Two entries on the Drudge Report, as of 10:09pm:
Administration will seek additional billions early next year to fund Iraq, Afghan wars, WASH POST reporting in Page One lead story on Tuesday, insiders tell DRUDGE... Developing...Can anyone make the case that the media are not biased? Those items are not news. Of course the administration wants more money for overseas operations -- do you think the military can get along without money?New legal opinion by Bush admin concluded for first time some non-Iraqi prisoners captured by US forces in Iraq not entitled to protections of Geneva Conventions, NYT set to lead in Tuesday editions, newsroom sources tell DRUDGE... Developing...
All I have to say about the second item is: it's about freakin' time. Men who deliberately attack the innocent, who do not fight in uniform or obey the laws of war are not legal combatants. They are the "pirates and brigands" singled out in moral theology as those who wage private wars, and legitimate authorities have the God-given duty — yep, I said God-given, just like St. Paul said — to deter and punish them. Morally, they have no excuse. Legally, they are not entitled to Geneva protections and can be executed when they are caught.
Today, the NY Times published a story on some nasty explosives that disappeared because George Bush is an incompetent fool. (I'm paraphrasing.) Turns out they have no idea when the materials disappeared, and it's likely they were removed before the war started last year, because the site would be bombed at the beginning of hostilities.
This wasn't "news" in the sense of being new -- plenty of people have known about this matter since last year. Besides, the explosives were gone by the time American forces reached the storage bunkers, as NBC News reports.
Why are so many formerly prestigious news organizations willing to sacrifice themselves on the pyre of Senator Kerry's presidential ambitions? I can hear a voice in the back muttering, "Legal abortion...stigma-free extramarital sex...child-free consumerism...freedom from God's laws...."
The real message of today's news is that Kerry is getting desperate.
Today he grabbed this story from the headlines as a new mallet with which to hit Bush, and didn't even wait through one day's news cycle to get it confirmed. Tonight the story is disintegrating while video clips of Kerry trying to exploit it are still airing.
Why are so many formerly prestigious news organizations willing to sacrifice themselves on the pyre of Senator Kerry's presidential ambitions?
Because the dominance of the secularist left over the political and social culture is at stake. If they win, no one will hold them accountable for their lies.
You rely on National Review for objective news analysis? The "missing explosives" story is hardly dead or as clear-cut as it's being made out to be by NR.
Josh Marshall has an interesting post on this story which contains an excerpt from an interview with an NBC reporter embedded with the 101st Airborne. From the interview, it is clear that "ordnance" was present when the 101st Airborne was at al Qaqaa and that that "ordnance" was left behind unsecured when the 101st continued to Baghdad. Read up from the linked post for more of Josh Marshall's comments.
As for the second point from The Drudge Report about the violation of the Geneva Conventions, I am surprised that you support the practice described. Perhaps that is because The Drudge Report inaccurately summarized the story?
Read the Washington Post's story on this memo. There is a link from the story to a copy of the memo itself, but you can directly go to a PDF copy of the memo at this link.
Note that the memo explicitly deals with persons who already have the status of "protected persons" under the Geneva Convention. They are not the "pirates and brigands" you refer to. You can read the memo as a serious attempt to interpret a provision of the Geneva Convention, or you can read it (as I do) as yet another attempt to provide a legal justification for the abuse of prisoners.
There are many more sources commenting on this matter besides National Review; they just happened to be the last one I read. Suffice it to say that -- as you said yourself -- the story isn't clear-cut. If it isn't, then the NYT shouldn't have run the article -- or else the tone should have reflected the reality, that nobody knows what happened to the explosives or when they disappeared.
I don't believe a damn thing the New York Times or Washington Post prints about Iraq, not a damn thing. They've chosen their side, and they're going to make sure their side wins, even if it means compromising their integrity.
As for the detainees, again, it's not clear-cut. Since we don't know who the detainees are, we don't know that they aren't "pirates and brigands." Even if they were normally entitled to Geneva protections, if they committed a crime (such as blowing up a bunch of schoolkids), they're criminals and can be treated as such.
Anyway, the Geneva Conventions have turned into a joke, but not because of Donald Rumsfeld. It's because we've ignored our clear duty to punish illegal combatants by executing them when we find them. There's no downside to fighting in an illegal manner, so that's what the evildoers do.