Last Fall, I highlighted the website WWII in Color.

For so many years, historians and casual observers alike have observed the events of World War II through faded black and white images. What most people do not know is the fact that quite a large portion of the WWII was shot using color film! However, it wasn’t until recently that a lot of the photographs and motion picture footage was de-classified by the U.S. Government. We don’t just have a collection of U.S. images, but we also have a diverse collection of German, Russian, Japanese, British and Italian photos.

It’s a very cool site. Now here’s some WWII video… in color! Enjoy.

There they go again. The New York Times has decided that publishing classified information is in the public interest. How nice. (hat tip: Michelle)

The top American commander in Iraq has drafted a plan that projects sharp reductions in the United States military presence there by the end of 2007, with the first cuts coming this September, American officials say.

According to a classified briefing at the Pentagon this week by the commander, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the number of American combat brigades in Iraq is projected to decrease to 5 or 6 from the current level of 14 by December 2007…

…General Casey’s briefing has remained a closely held secret, and it was described by American officials who agreed to discuss the details only on condition of anonymity.

Isn’t it ironic that the Plamegate supporters never seem to give a damn about the leaking of classified information that could endanger thousands of brave men and women, much less undermine the very war against terrorists.

Update: Lawmaker Wants Papers Probed Over Stories

The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee urged the Bush administration on Sunday to seek criminal charges against newspapers that reported on a secret financial-monitoring program used to trace terrorists.

King, R-N.Y., said he would write Attorney General Alberto Gonzales urging that the nation’s chief law enforcer “begin an investigation and prosecution of The New York Times _ the reporters, the editors and the publisher.”

“We’re at war, and for the Times to release information about secret operations and methods is treasonous,” King told The Associated Press.

Amen!

…reports the Washington Times. There ought to only be one thing written on those signs:

On December 3, 2003, John Kerry said that a premature U.S. withdrawal from Iraq would be “tantamount to a cut-and-run strategy” and that a “sudden embrace of accelerated Iraqification and American troop withdrawal without adequate stability” would be “an invitation to failure.” He contended that it would be “a disaster and a disgraceful betrayal of principle” to accelerate the transfer of authority to Iraqis so as to allow “a politically expedient withdrawal of American troops.”

But this past week, Kerry introduced an amendment to the Defense Authorization Bill that would withdraw U.S. combat troops out of Iraq by the end of this year.

So I guess a “disgraceful betrayal of principle” through a “cut-and-run strategy” that invites failure is okay as long as it’s done by a Democrat.

Today’s episode brought to you by Jersey City, NJ:

Instead the magnifying glass has focused on Mr. Healy after a widely publicized clash with the police early Saturday outside his sister’s bar in Bradley Beach, a Shore town where Mr. Healy owns a home.

After the arrest, a spokeswoman for the mayor said that Mr. Healy had had “a couple of beers,” at the bar, but she later retracted that statement.

It would seem strange that voters are shrugging this incident off as no big deal, but then again these are the same voters that…

Mr. Healy garnered unwanted attention in October 2004, less than a month before a special mayoral election, which he won. Grainy photographs taken with a cellphone camera and distributed around the city showed him slumped naked on his porch after a night of drinking.

When asked about the photos, he acknowledged that he was the person in them, and said that he had consumed “six to eight beers” over the course of three hours at a nearby tavern… Despite the photos, Mr. Healy, a Democrat, went on to win the election against 10 candidates. Six months later, he won a full four-year term in a landslide, with 75 percent of the vote.

Welcome to Jersey.

al-Qaida has a new message out:

Al-Qaida’s No. 2 leader paid tribute to the slain Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in a video Friday, extolling him as “the prince of martyrs” despite the rocky relationship that the terrorist leader in Iraq had with the al-Qaida command.

This message has been brought to you by the New York Times, proudly serving jihadists for 17 years… whose motto is, “If it ain’t secret, it ain’t news!”

Remember when President Bush shocked… shocked… the entire liberal world in his second month on the job, by dumping the tree-hugging-fiasco known as the Kyoto Protocol?

Europeans reacted sharply Thursday to President George W. Bush’s repudiation of the Kyoto global warming treaty, with France denouncing it as a scandal and an alarmed European Union announcing it would send top-ranking representatives to Washington.

French Environment Minister Dominique Voynet said: “Mr Bush’s unilateral attitude is a scandal.”

His behaviour was “entirely provocative and irresponsible,” she added.

The European Commission announced in Brussels it will send a delegation to Washington next week for talks with the Bush administration.

Italy’s Environment Minister Willer Bordon called the US move “extremely serious”. He said Washington should be forced to state its position officially.

Apparently they didn’t recognize the good ol’ fashioned official-middle-finger-position.

Now who’s having the last laugh? From AFP:

New data has shown that the European Union (EU) remains embarrassingly off track for meeting its pledges under the Kyoto Protocol, the UN climate-change pact it championed after a US walkout.

Instead of falling, EU greenhouse-gas pollution actually rose in the latest year of monitoring, adding to the task of meeting the Kyoto goals, according to figures released by the European Environment Agency (EAA) in Copenhagen.

“Despite the various policy initiatives, this report highlights that the trend is still going in the wrong direction,” declared EAA Executive Director Jacqueline McGlade.

Oops. That’s gonna leave a mark.

Now, let’s see a report on how many millions of dollars have been thrown at this stupid treaty, and how many jobs have been lost as a result of the ineffective regulations it produced.

