Romney's Judge Troubles

By now, the buzz is going around fast and furious about a Romney-appointed judge letting a killer go free with no bail after allegations that he'd assaulted two prison guards, and threatened former Governor Romney's life.

My own thoughts on this are that this should be a non-issue. Romney is no telepath nor fortune teller, he had no way of knowing that this judge would ever rule this way. His campaign spokesman says that the judge's record as a prosecutor showed that she would be "a law and order judge," so it really doesn't seem to be a slip on Mitt's part.

However, politics is largely about perception, so this will probably be a big problem for the Romney campaign. The term "Willie Horton" is already being heard in relation to this.

By the way, lest anyone think I am coming around to the Romney camp, think again... I just don't like seeing a campaign accused of something as idiotic as push-polling themselves, or criticized for not being prescient regarding what judges might do in the future.

Bottom line, I'm still behind Fred for the nomination. If he doesn't get it, well, we'll see what happens then.

Columbia Reborn

Speaking of Columbian President Uribe, NRO has a great article (link in the title) about him and his progress in rebuilding the nation after the drug wars of the 90s. Maybe the Iraqis should pay attention.

In what was once the most dangerous neighborhood of this, the world’s most notorious city, a Sunday afternoon is a bustling, joyful affair. The scampering children and people sitting at tiny sidewalk cafes on the narrow streets would be fit subjects for a Colombian Norman Rockwell.

“Look,” says New York Democratic Rep. Gregory Meeks, part of a congressional delegation visiting from the United States, “they’re cooking pizzas, they’re eating ice cream, boyfriends and girlfriends are holding hands — this is amazing, this Medellin! We’re supposed to be dodging bullets.”

The late drug lord Pablo Escobar made this city into one of the most violent on Earth. Men like Sergio Fajardo — the outgoing mayor, a mathematician who is a leader in a citizens’ movement that arose in opposition to the violence — made it into a city that belies its reputation. In 1991, 6,500 people were murdered here; in 2006, 700 were. Medellin’s murder rate is now lower than Baltimore’s.

Okay, I know, that's not specifically about Uribe... keep reading.

Medellin is a microcosm of Colombia. President Alvaro Uribe has forged extraordinary security gains by taking the fight to the country’s hellish brew of left-wing guerrillas, their paramilitary opponents and narco-traffickers. The strength of the main guerrilla group, FARC, is down an estimated 40 percent from its peak, and more than 30,000 paramilitary fighters have been demobilized. Murders have dropped 40 percent from 2002 to 2006, and kidnappings almost 80 percent from 2000 to 2006.

Notice... violence is decreased by taking the fight to the terrorists. Democrats should listen, and listen good... but they won't. Once again, Democrats are standing in the way of helping those in need, in favor of one of their preferred constituencies.

But security is not enough. Colombia is awash in displaced people, chased from their homes by dueling guerrilla armies, and young men who have to be resocialized after lives of violence. They need jobs. That’s why the Colombia-U.S. Free Trade Agreement is so important. It is pending in Congress, where Democratic leaders might let it die in the gravest act of strategic short-sightedness since their attempted rebuke of Turkey.

[snip]

The congressmen can’t help but be impressed. What holds Democrats back from supporting the trade agreement is union opposition back home. The unions hate the deal even though most Colombia exports to the U.S. already benefit from trade preferences, and the deal would remove duties on U.S. goods going to Colombia. They complain about violence against Colombian union leaders, but attacks against unionists have tracked with general trends of violence — as killings have declined since 2002, so have murders of union leaders.

Rep. Meeks, an advocate for Afro-Colombians, supports the deal. He calls progress in the country “nothing short of a miracle,” and blames the image of the “old Colombia” for limiting the deal’s support. “If you come here,” he says, strolling out into the streets of this revived neighborhood, “it’s a no-brainer.”

Yep, the party that claims to be the champion of the little guy, fighting a bill that would help raise the economic fortunes of people in a very hard-hit country.

Typical. So typical.

Another "Shup Up, Chavez" Moment

This one wasn't a direct "shut up" quote, but the meaning is pretty much the same:

The peace-at-any-price crowd is outraged by the way Colombia's president yanked the right of Hugo Chavez to talk with terrorists. But all Alvaro Uribe did was signal that in diplomacy, results matter.

Middle East peace-process negotiators, take note.

Colombia's president, at the urging of France's Nicolas Sarkozy, last August gave Venezuelan dictator Chavez a chance to mediate the release of 45 hostages held in Colombia's jungle dungeons by FARC, a brutal Marxist narcoterrorist group at war with Colombia since 1964. The French wanted FARC hostage Ingrid Betancourt, a Franco-Colombian citizen kidnapped in 2002, freed. Three American contractors are also on the hostage list.

Who better than the thuggish Chavez? Or so the wisdom went. The radical Venezuelan leader is a hero to the narcoterrorists, who've festooned their Web site with praises for his "revolution." If anyone could persuade them to release hostages, it would be him.

But it didn't take long for Uribe to realize talks with terrorists would go nowhere. So instead of going along, Uribe pulled the plug.

Uribe's move offers lessons in how to deal with terrorists in an era when peace talks go on, emboldening terrorists to act out.

(Colored emphasis mine.)

So, there we have it. Once again, Chavez has had an opportunity to do good, and when he couldn't or wouldn't deliver, he got told to be quiet.

It's also interesting, as I highlighted above, that Chavez is the poster boy for the kind of people who take hostages and keep them for years. Perhaps not the squeaky clean image some people have of him, but truth is truth.

Democrats and the Culture of Corruption, Part VI

Here we go again with the Clintons, money, and corruption:

Three years after the William J. Clinton Presidential Library opened its doors, the list of donors who helped the former president build his $165 million complex remains a secret from the public.

Yet the Blotter on ABCNews.com has learned that the Clinton Foundation sold portions of the list through a data company headed by a longtime friend and donor.

"The fact that they've sold the list and then turned around and said that these names must be kept anonymous completely undercuts their argument," said Sheila Krumholz of the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington, D.C.-based government watchdog group that tracks the influence of money in politics.

An employee of Walter Karl, a subsidiary of the data company InfoUSA, told ABCNews.com that the company made a list of more than 38,000 donors to the Clinton presidential library available for sale to foundations and other nonprofit groups from June 2006 to May 2007. A spokesman for the company would not say how the profits from the sale of the partial list were distributed.

Again, while this is not illegal, it is definitely morally reprehensible, since they'd made a big point earlier about donors being anonymous.

And there's more about InfoUSA, the parent company of Walter Karl, who was chosen to act as the vendor for the mailing list:

Vin Gupta, CEO of InfoUSA, was also on the list of donors giving $1 million or more.

His ties to the Clintons came under scrutiny earlier in the year when a lawsuit filed by InfoUSA shareholders accused Gupta of wasting millions of dollars of the company's money to "ingratiate himself" with the Clintons and other personal friends.

Separately, a New York Times article in May revealed that InfoUSA was involved in an investigation in Iowa for selling mailing lists of elderly Americans to criminals. In response to the investigation, the company released a statement saying, "While InfoUSA can not manage what a client does with the publicly available information InfoUSA provides, the company has a strict policy about not selling data to companies who act illegally."

Gupta has donated and raised millions of dollars for the Clintons' political campaigns and charities over the last decade. InfoUSA spent millions more paying the former president as a consultant and flying him and his wife to events around the country and family vacations in Hawaii and Acapulco, Mexico on the company's private jet, according to the court documents.

InfoUSA officials have stated that the expenses were "legitimate business expenses."

A spokesman for Sen. Clinton said in May that InfoUSA had been reimbursed for her flights, though ethics rules at the time only required the reimbursement be equal to the cost of first-class airfare.

Hmmm... InfoUSA has been reimbursed? The question is, how? Money or cozy deals like selling a list of donor names for the Clintons?

Makes one wonder, doesn't it?

Giving Thanks

I am thankful that people like Chris Hedges are writing for The Nation, and not running it (the USA as a nation, not the magazine):

I will not pay my income tax if we go to war with Iran. I realize this is a desperate and perhaps futile gesture. But an attack on Iran—which appears increasingly likely before the coming presidential election—will unleash a regional conflict of catastrophic proportions. This war, and especially Iranian retaliatory strikes on American targets, will be used to silence domestic dissent and abolish what is left of our civil liberties. It will solidify the slow-motion coup d'etat that has been under way since the 9/11 attacks. It could mean the death of the Republic.
...
I will put the taxes I owe in an escrow account. I will go to court to challenge the legality of the war. Maybe a courageous judge will rule that the Constitution has been usurped and the government is guilty of what the postwar Nuremberg tribunal defined as a criminal war of aggression. Maybe not. I do not know. But I do know this: I have friends in Tehran, Gaza, Beirut, Baghdad, Jerusalem and Cairo. They will endure far greater suffering and deprivation. I want to be able, once the slaughter is over, to at least earn the right to ask for their forgiveness.

And thank God they have the arrogance to write things like that for public consumption, so that we can see what kind of internal enemies we face.

God bless you all... even the lefties... even you, Mr. Troll, and you know who you are (if you write a kind response to this, it might actually get approved).

