HILLARY CLINTON'S AMERICA

I heard this speech by Hillary on Hannity & Colmes last night:

"Suppose that you were meeting today to decide who got the vouchers.
First parent comes and says 'I want to send my daughter to St.
Peter's Roman Catholic School' and you say 'Great, wonderful
school, here's your voucher. Next parent who comes says, 'I want
to send, you know, my child to the Jewish Day School. Great here's
your voucher! Next parent who comes says, 'I want to send my child
to the private school that I've already dreamed of sending my child
to.' Fine. Here's your voucher.

Next parent who comes says, 'I want to send my child to the school
of the Church of the White Supremacist.' You say, 'Wait a minute.
You can't send...we're not giving a voucher for that.' And the parent
says, 'Well, the way that I read Genesis, Cain was marked, therefore
I believe in white supremacy. And therefore, you gave it to a
Catholic parent, you gave it to a Jewish parent, gave it to a secular
private parent. Under the Constitution, you can't discriminate
against me.'

Suppose the next parent comes and says 'I want to send my child to
the School of...the Jihad.' Wait a minute! We're not going to send a
child with taxpayers dollars to the School of Jihad. 'Well, you
gave it to the Catholics, gave it to the Jews, gave it to the private
secular people. You're gonna tell me I can't? I'm a taxpayer. Under
the Constitution.'

Now, tell me how we're going to make those choices."

So, there you have it. Hillary would like to trust you with the
freedom to choose where your children should be educated, but she
can't take the chance that you might make a bad choice. That's the
nanny-state mentality for you. They want what's best for you.
They know what's best for you. They'll do what's best for you.
And you'd better like it, becuase you don't have a choice*.

*Unless, of course, you want an abortion.

Hat tip to Michelle Malkin for posting the transcript.

DUBAI-OUS PROPOSITION

The question of whether to let a UAE based--and government owned--company take control of several major ports in the US was such a no-brainer that I wasn't going to bother posting about it. But since even Rush Limbaugh seems to be in favor of the deal, I just have to say something. I have two major concerns about the prospect of Dubai Ports World taking over ports in New York, New Jersey, New Orleans, Miami, Philadelphia and Baltimore:

REASON #1
Having a UAE-based company running the ports would give terrorists an excellent opportunity to place personnel in a position where they could gather intelligence about our port security. Information like security strengths, weaknesses, and shipping schedules would be essential in planning any large scale terrorist operation. We're already weak in the port security department. Why make the terrorists job any easier?

REASON #2
Look who's in favor of the deal. Jimmy "Punked by Islamic Extremists" Carter.

"The overall threat to the United States and security, I don't think it's exists," Carter told CNN's Wolf Blitzer.

"My belief is that the president and his secretary of state, the Defense Department and others have adequately cleared the Dubai government or organization to manage their ports," Carter added. "I don't think there's any particular threat to our security."

Considering his track record in dealing with Islamic extremists, anything Carter suggests is most certainly wrong. This is a really (really) bad idea folks. Lets not put dollars ahead of sense.

MORE GITMO CONTROVERSY

A recent UN report criticizes the US over the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

The 54-page report also urged the immediate shutdown of the prison complex. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the detention facility would have to be closed "sooner or later ... hopefully as soon as is possible."

"The United States government should either expeditiously bring all Guantanamo Bay detainees to trial ... or release them without further delay," read the UN Commission on Human Rights report.

As hard as this is to believe, I sincerely doubt that the UN has the best interest of the US in mind. And I can't, for the life of me, recall mass trials for all of the Axis POW's during WW II. If I recall correctly, we held onto those guys until the end of the war.

For some perspective on the issue from someone who has a clue, check out Mike Gifford's column at Defensewatch.

There's a fact that everyone needs to wake up to--the men we've detained at Gitmo are not common soldiers. They aren't conscripts fighting as soldiers in an Army that were captured in some obscure battle, like so many of the Iraqi soldiers you saw surrender en masse during war. These people are out to bring down the United States at all costs, and often have information that can help destroy the network that's out to destroy us. They will never fight by the same rules we do, and they know how to use our rules of warfare against America, Britain or anyone they consider an enemy. (5) We're not the bad guys here--they are--but in our panic to be completely fair, I'm afraid we're going to make deadly and potentially irreversible concessions.

MUST-READ ITEM FOR THE DAY

As you may have already surmised, I am less than impressed with
the media's handling of Dick Cheney's hunting accident. They
haven't exactly covered themselves in glory this week. The best
analysis I've seen about this to date can be found in Thomas
Sowells' latest column. I'm posting by email, so I can't post the
link. I'll put the url below. You can just copy and paste it into
your browser's address box. Or you can find it at Townhall.com.

http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/thomassowell/
2006/02/16/186735.html

THOUGHTS ON STUFF

-Anyone who is a parent, and who has lived through the "terrible
twos," probably experienced deja vu upon seeing NBC news
personality David Gregory throwing a tantrum over the Cheney-
hunting accident story. And they probably empathized with Scott
McClellan.

-I read over at Drudge's site that Madame Hillary finds the way in
which information was released about the Cheney hunting accident
"troubling." As troubling as perjury by a sitting president? As
troubling as unauthorized access to FBI files for political purposes?
As troubling as campaign contributions from communist China? As
troubling as dozens of questionable last-minute pardons as payback
to supporters and donors from an outgoing president (and his
candidate wife)? As troubling as the illegal transfer of technology
to communist China? As troubling as a thirty hour delay
in releasing the suicide note of a senior administration aide? More
troubling, no doubt. It was a hunting accident, after all.

-The cartoon riot in the Muslim world continues. The mainstream
media has apprently lost interest in the story, or are busy with
more important things. This begs the question: If a tree falls in
the forest, and the American media isn't there to cover it, does it
make a sound? You bet your ass it does.

-Some snot-nosed punks at the University of Washington don't want
a memorial to UoW alum, and WW II fighter ace, Greg "Pappy"
Boyington on campus. Maybe they have a point. A campus full of
whiney, self-absorbed, left-wing asshats isn't good enough to have
a memorial to a hero like Boyington.

YOU LEARN SOMETHING NEW EVERY DAY

Always looking for a hidden lesson in everything, I've been giving
serious thought to the media meltdown over Dick Cheney's hunting
accident. Here's what I came up with:

Dick Cheney accidently shoots one of his best friends in a hunting
accident, and a thirty hour delay in reporting it to the almighty
Washington press corps is a mortal sin. "Coverup" is the word of
the day. NBC's David Gregory is ready to duke it out with Scott
McClellan during a press conference. No doubt we'll hear calls
for a Congressional investigation--and maybe utterances of the "I"
word--in the near future.

Rewind to the 1990s. President Bill Clinton has "sex with that
woman, Miss Lewinsky" and lies about it, under oath and in a speech
to the nation. "It's ok", we are told, because it involves his
personal life. None of our business anyway.

Thousands of FBI files on Clinton poltical opponents wind up in the
hands of a political hack at the White House. "It was just a
mistake," we are told. Lighten up already.

White House travel office director Billy Dale is arrested and
criminally prosecuted so a Clinton cousin can be installed as
director. A jury acquits him after a mere two hours of
deliberation. "Billy who?" the media elites asked at the time.
"Ancient history" they tell us today.

So, what's the lesson in all this? The lesson is that there is no
bias in the mainstream media. It's all just a paranoid delusion
of the right wing. Nothing but b.s. cooked up by talk radio. So
there you have it. Any questions?

STUFF

Some observations on the goings-on in the news:

Judging by the media feeding frenzy over the Dick Cheney hunting
accident, I'm inclined to suggest that Scott McClellen borrow the
VP's shotgun for his next news conference. Some birdshot in the
ass of a couple of the snottier reporters may serve as a warning to
the rest. Then again, maybe not. They are pretty dense.

On a side note, statistically speaking, it's still safer to hunt
with Cheney than it is to hitch a ride with Teddy Kennedy.

It looks as if former VP Al Gore and DNC Chair Howard Dean are in
a footrace to the looney bin. Who will win? Damned if I know.
It's too close to call at this point.

Senator Hillary's leftwing-moderate-antiwar-hawkish-tax-and-spend-
fiscally responsible act is wearing thin. In her bid for the
presidency, she's trying to wear too many hats, a tough trick to
pull off. Even for someone with a head as big as hers. It's
starting to appear that she won't even get the nomination, let
alone win the election in '08.

