Andrew Bolt's Blog, page 1907

Which of them has conceded they were wrong?

We must not allow them to forget or be excused. Iraq was the war the Left claimed, insisted and even hoped couldn't be won.

Let us remember some of those who all but willed defeat there - and in one case expressly desired it:

Which of the countless examples should I choose? Then ABC host Terry Lane, who wrote: "I want the army of my country, which is engaged in an act of gross immorality, to be defeated"?

Or ABC host Phillip Adams, who said spreading democracy to the Middle East was "lunatic"?

Or Age columnist Ken Davidson, who agreed that "arguably . . . Iraq can only be held together by a monster"?

No, let's instead single out Sydney Morning Herald correspondent Paul McGeough as the symbol of the media's wilful failure to predict this victory in Iraq - and it's preference to report one Dunkirk after another.

I choose McGeough because so popular with his peers were his prophesies of doom that his reporting from Iraq was rewarded with a Walkley Award, a Graham Perkin Award for Journalist of the Year, and a United Nations Association of Australia Media Peace Prize.

So how did this authentic voice of the Australian media regard the liberation of Iraq? Well, as an illegitimate, shameful and hopeless blunder from the very start.

At the fall of Baghdad, for instance, he fell for the beat-up of the "looting" of the Baghdad Museum and said it made him doubt after the invasion where the true "criminality lies".

He jeered at Iraq's "puppet regime", falsely accused the interim prime minister of personally executing prisoners, and predicted before the country's first true elections Iraqis were "unlikely to vote in the right numbers to legitimise this process".

When, in fact, more than eight million voted, defying terrorists' warnings to stay away, McGeough bizarrely suggested some had voted "only because of the gun at their backs".

And again and again, he tipped the civil war that never actually came.

In 2003: "Such an uprising has the potential to explode into a civil war . . ."

In 2004: "(Iraq) seems to edge steadily to civil war . . ."

In 2005: "Iraq is showing all the signs of descent into an ugly civil war."

Remember also those who so cynically tried to profit from defeatism - by preaching even more of it. Take Kevin Rudd, for example:

This war is a rolled gold disaster.

Rudd's reckless and cravenly opportunistic defeatism seems even tawdrier with time:

On the issue of Iraq itself, it stands as the greatest single error of Australian national security and foreign policy decision making since Vietnam…

Let's fact-check, and ask why Rudd is still trusted with supervision of the foreign affairs of this nation:

Australian combat deaths in Iraq:

0





Australian combat deaths in Vietnam*: 426





Mission result in Iraq: Victory.





Mission result in Vietnam: Defeat.





Status of Iraq today: Democracy.

Status of Vietnam today: Communist dictatorship.





(* - includes deaths through mines and friendly fire.)

And how about this prediction, by the Anti-Nuclear Alliance of Western Australia:

Australian soldiers will die long before and long after any harm reaches Saddam Hussein.

Saddam has been hanged, and not one Australian soldier has died in combat in Iraq. It's rare that you see a prediction so categorically falsified by events.

And thanks to the sacrifices of uniformed men and women more clear-eyed than their critics, the world is rid of a genocidal dictator, Iraq is free, and terrorists have one fewer sponsor.

(Casualty figures from iCasualites.org.)

Here we go again. Boat no. 1

A new year, but a familiar problem:

HMAS Glenelg, operating under the control of Border Protection Command, intercepted a suspected irregular entry vessel west of Ashmore Islands last night.

Initial indications suggest there are 90 passengers and two crew on board the vessel.

UPDATE

Former Immigration Minister Phillip Ruddock in 2009 warns the Rudd Government its policies have put the people smugglers back in business:

If the numbers keep on increasing at the rate they have been, I think the government will be looking at a pipeline of 10,000 a year or more...

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in 2009 responds with abuse:

Mr Ruddock was also that minister who said that asylum seekers had thrown their kids overboard ... I therefore place zero credibility on anything Philip Ruddock says about anything on that subject at anytime.

But now:

The arrival last night of a boat carrying 92 passengers brings the total number of arrivals under Labor to 10,016 and 3,464 since Prime Minister Gillard took office...

Er, can I have extra fries, then?

I suspect the KFC man was provoked by a customer who knew well that the restaurant was halal, but I'm still not convinced this integration thing is working all that well if a request for bacon is in invitation to have your head broken, bro'.

(Thanks to readers Possum Hunter and Steve S. No comments during holiday break.)

Warmists said the drought would last forever

2007:

DROUGHT will become a redundant term as Australia plans for a permanently drier future, according to the nation's urban water industries chief…

"The urban water industry has decided the inflows of the past will never return," Water Services Association of Australia executive director Ross Young said. "We are trying to avoid the term 'drought' and saying this is the new reality."… Mr Young blamed climate change for the nation's water woes.

2011:

Last year was Australia's third-wettest year on record as a 14-year "long dry" was broken by the rapid transition from El Nino to La Nina conditions. The second half of the year (July to December) was the wettest on record for Australia.

(Thanks to reader David.)

Should Marxists play poker?

Questions:

Does playing poker in the New York Marxist School prove a shortcoming of the ideology or the players?

If rising poverty in the US is an argument for turning to Marxism, what is the greater poverty in every Marxist state an argument for?

Why are universities the last refuge of the Western Marxist?

What kind of person expects to find inspiration in the collected works of Joseph Stalin?

Is singing Christmas carols with new lyrics demanding a boycott of Israel a sign of mental impairment or of a social misfit?

Would it kill a Marxist to dress nice?

Is the glee of the reporter from Russian TV explained by satisfaction that the US is turning to what worked in Russia first, or that the US is falling for what ruined Russia first?

