Sneaky little bastard Dept.

Short story: Dwarves in suitcases rifling bus travelers' bags

From London's Telegraph comes this nominee for the Annals of Weird Crime:

Criminal gangs are using dwarves in a ruse to steal from the luggage holds of long-distance coaches, by hiding them inside suitcases, according to police.

The bizarre crime is on the rise in Sweden and officers say thieves have got away with thousands of pounds in cash, jewellery and other valuables in recent months. Gangs are said to sneak the dwarves into the luggage hold, hidden inside baggage. Then, once the journey has begun, the stowaways are free to rifle through the bags of other passengers without fear of being apprehended.

Before the coach arrives at its destination the dwarves take their loot back into their suitcase, zip themselves inside and wait to be collected by their partners in crime. ...

This sounds too weird to be true, but there are multiple sources with much the same story, including a Spiegel report that quotes a spokeswoman for the bus line. "We think it is a short, young person," Ingvar Ryggasjo, sales manager for Swebus, tells Spiegel. "We are taking extra security measures and are thinking of installing video surveillance cameras."

The Local, a Swedish publication, quotes a victim. "It is not known whether the thief in this case was a bantam adult or a child," The Local reports.

Posted by Michael Winter at 04:56 PM/ET, January 31, 2008 in Crime, Europe, Offbeat | Permalink

(
Afterthought: What if all the bags are piled on top of him and he can't get out)

And now from the Iowa Legislature......

I guess we're just not a serious people anymore

Because we let the enemy denounce us and call for our deaths in our heartland

The Iowa Legislature started just over a week ago and some people were upset before the first issue was every addressed.

When the session began, a Muslim Imam began the prayer in the Iowa Legislature. This is where the controversy begins. The prayer asked for “victory over those who disbelieve,” and “protection from the great Satan” among other things.

Pastor Steve Smith of the Evangelical Free Church in Albert City is among those concerned about the Muslim prayer. Rev. Smith admits that he doesn’t know about all the levels of Muslim but knows that the Jihadists believe those in the U.S. are the great Satan.

No, I’m not saying all Muslims are our enemies, just the ones who want us dead.

But here’s the icing on the cake.

When asked about the prayer, Senator Steve Kettering replied in an e-mail that he had not heard the prayer, which did not take place in the Senate chambers.
“I cannot tell you what was said. I have received e-mail regarding this, but since it did not occur on the Senate side I do not have much information,” Kettering said. “ I should point out that the senate had a Catholic priest for their opening."

Oh, I get it, just having a Catholic Priest speak (*cough*Crusades*cough*) is completely the same thing as allowing a muslim to openly call for violent Jihad in the State House.

Scorpius
01/24 at 02:33 PM •
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...thanks to http://www.sondrak.com/index.php/

You ain't gonna like losing.

One of the best points of view that I have heard on the current political situation concerning the war on terror.

"You ain't gonna like losing." Unfortunately, Author unknown

President Bush did make a bad mistake in the war on terrorism. But the mistake was not his decision to go to war in Iraq . Bush's mistake came in his belief that this country is the same one his father fought for in WW2. It is not.

Back then, they had just come out of a vicious depression. The country was steeled by the hardship of that depression, but they still believed fervently in this country. They knew that the people had elected their leaders, so it was the people's duty to back those leaders.

Therefore, when the war broke out the people came together, rallied behind, and stuck with their leaders, whether they had voted for them or not or whether the war was going badly or not.

And war was just as distasteful and the anguish just as great as it is today. Often there were more casualties in one day in WW2 than we have had in the entire Iraq war. But that did not matter. The people stuck with the President because it was their patriotic duty. Americans put aside their differences in WW2 and worked together to win that war.

Everyone from every strata of society, from young to old pitched in. Small children pulled little wagons around to gather scrap metal for the war effort. Grade school students saved their pennies to buy stamps for war bonds to help the effort.

Men who were too old or medically 4F lied about their age or condition trying their best to join the military. Women doubled their work to keep things going at home. Harsh rationing of everything from gasoline to soap, to butter was imposed, yet there was very little complaining.

You never heard prominent people on the radio belittling the President. Interestingly enough in those days there were no fat cat actors and entertainers who ran off to visit and fawn over dictators of hostile countries and complain to them about our President. Instead, they made upbeat films and entertained our troops to help the troops' morale. And a bunch even enlisted!