Since Cindy Shhehan has decided not to run against DiFi for US
Senate, I wonder if we could convince her to move to New York
and take on Madame Hillary. I'd actually register as a Democrat
in order to vote for Cindy in the primary.

RIOT IN TOONTOWN--REAX

A sampling of some columns on the Cartoon Jihad:

Kathleen Parker

The cartoon implosion now rocking the Muslim world - featuring embassy burnings, threats of 9-11 sequels and the Arab street equivalent of the Terrible Twos - is based on equal parts fake photographs and a default riot mode looking for an excuse. Extreme propaganda on one side and a lack of fortitude on the other have brought us near the brink of extinction through a global act of accidental self-mockery.

David Yeagley

Any so-called “moderate Muslims” there are have simply made insufficient effort to distinguish themselves, or to alter the horrid image of Islam. The “good” Muslims have no place in the press, and have either not made the effort, or are simply incapable. If they are the majority, as apologists like to assert, then why haven’t they taken over Islam? Why don’t they control it?

Nobody believes in this “vast majority” of moderate Muslims. This is a fantasy, until proven otherwise. Many of these “moderate Muslims” hardly practice Islam at all. They left it by the wayside, along with the other chronic restraints of a socially retarded culture that justifies its deformity in the name of religion. They prefer freedom. Islam is only for weddings and funerals, or personal prayer. It is no longer a way of life for the “moderate Muslims.” There are no “moderate Muslims.”

Fred Siegel

Why have so many Europeans submitted (to) this kind of blackmail? Anti-Americanism is part of the answer. Like the Arab world, Europe is deeply resentful of American power. In order to counter balance the United States and increase their dwindling welfare state populations, Europeans have, ever since the oil shock of 1973, entered into a close relationship with the Arab world. The so called Euro-Arab dialogue produces regular meetings designed, in principle, to bring modernity to the Arab world while easing the way for Arab immigrants to be integrated into Europe. In practice, as in the case of the Danish cartoon affair, the Arab world has been little modernized, but it has successfully exported its hatreds and world-view to Europe.

Claudia Rosett

What’s noteworthy about the latest violence is not that it is unusual — but how very ordinary in so many ways it has become. Yes, of course, the grimly whimsical surprise is that this time the lightning rod has turned out to be not the famous London underground, or the grand train stations of Madrid, or the twin towers of New York, but a set of cartoons out of Copenhagen. The Danish drawings did not trigger some previously nonexistent fury. They have simply become the latest litmus test of how very much the worst thugs of the Islamic world believe they are entitled to get away with, whatever the pretext.

The inimitable Ann Coulter

The rioting Muslims claim they are upset because Islam prohibits any depictions of Muhammad -- though the text is ambiguous on beheadings, suicide bombings and flying planes into skyscrapers.

My take? The evidence is mounting that these riots aren't that spontaneous. The cartoons are five months old, and they're only now causing an uproar? The three most offensive "cartoons" were never even published, and are almost certainly fakes. And how does every asshat with a zippo in the Muslim world come to have a Danish flag? I've spent a little time in the middle east, and I've never seen or heard of a "Scandinavian flag superstore" in the region.

For what it's worth, I don't think that the American left is alone in viewing the war on terrorism as a "quagmire." The global Islamic revolution that was supposed to be set off by the US response to 9/11 hasn't happened. The terrorists are still out there and they're still active, but they've made no progress. It's going to take more than a few thousand fanatics to make bin Laden's vision come true, it's going to take millions. I believe that this whole thing is meant to serve as a recruiting drive and a pep rally for Islamofascist anti-Americanism. Let's hope it's not successful.

CARTOON BLOGBURST

"Freedom isn't free." It's a phrase I've heard many times, and said myself on more than one occasion. Oftentimes it is meant as a reminder of the sacrifices made by others so that we can be free. It is also a reminder of the costs we all must bear in order to be free. One of those costs is having to tolerate that which we find offensive. The benefit for paying this price is freedom of speech. To that end, I've decided to take ranks with the other bloggers who have elected to show their support for freedom of speech by joining The Muhammad Cartoons Blogburst.


If I can tolerate the likes of Ted Rall, Michael Moore, Al Franken, and others of their ilk, Muslims can tolerate these cartoons. Even the "Christian Right" managed to deal with Piss Christ and Kanye West posing as Jesus without rioting or threatening to massacre anyone.



And while I'm showing my support for freedom of speech, I'd like to show a little support for the people of Denmark. I think I'm going to buy (and drink) some Carlsberg Beer this weekend. Buy Danish!

NEW PARADIGM TIME

A government agent can't search your person without a
warrant or probable cause. If you're carrying a suitcase, he
can't search it without a warrant or probable cause. If you're in
your car, he can't search your car without a warrant or probable
cause. Unless you give them permission, government agents can't
search you without legal justification (i.e. a warrant or probable
cause). Ever! Right? Not so fast.

What if you're entering the US at a border checkpoint? Can they
search you? Your suitcase? Your car? With no warrant? No probable
cause? No problem. I've seen it with my own eyes. When I was in
college, three of my friends and I spent about an hour at the US-
Canadian border while my friend's car was tossed by Customs
Inspectors. Why? Because we were college kids, and they probably
figured that we had some drugs in the car. Turns out we didn't.
When they were done searching the car, one of the Customs guys
said "OK, you can go now." No explanation. No apology. They didn't
even put back the stuff they threw on the pavement during the
search. That's just the way it is at the border. Anyone, or anything,
entering the US can be searched. It's been that way for years and
years.

With this in mind, I'm curious as to why phone calls and
communications are any different. We're in the information age.
A lot can be done with the transfer of information. Why should it
be allowed to enter the country unchecked? Are we trying to use
a 19th century mindset to deal with a 21st century problem? I think
it may be time for a new paradigm.

GOOD QUESTION

Retired marine H. Thomas Hayden wrote a that appeared on Military.com today titled by The Need For Counterintelligence. Go check it out, it's well worth the read. In it, he asks a damn good question:

Can someone tell me if there is a section in the US Constitution that guarantees the right to national suicide? I surely must be missing something that some of the liberal national news media, ACLU, and some politicians on both sides see.

CELEBRITY MOONBAT WATCH

Compassionate actor-director George Clooney was one of several filmmakers interviewed recently by Newsweek. I expected that Clooney would be the man with the best quote. He didn't disappoint:

But on the other hand, I'll wager that every one of our films, when you first tested it with an audience, tested much lower than after it was reviewed. Sometimes people need reviews to explain what a film is, to put it into some sort of perspective.

(emphasis mine)

Yup. You read that right. Us poor stupid rubes need film critics to tell us what movies to like. Thank God for Rex Reed and Roger Ebert. But not Gene Shalit. He, apparently, has no perspective.

If us ignoramuses cain't be trusted to know what movies to like, how can we be trusted to know which polytishuns to vote fer? Hopefully, the good folks in Hollywood will let us know.

TO HELL IN A HANDBASKET

I take a couple weeks off from blogging to focus on my educational pursuits, and look what happens. The world blows up. Again. I should have known.

AND THE WINNER IS...
Hamas! Yeah, big surprise. The punditocracy calls the outcome of the Palestinian election "shocking." Well I'm not shocked. This is about what I expected. I must be psychic. Or maybe I'm just paying attention. The Palestinian people had two choices: the party that is dedicated to destroying Israel (Hamas), or the party that is dedicated to destroying Israel (Fatah). Fatah talked peace--to the Americans and Israelis. But they still spoke about an Israel-free world among themselves. Hell, their schoolbooks even deny the existence of Israel. If you were fooled into believing that Fatah wanted peace, you must've fooled yourself. The Palestinians were barely putting up a front. The only real difference between the two parties is who gets to run the show.

THE EVIL BUSHITLER IS VIOLATING OUR RIGHTS
Be still my heart! President Bush and his evil minions at the NSA are violating our God-given, constitutionally protected rights to chit-chat with terrorists overseas who are plotting to attack the United States. The founding fathers must be spinning in their graves! Stopping the terrorists is priority number 2 to some of these leftwing yahoos. Filling out the paperwork is priority 1. My opinion? That's backwards. But since it appears that the majority of Americans agree with me on this, I hope the moonbats keep bleating about this. It hurts them politically, and I don't trust them to run things with the bad guys still looking to hurt us.

