Normally, news of CBS doing damage control for the Clintons on one of its programs would be of the “dog bites man” variety. However, today’s attempt resulted in some unintentional hilarity as their reliably anti-Bush terrorism expert is none other than Mike “Anonymous” Scheuer. Mr. Scheuer was the head of the CIA’s Bin Laden unit at the time to which Mr. Clinton refers when he lays the blame for not capturing Bin Laden at the feet of the CIA and the FBI. Moreover, Mr. Scheuer has been vocal in the past about his feeling that his unit was repeatedly frustrated by the Clinton administration’s lack of willpower concerning terrorism, going so far as to suggest that the lackadaisical attitude of Clinton, along with Sandy Berger and Richard Clarke, actually abetted Al-Qaeda. Naturally, Scheuer probably wasn’t the best choice of talking head with which to re-focus all talk of the failure to get Bin Laden back upon the Bush administration, particularly since Scheuer and his entire unit are directly implicated in Mr. Clinton’s finger-pointing. When asked if Clinton’s statement to Wallace rang true, Scheuer said the following:

No, sir, I don’t think so. The president seems to be able, the former president seems to be able to deny facts with impugnity. Bin Laden is alive today because Mr. Clinton, Mr. Sandy Berger, and Mr. Richard Clarke refused to kill him. That’s the bottom line. And every time he says what he said to Chris Wallace on Fox, he defames the CIA especially, and the men and women who risk their lives to give his administration repeated chances to kill bin Laden.

Ouch. As Reynolds said, re-hashing the pre-9/11 record on terrorism doesn’t help either Clinton or the Dems so their insistence on doing so makes me think that they’ve once again fallen into the trap of repeating their own canards to the point of believing in them. This would also explain Clinton’s recommendation of Clarke’s book, which does not say what Mr. Clinton thinks it says about his efforts against terrorism, but regardless Clinton’s pathological need not to be at fault is causing damage both to his “legacy” and his party. If he and his media sympathizers have any sense they’ll make like Kos and stop giving this story so much oxygen.

Update: Welcome Ace of Spades readers! Hope you like the site!

More: I was writing this to Geezer and I realized that I should probably share it here. The thing that cracks me up is that Scheuer is the kinda guy that made no bones about wanting to assassinate OBL in the nineties and so while he’s as much of a Bush-hata as most of the rest of the Legacy Media he isn’t exactly the kinda guy to talk to if the goal is to puff ole’ Billy-bob back up after his tirade on Sunday, especially not after Bill blames the CIA, and by implication, Scheuer, when it was the Clinton administration that lacked any real resolve on the terrorism issue!

Back in April, Michael Totten reported from the Israeli/Lebanese border that Hezbollah was preparing an operation. Now they have crossed the border and kidnapped two soldiers and demanded the release of prisoners for their return as Hamas did earlier. The idea that the kidnapping was a copycat operation has received a lot of play today but I’m not so sure that I agree with that line of reasoning. To my mind the symmetry of these kidnappings raises the distinct and much more disturbing possibility that they were orchestrated not just by Hamas and Hezbollah but by their state sponsors in Syria and Iran as the opening moves in a spoiling attack aimed at pushing us out of the Middle East. The collective situation may just be poised to hit the proverbial fan.

Here’s the thumbnail version of how such a spoiling attack would play out. Essentially, Iran sets the stage to its liking, goads the US and/or Israel into action, stirs up a bunch of trouble and then relies on either international and/or domestic fecklessness to constrain the US and Israel while leveraging events to shore up domestic support and possibly duplicate their successes with Hezbollah in Shi’ite Iraq. Amir Taheri has been writing of the potential for this sort of Iranian attack for several years now. In a recent example entitled Iran Readying for Conflict with the US, Mr. Taheri outlined the steps that Iran was taking to prepare itself for war and followed that with speculation on how the scenario would play out:

The diplomatic tussle over Iran’s nuclear plans goes to the Security Council that will fail to take a decision thanks to Russian and Chinese vetoes.
The US, after much huffing and puffing launches air strikes against Iran’s nuclear installations. (Tehran loves Israel to also participate because that would give the Islamic Republic a better claim to be fighting on behalf of Islam as a whole.)
Iran retaliates by ordering the forces it controls inside Iraq to attack American and British troops. At the same time the Lebanese branch of the Hezbollah launches massive rocket attacks against Israel while Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, whose leaders spent the past month in Tehran meeting Khamenehi and his aides, organize a wave of suicide operations against Israel from Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Emphasis mine. Taheri has written several variations of this basic scenario and the current events don’t exactly follow the speculation of this particular article but nevertheless his speculation is alarmingly similar to the events playing out now.

While this sort of offensive may seem foolish and short-sighted from our American point of view it must be remembered that this is classic 4th generation warfare in the style of the Tet offensive. All military action will be precipitated on the political goal of convincing the US that the Middle East is a hopeless quagmire and that maintaining stability (much less promoting democracy) is an impossibly idealistic goal that cannot be achieved, an idea which they are counting on our sensationalist press and our Old European “allies” to reinforce at every opportunity. In short, Iran has the capability to indefinitely launch asymmetrical attacks against our interests in the ME. If they decide to do so, it will take nothing less than the will and resolve to wage total war with Iran with full knowledge and acceptance of the resulting consequences in order to maintain our presence and influence in the Middle East.