And imagine this: Teachers in schools actually started the day off with a Pledge of Allegiance and with prayers for our country and our troops!

Back then, no newspaper would have dared point out certain weak spots in our cities where bombs could be set off to cause the maximum damage. No newspaper would have dared complain about what we were doing to catch spies.

A newspaper would have been laughed out of existence if it had complained that German or Japanese soldiers were being 'tortured' by being forced to wear women's underwear, or subjected to interrogation by a woman, or being scared by a dog or did not have air conditioning.

There were a lot of things different back then. We were not subjected to a constant bombardment of pornography, perversion and promiscuity in movies or on radio. We did not have legions of crack heads, dope pushers and armed gangs roaming our streets.

No, President Bush did not make a mistake in his handling of terrorism. He made the mistake of believing that we still had the courage and fortitude of our fathers. He believed that this was still the country that our fathers fought so dearly to preserve.

It is not the same country. It is now a cross between Sodom and Gomorrah and the Land of Oz. We did unite for a short while after 9/11, but our attitude changed when we found out that defending our country would actually require some sacrifices.

We are in great danger. The terrorists are fanatic Muslims. They believe that it is okay, even their duty, to kill anyone who will not convert to Islam. It has been estimated that about one-third or over three hundred million Muslims are sympathetic to the terrorists cause...Hitler and Tojo combined did not have nearly that many potential recruits.

So...we either win it - or lose it - and you ain't gonna like losing.

America is not at war. The military is at war. America is at the Mall.

.....Eva Tympalska, PLLC

/Or "Quack Science"

DavidWarrenOnline
ESSAYS ON OUR TIMES

SUNDAY SPECTATOR

October 28, 2007

"Irrefutable science"

According to three doctors at the K.S. Hegde Medical Academy in Mangalore, India, writing in the journal Medical Hypotheses, giving up smoking can kill you. Arunachalam Kumar, Kasaragod Mallya, and Jairaj Kumar were “struck by the more than casual relationship between the appearance of lung cancer and an abrupt and recent cessation of the smoking habit in many, if not most, cases." In 182 of the 312 cases they had treated, an habitual smoker of at least a pack a day, for at least a quarter-century, had developed lung cancer shortly after he gave up smoking. They reasonably surmised, that a biological mechanism protects smokers against cancer, which is strengthened by years of determined smoking. But when the smoker quits, “a surge and spurt in re-activation of bodily healing and repair mechanisms of chronic smoke-damaged respiratory epithelia is induced and spurred by an abrupt discontinuation of habit,” and “goes awry, triggering uncontrolled cell division and tumour genesis." One immediately posits an evolutionary argument that could support this hypothesis. Man is the only animal who cooks his food, and thousands of generations of our ancestors, pent up in smoke-filled caves, could easily account for this biological mechanism. Since the findings of Kumar, Mallya, and Kumar coincide with my own medical hypothesis, based on my own anecdotal evidence, I hasten to embrace them. Several deceased friends and family, starting with my paternal grandfather, perished shortly after they quit smoking -- not only from lung cancer, but from other causes ranging from previously-undiagnosed heart disease to industrial accident. The same general principle would apply: that a body long accustomed to a (frankly addictive) substance, goes haywire when the substance is removed. Verily, in the good old days, people instinctively understood things like that, without the need for medical research. And it was inconceivable that, for instance, hospitals would prevent patients from smoking, who were already medically challenged on other fronts. More widely disseminated medical literature has documented other risks of non-smoking, that include neurotic depression, violent irritability, and obscene weight gain. But these tend to be discounted because they lead to death only indirectly. Likewise, indirect evidence for the dangers of not smoking comes from the 150th anniversary number of Atlantic magazine. P.J. O'Rourke points to (actual, serious) U.S. historical statistics showing that, in the period 1973-94, annual per capita consumption of cigarettes FELL from 4,148 to 2,493. In the same period, the incidence of lung and bronchial cancer ROSE from 42.5 to 57.1 cases per 100,000 population. In the past I have flagged U.N. statistics showing that life expectancy was nicely proportional to tobacco consumption, internationally -- so that e.g. Japan and South Korea were respectively first and second in BOTH life expectancy AND tobacco consumption. Whereas, the lowest tobacco consumption was in “basketcase” Third World countries, where we also found some of the shortest life expectancies. I think we could also find historical statistics showing that there is a reliable, worldwide relationship between rising tobacco consumption, and rising life expectancy, nation by nation, throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. As Al Gore likes to say, "the science is irrefutable." The weakness in that last statement being, that there is no such thing as irrefutable science. There is nothing in the whole history of science, including physiology and meteorology, that is not tentative. And while, in astronomy, I remain convinced that the earth revolves around the sun, I would not put all my money even on that proposition, but, given attractively long odds, reserve a penny bet on the sun going round the earth. If my reader is planning to give up smoking in the face of what I report, then courage to him, and I will not joke, “Go ahead, make my day.” I am not in the pay of the tobacco lobby -- on the contrary, I seem to be paying them -- and am in principle indifferent to what substances others decide to use or abuse. My dander rises only when they interfere with my own freedom, through the childish, petty, and essentially totalitarian public campaigns against harmless smokers -- buttressed by scientific claims weaker than the above. There is one more hypothesis with which I would like to leave my reader today. It is that the kind of quack “science” that was used to ban smoking has now mutated into the kind that is used to flog global warming. It should have been resisted then; it should certainly be resisted now.