"THE CULTURE OF CORRUPTION"
Yeah, it's called Washington, DC. Let's do the math:

would-be lifelong politicans
+the need for money to stay in office
+strict controls on campaign financing
-------------------------------------------
=corruption

Term limits anyone?

AUNT HILLARY'S CABIN
The smartest woman in the universe, Hillary Clinton, tells us that the House of Representatatives is run like a plantation. Really. Are our congressional representatives slaves? Are people being whipped? Worked to exhaustian in the fields? Doubtful. Hill needs to learn some history before she tries to make historical comparisons. The lamestream media gave her a pass, though. Shocking! Like a Hamas victory!

SOMEBODY PLEASE BUY HER A FREAKIN' DICTIONARY!
Since I'm bashing Hillary...
From a speach on the Senate floor yesterday:

"I fear that Judge Alito will roll back decades of progress and roll over when confronted with an administration too willing to flaunt the rules and looking for a rubber stamp."

OK Hill listen up. Time for a quick vocab lesson.

Flaunt: To exhibit ostentatiously or shamelessly.

I think that the word you're looking for is flout.

Flout: To show contempt for; scorn.


OK. Enough for the current events. I have a final to study for.

"STUPID IN AMERICA"

John Stossel, who wrote the column I cited in my previous post, is doing a report titled "Stupid in America" on ABC's 20/20 tonight. It looks like it's well worth watching. If you go to the 20/20 website, there is a video preview of the report, and an interview with Stossel on Good Morning America. There's also a poll there about school voucher programs. So far it is 71.8% in favor of vouchers, 28.1% in favor of spending more on public schools instead of vouchers.

SCHOOL CHOICE

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you probably know that I send my daughters to a private school. It's not easy, as we aren't rich, but I think it's well worth the effort. Knowing that, it should come as no surprise that I'm an advocate for school choice. It's not a topic that gets a lot of play from the punditocracy these days, but it is an important one. That's why I was happy to read John Stossel's latest column.

Remember when the Postal Service said it couldn't get it there overnight? Then companies like FedEx were allowed to compete. Private enterprise got it there absolutely, positively overnight. Now even the Post Office guarantees overnight delivery sometimes. Competition works.

Why can't education work the same way? If people got to choose their kids' school, education options would be endless. My tiny brain can't begin to imagine the possibilities, but even I can guess there soon would be technology schools, cheap Wal-Mart-like schools, virtual schools where you learn at home on your computer, sports schools, music schools, schools that go all year, schools with uniforms, schools that open early and keep kids later, and, who knows? If there were competition, all kinds of new ideas would bloom.

Damn right. School choice would revolutionize education in this country. Unfortunately, there aren't many politicians out there willing to make it happen. When it comes to school choice, the vast majority of politicians fall into one of two categories:

1. Bought off by the teachers' unions.
2. Spineless.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that all these folks are opposed to private schools. Many of them have sent their own kids to private schools. But they'll be damned if they lift a finger to help working class folks to do the same.

READING ASSIGNMENT

Today's assignment is a story that's not getting the play in the
media that it should. It involves the violation of the civil
liberites of American citizens by an out-of-control Presidential
administration. Read it and pass it on. Every American needs to
know about this.

Report implicating Clinton: Will it be hidden for good?

CHRISTMAS CONCERT

I went to the Christmas concert at my children's school last
night. It was a CHRISTMAS concert, not a generic "holiday"
or "winter" concert. The kids all sang Christmas carols. Most
of these carols were religiously themed--"We Three Kings", "Silent
Night" and such. The ACLU was nowhere to be seen. Ditto the
Americans United for the Separation of Chrurch and State. I didn't
expect to see them there. That's because my kids go to a Catholic
school. I can send them a Catholic school because I can afford it.
Many people would like to send their children to private schools,
but they can't afford to. It's too bad that so many of our political
"leaders" are too spineless to push for a voucher program.
Apparently, "freedom of choice" extends only so far.

ORGANIZED LABOR, OR ORGANIZED CRIME?

There's something about the NYC transit strike I don't get. The Transit Workers Union has called a strike. NYC is nearly gridlocked. As of this writing, the city has lost about $400 million because of the strike. The strike is illegal--as in against the law. So here's my question: Why is the Transit Workers Union still a recognized labor union? They are an organization that is engaged in a conscious effort to commit a crime. This, by definition, makes them a criminal organization. So why hasn't the National Labor Relations Board decertified them as a labor union? Unions aren't sacred. They should be held to the same standards as anyone else. Maybe, if this organization got decertified, it would send a message to other unions that their days of being above the law are over.

And while we're on the subject of the law, how about some criminal charges here? NYS Penal Law secion 195.05, Obstructing Governmental Administration in the second degree:

"A person is guilty of obstructing governmental administration when he intentionally obstructs, impairs or perverts the administration of law or other governmental function or prevents or attempts to prevent a public servant from performing an official function, by means of intimidation, physical force or interference, or by means of any independently unlawful act, or by means of interfering, whether or not physical force is involved, with radio, telephone, television or other telecommunications systems owned or operated by the state, or a county, city, town, village, fire district or emergency medical service or by means of releasing a dangerous animal under circumstances evincing the actor's intent that the animal obstruct governmental administration. Obstructing governmental administration is a class A misdemeanor."

I'd say that this strike meets the criteria spelled out in the law. And I'm sure that there were several people involved in the decision-making process when the union decided to strike. Which brings us to NYS Penal Law section 105.00, Criminal Conspiracy in the sixth degree:

"A person is guilty of conspiracy in the sixth degree when, with intent that conduct constituting a crime be performed, he agrees with one or more persons to engage in or cause the performance of such conduct. Conspiracy in the sixth degree is a class B misdemeanor."

So let's have some union leaders arrested, cuffed, and "frog marched" into central booking on live TV. Mayor Bloomburg and the respective D.A.s of the five boroughs would be heroes, the strike would end in short order, and "labor leaders" would get the message that they're not above the law.

DECEMBER 7, 1941

Sixty-four years ago today, US forces at Pearl Harbor were struck by the Japanese Navy in a surprise attack. Prior to the attack, many Americans -- most notably a group known as The Committee to Defend America First -- expressed serious opposition to our involvement in World War II. Many prominent Americans were members of the America First Committee, including aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, most America Firsters -- including Lindbergh -- got behind the President, our military, and the war effort. That's what you call a "loyal opposition." My, how times have changed.


Picture found at Sacred Cow Burgers.

CHANGES TO AIR FORCE BASIC TRAINING

This is welcome news, found at Defensewatch:

Longer, Tougher Basic Training for Air Force Recruits

by Paul Connors

The Air Force finally seems to have taken notice. After almost a decade of operations using its own Air Expeditionary Force concepts and models, the nation's junior service finally realized that it needs to train the way it will fight. As a result, the Air Force concluded that it must change its basic training and as of the time of this writing, is doing just that.

Gone are the days of learning how to fold t-shirts into six inch squares (an exercise designed to stress attention to detail). Air Force Basic Training, the shortest of all the services at just six weeks had long been viewed as a cakewalk compared to Basic Combat Training for the Army and the legendary boot camps of the Marine Corps. Training cadres in the know even admitted that Coast Guard basic training, held at that service's Training Center in Cape May, N.J. was more difficult and stressful than that experienced by incoming airmen.

Now the focus, curriculum and length of time a trainee spends at Lackland AFB in San Antonio, Texas have all been revamped. The service's newest incoming enlisted trainees will face a basic training program that is seven weeks long, with a curriculum that emphasizes the "warrior ethos," and ground combat skills.

I've never attended AF basic training (my military career started in the Army), but as a member of the Air National Guard for the past nine years, it has become painfully obvious to me that USAF personnel are in serious need of more tactical training. In this era of asymmetric warfare and joint operations, technical proficiency in one's job is no longer enough. This isn't a huge step, but it is a step in the right direction.

DELICATE WONDER

"Who knows what delicate wonders have died out of the world for lack of the strength to survive?" -- Han (Kien Shih), Enter the Dragon

In recent months, I've become concerned that our country is turning into a "delicate wonder", too "evolved" to engage in the dirty, and sometimes brutal, business of surviving as a nation in a violent world. Any bloodshed or suffering are unacceptable. If we can't do it bloodlessly, we won't do it at all. This pie-in-the-sky idealism may sound good in an Ivy League classroom, but it doesn't work in the real world. Pacifists will tell you "it takes two to make war", but violence only requires the effort of one. Stopping violence often requires the decisive use of force. Too many Americans seem to have forgotten this.

