unless you have reading problems, I think you’ll find that very NYT article Bob Owens cites for ’suppressing’ the mentally-challenged detail actually contains that very piece of information. Explicitly, in fact.
For guys like you and Bob, leaving a detail out at press time, and then adding it a few hours later constitutes “suppressing†it.
Um, hey, Ted? Unless you have reading probems, Bob over at CY says this:
Update: The NY Times has updated the original article to now include a contribution from Mudhafer al-Husaini. It now includes commentary about the mental disability of the suicide bombers… buried 15 paragraphs into the now much longer story.
IHT still has up an original version of this story as it ran earlier, which I’ve copied into the comments as well.
DOH!
Tech. The law takes great pains that the condemned understand why the execution is taking place.
As for your own comments, can’t you people stop snarling and spittling for one damn day?
I’m with Ted.
Knock it off, people, that’s my shtickl!
P.S. Don’t forget to bring your shower cap.
Yeah, I’d call putting that detail in the 7th paragraph or so burying the lede.
I wouldn’t necessarily call it burying the lede. The lede is a whole lot of people getting blown to bits. That’s the lede.
I don’t care if they use willing Jihadists, retarded girls, mimes, puppies, endangered squirrels, or whatever to get the bombs to their place: the lede is the bombing.
And sometimes, when meandering through bits of people and their belongings, asking if the bombers were mentally-disabled isn’t the first and most important fact to confirm. If you want to be that journalist and get the story right right away, I’m sure someone will set you up with that job. But if you want to stay at home and question their motives, sometimes you just need to be patient a bit. If those pesky left-leaning terrorist-conspiring journalists weren’t there getting you information, you might have to actually have to do it yourself.
I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be in Iraq. Not as a soldier, diplomat, journalist, merc, and especially not as an Iraqi.
Yes, and by the same token, the lede on waterboarding ought to be the information that we derived as a result.
jon, you need to add a qualifier.
The lede is a whole lot of people getting blown to bits if you want to support the terrorists. Their goal, after all, is to frighten people, and for that they need publicity — which you are delighted to give them.
Regards,
Ric
And sometimes, when meandering through bits of people and their belongings, asking if the bombers were mentally-disabled isn’t the first and most important fact to confirm. If you want to be that journalist and get the story right right away, I’m sure someone will set you up with that job. But if you want to stay at home and question their motives, sometimes you just need to be patient a bit. If those pesky left-leaning terrorist-conspiring journalists weren’t there getting you information, you might have to actually have to do it yourself.
You seem to be missing the point, which is that the girls’ condition was indeed known, at least as far as the Daily Mail and CNN goes. The “Paper of Record”? Not so much.
I don’t care if they use willing Jihadists, retarded girls, mimes, puppies, endangered squirrels, or whatever to get the bombs to their place: the lede is the bombing.
No, the lede is that the meme “we’re just creating more jihadis” is directly contradicted by the evidence in this story.
bingo. cause when I heard this story, I thought, “huh, all these terrorists we’re creating seem to be degrading in quality with each successive generation.” eventually they’ll be incapable of doing anything effectively.
Criminal penalties are for the acts you committed, not the memories or understanding you have of them. However, I do nod at the hypocrisy and sad betrayal of principles that the left continues to show regarding terrorism and Islamofascism.
Mentioning that people get blown to bits=contributing to terrorism because it gives them publicity.
Mentioning that the retarded were used=not contributing to terrorism, since it certainly doesn’t give them publicity.
I simply don’t follow your argument.
They used retarded girls to blow up people. It shocks the conscience is the argument. For normal people. You make syllogisms.
No wonder you don’t have any friends.
Mentioning that people get blown to bits=contributing to terrorism because it gives them publicity.
Did someone actually say that?
I think it has more to do with calling them “brilliant”. Cause, you see, that could be seen as giving them good publicity.
jon: If those pesky left-leaning terrorist-conspiring journalists weren’t publishing bad jihadi Photoshop jobs and concocting stories about wearing human skulls as hats
Fixed it for you.
I simply don’t follow your argument.
That would be because you’re stupid. Hope this helps!
P.S. I think there are some guys in Baghdad who have a wonderful short-term job opportunity for which you are eminently qualified.
I’m supporting terrorists by giving them publicity? How? By mentioning their acts? So if I ignore what terrorists do, mainly kill innocent people, then I am fighting terrorism, or at the least not being complicit, I guess. Then mentioning the retarded women is wrong, since what they did/had done to them, when mentioned, gives the terrorists publicity. Jesus Fucking Christ on a pogostick! Over three hundred people are killed or injured by terrorists and it’s only okay to mention that after saying that retarded girls were involved? Three hundred people, people! That’s a big fucking terrorist attack! I don’t mean to have to explain why that’s a large number of dead or wounded, but maybe I will if someone demands it. And maybe, just maybe, the New York Times reporter/s wanted to confirm the reports of retarded girls? I don’t think a major conspiracy of silence was involved, since the information was released later, after confirmation. Sometimes good reporting takes time. Reporting on unsubstantiated rumors may be the lifeblood of some reporters, but not all, and the New York Times has more original information in its corrections page than many websites generate in a week.
From the NYTimes: ‘U.S. military officials said they had seen no evidence to suggest the women were handicapped, but one spokesman said on Saturday: “We don’t have any reason to doubt that either.”‘
Come on, Citizen Journalists, do your worst: is the spokesman a liar, is he a terrorist sympathizer, or is the NYTimes lying?
jon: English. Learn to speak it.
kthxbye.
#53 this comment has too many words and I don’t really feel like reading it
#54 The New York Times is a damaged brand and your endorsement really kind of speeds that along really.
Well, I’ve got some bad news for you, sunshine. The International Herald Tribune is the New York Times. So, you tell me.
I think the main point here is that AQ is reduced to using women for their evil purposes. In a muslim country, where women are socially slightly above livestock, they can’t really have an informed choice. So in that respect either socially or mentally retarded, yes.