David Warren

© Ottawa Citizen

Denmark and the Muslim Experience...

Subject: How Denmark Faces The Muslim Challenge!

By Susan MacAllen
In 1978-9 I was living and studying in Denmark.
But in 1978 - even in Copenhagen, one didn't see Muslim
immigrants. The Danish population embraced visitors, celebrated the exotic, went out of its way to protect each of its citizens. It was proud of its new brand of socialist liberalism - one in development since the conservatives had lost power in 1929 - a system where no worker had to struggle to survive, where one ultimately could count
upon the state as in, perhaps, no other western nation at the time. The rest of Europe saw the Scandinavians as free-thinking, progressive and infinitely generous in their welfare policies. Denmark boasted low crime rates, devotion to the environment, a superior educational
system and a history of humanitarianism.

Denmark was also most generous in its immigration policies - it offered the best welcome in Europe to the new immigrant: generous welfare payments from first arrival plus additional perks in transportation, housing and education. It was determined to set a world example for inclusiveness and multiculturalism. How could it
have predicted that one day in 2005 a series of political cartoons in a newspaper would spark violence that would leave dozens dead in the streets - all because its commitment to multiculturalism would come back to bite?

By the 1990's the growing urban Muslim population was obvious - and its unwillingness to integrate into Danish society was obvious. Years of immigrants had settled into Muslim-exclusive enclaves. As the Muslim leadership became more vocal about what they considered the
decadence of Denmark's liberal way of life, the Danes - once so welcoming - began to feel slighted. Many Danes had begun to see Islam as incompatible with their long-standing values: belief in personal liberty and free speech, in equality for women, in tolerance for other ethnic groups, and a deep pride in Danish heritage and history.

The New York Post in 2002 ran an article by Daniel Pipes and Lars Hedegaard, in which they forecasted accurately that the growing immigrant problem in Denmark would explode. In the article they reported:

"Muslim immigrants..constitute 5 percent of the population but consume upwards of 40 percent of the welfare spending."

"Muslims are only 4 percent of Denmark's 5.4 million people but make up a majority of the country's convicted rapists, an especially combustible issue given that practically all the female victims are Non-Muslim. Similar, if lesser, disproportions are found in other crimes."

"Over time, as Muslim immigrants increase in numbers, they wish less to mix with the indigenous population. A recent survey finds that only 5 percent of young Muslim immigrants would readily marry a Dane."

"Forced marriages - promising a newborn daughter in Denmark to a male cousin in the home country, then compelling her to marry him, sometimes on pain of death - are one problem."

"Muslim leaders openly declare their goal of introducing Islamic law once Denmark's Muslim population grows large enough - a not-that-remote prospect. If present trends persist, one sociologist estimates, every third inhabitant of Denmark in 40 years will be Muslim."

It is easy to understand why a growing number of Danes would feel that Muslim immigrants show little respect for Danish values and laws. An example is the phenomenon common to other European countries and the U.S.: some Muslims in Denmark who opted to leave the Muslim faith have been murdered in the name of Islam, while others hide in fear for their lives. Jews are also threatened and harassed openly by Muslim Leaders in Denmark, a country where once Christian citizens worked to smuggle out nearly all of their 7,000 Jews by night to Sweden - before
the Nazis could invade. I think of my Danish friend Elsa - who as a teenager had dreaded crossing the street to the bakery every morning under the eyes of occupying Nazi soldiers - and I wonder what she would say today.