Retired Lt. Col. Gordon Cucullu, a special ops veteran of Vietnam, addresses this in his most recent column, appropriately titled "Mythology of Clean War."

Watching the Democrats in Congress -- abetted by some ill-informed, poorly disciplined Republicans -- engage in the politics of betrayal most recently was grim. Seeing so many supposedly intelligent, dedicated, patriotic individuals engage in infantile defeatism was maddening. They are attempting to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and many of us are frustrated and upset.

Part of what drives these individuals -- aside from Beltway poll watching, and unchecked ambition -- also troubles many Americans: our obsession with achieving the impossible. We want to have a clean, crisp, sanitary war in which we suffer few casualties. We want our enemy's pain to be minimal possible to achieve desired results. We want the unfortunate deaths of civilians -- euphemistically called “collateral damage” -- removed from the process completely. Additionally we wish that all deaths inflicted by internal errors -- “friendly fire casualties” -- be prevented. We want a Clean War Pill to cure our foreign policy ills and will accept no hangovers or unpleasant side effects. And, by the way, we want the entire thing from beginning to end wrapped up by next Thursday.

Even though Iraq since July 2003 has been a frustrating experience it has been relatively positive. Regardless, American media conveys much the opposite impression. Compared to previous wars casualty levels are extremely low considering that 50 million people in Iraq and Afghanistan are free of brutal, mass murdering dictatorships. Elections, that took years to take place in liberated Japan and Germany, have been occurring with reassuring regularity and have included increasingly large numbers of the population. Disaffected Sunni citizens -- who held all the cards during Saddam's vicious reign -- are accepting the reality of living with other Iraqi citizens as equals. The terrorist campaign has shifted focus from American troops to Iraqi civilians and first responders, particularly police. And the terrorists are now mostly foreign fighters imported from Saudi, Yemen, Jordan, Chechnya, and other Arab/Islamic states.

So why are Americans so disconsolate about the state of affairs? The obvious answer is that we receive precious little positive news from the battlefield. We are told that casualty rates are high, though they are not. We are told that the “insurgency” is gaining popularity among Iraqi people while the converse is true: insurgents have declared war on ordinary Iraqis and the civilians recognize the threat. Massive demonstrations in Jordan see the “Arab Street” -- which up till now has been deafening silent -- out chanting “Zarqawi, burn in hell!” Inside Iraq civilians who may have given tacit support to the terrorists are no longer intimidated and are informing to American and Iraqi forces on the hideouts of the Al Qaeda thugs.

Check out the rest of Lt. Col Cucullu's column. He's a guy who has "been there and done that", and knows more about counterinsurgency warfare than Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, or anyone at moveon.org.

POLITICS IN THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF NY

From yesterday's Newsday

Rep. Sweeney: GOP should delay vote on statewide candidates

WASHINGTON -- New York U.S. Rep. John Sweeney said Tuesday that GOP leaders should put off a Dec. 12 vote to endorse candidates for governor and U.S. Senate in 2006, saying the party needs more time.

The comments by Sweeney, R-Clifton Park, echo those made Monday by state Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno as the beleaguered state party seeks to mount viable campaigns up and down the ticket.

New York's 62 county GOP chairmen are due to meet Dec. 12 to settle on their endorsements for the two top races in the state next year. State GOP Chairman Stephen Minarik has called for the meeting and vote.

"I think it's just too risky right now," said Sweeney. "I respect that it's their choice, but my gut tells me that it's a little premature, that they just need a little more time to establish a clear picture for the committee chairmen to make their choice."

Sweeney, a former executive director of the state party, said that without more time, the party risks alienating key voters who may either back other candidates or simply stay home on Election Day 2006.

"We still have a little bit of time, I believe over the next four or five months we need to develop our candidates," said Sweeney.

Damn right. As it stands right now, Democratic candidates for statewide offices are the only ones with name recognition. AG Eliot Spitzer appears to be running unopposed for Governor. Westchester County DA Janine Pirro appears to pose minimal threat to Madame Hillary's reelection bid for US Senate. On that note:

Bruno: Pirro should quit anti-Clinton race

ALBANY, N.Y. -- The most powerful Republican in the state Legislature called Tuesday for Jeanine Pirro to give up her quest to unseat Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2006 and run instead for state attorney general.

Pirro, in a statement, declined to heed the advice.

State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno said the Westchester County district attorney could win the attorney general's race, while in running for Senate, "she's going to have one of the most competitive races in the state."

Independent polls have shown the former first lady well ahead of Pirro.

"I hope that before this procedure gets too much further along that Jeanine Pirro would reconsider and run for AG.," Bruno told a state Capitol news conference.

In a statement issued by her campaign, Pirro said: "Senator Bruno is a respected majority leader and I appreciate his confidence in my abilities. However, I am a candidate for U.S. Senate."

Democrats were quick to pounce on Bruno's statements with state Democratic Chairman Herman Farrell saying, "This is clearly a major blow and an obvious indication of how difficult top Republicans believe it will be to defeat Senator Clinton."

The GOP in NY better get its act together, and soon. Many of us are sick and tired of the also-ran candidacies we've seen from Republicans in this state. I'm thinking specifically of the sorry run against Chucky Scummer for Senate in 2004. Chuckie won with over 70% of the vote. Since then he's been more unbearable than ever. Landslide victories tend to take these arrogant libs to new heights of jackassedness. If Hillary wins one, she'll start believing she's indestructible. Then you'll be seeing her--and her pathetic narcissistic hubby--on the national stage 24/7. They'll be running their mouths incessantly, lecturing us on everything; assuring us that they can solve all our problems. I don't know about you, but the very idea makes me nauseous.

The GOP needs to start playing for keeps in this state before their supporters start staying home in droves. And their party ceases to exist here.

REMEMBER, THE LEFT SUPPORT THE TROOPS.

Cartoonist Ted Rall (who draws about as well as my dog) is at it again. The "compassionate" Mr. Rall, the man who portrayed the late Pat Tillman as "an idiot" and took a racist swipe at Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, is showing his support for the troops with his latest "cartoon."

I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Rall appears to have a hatred for military personnel that borders on the pathological. But that's OK, Ted has a right to do what he does. The first ammendment guarantees that right. A right he can claim thanks to the efforts the military he despises so. A military made up of better men than Ted Rall. Many of those "better men" are actually women, but most women are better men than Ted Rall anyway.

h/t: Michelle Malkin

IT'S JUST GOOD HONEST DISSENT. RIGHT?

Whenever criticism is directed toward the antiwar crowd, they scream bloody murder. After all, they tell us, dissent is essential in a free society. I agree. The problem is with when and how they choose to dissent. War is not like a football game. In football, the constant chatter of the sports-guy talking heads in the broadcast booth is irrelevant to the outcome of the game. The game is going on down on the field. The players won't know what's been said about them until later.

In war, the game isn't just played by the folks in the field (the military), the entire country is part of the game. The troops can only win the battles. It takes the entire country to win a war. Look at Vietnam. We won all the battles, but we didn't win the war. Our troops kicked ass, but our politicians gave up.

If you think I'm dead wrong about this, consider this story:

The overwhelming assessment by Asian officials, diplomats and analysts is that the U.S. military simply cannot defeat China. It has been an assessment relayed to U.S. government officials over the past few months by countries such as Australia, Japan and South Korea. This comes as President Bush wraps up a visit to Asia, in which he sought to strengthen U.S. ties with key allies in the region.

Most Asian officials have expressed their views privately. Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara has gone public, warning that the United States would lose any war with China.

"In any case, if tension between the United States and China heightens, if each side pulls the trigger, though it may not be stretched to nuclear weapons, and the wider hostilities expand, I believe America cannot win as it has a civic society that must adhere to the value of respecting lives," Mr. Ishihara said in an address to the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Mr. Ishihara said U.S. ground forces, with the exception of the Marines, are "extremely incompetent" and would be unable to stem a Chinese conventional attack. Indeed, he asserted that China would not hesitate to use nuclear weapons against Asian and American cities—even at the risk of a massive U.S. retaliation.

