On a momentarily serious note, am I really supposed to give a shit now what Le Monde thinks about terrorism? After this, this, this, this, and dozens of other examples? After this I’m supposed to take them seriously? Hey, Le Monde? Go fuck yourself.

For all their yammering about human rights and transnationalism, Europeans of the Le-Mondean mindset don’t appear too troubled by terrorism until it’s their body parts lying on the sidewalk, do they? But fine. Here’s their chance to prove that they’re serious. Let’s see how brightly that outrage burns now as news spreads that the enemy isn’t a tiny band of Basque separatists after all. Will the Le-Mondeans of the world keep talking tough? Or will they shrink away and blame themselves instead? Only time will tell, but based on the early trends, I know which way I’m betting.

UPDATE: The leader of batshit Islamist death cult Al Muhajiroun says the Spanish got what was coming to them. The graphic at right is taken from the front page of Al Muhajiroun’s website; nice to see this sort of thing going on in the capital of European democracy.

UPDATE: Feel the heat of that European outrage! Meanwhile, an anonymous jackoff stops by the train station to remind mourners that they deserved it.

Anyone who wants to understand why the media are held in such low regard by the public -- in polls of the most respected professions we usually come somewhere between Nigerian e-mail scammers and serial pedophiles -- should consider the following headline from an Associated Press story in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer last week:

’’Accused Spy Is Cousin Of Bush Staffer’’

The accused spy is Susan Lindauer, who is accused of working for Saddam Hussein’s intelligence agency. She describes herself merely as an "anti-war activist,’’ though, as the daily rummage through the Baathists’ scrupulous paperwork indicates more clearly every day, being an anti-war activist and on the Saddamite payroll are by no means mutually exclusive.
$10,000??? She should’ve got oil like Galloway did!
Before she allegedly became an Iraqi agent, Lindauer spent a decade in Washington working for four members of Congress: Peter DeFazio, Ron Wyden, Carol Moseley Braun and Zoe Lofgren. What do these four legislators have in common? Answer: They all have a ’’D’’ after their name.
as in D’oh!
But to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s headline writer the salient fact about Lindauer is not her 10 years of work for the Democratic Party but the amazing revelation that she is a second cousin of Bush chief of staff Andrew Card.

A second cousin! Hold the front page!

Here’s an easy test for the publisher, editor and news staff of the paper:

1. Name all your second cousins.
   
   
2. Where do they live?
   
   
3. When did you last see them?

It’s one thing for the press to be anti-war and feel Saddam should be given another decade or two to come into compliance with Security Council resolutions. It’s quite another to be so smitten with the old butcher that your copy editors internally absorb Baath Party tribal politics and assume that mere second cousinship with members of the Bush clan automatically puts you in the inner circle. To be fair to the Associated Press, they sent the story out on the wires with the headline, ’’Woman Named In Spy Case Worked As Journalist, Congressional Aide.’’

What’s that? ’’Worked As Journalist’’? Well, there’s an angle the Seattle guys unaccountably missed. Before she went to work for the Democratic Party, Lindauer worked for . . . the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Instead of the cousin thing, the headline writer might more usefully have written:

’’Accused Spy Used To Sit At Desk Next To Mine; I Made Clumsy Pass At Her At 1992 Office Party.’’

I’d love to see these headline writers working in Hollywood: ’’Austin Powers, The Spy Who Shagged Me’’? ’’Well, to be honest we thought it sounded punchier as ’Austin Powers, The Spy Who Shagged Someone Who Used To Go To School With Someone Who Was A Cousin Of Someone Who Was Briefly Married To A Receptionist At Halliburton. When Cheney Worked There!’ ’’

Look, these are serious times. Week after week, more details emerge of the extraordinary number of influential Westerners, from French government ministers to the head of the U.N. Oil-for-Food program, who appear to have been in the pay of Saddam. That’s, among other things, what Susan Lindauer is accused of.
see?
But we don’t have a serious press for these serious times. Boring and self-important is not the same as serious. But one reason why John Kerry calculates he can get away with damning the Bush administration as ’’crooks’’ and ’’liars’’ is because he figures he can count on the mainstream media doing what the Post-Intelligencer did -- instinctively framing every issue in anti-Bush terms, no matter how ludicrously. I suppose it’s not entirely impossible that one reason the Post-Intelligencer guys went with their spy-Bush linkage is because Lindauer has been accused of betraying her country and Al Gore accused Bush of ’’betraying’’ the country, too. But that’s one more reason why Bush will win in November: The media and the Democrats are sustaining each other in their delusions.

