Pakistan is Well Compensated

In an interesting letter published in DAWN, the writer thinks the United States should show a little more gratitude toward Pakistan, especially in the latter’s “dedication” to fighting what is essentially America’s war on its border with Afghanistan:

Pakistan armed forces have deployed their prime combat Cobra gunship helicopters, assets, munitions and troop-carrying helicopters and C-130 cargo planes to support this deployment logistically. These machines through continuous flying for years must have been close to the end of their useful combat flying life and more so in view of American embargoes in the past due to the Pressler amendment.

It is only fair that the American president should compensate Pakistan by supplying free of cost three squadrons of Apache gunship helicopters with complete guided munitions, two squadrons of cargo airlift helicopters and two squadrons of C-130 J Super Hercules cargo planes.

A tall order indeed! Never mind that Pakistan is receiving $3 billion in economic and military aid, the right to purchase F-16s, the cancellation of more than $1 billion in long-term debt and, not to mention, avoiding the opprobrium of being declared a terrorist state.

The writer is correct; the United States is quite ungrateful.

Dinesh D'Souza Gets a Beating

Scott Johnson, who blogs for Powerline, gives fellow conservative Dinesh D'Souza's new book, The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11, a well-deserved beating in this review. Johnson writes:

"The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11"--Mr. D'Souza's new book--is something else entirely. The book works a strange metamorphosis. Whereas "Illiberal Education" and "The End of Racism" proved Mr. D'Souza a precocious commentator and gifted polemicist, the new book is crude and sophomoric. Worse than its sophomoric treatment of serious issues is its presentation of a blinkered and politically correct version of the Muslim world.

...The charge is serious, even if Mr. D'Souza's invocation of Joe McCarthy belies its seriousness. And the list is long. Does Mr. D'Souza prove his case? Although prosecutors are famously able to get grand juries to indict ham sandwiches, I don't think that Mr. D'Souza's indictment would make it out of a grand jury room. Mr. D'Souza simply lacks any evidence to sustain the charge connecting "the visceral rage," as Mr. D'Souza calls it, of the Muslims who carried out 9/11 to "the cultural left" that supposedly provoked it. Given the disparity between the seriousness of the charge and the thinness of the evidence, the book is a disgrace.

...Mr. D'Souza is neither a historian nor a student of Islam. His research is neither broad nor deep. He refers in passing to interviews he conducted for the book, but he does not appear to have interviewed many scholars, journalists, or witnesses who have devoted themselves to the subjects that bear on his book's thesis.

When you're attacked by fellow conservatives like this, you know you did something wrong. With this hideous book, we can safely say that Dinesh D'Souza is now in the same orbit with Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, and other right-wing nut cases.

Cuba Expelling Foreign Journalists

Cuba is expelling foreign correspondents because they are engaging in "negative" reporting. Negative reporting, in this case, is construed as not toeing the government line; for not publishing their press releases without comment.

Leftist idiots, I'm sure, will come up with a plausable explanation for this-- something along the line about corporate media and right-wing elements in the U.S. government trying to smear the only true people's government on earth. Losing that argument they will always return to the tried and true: reminding the world how wonderful Cuba's health care system is and how literate and educated Cubans are.

Dick Cheney Talks No One Listens

I agree with Blue Texan from Instaputz that no one's been listening to what Vice President Dick Cheney has been saying for years. The man's numerous vacuous statements has reduced his credibility to nil.

For one thing, he spinned the recent announcement by British Prime Minister Tony Blair to withdraw a certain number of troops as a sign that things are going well in Iraq, discounting the fact the withdrawal could also be a sign that things aren't going well in Iraq.