Our Friends, the Saudis

Whomever the next President is needs to start re-evaluating our relationship with Saudi Arabia--we know darned good and well that Bush won't in his remaining time in office, even in light of things like this:

But, hey, this is just another day in Saudi Arabia, where religious police trap teenage girls in burning school buildings for shedding the head-to-toe Islamic garments they must wear in the presence of men. Where it's a crime for adult women to drive, vote or hold office. And where polygamy is encouraged, and men in their 60s take 14-year-old brides.

Now this. The 19-year-old rape victim, a Shiite woman, originally received a sentence of 90 lashes from the Islamic court after she was kidnapped, beaten and repeatedly raped. Her crime? Being in the same car with an unrelated male companion.

She only agreed to meet the man after he threatened to tell her father they were having an affair if she didn't join him alone. She subsequently was abducted and raped by seven other men. Then her brother beat her for good measure because the rapes brought shame to the family.

Last week, the Supreme Judicial Council convicted her of unchaperoned car-sitting and hiked the sentence to 200 lashes and six months in prison.

After the West got wind of the barbarous ruling, the Saudi Ministry of Justice defended it by saying that "charges were proven" against the woman. So what's the problem?

Yep, just Saudi justice at work.

And Dubya, for all his good work in Iraq, is cozying up to these folks.

Hemingway Responds

Looks like more people than just your humble blogger have been after Mark Hemingway for his piece which all but concludes that Romney push-polled himself.

He's come out with a defense of sorts (link in the title of this post), but there's one point that's very easily debunked, and so I will take that one first and work on the rest as time permits.

Hemingway says:

And I did not merely speculate — I provided new evidence and I also provided pro-Romney balance as well.

This is very easily taken care of. Hemingway's article covers two pages at NRO, and fully one and one-third of those pages are devoted to "evidence" that Romney was involved... "evidence" like what the mysterious "Amanda," a name which Hemingway seems to believe unique.

Where's the pro-Romney balance? It's a mere three paragraphs, two of which are a mere three lines on my laptop screen. These three small paragraphs also appear on the lower two-thirds of page two, or if you prefer, "below the fold." Here they are:

The Romney defense is plausible, but not everyone is convinced. “Consultants tend to be tribal and work off of referral,” the aforementioned anonymous political consultant advises. “The ones that are whorish tend not to be in business for very long.”

There are a number of mitigating factors outlined on mymanmitt.com that suggest that the Romney campaign may be telling the truth. Western Wats has over 1,500 employees across the country — there’s no evidence that Amanda Earnshaw and other employees are donating to Romney at a rate or contribution level higher then the general population, or doing anything unethical or out of the ordinary to help the Romney campaign. And currently, not a single board member or the CEO of the company is Mormon.

Also, reports describing the calls note that in addition to the anti-Romney queries, questions were asked about John McCain’s military service. The McCain campaign has denied involvement and has asked the New Hampshire attorney general to investigate the incident.

This is "balance," New York Times style. Lead with the damning evidence, then bury any exculpatory evidence below the fold and fence it round with other accusations. If one just skips over the next paragraph, we are reminded:

According to another source at a rival campaign who wished to remain anonymous, there’s speculation that Romney may have push polled himself because his campaign wanted polling data regarding the negative perception of his Mormon faith for internal use. But since they couldn’t do so without causing controversy, they took steps to make it look like McCain.

And then there's this gem of a closing:

The Romney campaign, ultimately, has the power to clarify any misconceptions. If there is a relationship between the two firms, then Alex Gage and Target Point should immediately clarify the extent and nature of the work that it has contracted out to Western Wats to end speculation and exonerate Romney.

Sure sounds like Hemingway views Romney as "guilty until proven innocent," doesn't it? This is again the tactic of MoveOn, DailyKos, and Democratic Underground... just look at their treatment of, say, Blackwater.

All in all, I find his response highly unsatisfactory.

Push-Polling-Gate: UPDATED

Much ado is now being made about the push-polling against the Romney campaign--which specifically targeted his Latter-Day-Saint religion. There are several theories floating around out there, including (but not limited to):

1. Romney's campaign did it to themselves, to get the issue out of the way. Evidence for this is supplied in the facts that the firm making the phone calls, Western Wats, has done work for Romney in the past, and another firm, Target Point, which appears to be involved has also been hired in times past by Romney. Also in the mix, Western Wats has several employees who have made contributions to the Romney 2008 campaign.
2. Giuliani's campaign is behind it. Seems that a polling company used by Giuliani, the Tarrance Group, also has connections to Western Wats.

Personally, I find it hard to believe either of the above, though the accusations have been splashed all over the web... I found the following breathless section on National Review Online:

According to Whocallsme.com, on August 16 — almost exactly three months before the anti-Romney calls were made in Iowa and New Hampshire, a user named Bruce reported:

Call from Amanda at Target Point Consulting
www.targetpointconsulting.com
66 Canal Center Plaza No. 555
Alexandria, VA 22314
(703) 535-8505
fax: (703) 535-8517
info@targetpointconsulting.com
Caller ID: (801) 623-4621 [Emphasis Added]
Caller: Target Point Consulting

A Western Wats-Target Point connection sets off alarm bells since the Romney campaign has paid Target Point consulting $720,000.

Target Point’s president, Alex Gage, is a pioneer in the direct-marketing data-mining technique known as microtargeting. The Bush campaign spent nearly $3 million on Gage and Target Point’s services in the 2004 election. In the 2008 election cycle, Gage has been working closely with Romney. The Washington Post headlined an article about Gage “Romney’s Data Cruncher” and has elsewhere identified Gage as part of “Mitt Romney’s Inner Circle.”

Adding to the intrigue, Western Wats employs a dialer named Amanda Earnshaw who, according to election records, has made the maximum allowable donation of $2,300 to Romney’s campaign. Further, Federal Election Commission records reveal that Amanda’s husband Seth Hutchings, her father Craig Earnshaw, mother Colleen, and brother Berton have all maxed out donations to the Romney campaign. Craig Earnshaw is active in Romney’s campaign, serving as Utah’s co-chair for the state’s “Rally for Romney” fundraiser on September 28, 2007.

My Lord, we've got her! It's this "Amanda" who is behind it all... she works for Western Wats, and she also gave to the Romney campaign! And it's such an uncommon name that it just has to be the same person!

(disclaimer for those with their undergarments permanently in a twist: the above paragraph is sarcasm and satire.)

Puh-LEEZE! This is the sort of nonsense I, at least, expect from DailyKos, MoveOn, or Democratic Underground, not from National Review. A first name as common as Amanda simply cannot logically be used to prove anything.

As for the Giuliani accusation, that's just as ludicrous. Guilt by association has long since been revealed as invalid.

No, for my money, I go with what Jim Geraghty--also, let it be noted, working for National Review--has said:

The more I hear angry accusations from campaigns, and the more bad blood that is stirred, and the accusations that some campaigns employ bigoted arguments against a candidate, I start wondering... isn't this what some deep-pocketed Democrat would want to see in the GOP primary?

Indeed, as a conjecture this one has good legs under it. If a Democrat wanted to do this and reduce the risk of it being traced back to them--and unlike some of my fellow conservatives, I do admit that there are some pretty smart Democrats--they'd naturally use a company with lots of ties to Republicans, and if they can use one with direct ties to Romney, so much the better.

In short, this whole thing has "Politics of Personal Destruction" written large all over it. Whether it is Mrs. Clinton or one of the Democrats who learned the art from the eight years of Clinton ascendancy has yet to be determined, but it seems to be accomplishing exactly what the Party of the Donkey would want to see right now.

Let me also point out that I am neither a Romney nor Giuliani supporter... just take a gander at the sidebar to see which candidate I support. However, it is clear, from the points above, that if some hyper-partisan wants to make of this a case against Mitt or Rudy, they're gonna have to do a lot better than they have so far.

UPDATE: Well, not so much an update as an explanation of a point and the introduction of a new point that occurred to me after posting this last night.

First off, the "Amanda" thing. Mr. Mark Hemingway, the NRO columnist whose breathless article I excerpted above, seems to be conflating two Amandas. There is the one that works for Western Wats, who donated to Romney, and apparently another one that works at TargetPoint, and called "Bruce" from a Utah number. There is, at least so far, absolutely no evidence that they are the same person. Amanda is far too common a name for there to be any sort of assumed link... now, if the person was named Zaphod Beeblebrox, it could be assumed that they were the same person, but Amanda? It fails the laugh test.

Second, the assumption that Mitt or Rudy had something to do with this also fails the laugh test. In order to believe that, one would have to believe that the campaign--whichever one you fancy as the culprit--had staffers who were unaware that the Western Wats connection would be highly indicative of the campaign's involvement. Stripped of the fancy language--sorry, I get too verbose at times... and there I go again--Mitt or Rudy's people didn't realize that the use of Western Wats would point a huge glowing finger straight at them. I simply cannot believe that two such successful campaigns as Mitt's and Rudy's would have such incompetent people in a position where they could set up such a program. Now, Ron Paul's campaign... maybe. (Ooooh, am I gonna get hate mail for that one... good thing I have comments moderated.)

The more I look at this the more fantastic the accusations against Mitt and Rudy look. From Mr. Hemingway's article, it almost seems like Amanda might have been the person on the "grassy knoll" as well. Such outlandish conspiracy theories belong on the left, not in a heretofore respectable journal of conservative thought such as National Review.

More On the Blindness of our Intelligence Agencies

Here's an interesting piece that sort of dovetails with something I posted just yesterday...

