Posse Incitatus

About those armored Humvees

Powerline has the goods and it is becoming ever more clear that this entire episode was about nothing more than an ambitious reporter trying to get his name in the papers - and the usual anti-war types trying to score political points.

Yes, it appears that the vast majority of the unit in question already had armored vehicles.  The remainder did shortly after the news conference - and it was already scheduled to get that armor.

The Posse takes a dim view of this sort of "gotcha" journalism and we cannot but question the motives and character of the soldier who put this question to the SecDef, knowing full-well that this was the case.

Ode to revolvers

Via Tom Maguire, we find this New York Times piece celebrating - of all things - the humble police .38 Special and the officers who carry it.

The Posse has a great and enduring love of revolvers.  The look, the feel and the functionality of them put us firmly in the revolver camp.

That is not to say that auto-loaders are excluded from our armory - far from it.  We own a Ruger KP-89 and look forward to acquiring others.  Many auto-loaders are finely-tuned pieces of machinery, precision-manufactured for accuracy, comfort and volume of fire.

We just like revolvers better.

Why?

The feel, the aethetic and the reliability are all factors that tilt us to revolvers.  Because there is no need for a magazine, revolvers can have more varied and functional grips.

The mechanism is profoundly simple and easy to use - and reliable to a fault.  You have to really work to create a jam in a revolver.

Revolvers of course have a great deal of history associated with them.  They won the West and served in the mud and mire of the trenches.  The solid frame of a revolver allows for higher pressure loads and the cartridges designed to take advantage of this are legendary:  .357 Magnum, .44 Magnum and the utterly insane .500 Magnum.

For this reason we celebrate revolvers and are pleased by the NYT's piece.  It just goes to show that even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

More Sullivan stupidity

The Posse didn't mean to deal with Andrew Sullivan again, but Roger L. Simon's post brought to mind yet another of Sullivan's moronic obsessions:  that disbanding the old Iraqi Army was a mistake.

In July we made this observation:

It is well known that you supported keeping the old Saddamite Iraqi army around for police duties, a typically stupid and ignorant position given the facts on the ground.

The old army had already deserted en masse. The ones that remained were shot through with Saddam loyalists would could easily have infiltrated our operations and fed information to the Fedayeen. If you think the Shi’ites would have responded to such officers, you’re clearly insane.

Here is what an actual Iraqi on the spot has to say:

As it happens, the question of whether we should have "disbanded the Iraqi Army" came up at our party for Iraq the Model the other night. Because I have never been to Iraq, speak no Arabic, never have been in the Army, etc., unlike others, I have never had a strong opinion on this issue. I simply do not consider myself qualified. But I have to say I was surprised at the response to the question. Omar, the younger brother, all of twenty-four but waaay wise beyond his years, simply laughed and said it would have been impossible. There was no way we could have kept the Iraqi Army together even if we had wanted to. The Iraqi Army, hugely underpaid conscripts who hated what they were doing, had already dissolved before we got to Baghdad. No one wanted any part of it. There was no Iraqi Army to preserve. We had to start all over again - which we have... eventually.[emphasis added]

The Posse will pause for a moment to bask in this vindication.

How long before Sullivan accepts this proven fact?  Is it even possible for him to do so, or will he fall into denial?

Will he become merely a warmed-over plastic turkey worshipper?  Only time will tell, but the signs aren't good.

We're all CIA shills

Arthur Chrenkoff has perhaps one of the most amusing examples of far-left lunacy yet to surface.

It concerns allegations that Iraq the Model is really a right-wing front group, run by CIA or some other shadowy neocon conspiracy.

The Posse was prepared to write this off as the usual left-wing paranoia, but an amusing thought occured to us: what if the opposite is true?

George Soros spent millions on the election.  Other leftish moneybags are also prepared to pour vast sums into subverting American politics.

Could this not be a preventative strike, before the news comes out?

Where did all that Oil for Food money go, anyway?

The left delights in throwing bricks, using whatever form of hateful address catches their fancy.  Retaliate in kind, and you are branded as "uncivil" and a hate-monger - as if the pie-fighting goons who smash storefronts know anything of civilized debate.

