THE GOOD NEWS ABOUT IRAQ

This is a letter to his friends from Ray Reynolds, a medic in the Iowa Army National Guard, serving in Iraq. To The Point has determined its authenticity and updated its factual claims, verifying them with USAID and the Pentagon:

As I head off to Baghdad for the final weeks of my stay in Iraq, I wanted to say thanks to all of you who did not believe the media. They have done a very poor job of covering everything that has happened. I am sorry that I have not been able to visit all of you during my two (more…)

ABU GHRAIB AND TFM

The most personally frustrating aspect of the Abu Ghraib folies is that over a year ago I submitted an interrogation method to the Pentagon that was foolproof, immediate, effective, and humane.

It’s called TFM Interrogation, utilizing a nutritionally-engineered diet of Tryptophan-Free Meals. A TTP article discussing the method is now posted in the Classics section.

If the interrogation teams at Abu Ghraib and other detention centers had used TFM, the Red Cross could have been observing and taking all the pictures they wanted. Yet the Saddamites would have sung like canaries.

Instead, the interrogators chose far less sophisticated techniques. Some (more…)

THE ILLITERATE LEADER OF BRAZIL

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva – known as “Lula” – is functionally illiterate. He won’t read anything, any studies, reports, books et al. His aides have learned to give him only one-page bulleted summaries of any issue, then explain it to him verbally. He has no education and knows nothing of economics or business. Yet he has a photographic memory for events and what is said to him. He is incredibly articulate and persuasive in speech. Thus he is the perfect populist demagogue to rouse the poor Brazilian masses.

He was backed by key Brazilian business leaders who concluded (more…)

GOOD NEWS! KERRY RESCUED BY NEW YORK TIMES

Whew. That was close. Earlier this week, Hanoi John’s campaign looked like a goner.

First was the disastrous interview with Charlie Gibson on Good Morning America, where HJ came off as a truculent, arrogant jerk lying through his teeth.

Then came the $1000 Haircut, with HJ flying his personal hairdresser from Washington to a speaking event in Pennsylvania in Tuh-RAY-zuh’s $35 million private jet for a hair “touchup.” (Note: That’s what the press calculated — flying a Gulfstream V from DC to PA and back costs thousands of dollars alone.)

The third whammy came when the Village Voice ran an (more…)

TERROR ON THE DOLE

Four young British Muslims in their twenties – a social worker, an IT specialist, a security guard and a financial adviser – occupy a table at a fast-food chicken restaurant in Luton. Perched on their plastic chairs, wolfing down their dinner, they seem just ordinary young men. Yet out of their mouths pour heated words of revolution.

“As far as I’m concerned, when they bomb London, the bigger the better,” says Abdul Haq, the social worker. “I know it’s going to happen because Sheikh bin Laden said so. Like Bali, like Turkey, like Madrid – I pray for it, I (more…)

LIBERATING SYRIA

As Syria is emerging as the principal facilitator of terrorism in both Israel and Iraq – see “Syria In The Gunsights” in last week’s TTP Weekly Report of April 23 – a Syrian democracy movement has just come in to being.

It is the Reform Party of Syria, dedicated to terminating the Assad tyranny and achieving freedom and democracy for the Syrian people. The RFS immediately recognized that the “terrorist attack” in Damascus earlier this week (April 27) was staged by the Syrian government as a ruse to divert attention from its being wedded to the very terrorists they claimed (more…)

BUSH’S BIGGEST SUPPORTER

She’s pretending to be John Kerry’s biggest supporter, but no one is rooting for George Bush to win in November more than Hillary. She got behind the best straw candidate Bush could most easily demolish, Dizzy Howard Dean. When he imploded, she looked around and asked, “Who’s the next worst?” A no-brainer: obviously, an egomaniacal gigolo with more negatives than an Algebra student who fantasizes he could be another “JFK.”

As laid out in “Bitterness and Bad Karma” (Behind The Lines, December 14, 2003, currently posted in the Classics section), the only way Hillary can run in 2008 is for (more…)