European weenies, your apologies can be forwarded to the U.S. State Department.

Remember back in April when NBC tried to manufacture a news story about sending some brown-skinned, turban-wearing man to a NASCAR race to see if some rednecks would unleash a trailer park jihad on him?

Now it’s ABC News’ turn to generate some news out of thin air.

It’s always nice to see MSM taking the initiative in creating the news.

Witnessing the impact of global warming in your life?

ABC News wants to hear from you. We’re currently producing a report on the increasing changes in our physical environment, and are looking for interesting examples of people coping with the differences in their daily lives. Has your life been directly affected by global warming?

My dog has been licking himself more than usual… I can only assume it’s because the globe is warming and he’s got to stay cool. Mr. ABC News producer manufacturer, would you prefer pictures or video?

Update: Michelle and HotAir are offering assistance to ABC.

There is a lot of buzz about the reports of more WMDs being found in Iraq. I don’t know that this story will be as earth-shattering as some hope. Even if a fully-functional nuclear warhead was discovered with Saddam’s fingerprints and DNA on it next to a picture of Saddam riding the warhead like a circus pony, while holding a sign that says, “America, this nuke’s for you”, the liberalistas would still dismiss it as: 1) fake, 2) planted, 3) having been given to him by Ronald Reagan, 4) a CIA hoax combined with an FBI photoshop and a body double from FEMA.

We know Iraq had WMDs because Saddam used them. And while he may not have had a fully functioning nuclear weapons program the moment we walked in, the Deulfer Report declared that Saddam was simply waiting for the crumbling U.N. sanctions to be lifted to rapidly start up (or restart) the program. And with so-called allies like France, Russia and China trying to help end the sanctions, it was only a matter of time. And given the ties, and mutual hatred of western infidels, between al-Qaida and Baghdad, in a post-9/11 world, it would’ve been negligent to continue down the path of U.N. containment and inspections that were obviously ineffective.

That last point is what makes today’s story newsworthy. Those who oppose our actions in Iraq while claiming the U.N. inspections were “working” are either naive, gullible or just plain stupid. To believe they were working would require you to believe Saddam was an honest and trustworthy man who was actively cooperating with the U.N. and inspectors. The post-2003 invasion discovery of hundreds of chemical weapons, degraded or not, from years past or not, prove that the inspections were not working and that Saddam was actively engaged in deception, hiding such weapons from the inspectors. If he was engaged in deception around old, worn out, potentially unusable weapons, do you think he’d be forthright about active nuclear weapons programs?

If you do, you’re an idiot…

I’m not a big fan of polls, but I know Democrats live by them… so the latest CNN Poll has got to be making Hillary reach for the prozac.

With the presidential election more than two years away, a CNN poll released Monday suggests that nearly half of Americans would “definitely not vote for” Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

It’s not like it really comes as a surprise. (Of course the poll equally dashes the hopes of John Kerry and Al Gore as well, but that’s another story)

But never fear, Hillary. Just because Geena Davis’ female president show got dumped faster than an Elizabeth Taylor husband, and just because Americans would rather perform root canals on themselves before electing you to return to the White House, your media allies are johnny-on-the-spot with some “news” to help your cause.

It just so happens MSM suddenly thinks there’s a surprising lack of femininity at the top of American politics. What a coincidence.

For all the talk about Hillary Rodham Clinton and Condoleezza Rice battling for the presidency in 2008, the closest a woman has come to the Oval Office is actress Geena Davis, star of the recently canceled TV series “Commander in Chief.”

Yet, in other nations, a female leader isn’t just the stuff of television drama.

Countries as diverse as Britain, Chile, Liberia and Israel have elected women to their highest political office. When it comes to female representation in national parliaments, the U.S. ranks 68th in the world.

As “diverse” of Chile and Liberia?

Ahh, yes, that diverse-women-loving country of Liberia.

But women were subjected to distinctive abuse for reasons linked specifically to their being women. Rebel fighters often raped women and killed men on a systematic basis. Sometimes women were raped first and then killed. In Liberia today, women survivors count their blessings in terms of whether or not they were raped, or ‘disgraced’ (a euphemism that is sometimes used).

The violence included individual and gang rapes, and forced “marriages” to the men who raped them, where women were obliged to cook, clean, wash clothes, and have sex with their captors. Some women also fought in the conflict, which did not preclude their being sex slaves as well. Many, some of them children at the time, now care for the children born of those rapes.

And Chile? With a female president, surely they’re a bastion for women’s rights?

One court in Chile ruled that a female soccer referee couldn’t continue working because her job was too dangerous… Chile, she said, remains the only country in the region that doesn’t permit divorce. Nor does it have statutes prohibiting sexual harassment.

Pregnant woman in Chile are still occasionally expelled from school and college because, as Casas explained, the relevant legislation contains no effective sanctions for violating women’s rights.

She also criticized the Chilean laws that give men the legal right to manage some of women’s property.

But apparently the AP is in campaign-for-Hillary mode so women’s rights and diversity is no longer defined by the average citizen, but whether el presidente doesn’t stand at a urinal.

Just more propaganda from MSM trying to persuade the American public that a woman… or rather, a specific woman should move into 1600 Pennsylvannia soon.

I’m sure if an influx of pro-life, smaller government, lower taxes women announced their candidacy, the MSM would start running the “too many women in politics” stories. You think I’m kidding?