The governor said the U.S. military could not counter a wave of millions of Chinese soldiers prepared to die in any onslaught against U.S. forces. After 2,000 casualties, he said, the U.S. military would be forced to withdraw.

(emphasis mine)

Our ground forces are "extremely incompetent?" I guess hearing our antiwar politicos and media talking heads always squawking about how we're losing the war has had an impact on the world's opinion of our military. And withdrawal after "2,000 casualties?" Yeah, I'm sure that number is just coincidental. No connection with the cries of the antiwar crowd. Right?

Officials acknowledge that Mr. Ishihara's views reflect the widespread skepticism of U.S. military capabilities in such countries as Australia, India, Japan, Singapore and South Korea. They said the U.S.-led war in Iraq has pointed to the American weakness in low-tech warfare.

"When we can't even control parts of Anbar, they get the message loud and clear," an official said, referring to the flashpoint province in western Iraq.

The people of the world are learning from the Kennedys, Deans, and Murthas of America. And what are they being taught? They're being taught that the USA doesn't have the will to wage and win a war. That's a dangerous thing to do. Especially now.

NOVEMBER '05 MARTINEZ UPDATE

Alberto Martinez, the Army National Guard NCO who is accused of murdering two officers in Iraq, has been in the news. But not much. A Google News search done at 8:00 on Monday night yielded 123 hits. Compared to Natalee Holloway, which yielded 1150 hits, that ain't a whole lot. The national media has shown a marked lack of interest in this story. It's not hard to figure out why. Since there appears to be no political/antiwar motivation behind the murders--"fragging" just doesn't adequately describe this heinous act--the news media would rather devote it's time to other pursuits. Pursuits that bash the Bush administration, the war effort, and even the troops themselves.

Fortunately, there are some news organizations covering the story. The most recent report comes from The Journal News, of Rockland County, NY.

The widow of Capt. Phillip Esposito of Suffern hopes military authorities will seek the harshest punishment for the soldier accused of killing her husband and another officer in Iraq.

Siobhan Esposito, 31, made the comments a day after returning from Kuwait, where a pretrial hearing for Staff Sgt. Alberto Martinez was held last week. He is charged with two counts of premeditated murder in the killings of Esposito, 30, and Lt. Louis Allen, 34, of Milford, Pa., on June 7 in Tikrit, allegedly because he had been reprimanded.

"I hope it is tried as a capital case," Esposito said. "I would be disappointed if it is not."

Col. Patrick Reinert, the officer investigating the slayings, recommended a general court-martial, which carries a maximum sentence of life without parole. But he said enough evidence existed to try it as a capital case, allowing for the death penalty, and left it to higher authorities to make that decision.

Reinert's recommendations are nonbinding. They will be forwarded to Lt. Gen. John H. Vines in Baghdad, who will decide whether to seek the death penalty.

The pretrial investigation under Article 32 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice was required before any court-martial could take place. The hearing, which is similar to a civilian grand jury proceeding, took place at Camp Arifjan in southern Kuwait.

Esposito and Barbara Allen, Allen's widow, spent two days listening to witnesses and criminal investigators who testified before Reinert. Martinez and his wife, Tamara, also were present during the hearing.

Witnesses testified that Martinez, 37, of Troy, was openly antagonistic toward Esposito. He is said to have told at least one officer that he hated Esposito and wanted to "frag" him. He is said to have told another that he wanted Esposito killed.

The above referenced story was filed on November 6, 2005. I understand that there may not be any new developments to report at this time, but that's never stopped the intrepid news-hawks of the "fourth estate" from reporting a story into the ground. I guess they're all waiting to get their marching orders from the New York Times before they feel the story worthy of reporting. Unsurprisingly, the "paper of record", which is published in the home state of the murdered soldiers, doesn't have a single story in the current Google News loop (which goes back about a month) about Martinez. Not one. Disgraceful.

In the meantime, I haven't heard any more news from my back-channel source about the case. I've been told that there is more to it than has been reported, but it would be irresponsible of me to put this info out there with a case pending. I don't want to do anything to endanger the prosecution of this guy. If he's guilty, and I'm inclined to believe he is, he needs to go down.

If you need to get caught up on this story, check out these previous posts:

A SAD DAY FOR THE RAINBOW DIVISION

MORE ON THE 42nd ID "FRAGGING" INCIDENT

DO THE WRONG THING

MARTINEZ UPDATE

LIAR, LIAR, PANTS ON FIRE (UPDATED)

The Prez finally started fighting back over the left's "Bush lied" mantra. I'm sure I'm not alone when I say "It's about frickin' time!" I was at the end of my rope on that subject. I recently saw a car with a bumper sticker that read "When Clinton lied, no one died." It was all I could do not to slash that sumbitch's tires.

This whole meme is predicated on an extreme level of stupidity. First off, what, exactly, is a lie? From Dictionary.com:

1.A false statement deliberately presented as being true; a falsehood .
2.Something meant to deceive or give a wrong impression.

(emphasis mine)

Note the emphasis on intent. Just saying something that turns out to be untrue isn't lying. Is the weatherman a liar when he gets the forecast wrong? How about the talking head sports guy on ESPN who incorrectly predicts that team A will beat team B; is he a liar? Of course not. Deception and innacuracy are not the same. Anyone over four years old understands this.

The only way one can be certain that President Bush lied is to know what he was briefed in the run-up to the war. To listen to Cindy Sheehan and others of her ilk, you'd think that they all had received intelligence briefings from the CIA. The President receives such briefings daily. It's safe to assume that the editorial staff of the NY Times does not. They might get bits and pieces, but not the whole picture. They can make educated guesses, but in the end it's just pure speculation. Selling speculation as "news" is irresponsible journalism, at best. Treason, at worst.

The best indicator of whether "Bush lied" about Iraq's WMD program is the response of the one man who has been the recipient of a Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) in the recent past: Bill Clinton. Many in the blogosphere have been quoting him of late. They remind us of what he was saying in the late 90s about Iraq's WMD program. I'm not as interested in what he said in 1998 as I am in what he has been saying since the invasion of Iraq. So what has he said? Very little. And he hasn't called President Bush a liar. The one man who is in a position to effectively make that argument, and he hasn't even tried.

So why hasn't Clinton jumped on the Bush-bash bandwagon? And why did Senator Hillary vote in favor of the war? Neither one of them was in a position to be "duped." They had insider knowledge. And both of them have been quick to criticize the President on practically everything else. So why haven't they joined the pile-on? Because they know that the accusation isn't true. And Bill and Hill know that the truth can be like a time bomb. Neither one of them wants to chance that bomb going off when Hillary is gearing up for a Presidential run in '08. So they let others do the dirty work while Team Clinton steers clear. You'd think that other Dems would take note, but they're too insane with BDS, too drunk on Kool-Aid, to figure it out.

There's another point to keep in mind regarding the Clinton response. Bill Clinton is fully cognizant of the fact that his administration bears at least as much blame--if not more--for the "intelligence failures" that occurred in the run-up to the war. After all, Bill Tenet was his boy at CIA before he was W's. And intel databases are built over years, not weeks. Shortfalls in Iraq intel predated the Bush administration by a good chunk of time. The former Prez is way to smart to open up that can of worms. They don't call him Slick Willie for nothing.

So there it is. The answer is as plain, and as obvious, as the nose on Bozo the Clown's face. There are probably some folks on the left who can't see it, but I think most of them just don't want to.

Update: Well, he's at it again. Via Drudge

Clinton says Iraq invasion was a big mistake
The United States made a "big mistake" when it invaded Iraq, former President Bill Clinton said Wednesday, citing the lack of planning for what would happen after dictator Saddam Hussein was overthrown.

"Saddam is gone. It's a good thing, but I don't agree with what was done, " Clinton told students at the American University of Dubai.

"It was a big mistake. The American government made several errors ... one of which is how easy it would be to get rid of Saddam and how hard it would be to unite the country."

Clinton did however say that the United States had done some good things in Iraq: the removal of Saddam, the ratification of a new constitution, and the holding of parliamentary elections.

I took the liberty of pasting the whole article here. Note the lack of reference to lies, intel, and WMD. What does that say about a team whose captain won't use, or even publicly endorse their preferred tactic?