Nada Nadim Prouty, a Lebanese national, infiltrated both the FBI and CIA — even though she lied on her application about being a U.S. citizen. Both agencies failed to catch the fraud in their security checks.

Prouty went on to access secret files about Hezbollah to tip off family members linked to the Lebanon-based terror group, something investigators failed to turn up in their original background check.

So, the CIA and FBI are both unable to even determine which of their applicants is a citizen?

If we don't get on the ball, we are doomed as a nation.

Ya Done Good

Okay, I am a bit late, but the Project Valour-IT Veterans Day Fundraiser is over. The following note appears on the website:

Thank you to all for your amazing efforts in helping us to raise more than $200,000 during our 3rd Annual Veteran's Day fundraiser. No words can express our gratitude. Thank you!

So to all those who donated, whether through this humble blog or others, all I gotta say is, Ya Done Good!

However, even though the Veteran's Day fundraising push is over, the need goes on. If you didn't donate before, or want to donate again, you can do so through this page.

Comments Now Moderated

Because of the actions of one particular troll, who shall remain nameless but who doubtless knows who he is, I am left with two options if I wish to run a "tight ship" as one friend put it:

1. Ban the entire IP range of the troll's ISP, which is a large one.
2. Moderate and approve all comments before they appear.

Rather than ban a large segment of the population because of the actions of one person, I've chosen #2. Therefore, it may take some time before comments appear on the blog. However, being a geek, I do have a smartphone, and have verified that I can approve or delete comments using its web browser, so I can take care of it from work as well as from home.

Hopefully the troll will get the message that he is not welcome here and we can remove moderation at some point in the future.

A Russian Speaks About Western Intelligence Services

...and what he says isn't pretty.

The CIA did not call Reagan insane, but spoke mockingly about his “evil-empirism.”

Still, my day came. In the mid-1970s the CIA began to testify regularly in Congress about Soviet Russia and Maoist China. That is, the CIA presented its papers on the subject and answered the questions of members of Congress. The resulting texts were made accessible to the public, and on the basis of them I wrote an article for “Commentary” magazine (September 1978), whence it was reprinted or retold by about 500 periodicals all over the West.

I made it clear to the readers that the CIA presented as intelligence/espionage data what the CIA collected from open Soviet and Chinese texts, i.e., the propaganda data from the totalitarian press of the two countries.

But without Western intelligence/espionage in dictatorships like those of Soviet Russia and post-1949 China, the West is doomed. Surely a dictatorship will not issue true military information about itself, which will weaken its first strike (“by the assassin’s mace”) that is to ensure their victory. Only the Western intelligence/espionage could obtain such data, but here it turns out that the Western intelligence/espionage does not exist. Instead, there are a number of well-paid officials who sit in comfortable offices and are paid good salaries for passing the propaganda of a closed militarized dictatorship for the data, obtained by intelligence/espionage.

(emphasis mine)

So, there ya go. The CIA's main intelligence-gathering function seems to be watching CNN and maybe reading Pravda.

And these are the people that we're supposed to trust with figuring out where the next attack will come from?

NYT: Dems Must Keep At Fruitless Iraq Votes

Looks like the NY Times wants the Democrats to continue looking like total idiots, pushing forward Iraq withdrawal bills that it admits are fruitless.

Courtesy NRO's The Corner (since I refuse to link directly to the NY Times):

News section (Pg. 15): Iraq votes were ‘repeated and fruitless’

… House and Senate Democrats have made some rookie management mistakes in their first year of combined Congressional control. They have angered Republicans with occasional heavy-handed treatment, as well as repeated and fruitless votes on the war.

(“Off for Break, Congress May Still Face Stalemate,” November 17, 2007)

Editorial (Pg. 18): Democrats ‘must keep at it’

Democrats say they will continue to push the president and his Republican allies to concede their failed war policy and change course. They must keep at it.

(“Democrats Find Their Voice,” editorial, November 17, 2007)

So there ya go. The NY Times wants Democrats to "keep at" their "repeated and fruitless votes on the war."

Is Karl Rove running the NY Times now?

All The Anti-Israel Propaganda That's Fit To Show

Looks like another "fake but true" story is unraveling, this time in France:

Suffice it to say here that the iconic image of the child Mohammed al Durah, pictured crouching with his father behind a barrel next to a concrete wall in an apparently vain attempt to shelter from the gun-battle between Israel and the Palestinians that was raging around them before he was allegedly shot dead by the Israelis, served to incite terrorist violence and atrocities around the world after it was transmitted by France 2 at the beginning of the second intifada. Yet it is clear to anyone looking at this in detail that the whole thing was staged, not least from the devastating evidence here which shows the boy raising his arm and peeping through his fingers seconds after the France 2 correspondent Charles Enderlin said he had been shot dead.

After Philippe Karsenty, founder of the French online media watchdog, Media Ratings, accused France 2 of staging the al Durah ‘killing’ and called for the resignation of both Charles Enderlin and France 2’s News Director, Arlette Chabot, France 2 and Enderlin sued Karsenty for defamation, and won. In a disgraceful piece of judicial cronyism after the gratuitous intervention of the then French President Jacques Chirac, the court decided against Karsenty and in favour of France 2 and Enderlin. Karsenty appealed; the judge ordered France 2 to produce the unscreened footage of this incident; today it did so.

And here's a short list of the problems with the footage:

There were many very strange things about this footage which just didn’t add up. When it came to the footage of the ‘killing’ of Mohammed al Durah, the following stood out:

* This sequence was not a continuous narrative but was repeatedly broken up and spliced onto footage of other scenes from the demonstration

* Although the France 2 cameraman had told a German film-maker, Esther Schapira, that he had filmed six minutes of the al Durah father and son under continuous Israeli fire, the footage of them lasted for less than one minute

* There was a camera tripod next to them

* There was no evidence of the boy actually being hit

* At one point, people in the crowd cried out that the boy was dead, while he was sitting up large as life clinging onto his father with his mouth wide open

* After he was said to be dead, he moved his arm (the sequence I have already reported which has been available on the web for years).

Fortunately, it appears that this story is about to end up in the same file as Scott Beauchamp's Baghdad Diarist and Dan Rather's faked Texas Air National Guard memo.

You'd think that journalists, who are supposed to be aware of what's happening in the world, would realize that they just can't get away with this sort of distortion anymore. My gut feeling is that the journalists who are still trying to do things like this live and work in an isolated leftist "bubble" which has a tenuous connection to reality at best.

Saddam's Iranian Bluff

It sometimes happens that one small piece of information can help a lot of other things make sense. Thus it is with this revelation:

Ever since American forces invaded, overran and occupied Iraq in 2003, and discovered no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, the great lingering question about the war has been why Saddam Hussein would spend an entire decade acting as though he possessed WMDs when he didn’t. Since the ceasefire agreement he’d signed in 1991, in order to remain in power after the first Gulf War, obligated him to get rid of them, why would Saddam intentionally endure crippling United Nations sanctions as he jerked around, and finally ejected, weapons inspectors? Why wouldn’t he just come clean if he had nothing to hide?

The answer, according Ronald Kessler in his new book, The Terrorist Watch: Inside the Desperate Race to Stop the Next Attack, is that Saddam ultimately feared United Nations actions less than he feared an attack from Iran . . . which, he calculated, would be much more likely if the leaders of Iran knew he had no WMDs. Kessler based his conclusions on information obtained by an Arabic-speaking FBI agent named George Piro who debriefed and befriended Saddam after the dictator’s capture in Iraq, during his months of captivity before his eventual execution.

In retrospect, Saddam’s calculus looks altogether logical. He’d fought a brutal stalemated war against Iran in the 1980s and viciously persecuted Iraq’s Shiite majority out of fear they might align themselves with their Shiite neighbor. More alarming still, from Saddam’s standpoint, was the fact that his own military had been decimated by the 1991 conflict with the American led coalition. If Iran did attack, he had no chance in a conventional war.

His last option was a bluff: Since he once possessed WMDs, and the entire world knew it, he pretended he still did. He knew it would antagonize America, as well as the rest of the U.N. Security Council, but he figured that the threat of an American invasion to enforce the provisions of the 1991 ceasefire was less dire than the threat of an Iranian invasion to crush a bitter enemy and take control of Iraq’s oil resources. According to Kessler, “Saddam said that if America thought that he had WMDs, then of course Iran would, and this would fulfill his goal of making sure that Iran did not want to attack Iraq.”

What Saddam never counted on, of course, was September 11, 2001. Kessler’s book should put to rest, once and for all, the notion that Saddam was somehow involved in Osama bin Laden’s plot. The 9/11 attacks were Saddam’s worst nightmare because they changed the risk equation for the United States. Suddenly, the prospect of Saddam hiding WMDs went from being an ongoing nuisance to a mortal dread. What was to stop him from handing them off to al Qaeda?

President Bush decided the risk was intolerable — and the rest, as the saying goes, is history.

So now it all makes sense. All the evidence for Saddam's WMDs was indeed cooked up--by Saddam himself, in a desperate gamble to keep Iran at bay. It must be admitted, he succeeded in that. However, in the long run, his strategy was a dismal failure, since it brought the attention of a nation whose armed forces he could not hope to beat--namely, the USA. In attempting to forestall invasion by one nation, he invited invasion by another. Of course, he's now paid for that mistake with his life.