Now that Israel has sent the military into southern Lebanon Iran will have a much easier time painting any potential action (including, most importantly, their pursuit of nuclear weapons) with the pretense of legitimacy by framing the conflict as an Israeli/Arab one, hampered by imperious US meddling. Though vile nonsense at its heart one needs only to look at a recent Washington Post op-ed to see the ease with which Iran would be able to disseminate their propaganda.

It is my fervent hope that I am wrong but I cannot help but fear that the danse macabre has just begun.

Update: Ali Larijani (the Iranian defense minister) is currently in Syria to meet with the regime of boy Assad. The plot thickens.

Update the second: Strong words from Frederick Jones at the NSC:

“We also hold Syria and Iran _ which directly support Hezbollah _ responsible for this attack and for the ensuing violence,” Jones said.

So here’s the situation: a few years ago I bought a cheap-o leather office chair with built-in massagers. At the time the price was right but when the chair showed up it was cheap. The leather was coarse, the padding was thin and though it had a battery for cordless operation without AC power it provided a decidedly underwhelming massage. What it DID have going for it was a programmed massage that was really nice. Unfortunately, after several years of use by various people the padding is worn, the battery is dead (which is probably my fault, since I rarely used it without power and probably ruined the battery as a result) and worst of all the sensors have moved enough to prevent the chair from properly detecting my weight and thus actually providing its massage feature. Thus it was decided that I needed a new chair to replace the aging chair.

My criteria for the replacement chair was the following:

• More comfort from better padding and better leather
• A high back was highly preferable so that I could rest my head if desired
• The ability to rock freely was a must
• Massage was mandatory with at least five motors
• Said massage should have an autoprogram or alternately, be programmable

I looked at two less expensive chairs that I initially intended to choose between but chair #1 from Staples was made of the same coarse, stiff leather that I didn’t like in my old chair and chair #2 from OfficeMax only had four massage motors and no program features at all. Both were mid-back models besides and the true deal-killer was that Staples had a much nicer massage chair with heat for fourty bucks more. That is the chair that I decided upon and that I am now enjoying.

Thus far I have found it to be much more comfortable than my previous chair as well as providing a much better range of control over the massage motors. On the negative side, the heater seems a wee bit under-powered and I’m not sure that I like the programmed massage of this unit as much as I liked the programmed massage of my previous chair. Since it’s made with nice leather I’m also experiencing that phenomenon of occasionally peeling myself out of my chair but on the whole I’m satisfied with my purchase. That said, if I didn’t have a religious objection to pleather I’d probably have bought this chair instead, which Wal-Mart sells for $129.99.

The corner has posted a letter from majority “leaders” Frist and Hastert to the president concerning the high price of gasoline. What do congressman Hastert and Senator Frist propose we do about this issue? Wait for it…

we believe that Federal law enforcement agencies and regulators should take every available step to ensure that all Federal laws protecting American consumers from price-fixing, collusion, gouging and other anti-competitive practices are vigorously enforced.

We respectfully request that you direct the Attorney General and the Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission to investigate any potential collusion, price-fixing or gouging in the sale or distribution of gasoline, petroleum distillates or ethanol in wholesale and retail markets. We further request that scrutiny be directed to refining, the transportation of fuel by pipelines, marine vessels and trucks, storage and marketing activities and retail practices to determine if there is any unlawful manipulation of the price of gasoline. Sweeps of retail distribution centers should be undertaken to ensure that retail price movements are in response to a change in market conditions and not price gouging. Finally, we recommend that the Federal Trade Commission examine whether spot shortages of gasoline are the result of illegal efforts to manipulate prices.

Given the severity of the current situation regarding gas prices, we believe that the Attorney General and the Federal Trade Commission should devote all necessary resources to expedited review of complaints of price gouging against wholesalers or retailers of gasoline and other distillates.

Additionally, we request that you direct the Chairman of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission to bring heightened scrutiny to the trading of energy futures and derivatives to determine whether spikes in prices of oil, gasoline and other petroleum distillates are a result of improper market manipulation by traders or by energy firms.

Translation: spend a bunch of time, money and resources and look like you’re doing something about the problem so that we can act in a similar manner. After all, we wouldn’t want those rubes to start thinking too hard about the relation between our mushrooming subsidies new ethanol mandates and the increased price at the pump, eh? What’s next? Drilling ANWR? Opening up the East and Gulf coasts and perhaps even the outer continental shelf to off-shore drilling? Eliminating the maze of environmental regulations that has prevented any new refineries from being built for decades? Can you imagine how the BANANAs will howl about that?!! God knows we all need to keep talking about the Evil Oil CompaniesTM so that our taxpayers don’t realize that we make more money off of every gallon of gas than any oil company ever does!

Just as the Democrats are reminding us of their fundamental unseriousness on National Security issues by rushing to defend Mary McCarthy the Republicans author this brilliant example of their blindingly arrogant and condescendingly pedantic idea of “leadership” so that they, too, can stand up and be counted among the ranks of the unfit to govern. Wonderful.

Update: Looks like Rich Lowry at NRO thought the same thing when he saw that letter. Right on.

I am enthralled with Project X: Megaman Remixes!!! Oooooooooh, those are gonna go on the MP3 player. Oh, yes they are!

Note for the non-geeky types out there: Megaman is a long-running video game series with some of the coolest music out there (Castlevania notwithstanding) and these remixes cover Megaman 2 which quite possibly contained the best music of the series thus far.