19 YEARS AGO TODAY...

I boarded a plane in Syracuse, NY bound for Newark, NJ. Seated a few rows in front of me was Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa, instantly recognizable in his red beret and Guardian Angels T-shirt (yes, he wore them on the plane). After a short flight to Newark, I boarded a bus to Fort Dix, NJ. Within the next 24 hours, I would lose my civilian clothes, my first name, and most of my hair. And so began Army basic training and my career in the US military.

In the following weeks, I would find myself wondering why I chose to enlist in the military after graduating from college, when most of my peers were starting their civilian careers. Their big worries consisted of stuff like trying to decide whether to buy a Camaro or a Firebird. Or an (UGH!) Pontiac Fiero. I cursed my decision to enlist on more than one occasion, but in the long run, I'm glad I served. In fact, I can't imagine not having been in the military. I didn't join becuase I was poor. I didn't get duped or brainwashed. It was just something I had to do. I guess it's just the way I'm put together. Maybe it was the way I was raised. I can't really explain it. It just is what it is. I can't speak for everyone who has been in the military, but I'm sure I'm not alone in how I feel about it.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED (FOR NOW) -- UPDATED

Well, I survived the training deployment and arrived home completely exhausted on Tuesday afternoon. We spent yesterday squaring away the shop. Today I returned to my civilian job. I have tomorrow off. Hopefully I'll be able to catch up on my sleep and my blog reading. Until then, here are some random thoughts generated by my deployment.

-A KC-135 can get you to your deployment site faster than a C-130. It's a little quieter (only a little) and a lot roomier too.

-MOPP Level 4 can get really uncomfortable.

-Time slows down at MOPP 4. I can't explain why. It just does. I think it's some sort of quantum physics thing.

-Some people worry about having to urinate when at MOPP 4. Once you've been in the gear long enough, you realize that you're sweating too much to have much fluid left to worry about. Unless, of course, you had to go badly just before putting on the gear. In that case, you're shit out of luck. Speaking of which, defecation can be problematic as well.

-And speaking of fluids, "HYDRATE, HYDRATE, HYDRATE" while at MOPP 4. If you have trouble using the canteen tube on the mask at first, you'll have it figured out after 4-5 hours in that mask. Or you'll pass out.

-You'll get more from the training if you take it seriously and act like it's for real.

-The idea of having nerve agent shot at me scares the shit out of me.

-I need to get into better shape. It'd sure be helpful while trying to get around in that gear. Pretty much all I've done since I got back from Qatar last year is eat junk and watch TV. Not good.

-BDUs can get pretty heavy when every square millimeter of the fabric is soaked with sweat.

-On a four or five day exercise, you are usually just getting used to working the night shift when the exercise ends.

-I was nostalgic for MREs on day one. By day two, I was sick of them already.

-Whoever came up with the idea of putting the little Tabasco Sauce bottles in MREs should get a Meritorius Service Medal, or a Presidential Medal of Freedom, if they're civilian.

-When hydrating, drink water, not Heineken.

-After the exercise ends, drink Heineken, not water.

-When I'm exhausted, it only takes two Heinekens to do me in.

-No matter how fast your flight home is at the end of a deployment, it never seems fast enough.

-When the aircrew breaks out their personal Dunkin' Donuts stash and shares it with the pax (passengers), you know you're going to be landing soon. Fifteen to twenty minutes is a good bet.

-I'm glad I went. I'm glad it's over. I get to do it all again next spring. And thanks to this deployment, I'll do it better next time.

UPDATE
Teresa said the following in the comments section:

Oh and the hot sauce thing - it MUST be something to do with the military... is it from basic??? LOL - I only ask because every single military person I know LOVES hot sauce... Just an observation mind you.

Good question. Since her son is a soldier, it's important for her to understand the importance of the favorite seasoning of American service members.

When I first joined the US Army in 1986 (back when Miami Vice was still on TV), there were no miniature bottles of hot sauce in MREs. Also, there was a more limited variety of MREs available in those days. While MREs weren't bad, they got old in a hurry. After a couple of weeks, you weren't sure whether you should eat the plastic container, or the food inside it. To combat this gastronomical dilemma, I used to carry a bottle of Tabasco sauce with me whenever I went to the field. I always carried it in my left breast pocket. The way I figured it, if some commie bullet was going to take out my hot sauce, it might as well keep going through my heart. After all, who wants to go on living without hot sauce?

At first, my fellow soldiers all laughed at me. After a couple days, the laughing stopped. By the end of the first week in the field, they were asking me if they could have some of my Tabasco. Team player that I was, I shared it with these less fortunate, less prepared troops.

Toward the end of my enlistment, the powers-that-be, in their infinite wisdom, started putting itty-bitty bottles of Tabasco in the accessory packets of MREs. A couple of years later, they started putting chemical heating packets in the MREs as well. I claim no credit for the heaters, but I suspect that they stole the hot sauce idea from me. I think I should have some money coming too. How does a nickel for every bottle of hot sauce placed in an MRE sound? Damn, I'll be on Easy Street.

Actually, the hot sauce craze in the military probably pre-dates me by a generation or two (or three, or four). Military food has a reputation for being bad. This is not always the case (sometimes, it's actually very good), but there is a sameness to it after awhile. Hot sauce can combat that blandness. With enough hot sauce, even the aforementioned MRE plastic wrapper would taste ok--though it would be kinda hard to chew.

At any rate, while we should take some time this Veteran's Day to thank our veterans for their service, on behalf of veterans everywhere, I would like to thank the folks who invented hot sauce. Their creation has made life for American military personnel around the world just a little more bearable.

DISTRACTED BY REALITY

Time for blogging and following the news has been rather limited of late. I've spent the better part of this week in uniform prepping for a military training exercise. I'll be glad when it's behind me. This has been more stressful than prepping for my deployment to Qatar last year. Oh well, it'll all be over in a few days. In the meantime, I won't be doing much blogging. There are a few things that have been aggravating me that I need to rant about before I go.

VALERIE THE SUPERSPY
OK, this one's been bugging me for a long time. Fist off, I have trouble swallowing the bullsh*t that Val was working undercover. Her neighbors all swear they never suspected she worked for CIA, but as far as I'm concerned, that's proof positive that she wasn't working covert ops. CIA covert ops go on overseas. Why weren't her neighbors suspicious when she was away for months on end? Because she wasn't away for months on end. I'm a lowly reservist, and I've been away for extended periods on two separate occasions since 9/11. I've missed birthdays, soccer seasons (including my youngest daughter's first soccer season), concerts, and recitals. I'm not around for months on end, and friends and neighbors take note of that. But not Agent Val. Hot damn, she must have her one o' them Star Trek transporters in her basement. Either that, or she's not working undercover.

JOE WILSON: INTERNATIONAL MAN OF MYSTERY
This guy is a total idiot, and I don't just say that beacuse we disagree politically. First off, he and the media lapdogs cry foul because the administration "smeared" him. So, am I to understand that discrediting ones political opponents and critics was invented by the Bush administration? Or that such things aren't tolerated in Washington? Where was all this concern when the Clinton administration went after its opponents? And don't try to sell me the BS that Clinton never did such things. Who do you think Terry Lenzner's most famous client was in the '90s? Billy-boy wasn't paying Lenzner all that money to shine Hillary's shoes (that was Matt Lauer's job).

On the issue of Wilson's concern about his wife's safety and career in the wake of her "outing", what'd he expect? When you work in a sensitive job, there are certain things you don't do. One of the biggest no-no's is maintaining a high profile. With this point in mind, you do not want your spouse writing op-eds in the NY Times and going on cable news shows attacking the administration over the war. Sure, he has first ammendment rights, just like the rest of us. But you can't be on TV and in the papers and expect to keep something like your wife's employment at the CIA a secret. That's kind of like eating 40 Big Macs a day and expecting to be skinny. It ain't gonna work out that way. Valerie Wilson should have known better. Even her media whore husband should have known better. Freakin' clowns.

SPINELESS REPUBLICANS
I wish our Republican Congress-folks (especially the Senators) would stop pussy-footing around. Confirm Alito. Nuke the filibuster if you have to. Do what you think needs to be done, and stop worrying about what the Dems and the media say about you. The MSM doesn't have a stranglehold on the flow of information anymore. The truth will get out. But you have to have the courage to speak it and the tenacity to hammer the message home. Besides, the Dems are close to a meltdown. There is no measure to how far off the deep end they'll go if they don't get their way. Then they can rant in the media all they want. When you see Howard Dean on TV accusing George W. Bush of doing abortions in the White House basment with a salad fork, you'll know that you're seeing the end of the left wing's influence on American politics.