However, this is good ammunition against the Bush-lied-people-died meme. It would be better if it were reworded to Saddam-lied-Saddam-died.

Another Global Warming Claim Debunked

I'm sure everyone's heard of the claim that the arctic ice is melting too fast because of global warming.

A new study proves differently:

From 2002 to 2006, scientists and researchers from NASA and the University of Washington's Polar Science Center at the Applied Physics Laboratory observed a meaningful ongoing reversal in Arctic Ocean circulation. The cause is atmospheric circulation changes that vary in decade-long periods and the effect is, well, let the scientist who led the study explain it:

"Our study confirms many changes seen in upper Arctic Ocean circulation in the 1990s were mostly decadal in nature, rather than trends caused by global warming," said the University of Washington's James Morison.

In short, it's a cycle, not a catastrophe.

I won't hold my breath waiting for a retraction from High Priest Algore, tho.

The Clinton Quid Pro Pardon

Gotta love how the Clintons have no shame at all:

Three recipients of controversial 11th-hour pardons issued by former President Bill Clinton in January 2001 have donated thousands of dollars to the presidential campaign of his wife, Democratic front-runner Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., according to campaign finance records examined by ABC News, in what some good government groups said created an appearance of impropriety.

"It's not illegal," Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told ABC News. "But, of course, it's inappropriate and she should return the money. It does raise the appearance that this is payback.

"One can only hope that she wasn't yet aware of who made the donations," said Sloan.

"We have raised over $65 million from over 200,000 people," said Clinton campaign manager Howard Wolfson, adding sarcastically, "I appreciate your bringing the instance of this $5,300 and these three people to our attention."

-snip-

John Deutch is a different case, having served as President Clinton's CIA director.

Pardoned by President Clinton for charges he had mishandled government secrets -- but before the Department of Justice could file the proper paperwork against him -- Deutch, now a professor at MIT, gave Sen. Clinton the maximum allowable donation, $2,300.

No, it's not illegal, but imagine the howling from the left if, say, Scooter Libby donated to the presidential campaign of a member of the Bush or Cheney families.

Democrats and the Culture of Corruption, Part V

Once again, a Democrat with serious legal and corruption problems is somehow not mentioned in the leftymedia. Gee, I wonder why that could be?

U.S. Representative Alan Mollohan, (D-W.V.), has been under FBI investigation for steering federal money to a web of non-profits he helped create, questioned about suspicious land deals that made him a millionaire, and criticized for taking a European vacation paid for by federal contractors.

Mollohan has also paid the Washington, DC, law-firm of Kellogg, Huber, Hansen, Todd, Evans and Figel a staggering $220,000 in legal fees. According to the firm’s website, they specialize in “white collar criminal defense,” and Mollohan has used his campaign account to pay the hefty legal bills.

With all the investigations the MoveOn-controlled Congress is running, do ya think they could spare a few hours to look into this one?

Naah, he's a Democrat.

Political Correctness Chills Christmas

This one shouldn't need much introduction or comment:

THERE'LL be no ho, ho, ho this Christmas. Aspiring Santas have been told not to use the term "ho" because it could be seen as derogatory to women.

Thirty trainees at a Santa course in Adelaide [Australia] last month, held by recruitment company Westaff, were urged to replace the traditional festive greeting with "ha, ha, ha".

Don't these busybodies have anything better to do with their time?

Thank You

I can't say it much better than this:

At the end of the 1954 film "The Bridges at Toko-Ri," based on the Korean War novel by James Michener, the crusty old captain of an American aircraft carrier, watching his pilots take off for another mission from which not all would return, asks rhetorically, "Where do we get such men?"

Where indeed? Thank you all.

Read the whole thing at the link in the title.

King of Spain tells Chavez "Shut Up."

Looks like the King of Spain doesn't like the way Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez talks about Spain and the Spanish government:

Mr Chavez called Mr Aznar, a close ally of US President George W Bush, a fascist, adding "fascists are not human. A snake is more human."

[Current Spanish Prime Minister] Mr Zapatero said: "[Former Prime Minister] Aznar was democratically elected by the Spanish people and was a legitimate representative of the Spanish people."

Mr Chavez repeatedly tried to interrupt, despite his microphone being turned off. The king leaned forward and said: "Why don't you shut up?"

According to reports, the king used a familiar term normally used only for close acquaintances - or children.

Score one for the good guys.

Iraqis Take On Al-Qaeda On Their Own

More signs of progress that Reid, Pelosi, MoveOn, and those of like mind will not care to see:

BAGHDAD - Former Sunni insurgents asked the United States to stay away, and then ambushed members of Al Qaeda in Iraq, killing 18 in a battle that raged for hours north of Baghdad, an ex-insurgent leader and Iraqi police said yesterday.

The Islamic Army in Iraq sent advance word to Iraqi police requesting that US helicopters keep out of the area because its fighters had no uniforms and were indistinguishable from Al Qaeda, according to the police and a top Islamic Army leader known as Abu Ibrahim.

Abu Ibrahim said his fighters killed 18 Al Qaeda militants and captured 16 in the fight southeast of Samarra, a mostly Sunni city about 60 miles north of Baghdad.

"We found out that Al Qaeda intended to attack us, so we ambushed them at 3 p.m. on Friday," Abu Ibrahim said. He would not say whether any Islamic Army members were killed.

Much of the Islamic Army in Iraq, a major Sunni Arab insurgent group that includes former members of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party, has joined the US-led fight against Al Qaeda in Iraq along with Sunni tribesmen and other former insurgents repelled by the terror group's brutality and extremism.

An Iraqi police officer corroborated Abu Ibrahim's account, but said police officers were not able to verify the number of casualties because the area was still too dangerous to enter.

(emphasis mine)

Then there's this:

Meanwhile, farther east, in Diyala Province, members of another former insurgent group, the 1920s Revolution Brigades, launched a military-style operation yesterday against Al Qaeda in Iraq, the Iraqi Army said.

About 60 militants were captured and handed over to Iraqi soldiers, an Army officer said on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to speak to media.

Afterward, hundreds of people paraded through Buhriz, about 35 miles north of Baghdad, witnesses said. Many danced and fired their guns into the air, shouting "Down with Al Qaeda!" and "Diyala is for all Iraqis!"

Like the Islamic Army, the 1920s Revolution Brigades includes former members of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party and officers from his army. Hundreds of 1920s members now work as scouts and gather intelligence for American soldiers in Diyala.

And at Baghdad's most revered Sunni shrine, the Abu Hanifa mosque, voices blasted from loudspeakers yesterday urging residents to turn against Qaeda: "We are your sons, the sons of the awakening, and we want to end the operations of Al Qaeda."

Looks like we're doing good work there... but the Defeatocrats still want us to pull out.

Remember that next November.

Terrorists Support Hillary, Part II

Looks like it's more than just terrorists making pro-Hillary statements... they're also donating money to her, and she's taking it, not returning it as other Democratic campaigns have done.

Some of the donors, in fact, are under active federal investigation for supporting terrorism, money laundering and tax fraud. After the press reported their alleged terror ties in past elections, Democrat Reps. Jim Moran of Virginia and Cynthia McKinney of Georgia had to refund their donations, making national news.

But that hasn't stopped Hillary from pocketing their money. So much for her promise to fly-speck donations for criminal ties following her fund-raising scandal with fugitive donor Norman Hsu.

In the past several months, the Democrat front-runner has received at least $2,000 from M. Yaqub Mirza, M. Omar Ashraf and Omar Barzinji, records show. Federal agents raided the Virginia homes and offices of the Muslim donors after 9/11, as part of a counterterrorism investigation targeting the so-called Safa group, a Saudi-backed conglomerate of Muslim businesses and charities.

It's this sort of thing that makes me glad every time someone predicts that Hillary will be the Democratic nominee... she will not only be absurdly easy to beat, given stories like this, but she will drag the Party of MoveOn right down the toilet.

A Conservative Way of Providing Medicine to the Poor

Health care for the poor does not, I say again, not have to flow from the government. Just ask the people of Warren County, VA:

Warren County, Virginia, at the confluence of the North and South Forks of the Shenandoah River has neither the rolling hills of horse country nor the fertile plains of the Shenandoah Valley.

Of its 36,000 citizens, an estimated 6,000 are uninsured. Typically, when they get sick, the uninsured go to the emergency room, which is about the most inefficient and costly way of delivering primary medical care.

But, thanks to the initiative of some local Christians, the uninsured of Warren County can instead go to the St. Luke Community Clinic for free medical care. In FY 2006, 2,633 uninsured people did just that.

St. Luke Clinic is one of an estimated two thousand Free Clinics around the country, fifty of them in Virginia. In 2006, the total budget of all the Free Clinics in Virginia was about $18 million, which they leveraged to a value in excess of $80 million.

The Free Clinic movement is living embodiment of many conservative principles: the principles of subsidiarity and voluntarism, the spirit of enterprise and of community self-reliance. As health care becomes more and more of a national concern, if people are truly concerned about the less fortunate, there should be a population explosion in the number of free clinics around the country.

Please note, there are Free Clinics and then there are "free clinics":

Free Clinics are private, non-profit organizations that provide medical, dental, pharmaceutical and/or mental health services at little or no cost to low-income, uninsured and underinsured people. These clinics are truly free - both to their clients and to the taxpayers.