In 2001, Denmark elected the most conservative government in some 70 years - one that had some decidedly non-generous ideas about liberal
unfettered immigration. Today Denmark has the strictest immigration policies in Europe. ( Its effort to protect itself has been met with accusations of "racism" by liberal media across Europe - even as other Governments struggle to right the social problems wrought by years of
too-lax immigration.) If you wish to become Danish, you must attend three years of language classes. You must pass a test on Denmark's history, culture, and a Danish language test. You must live in Denmark for 7 years before applying for citizenship. You must demonstrate an
intent to work, and have a job waiting. If you wish to bring a spouse into Denmark, you must both be over 24 years of age, and you won't find it so easy anymore to move your friends and family to Denmark with you. You will not be allowed to build a mosque in Copenhagen. Although your children have a choice of some 30 Arabic culture and
language schools in Denmark, they will be strongly encouraged to assimilate to Danish society in ways that past immigrants weren't.

In 2006, the Danish minister for employment, Claus Hjort Frederiksen, spoke publicly of the burden of Muslim immigrants on the Danish welfare system, and it was horrifying: the government's welfare committee had calculated that if immigration from Third World countries were blocked, 75 percent of the cuts needed to sustain the huge welfare system in coming decades would be unnecessary. In other words, the welfare system as it existed was being exploited by immigrants to the point of eventually bankrupting the government. "We are simply forced to adopt a new policy on immigration. The calculations of the welfare committee are terrifying and show how unsuccessful the integration of immigrants has been up to now," he said.

A large thorn in the side of Denmark's imams is the Minister of Immigration and Integration, Rikke Hvilshoj. She makes no bones about the new policy toward immigration, "The number of foreigners coming to the country makes a difference," Hvilshoj says, "There is an inverse correlation between how many come here and how well we can
receive the foreigners that come." And on Muslim immigrants needing to demonstrate a willingness to blend in, "In my view, Denmark should be a country with room for different cultures and religions. Some values, however, are more important than others. We refuse to question
democracy, equal rights, and freedom of speech."

Hvilshoj has paid a price for her show of backbone. Perhaps to test her resolve, the leading radical imam in Denmark, Ahmed Abdel Rahman Abu Laban, demanded that the government pay blood money to the family
of a Muslim who was murdered in a suburb of Copenhagen, stating that the family's thirst for revenge could be thwarted for money. When Hvilshoj dismissed his demand, he argued that in Muslim culture the
payment of retribution money was common, to which Hvilshoj replied that what is done in a Muslim country is not necessarily what is done in Denmark. The Muslim reply came soon after: her house was torched while she, her husband and children slept. All managed to escape
unharmed, but she and her family were moved to a secret location and she and other ministers were assigned bodyguards for the first time - in a country where such murderous violence was once so scarce.

Her government has slid to the right, and her borders have tightened. Many believe that what happens in the next decade will determine whether Denmark survives as a bastion of good living, humane thinking and social responsibility, or whether it becomes a nation at civil war
with supporters of Sharia law. And meanwhile, Americans clamor for stricter immigration policies, and demand an end to state welfare programs that allow many immigrants to live on the public dole. As we in America look at the enclaves of Muslims amongst us, and see those who enter our shores too easily, dare live on our taxes, yet refuse to
embrace our culture, respect our traditions, participate in our legal system, obey our laws, speak our language, appreciate our history . . we would do well to look to Denmark, and say a prayer for her future and for our own.

British Court Inconveniences Algore's theory...

A British court has made several pronouncements about Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth as part of ruling prohibiting the showing of the film to schoolchildren without disclaimers. When the film was planned for presentation in class, a parent brought suit, claiming the film was politically biased and contained scientific inaccuracies. Well, the court has weighed in with the following assertions:

· The film claims that melting snows on Mount Kilimanjaro evidence global warming. The Government's expert was forced to concede that this is not correct.

· The film suggests that evidence from ice cores proves that rising CO2 causes temperature increases over 650,000 years. The Court found that the film was misleading: over that period the rises in CO2 lagged behind the temperature rises by 800-2000 years.