BILL CLINTON=ROSA PARKS (AND THEN SOME)
Our esteemed former Prez is perhaps the most narcissistic man on the face of the earth. In a speech honoring civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks, he said:

I remember as if it were yesterday that fateful day 50 years ago. I was a nine-year-old Southern white boy who rode a segregated bus every single day of my life. I sat in the front. Black folk sat in the back. When Rosa showed us that black folks didn't have to sit in the back anymore, two of my friends and I who strongly approved of what she had done decided we didn't have to sit in the front anymore.

Yeah, that's right. It's always about you.

PARTY TIME

Well, the fatality total for the war in Iraq has now hit 2000. The America-hating leftwing ghouls antiwar activists hit the streets for their party today. I've been trying not to let them piss me off, but I'm not having much luck. Oh well, I shouldn't have expected anything different from these "useful idiots." This cartoon seems to sum the situation up pretty well. I wonder exactly what number of casualties would be acceptable to these clowns. Was 1,999 dead ok? Or is one too many because this was an "illigitimate" war? And speaking of illigitimate wars:




The image above found at Sacred Cow Burgers.

NERO II: THE SEQUEL

It's not like we didn't already know, but Dick Morris' latest column at Frontpage Mag confirms the suspicions many of us have harbored for years. Bill Clinton's first priority was staying in office. The good of the country was not. According to Morris, Clinton's preoccupation with keeping gas prices down as he went in to the 1996 elections hindered the US response to the Khobar Towers bombing that killed 19 service members.

Khobar Towers is not unique. The 1993 WTC bombing, the Cole bombing, the embassy bombings in Africa. All responded to with a non-response. Some would even argue (and I tend to agree) that the Oklahoma City bombing was another area where Clinton failed.

And lest we forget, it was during the Clinton reign that China experienced it's "great leap forward" in rocket and missile technology. All thanks to illegal transfers of technology that -- just coincidentally -- coincided with illegal campaign contributions made to you-know-who. I wonder if these guys sent him a post card from space. Or at least a thank you note. Nobody likes an ingrate.

I'd be remiss in my responsibilities if I failed to mention North Korea. Remember them? Remember that treaty President Clinton told us solved the problem of nuclear proliferation in that backward, paranoid, Stalinist workers paradise? It worked. Didn't it? Otherwise, we'd have former Secretary of State Madeline Albright telling us "I find the situation in North Korea the most dangerous in the world."

The world was going to hell in a handbasket, and President Clinton was whittling away our military in order to cut the budget, and pissing away our credibility as a military power (Somalia? Oh yeah. Didn't they make a movie about that?). Oh, and let's not forget that giggly girl he was chasing around the oval office.

For all that, Bill Clinton still manages to land toward the top of many greatest Presidents lists. I just don't get it. It really makes me wonder how historians hundreds of years in the future will explain this era. Or whether they'll even try.

TORTURE

The folks at PBS recently did a Frontline special on torture used in interrogation. One of their star witnesses was an Army E-4 named Tony Lagouranis. Lagouranis, who is apparently the one "whore with a heart of gold" amongst the Military Intelligence community, details various torture methods used by US personnel in Iraq.

Froggy has an excellent post on the subject. His take is that Lagouranis is a malcontent. I tend to agree with that assessment. Unfortunately the media -- like they always do -- just lap it up.

Check it out. And don't miss the discussion in the comments section either. Well worth the read.

Update: Mr. Lagouranis, or someone claiming to be him (I tend to believe that it probably is him) has joined the debate in Froggy's comments section.

CLUELESS NEWS MEDIA. IS THAT REDUNDANT?

Most people who pay close attention to the news consider themselves well informed. But what if their sources are less than stellar? You wind up with people who have invested a lot of effort in learning about current affairs, but are still coming up short. Moreover, they don't know how much they don't know, or how much of what they do know is flat out wrong. This is especially true in the case of current events in Iraq, as Christopher Hitchens points out in his latest column.

When it comes to Iraq, one of the most boring and philistine habits of our media is the insistence on using partitionist and segregationist language that most journalists would (I hope) scorn to employ if they were discussing a society they actually knew. It is the same mistake that disfigured the coverage of the Bosnian war, where every consumer of news was made to understand that there was fighting between Serbs, Croats, and "Muslims." There are two apples and one orange in that basket, as any fool should be able to see. Serbian and Croatian are national differences, which track very closely with the distinction between Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic beliefs. Many Muslims are Bosnian, but not all Bosnians are Muslim. And in fact, the Bosnian forces in the late war were those which most repudiated any confessional definition. (And when did you ever hear the media saying that, "Today the Orthodox shelled Sarajevo," or, "Yesterday the Catholics bombarded Mostar"?)

In Iraq there are also two apples and one orange in the media-coverage basket (as well as many important fruits that, as I mentioned above, are never specified). To be a Sunni or a Shiite is to follow one or another Muslim obedience, but to be a Kurd is to be a member of a large non-Arab ethnicity as well as to be, in the vast majority of cases, a Sunni. Thus, by any measure of accuracy, the "Sunni" turnout in the weekend's referendum on the constitution was impressively large, very well-organized, and quite strongly in favor of a "yes" vote. Is that the way you remember it being reported? I thought not. Well, then, learn to think for yourself.

You can read the rest of his column here.

I have long believed that the "fourth estate" has been failing the American public miserably. I have often attributed this to their blatant partisanship. But as Hitchens points out, much of it is due to plain old ignorance.

THE FOLLY OF MODERN LEFTISM

Imagine a world where everyone is equal. Not just posessing of equal rights. Or equal under the law. Really equal. Equally smart -- or dumb. Equally athletic. Equally talented in music, art, etc. Even equally attractive. Sounds like the kind of utopia that liberals dream about, doesn't it. Well, over three decades ago someone else imagined such a world. It went something like this:

THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.

The above is from a short story titled "Harrison Bergeron." It was written by Kurt Vonnegut in 1961. If you haven't read it, by all means check it out. It's not too long and it's well worth the time spent reading it. The whole story is available here.

STUFF

Che Guevara
Freedom fighter. Fiery revoluntionary. Architect of the worker's revolution in Cuba. Whatever you call him, there's no denying that Che is an icon of the left. College students have been wearing T-shirts emblazened with his image for years. A recent movie called The Motorcycle Diaries chronicles Che's early years as he sought his life's calling. If you want to know the real story of Che, check out this piece by Humberto Fontova in todays' Frontpage Mag. After reading this, you'll likely call Che "dead murdering commie bastard."

Alert the media!!! Um...nevermind.
The latest "scandal" that has caught the attention of the MSM is a supposedly "staged" Q&A session President Bush had with troops in Iraq. I don't know if it was staged or not, but I do know (from personal experience) that pretty much everything the Army does is staged. And I think it's common knowledge that most of what politicians do is staged. Remember these?
-Bill Clinton's sudden expression change at Ron Brown's funeral.
-His impromptu cross-making with rocks in Normandy (does the ACLU know about that?)
-His run with Navy SEALs for the cameras. As I recall, some White House hack commented that the SEALs could barely keep up with him (cough, cough. Bullshit! cough).
-Hillary's cookie recipe (yeah right, she buys 'em at the Winn Dixie in the bakery aisle).
-Hell, Bill and Hill's whole marriage is practically a staged event.

And while we're on the subject of staging things, the MSM is in no position to cast the first stone:
-Exploding trucks at NBC.
-Forged documents at CBS.
-Dan Rather's big report in the 80s on disturbed Vietnam vets that featured "veterans" who weren't even in the war.
-Jayson Blair.

Gimme freakin' a break.

Harriet Miers
I still don't know what to say about this. I'm not really thrilled with the President's choice. I wish he'd have chosen someone better. The problem is the Senate. There is no way Bush could ever get a Thomas or a Scalia through the nomination process. The week kneed sissies that pass for Republicans in the Senate are of no help at all. Like Donald Rumsfeld says, "you go to war with the army you have." Arlen Specter. Olympia Snow. John McCain. Susan Collins. Lincoln Chafee. Yup, with an army like that, you better remember to bring the white flag with you into battle. Pathetic.

"We will never back down, never give in and never accept anything less than complete victory."

Check out this speech, given by President Bush earlier today.