Sen. Kerry thinks the Bush administration are ’’crooked’’ and ’’lying.’’ The Bush ’’lie’’ boils down to this: The president believes there’s a war on. The Dems think 9/11 is like the 1998 ice storm or a Florida hurricane -- just one of those things. And they think Bush is ’’lying’’ by insisting on playing it as a war.

As it happens, the only big political ’’lie’’ in recent days came from Kerry, who told a meeting in Florida, ’’I’ve met foreign leaders who can’t go out and say this publicly, but boy, they look at you and say, ’You’ve got to win this, you’ve got to beat this guy.’ ’’ The senator has spent most of the last year in Iowa and New Hampshire, which, for all their charms, are not where one goes to rub shoulders with ’’foreign leaders.’’ Jacques Chirac could have driven over the Granite State border from Quebec’s Eastern Townships, where he was vacationing last summer. But he didn’t. Kerry does not appear to have ’’looked at’’ any foreign leaders since he began his campaign.
so it was a lie...that’s why he said that about Bush and Cheney - he was projecting his own faults
And, if he had, he’d find them far less well-disposed to him than he imagines. Last Thursday, March 11, 2-1/2 years to the day after Sept. 11, nearly 200 people were murdered by terrorists in Spain. Like Britain, Australia and Poland, Spain is a member of what John Kerry calls Bush’s ’’fraudulent coalition.’’

• 4th Infantry Division soldiers with 1st and 3rd Battalions, 67th Armor Regiment captured nine individuals, six of whom were targets, during an air-assault operation near Khan Bani Sad Thursday. The targeted individuals are suspected of being members of a local terrorist cell operating in the area.
  
  
• Task Force Ironhorse soldiers with 1st Battalion, 21st Infantry Regiment discovered 19 122 mm rockets northwest of Krab Wednesday. The rockets were aimed at Forward Operating Base Warrior in Kirkuk. Explosive ordnance personnel destroyed the rounds Thursday.
  
  
• Task Force Ironhorse soldiers from 310th Military Intelligence Battalion confiscated four Frog 7B missiles Thursday. The Iraqi Civil Defense Corps is securing the site southwest of Kirkuk until explosive ordnance personnel can assess the missiles.
  Wonder if they were launchable?
  
  
• Local children led a 1st Battalion, 25th Infantry Division patrol to a site where two rocket-propelled-grenade launchers were located east of Forward Operating Base Speicher. The patrol secured the site Thursday until explosive ordnance personnel transported the rounds to FOB Speicher for destruction.
  
  
• Task Force Ironhorse soldiers from 1st Battalion, 7th Field Artillery Regiment apprehended two individuals and assorted weapons during a raid Thursday. The individuals and confiscated equipment were taken to Forward Operating Base Lancer.
  
  
• 4th Infantry Division soldiers from the 14th Engineer Battalion discovered and destroyed a cache near Al Ouja Thursday. The cache consisted of one 40 mm heat round, two hand grenades and one rocket-propelled-grenade launcher.
  
  
• Soldiers from the 1st Infantry Division secured a weapons cache near Abu Shakur Thursday based on information provided by an Iraqi civilian. 1st Battalion, 77th Armor Regiment secured the cache until explosive ordnance personnel can destroy it. The cache consisted of 50-60 mortar rounds and one rocket-propelled-grenade launcher. The rounds appeared to be in the early stages of preparation to be used as IEDs.
  
  
• A 1st Battalion, 67th Armor Regiment patrol captured two individuals who were emplacing an improvised explosive device north of Ghalibiyah Thursday.
  
  
• Three individuals attacked an Iraqi Civil Defense Corps patrol in Baqubah with what is suspected to be an improvised explosive device Thursday. Task Force Ironhorse soldiers with 588th Engineer Battalion heard the explosion and sent a patrol to the location. The patrol killed one and captured another individual while they were fleeing the site. The captured individual was taken to the Diyala Police.
  
  
• 4th Infantry Division soldiers with 1st Battalion, 67th Armor Regiment captured four targeted individuals in a raid Friday in an area south of Kan’an. The targeted individuals were suspects in attacks against coalition forces in the area.
  
  
• Soldiers from the 1st Infantry Division’s 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry regiment raided a house in Tikrit Friday. The raid resulted in the confiscation of 229 rounds of 7.62 mm ammunition, 40 shotgun shells and one 30-round AK-47 magazine.
  
  
• First Infantry Division soldiers from 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment discovered a cache consisting of 201 cans of 14.5 mm rounds south of Al Ouja Friday. The cache was taken to Forward Operating Base Packhorse for destruction.