· The film uses emotive images of Hurricane Katrina and suggests that this has been caused by global warming. The Government's expert had to accept that it was "not possible" to attribute one-off events to global warming.

· The film shows the drying up of Lake Chad and claims that this was caused by global warming. The Government's expert had to accept that this was not the case.

· The film claims that a study showed that polar bears had drowned due to disappearing arctic ice. It turned out that Mr Gore had misread the study: in fact four polar bears drowned and this was because of a particularly violent storm.

· The film threatens that global warming could stop the Gulf Stream throwing Europe into an ice age: the Claimant's evidence was that this was a scientific impossibility.

· The film blames global warming for species losses including coral reef bleaching. The Government could not find any evidence to support this claim.

· The film suggests that the Greenland ice covering could melt causing sea levels to rise dangerously. The evidence is that Greenland will not melt for millennia.

· The film suggests that the Antarctic ice covering is melting, the evidence was that it is in fact increasing.

· The film suggests that sea levels could rise by 7m causing the displacement of millions of people. In fact the evidence is that sea levels are expected to rise by about 40cm over the next hundred years and that there is no such threat of massive migration.

· The film claims that rising sea levels has caused the evacuation of certain Pacific islands to New Zealand. The Government are unable to substantiate this and the Court observed that this appears to be a false claim.

Teachers in England now have to make tell students the film is political and only shows one side of an argument, and the above inaccuracies need to be spelled out as well.

Did CNN cover this story? No, but you can find it here: Court Identifies Eleven Inaccuracies in Al Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth’.

The Carter Legacy...

We just don’t get it. The Left in America is screaming to high heaven that the mess we are in in Iraq and the war on terrorism has been caused by the right-wing and that George W. Bush, the so-called “dim-witted cowboy,” has created the entire mess.The truth is the entire nightmare can be traced back to the liberal democratic policies of the leftist Jimmy Carter, who created a firestorm that destabilized our greatest ally in the Muslim world, the shah of Iran, in favor of a religious fanatic, the ayatollah Khomeini.

Carter viewed Khomeini as more of a religious holy man in a grassroots revolution than a founding father of modern terrorism. Carter’s ambassador to the UN, Andrew Young, said “Khomeini will eventually be hailed as a saint.” Carter’s Iranian ambassador, William Sullivan, said, “Khomeini is a Gandhi-like figure.” Carter adviser James Bill proclaimed in a Newsweek interview on February 12, 1979 that Khomeini was not a mad mujahid, but a man of “impeccable integrity and honesty.”

The shah was terrified of Carter. He told his personal confidant, “Who knows what sort of calamity he [Carter] may unleash on the world?”

Let’s look at the results of Carter’s misguided liberal policies: the Islamic Revolution in Iran; the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (Carter’s response was to boycott the 1980 Moscow Olympics); the birth of Osama bin Laden’s terrorist organization; the Iran-Iraq War, which cost the lives of millions dead and wounded; and yes, the present war on terrorism and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

WHEN CARTER entered the political fray in 1976, America was still riding the liberal wave of anti-Vietnam War emotion. Carter asked for an in-depth report on Iran even before he assumed the reins of government and was persuaded that the shah was not fit to rule Iran. 1976 was a banner year for pacifism: Carter was elected president, Bill Clinton became attorney-general of Arkansas, and Albert Gore won a place in the Tennessee House of Representatives.

In his anti-war pacifism, Carter never got it that Khomeini, a cleric exiled to Najaf in Iraq from 1965-1978, was preparing Iran for revolution. Proclaiming “the West killed God and wants us to bury him,” Khomeini’s weapon of choice was not the sword but the media. Using tape cassettes smuggled by Iranian pilgrims returning from the holy city of Najaf, he fueled disdain for what he called gharbzadegi (”the plague of Western culture”).

Carter pressured the shah to make what he termed human rights concessions by releasing political prisoners and relaxing press censorship. Khomeini could never have succeeded without Carter. The Islamic Revolution would have been stillborn.

Gen. Robert Huyser, Carter’s military liaison to Iran, once told me in tears: “The president could have publicly condemned Khomeini and even kidnapped him and then bartered for an exchange with the [American Embassy] hostages, but the president was indignant. ‘One cannot do that to a holy man,’ he said.”