Unlike federally-qualified so-called "free clinics", they do not submit receipts to Medicare or Medicaid for reimbursement. St. Luke and the other authentic Free Clinics in Virginia do not submit bills to anybody for reimbursement.

How do they do it? Volunteers.

The small staff includes one part-time doctor, but most of the medical skills come from the volunteer nurses, doctors, labs, and hospitals.

And don't tell the lefties, but the eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil pharmaceutical companies help out a lot.

The biggest chunk of the leverage is pharmaceuticals. Every major pharmaceutical company has a free donation plan, or Patient Assistance Program. By maximizing those programs, St. Luke was able to dispense 31,134 prescriptions in 2006. However, every company has different medications, rules, forms, and schedules. The process is so complicated that the clinic employs two staff members work on it only slightly less than full-time. In 2006, the Free Clinics in Virginia provided about $42 million worth of donated medications to all their patients.

This is how you get health care to those with no insurance. Instead of installing a government program, you Americans, among the most generous people on the face of the planet, offer their services for free. The government can help, tho.

All the good intentions in the world would not make a free clinic possible in our litigious society. But that problem has been solved in Virginia, whose example could easily be followed.

With the help of the Virginia Association of Free Clinics, the state recently established the "VaRISK2" liability risk management program. Operating under the Division of Risk Management of the Department of the Treasury, of the Commonwealth of Virginia, the program indemnifies Directors, Officers, employees, and volunteers in a Free Clinic.

Volunteers in private medical clinics received federal tort claim coverage when Senator Dan Coats' 1996 Medical Volunteer Act became law as part of the Kennedy-Kassebaum Health Care Reform Act. Prior to Coats' action, only volunteers in government-funded clinics typically received coverage for liability at the federal level.

And it's that simple. No HillaryCare needed.

WaPo: Islamist = Conservative

Hot on the heels of the Harvard report on media bias comes a shining example, as explained by the Counterterrorism blog:

Regarding Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the November 5 Washington Post views him as "head of a conservative religious party", and reports Qazi Hussain Ahmed's calls against Musharraf as: "It's time to take a stand. It's a now-or-never chance, and people should come out on the streets and throw out this military dictator." The Washington Post reports that "[h]undreds of the party's activists had been arrested as of Monday morning, a party spokesman said". The Washington Post does not identify the organizations or the ideology that Qazi Hussain Ahmed and his political parties represent.

In fact, the "conservative religious party" that Qazi Hussain Ahmed leads is Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI), which is also part of the Muttahidah Majlis-e-'Amal (Council of United Action) (MMA) -- that he also leads. Neither are merely a "conservative religious party", but are Islamist political organizations, with reported support of Jihad by their leaders and some of their members.

Qazi Hussain Ahmed has been reported as a sympathizer and defender of Osama Bin Laden. One media report stated "Qazi Hussain Ahmed has earlier made flattering comments about Osama bin Laden, and his party, Jamaat-e-Islami, also has hailed al-Qaeda members as heroes." Qazi Hussain Ahmed views that the 9/11 attacks were "specially designed to crush Muslims all over the world under this garb".

In his own party's media news ("Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI) Media News"), Qazi Hussain Ahmed "has warned the government that unrest in the country would assume serious dimensions if it assisted the United States or any agency in arrest of Osama bin Laden." In May 2003, South Asia Intelligence Group reported potential links between Qazi Hussain Ahmed, JEI, and Bin Laden: "US intelligence officers posted in Pakistan have reportedly been making detailed enquiries into the likely links of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI) of Pakistan headed by Qazi Hussain Ahmed with Al Qaeda of Osama bin Laden".

Regarding Jamaat-e-Islami, the Christian Science Monitor reported that Pakistan's Interior Minister Makhdoom Faisel Saleh Hayat has alleged links between JEI and Al Qaeda stating "[a]ll of the activists and terrorists who have been apprehended in recent months have had links to the Jamaat-e-Islami, whether we have arrested them in Lahore or here or Karachi....[t]hey have been harboring them."

Prior to the Musharraf emergency declaration, the Pakistan Daily Times reported that Jamaat-e-Islami has been petitioning the Pakistani Supreme Court to halt all Pakistani military action in the Tribal Areas.

As GlobalSecurity.org states of Muttahidah Majlis-e-'Amal (MMA) political coalition: "it venomously attacked the Musharraf government for having betrayed the Taliban and sided with the US in its supposed 'war against Islam'. They...speak in favour of the militant groups banned by the Musharraf government Leaders under the MMA umbrella have issued fatwas of death on Americans and have denied the 9/11 attack by Osama bin Laden. The four parties are opposed to the present fiscal system and want it Islamised together with a complete enforcement of 'shariah'."

Now, granted, this may be viewed as "conservative" in Pakistan, which has a long history of being an Islamist haven, but the WaPo article makes no such distinction. By slapping the label "conservative" on this man and his party without explanation, they are at the very least negligent in not clearly explaining their terms, and at worst are trying to conflate the American conservative movement with these Islamoterrorists.

And don't get me started on the "religious" label. That's even worse, lumping all religions in with the radical terrorist wing of Islam.

The Washington Post deserves nothing but scorn for that article.

More Hillary Supporters

Looks like Hillary's recent comments on what she calls "George Bush’s faulty and offensive historical analogies" are gaining her support from at least one area she might not want to advertise:

So if you’re keeping score, Hillary Clinton finds Bush’s historical analogy, comparing Osama Bin Laden to Hitler and Lenin, wrong and offensive. She is joined by the Communist Party USA, who also find the analogy offensive — apparently because Lenin didn’t do anything wrong. The American Nazi Party is, frankly, flattered by the comparison — which it gleefully extends to George Washington for reasons only a mental health professional knows. And everybody involved hates George W. Bush.

So, I can see the updated Hillary ad now... Hillary '08: the choice of terrorists and the Communist Party USA.

Of course, given her own socialistic/communistic views, I guess that will surprise no one except a few DailyKOS readers who don't know any better.

Distorting Giuliani

It should be clear to everyone by now that I am not a Giuliani supporter, but this just couldn't go un-commented on:

The segment revealed, just as with Bush, the media has no problem broadcasting factual errors when targeting Giuliani. Olbermann misquoted Giuliani as saying that Democrats wanted to invite Osama bin Laden to the White House. In actuality, Giuliani didn't say Osama, he said Assad, as in Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, one of the leaders whom Barack Obama did in fact say he would be willing to meet with in Washington with no preconditions within the first year of his administration. Making the incident even more absurd, Olbermann ran the video clip of Giuliani's remarks on his show, and it was clear that Giuliani said Assad. How clear? The transcript appearing on the official MSNBC website for Olbermann's show had Giuliani saying Assad in the video clip.

Nevertheless, Olbermann asked his guest Arianna Huffington to comment on whether the former mayor was being hyperbolic or lying.

"Well, he's lying and also every day he reveals more and more of himself," Huffington said. "And you can see that he really has the soul of a thug and the disposition of a tyrant."

Huffington repeated the false Giuliani-Osama quote, and later in the interview, she added: "He's kind of channeling Rush Limbaugh. He's making the lunatic fringe mainstream."

And Olbermann wondered, "Has it reached a level yet where we should be considering examining whether or not this is compulsive lying that there is something endemic to [Giuliani]? Or this specific purpose driven lies?"

One might ask the same about Olbermann. Even though the AP issued a correction to its story that misquoted Giuliani following a report on AmSpecBlog, as of this writing, Olbermann has not corrected his erroneous segment. His spokeswoman did not return three calls or an email sent from TAS asking whether the news channel planned to correct the error, and if not, to explain its corrections policy.

So, Olbermann slips up with the proof right there in his own show, and he refuses to admit it? Is this guy trying to outdo Dan Rather and The New Republic for sheer unadulterated gall in the face of an obvious error?

Actually, I think it's just more of the same lefty mindset... we're never wrong, we are always right, and those who accuse us of being wrong are part of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.

Keith, you were wrong. Now, where'd I put that VRWC membership card?

Yes, Virginia, There Is Media Bias.

Yet another study has proven pro-Democrat bias in the media.

Just like so many reports before it, a joint survey by the Project for Excellence in Journalism and Harvard's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy — hardly a bastion of conservative orthodoxy — found that in covering the current presidential race, the media are sympathetic to Democrats and hostile to Republicans.

Democrats are not only favored in the tone of the coverage. They get more coverage period. This is particularly evident on morning news shows, which "produced almost twice as many stories (51% to 27%) focused on Democratic candidates than on Republicans."

That, of course, is no surprise to anyone who watches or reads the news regularly.

Expect the media spin machine to go into high gear, tho.

Project Valour-IT

There's a new widget on the sidebar for donations to Project Valour-IT. This program purchases voice-activated laptops for severely injured service members... a very worthwhile effort, I think.

In honor of my late father, a Navy veteran, I've joined the "Navy" team, but all donations go into a single fund for members of any branch, so don't worry about that--the teams are just for a friendly competition.

Please donate what you can.

UPDATE and BUMP: For more on what Project Valour-IT does, see this excellent article from National Review Online.