It is increasingly clear that the reelection of George W. Bush isn't a wake-up call to the opposition - it is the final shove that pushes them over the edge.

Enjoy the trip.

More revised linkage

The Posse is pleased to add another honorary member:

http://smalltownveteran.typepad.com/

Posting may be light for a bit, but keep checking back.  Our hours are probably going to be a unpredictable for a while so the usual update may be hours late.

This Sullivan, he bores us

The Posse hasn't commented much on Andrew Sullivan largely because we stopped reading him.

Once, a few weeks ago we clicked on a text link in a post and found ourselves at his site.  It was pretty much the way we remembered it:  sanctimonious and dull.

American Digest (via Let's Try Freedom) has a lengthy diatribe on Sullivan, and we agree with pretty much everything in there.  Sullivan used to be a must - read, back in the early days of the blogosphere.

But mostly he's predictable and dull.

We noted this a while ago, added some additional thoughts, and we see no flaws in that assessment.

The term "moulting hawk" was used by Mark Steyn to describe liberals such as Sullivan who were for the war in Iraq, but turned against it because it didn't meet their standards of perfection.

It works, but its a little awkward.  "Defeatist" sounds better, but is too general.  Perhaps "yellow hawk" will work. 

At any rate, Sullivan is a defeatist and his arguments are pathetic.  We suppose we're giving him a lift by talking about him (and he certainly likes attention) but we also believe that when confronted with stupid arguments, one should demonstrate they are stupid, not simply ignore them.  That gives the game to the other side.

We see no need to use the false civility that NRO and others take with him, either.  He regularly calls people who disagree with him bigots, racists, homophobes and the like - a typical leftist thing to do.

He likes to dish it out, but can he take it?  We think not.

Revised linkage

We've just gone through our links and reorganized them.

Unlike many blogs, we are following the example of Steven Den Beste who kept his blogroll to a minimum.

"Honorary Members of the Posse" are people who read who have linked to us or done something particularly praiseworthy.

"People We Can Ride With" are blogs or sites we regularly read, but who - for some strange reason - never return our emails or link to us.

Blogs that aren't utterly insane can therefore become honorary members simply by throwing a link to us on their site or giving us a favorable notice.

If you'd like to be a member of this select group, drop a comment or email.

More on UK self-defence

For some reason, the Posse got out of the habit of reading The Smallest Minority.

What were we thinking?

Kevin is all over the proposed reforms to Britain's self-defence (as they would spell it) laws.

We discussed this earlier and it is interesting to see the hyperventilation that is resulting in the UK.

For example, this BBC article can't resist noting how truly awful the laws regarding home invasion are in Oklahoma.

Could the "cowboy" comparsion be any more obvious?

Perhaps it would be instructive of the Beeb to note what the home-invasion rates are in the blood-drenched plot of ground.

Oklahoma has a burglary rate of 992.3 per 100,000 inhabitants.

According to the Home Office, the UK's rate is 1,592.9 per 100,000 inhabitants.  (Note: we did the math ourselves, so it may not be "officially exact.")

So the UK's burglary rate is 60 percent higher than blood-soaked Oklahoma.

We'd be interested to see other comparisons.  Somehow we doubt Oklahoma will come up short.

Psst! Ask Rummy this for me

Well, that was fast.

Drudge has the goods on that question we were talking about earlier.  Seems it was a plant by a reporter.

The Posse isn't surprised in the least and we suspect the motives in this case were simply to make a headline or two - always good for a reporter's budding career.

In this case, though, the reporter may have gotten a little more than he bargained for.

It should make his deployment a bit more interesting...

Why we hate Instapundit

Commenter Deuce asks:  "What is the basis of your animosity toward Instapundit?"

Many volumes have been written documenting the crimes committed by Glenn Reynolds.

Indeed, a vast alliance has been formed to combat his evil.

The Posse is proud to join this alliance and we will never cease the struggle until the hated Instapundit and his foul puppy blenders are destroyed for ever.

It wouldn't hurt for the man to throw us a link, well, ever.

That's probably the main reason.

But the puppy thing isn't nice.