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has donned the mantle of Ayatollah Khomeini, taken up bin Laden’s call, and is fostering an Islamic apocalyptic revolution in Iraq with the intent of taking over the Middle East and the world.

Jimmy Carter became the poster boy for the ideological revolution of the 1960s in the West, hell bent on killing the soul of America. The bottom line: Carter believed then and still does now is that evil really does not exist; people are basically good; America should embrace the perpetrators and castigate the victims.

IN THE ‘60S it was mass rebellion after the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. When humanity confronts eternity, the response is always rebellion or repentance. The same ideologues who fought to destroy the soul of America with the “God is dead” movement in the 1960s are now running the arts, the universities, the media, the State Department, Congress, and Senate, determined more then ever to kill the soul of America while the East attempts to kill the body. Carter’s world view defines the core ideology of the Democratic Party.

What is going on in Iraq is no mystery to those of us who have had our fingers on the pulse of both Iran and Iraq for decades. The Iran-Iraq war was a war of ideologies. Saddam Hussein saw himself as an Arab leader who would defeat the non-Arab Persians. Khomeini saw it as an opportunity to export his Islamic Revolution across the borders to the Shi’ites in Iraq and then beyond to the Arab countries.

Throughout the war both leaders did everything possible to incite the inhabitants of each country to rebel - precisely what Iran is doing in Iraq today. Khomeini encouraged the Shi’ites across the border to remove Saddam from power and establish an Islamic republic like in Iran.

Carter’s belief that every crisis can be resolved with diplomacy - and nothing but diplomacy - now permeates the Democratic Party. Unfortunately, Carter is wrong.

There are times when evil must be openly confronted and defeated.

KHOMEINI HAD the help of the PLO in Iran. They supplied weapons and terrorists to murder Iranians and incite mobs in the streets. No wonder Yasser Arafat was hailed as a friend of Khomeini after he seized control of Iran and was given the Israeli Embassy in Teheran with the PLO flag flying overhead.

The Carter administration scrambled to assure the new regime that the United States would maintain diplomatic ties with Iran. But on April 1, 1979 the greatest April Fools’ joke of all time was played, as Khomeini proclaimed it the first day of the government of God.

In February 1979 Khomeini had boarded an Air France flight to return to Teheran with the blessing of Jimmy Carter. The moment he arrived, he proclaimed: “I will kick his teeth in” - referring to then prime minister Shapour Bakhtiar, who was left in power with a US pledge of support. He was assassinated in Paris by Iranian agents in 1991.

I sat in the home of Gen. Huyser, who told me the shah feared he would lose the country if he implemented Carter’s polices. Carter had no desire to see the shah remain in power. He really believed that a cleric - whose Islamist fanaticism he did not understand in the least - would be better for human rights and Iran.

He could have changed history by condemning Khomeini and getting the support of our allies to keep him out of Iran.

The writer is a New York Times best-selling author. His newest book is The Final Move Beyond Iraq. www.beyondiraq.com

We just don’t get it. The Left in America is screaming to high heaven that the mess we are in in Iraq and the war on terrorism has been caused by the right-wing and that George W. Bush, the so-called “dim-witted cowboy,” has created the entire mess.The truth is the entire nightmare can be traced back to the liberal democratic policies of the leftist Jimmy Carter, who created a firestorm that destabilized our greatest ally in the Muslim world, the shah of Iran, in favor of a religious fanatic, the ayatollah Khomeini.

Carter viewed Khomeini as more of a religious holy man in a grassroots revolution than a founding father of modern terrorism. Carter’s ambassador to the UN, Andrew Young, said “Khomeini will eventually be hailed as a saint.” Carter’s Iranian ambassador, William Sullivan, said, “Khomeini is a Gandhi-like figure.” Carter adviser James Bill proclaimed in a Newsweek interview on February 12, 1979 that Khomeini was not a mad mujahid, but a man of “impeccable integrity and honesty.”

The shah was terrified of Carter. He told his personal confidant, “Who knows what sort of calamity he [Carter] may unleash on the world?”

