oh, for heaven's sake

Instapundit:

KOFI ANNAN DELIVERS peace in our time. And there's a reason why you should be worried.

"Peace in our time" is of course what prime minister Neville Chamberlain promised after Munich in 1938, when Great Britain and France appeased Hitler by sacrifizing Czechoslowakia. In other words, Kofi Annan is appeasing Iraq according to our friend.

Why does he think so? Because Kofi Annan announced that Iraq would allow unconditional inspections to take place. The full text of the letter, written by the Iraqi foreign minister, announcing this decision can be found at Counterspin Central.

I.P. Watcher may be stupid, but she cannot understand why Glenn would think Iraq caving in to US pressure is appeasement. Earlier he stated that the inspections wouldn't work, according to one Gary Milhollin. Perhaps that's why he thinks of Iraq allowing inspections as "appeasement". How he knows the inspections would fail is a mystery, must be that crystal ball he owns.

Smear jobs

Instapundit:

WHIGGING OUT purports to find a Democrats/Al Qaeda connection based on the Buffalo Five all being registered Democrats. Seems a bit of a stretch to me.

But not enough to not link to it, eh?

Let's see why Glenn felt the need to link to this incoherent rant:

So it should not remain ignored that there is an overlapping between the bad boys of Islam and elements of the Democratic party. In this article from the Buffalo News we learn that all five members of the al quaeda cell are registered Democrats, and I suspect most US Muslims vote the same way. And from FoxNews we learn of a march yesterday in DC by the "usual suspects" of the black and disgruntled Left elements of the party, protesting the war on terror as a purposeful distraction from bread and butter domestic issues. This march, few though there might have been in attendance (note Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton most definitely there), shows that there is a symbiosis of the Muslim and black communities that ties in not only with the Black Muslim movement associated with Farrakhan, but with the more establishment civil rights coalitions as well, who view American Muslims as potential allies fighting against the oppressor whites on high. This is dangerous for the reason that it may be influencing the tentative posture of the Democratic leadership who are keeping an eye on the Congressional and Senate races in '02 and '04. Let the light shine on this fact, because it is a threat to the nation right now as Tom Daschle and Richard Gephardt, two wily partisans who at least should know when to reign in their obstructionist tactics, are tap dancing around the issue of declaring war on Iraq despite millions of American lives and the future of American sovereignty on the line

Subtle stuff it is not. Blacks and Muslims are united to put pressure on the Democratic Party to oppose the War against Terror and so endanger national security is the message here.

And Instapundit? Clinton did not use McVeight to smear the right.

Bias?

N.Z. BEAR points out bias in an Associate Press story on antiwar protests by Angela Watercutter -- though, to be fair, the bias could have been injected by an editor. Wouldn't be the first time that happened.

So speaketh Instapundit. According to N.Z. Bear's post the story is biased because the antiwar protestors all come off as thoughtful, but the one guy quoted as supporting war with Iraq, doesn't. He also objects to the last sentence of the article:

Two people were arrested at the rally following a confrontation between protesters and a heckler, Lt. Larry Minasian said.

His beef? The use of the word "heckler" and that the article didn't tell whether the people arrested were pro or anti war.

It's all a bit silly, isn't it? To take the latter objection first, it is clear that the writer was citing Lt. Larry Minasian. Take the use of "heckler" and the omission of the affliation of the arrestees up with him.

As for the quotes used, since we cannot know how many protestors and counterprotestors were present, we cannot know how accurate these were. In real life, things don't always balance out and it's perfectly possible that one side is represented by knuckleheads while the other side isn't. It's N.Z. Bear's own bias that makes him think there's something fishy going on. And he is biased, otherwise, why the cheap shot at Hesiod?

Once again, we see something that I.P. presents as a fact fall apart when you look at it closely. The damage is already done however, because how many of his readers will follow the link to N.Z. Bear and from there to the original article (note I.P. doesn't provide this link) or to Hesiod's criticism of N.Z. Bear?

This may seem like a lot of fuzz about nothing, was it not that I.P. does this all the time. This is only one example of how I.P., by continually citing other bloggers, presenting their opinions as facts, shifts the debate his way. By presenting an unending stream of small lies, half truths, near lies and slanted stories the causual reader is left with the overwhelming impression that e.g. AP is biased towards the left. Repetition works. Word choice is important: "N.Z. Bear points out bias", not "N.Z. Bear thinks there is bias". So is presenting a humor as serious: "JOHN WEIDNER SAYS that Sweden is on the road to extinction."