Is the reporter really so brainless as to think a room full of poker-playing, boycott-singing, badly-dressed social incompetents is the vanguard of a great new political movement threatening capitalism in the US?

Hot-air Gore runs out of puff

Al Gore exploited the Hurricane Katrina disaster in his film An Inconvenient Truth to claim global warming was making hurricanes worse:

Now I'm going to show you, recently released, the actual ocean temperature. Of course when the oceans get warmer, that causes stronger storms.  We have seen in the last couple of years, a lot of big hurricanes. Hurricanes Jean, Francis and Ivan were among them. In the same year we had that string of big hurricanes; we also set an all time record for tornadoes in the United States… And then of course came Katrina. It is worth remembering that when it hit Florida it was a Category 1, but it killed a lot of people and caused billions of dollars worth of damage. And then, what happened? Before it hit New Orleans, it went over warmer water. As the water temperature increases, the wind velocity increases and the moisture content increases. And you'll see Hurricane Katrina form over Florida. And then as it comes into the Gulf over warm water it becomes stronger and stronger and stronger. Look at that Hurricane's eye. And of course the consequences were so horrendous; there are no words to describe it.

My red dot on Dr Ryan Maue's graphic - of accumulated energy of tropical cyclones around the world - marks the date Gore made that claim:

Oops. The total hurricane energy is falling, not strengthening.

Dr Roger Pielke Jr says the extensive evidence suggests Gore was wrong. Yet again.

What more does the weather have to do to prove the warming alarmists wrong? And what will it take for the Nobel committee to strip Gore of his prize for serial exaggeration?

(Via Watts Up With That. No comments during holiday break.)

Warmists see their credibility drowned

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong, September 2008:

There is a great deal of scientific advice about the impact of climate change on rainfall, particularly in southern Australia.

I'll just give you a few examples. We know the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said by 2050 that Australia should expect around about a 25 per cent reduction in rainfall in the southern part of the Australia.

We also know that in the two years before our election, what we saw were the lowest inflows into the River Murray in history, 43 per cent lower than the previous lows… So there is a very, very sound body of evidence that indicates that climate change is and will have an impact on rainfall in the Murray-Darling Basin and in southern Australia.

Alarmist of the Year Tim Flannery, 2007:

Over the past 50 years southern Australia has lost about 20 per cent of its rainfall, and one cause is almost certainly global warming.

Flannery again, 2007:

We're already seeing the initial impacts and they include a decline in the winter rainfall zone across southern Australia, which is clearly an impact of climate change, but also a decrease in run-off. Although we're getting say a 20 per cent decrease in rainfall in some areas of Australia, that's translating to a 60 per cent decrease in the run-off into the dams and rivers. That's because the soil is warmer because of global warming and the plants are under more stress and therefore using more moisture. So even the rain that falls isn't actually going to fill our dams and our river systems, and that's a real worry for the people in the bush.

Queensland Premier Peter Beattie, 2007:

Given the current uncertainty about the likely impact of climate change on rainfall patterns in (South Eastern Queensland) over coming years, it is only prudent to assume at this stage that lower than usual rainfalls could eventuate.

The weather, 2010:

AUSTRALIA experienced its third-wettest year on record during 2010 and the La Nina conditions bringing heavy rains are likely to persist into autumn. The Bureau of Meteorology has reported that the second half of the year was the wettest on record for Australia as a 14-year "long dry" was broken by the rapid transition from El Nino to La Nina conditions.

What more does the weather need to do to prove that the warming alarmists have no credibility? 

Warmists see their creibility drowned

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong, September 2008:

There is a great deal of scientific advice about the impact of climate change on rainfall, particularly in southern Australia.

I'll just give you a few examples. We know the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said by 2050 that Australia should expect around about a 25 per cent reduction in rainfall in the southern part of the Australia.

We also know that in the two years before our election, what we saw were the lowest inflows into the River Murray in history, 43 per cent lower than the previous lows… So there is a very, very sound body of evidence that indicates that climate change is and will have an impact on rainfall in the Murray-Darling Basin and in southern Australia.

Alarmist of the Year Tim Flannery, 2007:

Over the past 50 years southern Australia has lost about 20 per cent of its rainfall, and one cause is almost certainly global warming.

Queensland Premier Peter Beattie, 2007:

Given the current uncertainty about the likely impact of climate change on rainfall patterns in (South Eastern Queensland) over coming years, it is only prudent to assume at this stage that lower than usual rainfalls could eventuate.

The weather, 2010:

AUSTRALIA experienced its third-wettest year on record during 2010 and the La Nina conditions bringing heavy rains are likely to persist into autumn.

The Bureau of Meteorology has reported that the second half of the year was the wettest on record for Australia as a 14-year "long dry" was broken by the rapid transition from El Nino to La Nina conditions.

What more does the weather need to do to prove that the warming alarmists have no credibility?

Where's Marieke?

Judith Sloan wonders if the ABC has at last become too embarrassed by Marieke Hardy to run her bile.

I fear Judith may credit the ABC with too much taste.

Amazing revelation. Rudd was more interested in seeming than in doing

Just another Rudd stunt, designed to seem good, not do it? Gosh, what a surprise:

FORMER prime minister Kevin Rudd began legal action against Japan's whaling program despite strong opposition from senior ministers and bureaucrats who warned it was likely to fail and strengthen the hand of the Japanese.

Leaked United States diplomatic cables have indicated the decision to take Japan to the International Court of Justice was designed to divert public pressure on Labor over whaling.

What an offensively mendacious government this has been. An insult to our intelligence and a menace to our welfare.

(No comments during break.)