Let’s look at the results of Carter’s misguided liberal policies: the Islamic Revolution in Iran; the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (Carter’s response was to boycott the 1980 Moscow Olympics); the birth of Osama bin Laden’s terrorist organization; the Iran-Iraq War, which cost the lives of millions dead and wounded; and yes, the present war on terrorism and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

WHEN CARTER entered the political fray in 1976, America was still riding the liberal wave of anti-Vietnam War emotion. Carter asked for an in-depth report on Iran even before he assumed the reins of government and was persuaded that the shah was not fit to rule Iran. 1976 was a banner year for pacifism: Carter was elected president, Bill Clinton became attorney-general of Arkansas, and Albert Gore won a place in the Tennessee House of Representatives.

In his anti-war pacifism, Carter never got it that Khomeini, a cleric exiled to Najaf in Iraq from 1965-1978, was preparing Iran for revolution. Proclaiming “the West killed God and wants us to bury him,” Khomeini’s weapon of choice was not the sword but the media. Using tape cassettes smuggled by Iranian pilgrims returning from the holy city of Najaf, he fueled disdain for what he called gharbzadegi (”the plague of Western culture”).

Carter pressured the shah to make what he termed human rights concessions by releasing political prisoners and relaxing press censorship. Khomeini could never have succeeded without Carter. The Islamic Revolution would have been stillborn.

Gen. Robert Huyser, Carter’s military liaison to Iran, once told me in tears: “The president could have publicly condemned Khomeini and even kidnapped him and then bartered for an exchange with the [American Embassy] hostages, but the president was indignant. ‘One cannot do that to a holy man,’ he said.”

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has donned the mantle of Ayatollah Khomeini, taken up bin Laden’s call, and is fostering an Islamic apocalyptic revolution in Iraq with the intent of taking over the Middle East and the world.

Jimmy Carter became the poster boy for the ideological revolution of the 1960s in the West, hell bent on killing the soul of America. The bottom line: Carter believed then and still does now is that evil really does not exist; people are basically good; America should embrace the perpetrators and castigate the victims.

IN THE ‘60S it was mass rebellion after the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. When humanity confronts eternity, the response is always rebellion or repentance. The same ideologues who fought to destroy the soul of America with the “God is dead” movement in the 1960s are now running the arts, the universities, the media, the State Department, Congress, and Senate, determined more then ever to kill the soul of America while the East attempts to kill the body. Carter’s world view defines the core ideology of the Democratic Party.

What is going on in Iraq is no mystery to those of us who have had our fingers on the pulse of both Iran and Iraq for decades. The Iran-Iraq war was a war of ideologies. Saddam Hussein saw himself as an Arab leader who would defeat the non-Arab Persians. Khomeini saw it as an opportunity to export his Islamic Revolution across the borders to the Shi’ites in Iraq and then beyond to the Arab countries.

Throughout the war both leaders did everything possible to incite the inhabitants of each country to rebel - precisely what Iran is doing in Iraq today. Khomeini encouraged the Shi’ites across the border to remove Saddam from power and establish an Islamic republic like in Iran.

Carter’s belief that every crisis can be resolved with diplomacy - and nothing but diplomacy - now permeates the Democratic Party. Unfortunately, Carter is wrong.

There are times when evil must be openly confronted and defeated.

KHOMEINI HAD the help of the PLO in Iran. They supplied weapons and terrorists to murder Iranians and incite mobs in the streets. No wonder Yasser Arafat was hailed as a friend of Khomeini after he seized control of Iran and was given the Israeli Embassy in Teheran with the PLO flag flying overhead.

The Carter administration scrambled to assure the new regime that the United States would maintain diplomatic ties with Iran. But on April 1, 1979 the greatest April Fools’ joke of all time was played, as Khomeini proclaimed it the first day of the government of God.

In February 1979 Khomeini had boarded an Air France flight to return to Teheran with the blessing of Jimmy Carter. The moment he arrived, he proclaimed: “I will kick his teeth in” - referring to then prime minister Shapour Bakhtiar, who was left in power with a US pledge of support. He was assassinated in Paris by Iranian agents in 1991.

I sat in the home of Gen. Huyser, who told me the shah feared he would lose the country if he implemented Carter’s polices. Carter had no desire to see the shah remain in power. He really believed that a cleric - whose Islamist fanaticism he did not understand in the least - would be better for human rights and Iran.

He could have changed history by condemning Khomeini and getting the support of our allies to keep him out of Iran.

The writer is a New York Times best-selling author. His newest book is The Final Move Beyond Iraq. www.beyondiraq.com