Terrorists Support Hillary

I kid you not:

“I hope Hillary is elected in order to have the occasion to carry out all the promises she is giving regarding Iraq,” said Ala Senakreh, West Bank chief of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a Palestinian terror group. “I hope also she will maintain her husband’s policies regarding Palestine and even develop that policy. President Clinton wanted to give the Palestinians 98 percent of the West Bank territories. I hope Hillary will move a step forward and will give the Palestinians all their rights. She has the chance to save the American nation and the Americans’ life.”

Sometimes you can tell a lot about a candidate by who supports them, ya know?

I wonder if the Clinton campaign will include that in their TV ads. I can see it now... "Hillary - The Terrorists' Choice."

Another Story the Leftymedia Ignores

Yet another example of the leftymedia ignoring anything that doesn't fit their preconceived notions of what is going on in Iraq:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
RELEASE No. 20071026-01
October 26, 2007

Iraqi Army at Besmaya Installation Support San Diego Fire Victims
By U.S. Army Sgt 1st Class Charlene Sipperly
Multi-National Security Transition Command – Iraq Public Affairs

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Members of the Iraqi Army in Besmaya collected a donation for the San Diego, Calif., fire victims Thursday night at the Besmaya Range Complex in a moving ceremony to support Besmaya's San Diego residents.

Iraqi Army Col. Abbass, the commander of the complex, presented a gift of $1,000 to U.S. Army Col. Darel Maxfield, Besmaya Range Complex officer in charge, Multi-National Security Transition Command Iraq, to send to the fire victims in California.

The money was collected from Iraqi officers and enlisted soldiers in Besmaya. In a speech given during the presentation, Col. Abbass stated that he and the Iraqi soldiers were connected with the American people in many ways, and they will not forget the help that the American government has given the Iraqi people. Abbass was honored to participate by sending a simple fund of $1,000 to the American people in San Diego, to lower the suffering felt by the tragedy.

Sure, $1,000 isn't much to us, but to these people, it's probably a lot. And the gesture itself is very noteworthy.

But don't look for it in the leftymedia.

It's Over for Beauchamp and TNR, Part II

It is official.

The Army has released documents showing the results of their investigation of "Shock Troops," and the allegations contained therein.

The results: Scott Beauchamp lied through his teeth, and TNR printed it without checking.

The documents were originally on Drudge, but have been removed for some reason, but Little Green Footballs has them.

#3 is the most interesting to me. I've never gotten that much thrill out of reading transcripts of phone calls.

Heads should roll at TNR now, but they probably won't. However, no thinking person will accept TNR's word for anything for a long, long time.

States With Early Primaries May Lose Delegates

I've got mixed feelings about this one:

WASHINGTON - Republican Party leaders on Monday recommended punishing five states for shifting their nomination contests earlier, moving to strip New Hampshire, Florida, South Carolina, Michigan and Wyoming of half their delegates.

At least one state, South Carolina, is considering legal action in an effort to keep its delegates to next year's Republican National Convention.

Iowa, which plans to hold Republican caucuses on Jan. 3, would not be penalized because, technically, the caucuses are not binding on convention delegates. Nevada, which plans to hold its caucuses on Jan. 19, would not be penalized for the same reason.

"It's very important that our party uphold and enforce the rules that we unanimously voted into place at the Republican National Convention in 2004," said Mike Duncan, chairman of the Republican National Committee.

The rules ban holding votes before Feb. 5

On the one hand, rules are rules, and these rules have been in place for 3 years, so if the folks in the state parties weren't aware of them, they always could have picked up the phone and called the RNC to ask.

On the other hand, I am not sure that a court battle--which we all know the leftymedia would play for all its worth, while of course never mentioning that the Democrats are doing the same thing--would be good for the GOP at all.

On the whole, I think I am leaning slightly toward the enforcement side. But I reserve the right to change my mind.

Democrats Lose as the US Wins in Iraq

Let's see if we can't cause a few more lefty heads to explode (I love that sound):

The Democrats engaged in endless efforts to make sure the war really was lost. They failed. Now it looks as if the war, despite the Democratic Congress's best efforts, may well be won. It's the congressional Democrats who are the losers. And so could be the 2008 Democratic presidential nominee. Are the American people likely to elect the candidate of a party that has tried its best to lose a winnable war?

May I remind my readers that after Vietnam the Democrats only elected two Presidents, and one of those was because of the gross malfeasance of a Republican (if you don't know who I am talking about, blame a history teacher).

Simply put, the public does not put candidates from a party that loses wars in the Oval Office.

Thus, General Petraeus' success is the Defeatocrats' loss. That's why the "General Betray Us" ad, and Rep. Stark's comments, and so on. They are desperate, and thrashing about as desperate people do.

Milblogger: We've Won

From a milblogger using the nom-de-plume of Greyhawk:

I've been writing about Iraq here for four years now - in and out of country. I've been here during many of the most violent months of the war; from the second battle for Fallujah through the January, 2005 elections, and from the launch of the surge to the present - and I'm not homebound yet. In all that time progress has been achingly slow, and back steps have been mixed with forward - but never the majority. Throughout it all - until now - I've never declared victory, seen "light at the end of the tunnel", or even claimed to have "turned a corner" - you can take your bumper sticker slogans and shove 'em. Over here a tenacious and bloodthirsty enemy has fought a well-designed and multi-faceted campaign against us, perhaps secure in the knowledge that blame for every child they killed or each holy place they defiled would be shifted to us even as they washed the blood from their hands. Their efforts gained support from many quarters (not all of which were anticipated in preparation for or included in response to their actions) and condemnation from few. But the ranks of their opponents - at least here in Iraq - are large and still growing, and theirs are neither. The battles are diminishing but ongoing, losses will be suffered, and blood will still be shed. Still more of their supporters may redouble their efforts. But in short, while I recognize this will provoke immeasurable rage from those who feel we've lost, and consternation among those who know we've won but lack the fortitude to make the declaration at this point in time, I'll say it again: we've won the war in Iraq.

Those noises you hear are the sound of lefties grinding their teeth, their heads exploding, and so on and so forth.

How Democrats Support the Troops

Representative Pete Stark (D-CA) today on the floor of the House:

“I yield myself two minutes. Madam speaker, I, first of all, I’m just amazed that they can't figure out -- the Republicans are worried that they can't pay for insuring an additional 10 million children. They sure don't care about finding $200 billion to fight the illegal war in Iraq. Where are you going to get that money? Are you going to tell us lies like you're telling us today? Is that how you're going to fund the war? You don't have money to fund the war on children. But you're going to spend it to blow up innocent people if he can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the President's amusement.”

Do I need comment further?

Anyway, several GOP Congressmen have responded... visit the link in the title to read some of their comments.

Angering Our Allies, Democrat Style--UPDATED AND BUMPED!

Hypocrisy, thy name is Democrat.

After long complaining that President Bush's "cowboy diplomacy" is alienating and angering our allies overseas, the Democrat-led House of Representatives has passed a resolution that is essentially a slap in the face of one of the few Muslim nations allied with us.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A U.S. congressional panel defied President Bush on Wednesday and approved a measure that he said would damage U.S. goals in the Middle East.

The measure that would recognize the World War I-era killings of Armenians as a genocide had been strongly opposed by Turkey, a key NATO ally that has supported U.S. efforts in Iraq.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee's 27-21 vote now sends the measure to the House floor — unless the Democratic leadership reverses course and heeds Bush's warnings.

At issue is the killing of up to 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I. Turkey denies that the deaths constituted genocide, says the toll has been inflated and insists that those killed were victims of civil war and unrest.

Reaction from Turkey has been swift:

ISTANBUL, Turkey - Turkey's top general warned that ties with the U.S., already strained by attacks from rebels hiding in Iraq, will be irreversibly damaged if Congress passes a resolution that labels the World War I-era killings of Armenians a genocide.

Turkey, which is a major cargo hub for U.S. and allied military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, has recalled its ambassador to Washington for consultations and warned that there might be a cut in the logistical support to the U.S. over the issue.

Gen. Yasar Buyukanit told daily Milliyet newspaper that a congressional committee's approval of the measure had already harmed ties between the two countries.

"If this resolution passed in the committee passes the House as well, our military ties with the U.S. will never be the same again," Buyukanit was quoted as saying by Milliyet.

"I'm the military chief, I deal with security issues. I'm not a politician," Buyukanit was quoted as saying by Milliyet. "In this regard, the U.S. shot its own foot."

And...

“The committee’s approval of this resolution was an irresponsible move which, coming at a very sensitive time, will make relations with a friend, ally and strategic partner that have been nurtured over generations, more difficult,” the government said in the statement. “Our government regrets and condemns this decision. It is unacceptable that the Turkish nation has been accused of something that never happened,” it stressed.

The truly ironic thing is, the Democrats are showing their own ignorance of history.

• The "genocide" which they are "condemning" occurred in 1915.
• The Turkey we know today wasn't created until 1923.

So, blaming modern Turkey for this is sort of like condemning modern Italy for the brutalities of the Roman Empire.

Nice going, Speaker Pelosi. You're really demonstrating why you and your party are not ready to be trusted with the reins of power.

UPDATE: IBDEditiorials.com has an interesting idea...

But the timing of this resolution simply stinks, and we're made to wonder if this isn't some Democrats' way of making President Bush's Middle East policy even harder to implement.

Americans might not realize it, but Turkey is strategically indispensable. About 70% of our flights into Iraq come from our Turkish base at Incirlik. About 30% of our fuel comes from there.

[...]

No wonder Turkey is furious — talking even of shutting down Incirlik, which would cost the U.S. war effort in Iraq dearly and could even delay what appears to be a likely victory there.

An American friend who lives in Turkey says--and I must agree with her--that this is designed to make victory in Iraq even harder, thus helping the MoveOn-ocrats.

Defeat at any cost must be their rally cry.

Update and Bump: More and more commentators are coming to the conclusion that this is designed to screw up our success in Iraq, as seen here, here, and here.

Can the Democrats really be so stupid as to mess up our relations with an ally just because of their hatred of George W. Bush? I wish I could say the idea is laughable, but the past antics of the MoveOnocrats have shown that it is frighteningly plausible.

Update 3 and Bump 2: Looks like Pelosi is starting to lose support, according to the liberal bible, a/k/a the New York Times:

Before Tuesday, the measure appeared on a path to House passage, with strong support from Speaker Pelosi. But by Tuesday evening, a group of senior House Democrats had made it known that they were planning to ask the leadership to drop plans for a vote on the measure.

One wonders if these same senior House Democrats would have done so if the light hadn't been cast on their apparent plans to make success in Iraq more difficult by prodding Turkey to cut off access to Incirlik Air Base, through which a lot of supplies for Iraq pass.

FISA Delays Search for Captured US Soldier

This one will probably make your blood pressure rise, unless you're a MoveOn member:

In the early hours of May 12, seven U.S. soldiers - including Spc. [Alex] Jimenez - were on lookout near a patrol base in the al Qaeda-controlled area of Iraq called the "Triangle of Death."

Sometime before dawn, heavily armed al Qaeda gunmen quietly cut through the tangles of concertina wire surrounding the outpost of two Humvees and made a massive and coordinated surprise attack.

Four of the soldiers were killed on the spot and three others were taken hostage.

A search to rescue the men was quickly launched. But it soon ground to a halt as lawyers - obeying strict U.S. laws about surveillance - cobbled together the legal grounds for wiretapping the suspected kidnappers.

Starting at 10 a.m. on May 15, according to a timeline provided to Congress by the director of national intelligence, lawyers for the National Security Agency met and determined that special approval from the attorney general would be required first.

For an excruciating nine hours and 38 minutes, searchers in Iraq waited as U.S. lawyers discussed legal issues and hammered out the "probable cause" necessary for the attorney general to grant such "emergency" permission.

Finally, approval was granted and, at 7:38 that night, surveillance began.

"The intelligence community was forced to abandon our soldiers because of the law," a senior congressional staffer with access to the classified case told The Post.

"How many lawyers does it take to rescue our soldiers?" he asked. "It should be zero."

The FISA law applies even to a cellphone conversation between two people in Iraq, because those communications zip along wires through U.S. hubs, which is where the taps are typically applied.

Once again, this is why it is dangerous to have Democrats in charge... they're the ones that are refusing to help streamline FISA regulations in cases like this.

Remember this one come November 2008.

NYTimes Ignores a Hero

Once again, the newspaper with the slogan "All The News That's Fit To Print" has decided that the story of a hero is apparently not "Fit To Print":

I couldn’t find a story about Lt. Michael Murphy winning the Medal of Honor in the New York Times on Friday, though other New York papers covered the story with pictures and headlines. The Times neglected even to note that Murphy, 29, who lived on Long Island, was a hometown hero, the first person to receive the highest battlefield honor for action in Afghanistan.

On Friday, the Times instead carried a story headlined “Marines to Conduct Inquiry Into the Killings of Afghan Civilians.” This story was about a court of inquiry being set up to examine the circumstances surrounding the killing of several Afghan civilians by members of a special-operations platoon, in a remote area of Afghanistan, near the border of Pakistan. Some of the Marines involved, who are an elite group of combat-tested troops, are now, of course, hiring their lawyers.

There is a very special irony is this. Why? Because Mikey Murphy and his three SEAL comrades, during their operation, were concerned about the potential of a story just like the one in the Times. They wanted to avoid a situation in which they would find themselves forced to defend a life saving action in a court of law.

Nevermind that Lt. Murphy is a native of New York City. Never mind that he's received--posthumously--the nation's highest military award; he is something going right in the War on Terror, and a Marine that lived an exemplary life and died a heroic death, and that they will not honor.

I will honor him, though I am not a Marine. Lt. Murphy, ya done good. Semper Fi!

WaPo Gets It

Finally, a chink in the wall of silence from the leftymedia:

NEWS COVERAGE and debate about Iraq during the past couple of weeks have centered on the alleged abuses of private security firms like Blackwater USA. Getting such firms into a legal regime is vital, as we've said. But meanwhile, some seemingly important facts about the main subject of discussion last month -- whether there has been a decrease in violence in Iraq -- have gotten relatively little attention. A congressional study and several news stories in September questioned reports by the U.S. military that casualties were down. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), challenging the testimony of Gen. David H. Petraeus, asserted that "civilian deaths have risen" during this year's surge of American forces.

A month later, there isn't much room for such debate, at least about the latest figures. In September, Iraqi civilian deaths were down 52 percent from August and 77 percent from September 2006, according to the Web site icasualties.org. The Iraqi Health Ministry and the Associated Press reported similar results. U.S. soldiers killed in action numbered 43 -- down 43 percent from August and 64 percent from May, which had the highest monthly figure so far this year. The American combat death total was the lowest since July 2006 and was one of the five lowest monthly counts since the insurgency in Iraq took off in April 2004.

They summarize with:

This doesn't necessarily mean the war is being won. U.S. military commanders have said that no reduction in violence will be sustainable unless Iraqis reach political solutions -- and there has been little progress on that front. Nevertheless, it's looking more and more as though those in and outside of Congress who last month were assailing Gen. Petraeus's credibility and insisting that there was no letup in Iraq's bloodshed were -- to put it simply -- wrong.

Thank you, WaPo, for admitting it.

British Court Rules Against Gore

Ya gotta love it, a British court has ruled against "An Inconvenient Truth":

[Justice Michael] Burton ruled that the film could be shown to British students, but only on the condition it be accompanied by new guidance notes for teachers to balance Gore's "one-sided" views. Burton documented nine major errors in Gore's film and wrote that some of Gore's claims had arisen "in the context of alarmism and exaggeration."

It's now been proven in a court of law--albeit British--that Algore's masterpiece is hardly good science.

Wonder if the lefties that want us to adopt foreign court decisions will say the same about this one?

Court: Do Not Enforce Immigration Laws

There are so many things wrong with this, it's hard to know where to begin.

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer's kid brother, San Francisco U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, issued an order Wednesday blocking the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration from sending letters telling employers who have illegally hired illegal immigrants that they have 90 days to end the illegals' employment before facing punishment.

Breyer declared that the government's plans to mail 140,000 such notices would cause "irreparable harm to innocent workers and employers." But what of the irreparable harm the country is suffering because of the almost complete lack of a rule of law regarding illegal immigration?

Any member of a sleeper cell within our borders planning a future 9/11 knows not to fear being caught in a general roundup of illegals by immigration authorities.

There are scarcely any such roundups, because illegal entry and employment are so out of control — at least 12 million people are here in defiance of our laws — that we have no intention of even beginning to detain and deport that vast population.

Since the ruling is from a San Francisco court, of course it is far out of sync with the rest of the nation, but this is a symptom of a larger unwillingness to tackle what is both a law enforcement and a national security issue. And underneath it all is crass politics.

Many politicians--mostly Democrat, but a fair number of Republicans as well--are attempting to pander to the Hispanic vote, and thus don't want to be seen as tough on illegals, the vast majority of which are Hispanic. And that pandering is leading to porous borders that any one can essentially walk across--even those who would do America harm.

It's high time, I think, for politicians to stop pandering and start enforcing our laws and keeping the nation safe, else they might find themselves asked tough questions some time in the future, for which they will have no easy answer.

The Past as Prologue

This could almost be taken from today's headlines:

The Democratic platform denounced "four years of failure" in the war effort and the destruction of "public liberty and private right."

Yet it was not in 2007 that the above platform was adopted. It was 1864.

Read the whole article to see what happened.

What You Didn't Hear From The Leftymedia

Iraq: The insurgency lives, but it's directed toward al-Qaida, not U.S. and allied forces. A British newspaper, not our legacy media, is reporting that a "transformation has swept" across the Western part of the country.

Reporting from Anbar, the Telegraph's Damien McElroy says the shift in the region "allows Marines to walk through areas that a year ago were judged lost to radical Islam control and hear nothing more aggressive than a late-night game of pool."

"Behind the shutters," he reports, "the Sunni Muslim residents of the province are enjoying the dividends of driving out al-Qaida fighters who had imposed an oppressive Taliban-style regime."

Seems like the quagmire is something that al-Qaida is having to deal with. Or maybe not, since its terrorists are being forced out by the locals, many of whom were America's enemies not too long ago.

Today, the locals talk freely and sometimes cheer U.S. patrols, alert them to locations of weapons caches and turn in anyone who is acting suspicious. In the town of Husaybah, the absence of al-Qaida has led to "an economic revival and restoration of favorite pastimes," writes McElroy.

Gee, now I wonder why ABCCBSCNNNBCNPRPBS didn't report that?

Obama and His Flag

I can't say it any better than this:

Barack Obama made a big deal last week of not wearing an American flag in his lapel as other presidential candidates do, saying he didn't need it to prove his patriotism. "I probably haven't worn a flag pin in a very long time," he told a TV interviewer in Iowa.

Now, there's nothing wrong with not wearing a flag pin, and if it were just a personal preference, it would be a nonissue. But Obama had to politicize this, first by sneering at those who wear flags as hypocrites and then using it to woo the fringe left, a key Democratic voting bloc in the primary season.

"My attitude is that I'm less concerned about what you're wearing on your lapel than what's in your heart," he lectured. "You show your patriotism by how you treat your fellow Americans, especially those who serve. You show your patriotism by being true to our values and ideals."

Okay, let's judge Obama by his own words.

"You show your patriotism by how you treat your fellow Americans, especially those who serve."

Senator Obama, how did you vote on the resolution condemning MoveOn's attack on General David Petraeus?

He did not vote.

It was not important enough to him to defend the honor of one of those who serve to show up in DC and cast a vote.

"You show your patriotism by being true to our values and ideals."

Senator, how did you vote on the cloture motion for Senate Amendment 312, which was "To prohibit the recruitment of persons to participate in terrorism, to clarify that the revocation of an alien's visa or other documentation is not subject to judicial review, to strengthen the Federal Government's ability to detain dangerous criminal aliens, including murderers, rapists, and child molesters, until they can be removed from the United States, to prohibit the rewarding of suicide bombings and allow adequate punishments for terrorists murders, kidnappings, and sexual assaults, and for other purposes"?

He voted nay.

He would not permit an amendment to permit the government to detain child molesters.

He would not vote for cloture on an amendment that would prohibit rewarding suicide bombers.

He's right on one thing. He could wear a dozen American flags on his lapel and they wouldn't hide his disdain for the troops and his failure to support American ideals.

If Only Democrats Researched Before Opening Their Mouths

I've mostly stayed away from the Rush-Phony Soldiers kerfuffle, but this piece caught my eye:

Senate Democrats who've spent the week attacking Rush Limbaugh received much of their information about the controversy from David Brock's Media Matters as well as from MoveOn.org, which jumped on the attack-Rush bandwagon when it saw some potential for fundraising. That Democrats had not done their homework became clear on Wednesday, when Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid had his staff call over demanding that the Pentagon put liberal radio hosts on Armed Forces Radio. The problem: Armed Forces Radio already broadcasts extensive shows from National Public Radio, as well as the Ed Schulz radio show.

"They didn't believe us," says a Pentagon staffer based in the media affairs office.

Retired Gen. Wesley Clark was also unaware that Schulz and NPR were staples of the military's entertainment and information broadcasts. And Clark headed the NATO command.

That shows just how little Democrats know about the stuff they're speaking about.

Keep that in mind as election day gets closer.

Godspeed, Congresswoman Davis

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Davis, a Republican who represented southeastern Virginia for seven years, died Saturday morning after a two-year battle with breast cancer, her office said.

Davis, 57, died at her home in Gloucester.

Davis was found to have breast cancer in 2005 and had a recurrence this year. Her health took a turn for the worse during the past week, her office said.

She became Virginia's first Republican woman elected to Congress in 2000, and she was a member of the House Armed Services Committee and the Foreign Affairs Committee.

"Her determination to fight the disease is an inspiration to all of us," President Bush said in a statement.

"She was a fine example of a public servant who worked hard to cut government waste to ensure the people's money was used wisely," Bush said. "Her common-sense values will be missed on Capitol Hill."

Gov. Timothy Kaine, a Democrat, will schedule a special election, probably before the end of the year, to fill the remaining year of Davis' term, Kaine spokeswoman Delacey Skinner said.

Her first piece of legislation, passed by the House in 2001, increased the life insurance benefit paid to survivors of military members killed on duty.

Godspeed, Congresswoman.

Why We Are Winning In Iraq, Part V

A gentleman by the name of Bartle Bull, editor of the Middle East Monitor, has penned (typed?) an article for OpinionJournal, giving his own ideas about why we're seeing success in Iraq. He concludes:

The biggest unifier of all currently might be the most predictable one. Help from foreigners is welcome in Iraq. The country's elected prime minister, possessing after Iraq's heroic elections more popular legitimacy than almost any leader in the world, often points out that the Coalition is there as invited guests. When the U.S. Senate passed its disingenuous "plan" for extreme federalism in Iraq last week, the uproar in the country crossed the sectarian divide. Iraq already has a constitution. It was written by freely elected Iraqis and ratified overwhelmingly by the public in a brave vote two years ago.

Thousands of Americans and their allies have died helping to give Iraqis this opportunity. We have shown enormous skill and bravery in helping them fight their enemies, and immeasurable goodwill in sending our young men to protect Iraqi schools, mosques and polling booths. The reason we and Iraqis are winning this war together is that its purpose is to give Iraqis what they want.

Indeed. And they don't want people in Washington, many of whom have never set foot in Iraq, telling them how to set up their own government.

They're At It Again!

The Party of the Donkey is trying once again to kill the the War on Terror in Iraq while at the same time desperately attempting to avoid looking like they're doing so. They're returning to an old method they used in Vietnam--cutting off funding.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush's request for nearly $200 billion more to fund the Iraq war will not be approved unless it is linked to a plan to bring home U.S. combat troops by January 2009, the head of the House appropriations committee said on Tuesday.

Rep. David Obey, a Wisconsin Democrat, told a news conference his panel would not even consider the war funding request until early 2008, by which time he estimates funding for military operations will have run out. Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently outlined the request to Congress.

[snip]

In proposing the new timetable for withdrawing troops, Obey said, "As chairman of the appropriations committee, I have no intention of reporting out of committee any time in this session of Congress any such (war funding) request that simply serves to continue the status quo."

Of course, the "status quo" in Iraq is that we are winning. Both military and civilian deaths are down, fears of a civil war are fading, Al-Qaeda is on the run... and Obey admits he doesn't want to continue that?

Can he really be that blatant about wanting to lose? Or is he so stupid that he believes the anti-war propaganda rather than the reports from the Pentagon?

Hat Tip: Confederate Yankee

Oakland Locks Out Our Troops

Commenter Mark emailed me this, submitting it for the blog as it was too long for the comments. I reprint it here with but one minor editorial change (in capitalization of one word). The rest is as he wrote it -CCG

Oakland is part of the San Francisco bay area. San Francisco is where many of the 60’s and 70’s peace-nick ‘hippie’ radicals gathered once they ‘found their way’. Flowers replaced rifles. Drugs replaced discipline. “Freedom” meant being free to do anything they wished. “Make peace, not war” became their religion. And God was no longer welcome in the city by the bay. Apparently, Oakland followed suit and there is no distinguishing between the two now.

I read the story about a plane load of soldiers and marines posted at http://christianconservativegeek.blogspot.com/ on September 30^th shortly after it was up. I was incensed by the actions of the Oakland International Airport authorities. Incensed to the point of blind, white-hot rage. I bit my tongue and tried to contain the anger. I posted a quick comment to the story expressing that anger and the fact that I would not write more until I could get it under control. Then I thought.

Imagine you are a member of the US military and have been at war for about a year. You return via a chartered airliner to US soil and a US airport on your route refuses to let you into the terminal due to what can only be assumed to be (drum roll, please) ‘security issues’. Apparently, TSA has not screened you. Yes, you, a soldier who has been fighting a war. All you may want to do is buy a Coke, stretch your legs, or maybe even make a quick call home. And the airport will not let you inside the terminal.

Another day, another time and these young souls would have been spit upon. They would have been called ‘baby killer’ and ‘murderer’.

Excuse me, but I thought the Viet Nam anti-troop mentality was done. I thought calling soldiers, sailors, air-men, and marines “baby killer” was out of vogue. I thought freezing military personnel out of society was decided to be ‘beyond the pale’. I thought the citizenry of the US had finally put to rest this ‘hate the troops mentality’ of the 60’s and 70’s peace movement. I thought ‘We the People’ had decided it was noble and generous for a young man or woman to take the oath to serve in this country’s military. I thought…“Oh”, I said to myself with dawning realization.

We had.

It’s back.

This is the way cancer works.

We have a choice. Succumb to the disease or fight it. I know which side I’ve chosen, how about you?

Just for Fun

A prisoner in New Hampshire filed a complaint regarding the kosher food he receives in prison. The prisoner also included a hard boiled egg with the complaint.

The judge, one James R. Muirhead of the US District Court, issued the following ruling:

No fan I am
Of the egg at hand.
Just like no ham
On the kosher plan.
This egg will rot
I kid you not.
And stink it can
This egg at hand.
There will be no eggs at court
To prove a clog in your aort.
There will be no eggs accepted.
Objections all will be rejected.
From this day forth
This court will ban
hard-boiled eggs of any brand.
And if you should not understand
The meaning of the ban at hand
Then you should contact either Dan,
the Deputy Clerk, or my clerk Jan.

I do not like eggs in the file.
I do not like them in any style.
I will not take them fried or boiled.
I will not take them poached or broiled.
I will not take them soft or scrambled
Despite an argument well-rambled.
No fan I am
Of the egg at hand.
Destroy that egg!
Today! Today!
Today I say! Without delay!
SO ORDERED (with apologies to Dr. Seuss).

Now there's a judge who can write.