The murderous ideology of the Islamic radicals is the great challenge of our new century. Yet in many ways, this fight resembles the struggle against communism in the last century.

Like the ideology of communism, Islamic radicalism is elitist, led by a self-appointed vanguard that presumes to speak for the Muslim masses.

Osama bin Laden says his own role is to tell Muslims, quote, "what is good for them and what is not." And what this man who grew up in wealth and privilege considers good for poor Muslims is that they become killers and suicide bombers.

He assures them that this is the road to paradise, though he never offers to go along for the ride.

Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy teaches that innocent individuals can be sacrificed to serve a political vision. And this explains their cold-blooded contempt for human life.

We've seen it in the murders of Daniel Pearl, Nicholas Berg and Margaret Hassan and many others.

In a courtroom in the Netherlands, the killer of Theo Van Gogh turned to the victim's grieving mother and said, "I do not feel your pain because I believe you are an infidel."

And in spite of this veneer of religious rhetoric, most of the victims claimed by the militants are fellow Muslims.

When 25 Iraqi children are killed in a bombing or Iraqi teachers are executed at their school or hospital workers are killed caring for the wounded, this is murder, pure and simple; the total rejection of justice and honor and moral and religion.

These militants are not just the enemies of America or the enemies of Iraq, they are the enemies of Islam and the enemies of humanity.

If you read nothing else today, read the rest of this speech. This is the kind of speech that the President should be giving regularly. This is how a President should sound. No "nuance." No "I voted for it, before I voted against it." No "it depends on what the definition of is is." Totally unequivocal.

POLITICS BY PROSECUTION

It was bound to happen. Rep. Tom Delay (R-TX) was indicted. I had no doubt that Prosecutor Ronnie Earle would get to it eventually. He's been pursuing Delay for over two years now. Like Captain Ahab, he wouldn't rest until he's landed his white whale.

I'm not going to take the position that Delay has done no wrong. Shady dealings in raising campaign money have become the norm. Increasingly restrictive campaign finance laws have created a situation whereby politicians have to be extremely creative in raising funds. I'd be surprised if there was even one member of Congress who hadn't received at least some money that may have violated one or more laws.

As to the indictment, my initial reaction was that Delay would be acquitted at trial. Then I read the indictment today at the Smoking Gun website. Here's the case against Delay as laid out in the indictment:

-Delay is indicted as a co-conspirator.
-Delay co-founded Texans for a Republican Majority PAC with his two co-conspirators.
-Delay waived the statute of limitations so he could be indicted beyond the three year mark.

That's it folks. There are no other specific allegations against Delay in the indictment. There are several against his alleged co-conspirators, but none against Delay. No specific allegation that he even knew what the other two were up to. Don't believe me? Go read it for yourself. It's only four pages long. Kinda short for a conspiracy indictment.

My prediction now is that Delay will not only not be convicted, he will not even be tried on this charge. Earle had nothing specific about Delay's criminal conduct in the indictment because he has no evidence. Look for this thing to evaporate before it goes to trial. Earle won't want to embarrass himself in a courtroom trying to sell his evidence-free case to a jury. Besides, he's already achieved his goal. He forced Delay to step down and gave the Democrats several weeks of anti-GOP sound bites.

Legally speaking, this whole case is B.S. The real question is this: how much political impact will it have?

HOW'S ABOUT THIS FOR SOME MEDIA BIAS? (UPDATED)

I know I'm probably preaching to the choir here, but check out this blatant example (is there another kind?) of left-wing media bias. The following experiment was conducted at 12:50 p.m. eastern daylight time.

I went to the Google News search engine and typed in the terms "Schumer" and "credit report." The results (sorted by date): twenty (20) stories.

Next I typed in the search terms "Frist", "HCA", and "stock." The results (sorted by date): five hundred forty-eight (548) stories.

Based on the dates of the stories, they broke about one day apart. Yet the media is all over the Frist stock sale story, while there is little interest in the invasion of privacy committed by Schumer staffers. Media bias? What media bias?

Update: A few of the Schumer stories I found had nothing to do with his staffers illegally running a credit report on Maryland's Lt. Governor Steele, so I refined my search criteria. By adding the term "Steele" to my Google News search on the Schumer story, I wound up with seventeen (17) stories as of 8:30 p.m. EST.

As of 8:30 EST, Google News listed five hundred fifty-three (553) stories on Frist.

Update 2: As of 12:30 p.m. EST on 9/25/05, the results of the modified Schumer search is down to 13 stories. Apparently, what little interest there was in the Schumer story is waning. On the other hand, interest in the Frist story is growing. As of 12:30 p.m., there are now 581 stories about the Senate majority leader's stock sale.

HILLARY VOTING "NO" ON ROBERTS

This isn't surprising. We all know that Hill's running for Pres in '08 (can't they just hand the job to her? After all, she was born to be President, right?). If she had voted "yes" on Roberts, she stood the chance that he might make ruling on a case before the court that would infuriate Hillary's base (that would be the extreme left). Can't have that.

On the subject of Hillary '08, check out the Dick Morris column in yesterday's New York Post. Interesting.

TYPICAL

I only wish I were surprised by this.

BALTIMORE -- Federal prosecutors have opened an inquiry into allegations that two Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee employees illegally tapped into Lt. Gov. Michael Steele's credit history.

WBAL-TV 11 News reporter David Collins reported the workers obtained the report in July while executing opposition research on the lieutenant governor.

In June, the Republican lieutenant governor announced he had established an exploratory committee to explore a candidacy for the U.S. Senate.

Paul D. Ellington, Steele's chief of staff, issued a statement late Wednesday afternoon in reaction to the allegations.

"Lt. Gov. Steele was extremely disturbed to learn about the alleged criminal identity theft of his personal finance records by (a staff member of U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.,) at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

"He was notified by the FBI that a federal criminal investigation is under way and has been asked not to comment on the specifics of the case.

"He intends to honor this request and expects that those responsible for these actions will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."

Prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law? Don't hold your breath. Ever fearful of looking "partisan", Republicans are afraid to prosecute prominent Dems for wrong-doing. Ever since a certain ex-president beat a perjury rap in the Senate, being a high profile Dem is almost a license to steal. Hell, I'm surprised they even had the guts to slap Sandy Berger on the wrist for the serious felony (not to mention a breach of national security) he committed.

That Chuckie Scummer is involved in this is probably the least surprising thing of all. Mr. "Right to Privacy" himself. Maximum hypocrisy.

Update: Apparently, the NY Times -- "The Old Gray (area) Lady" -- hasn't found space in it's pages for this story. Michelle Malkin has some info on how the paper's "ombudsman" responded to a question about this omission. You can read all about it here. I'm wondering how many articles the paper has printed about Tom Delay's supposed scandal. More hypocrisy, but not surprising. Let's not forget, the Times worked on the Air National Guard memos story with Dan Rather. It may not be too many years before the paper follows Rather into irrelevance.

LEADERSHIP 101

I've blogged before about leadership in a crisis situation. Remember the golden rule? Lead, follow, or get out of the way! If you want to see what leadership in a crisis looks like, keep your eye on LTG Russell Honore. Check out his handling of a recent press conference about preparations for hurricane Rita:

Honore: And Mr. Mayor, let's go back, because I can see right now, we're setting this up as he said, he said, we said. All right? We are not going to go, by order of the mayor and the governor, and open the convention center for people to come in. There are buses there. Is that clear to you? Buses parked. There are 4,000 troops there. People come, they get on a bus, they get on a truck, they move on. Is that clear? Is that clear to the public?

Female reporter: Where do they move on...

Honore: That's not your business.

Male reporter: But General, that didn't work the first time...

Honore: Wait a minute. It didn't work the first time. This ain't the first time. Okay? If...we don't control Rita, you understand? So there are a lot of pieces of it that's going to be worked out. You got good public servants working through it. Let's get a little trust here, because you're starting to act like this is your problem. You are carrying the message, okay? What we're going to do is have the buses staged. The initial place is at the convention center. We're not going to announce other places at this time, until we get a plan set, and we'll let people know where those locations are, through the government, and through public announcements. Right now, to handle the number of people that want to leave, we've got the capacity. You will come to the convention center. There are soldiers there from the 82nd Airborne, and from the Louisiana National Guard. People will be told to get on the bus, and we will take care of them. And where they go will be dependent on the capacity in this state. We've got our communications up. And we'll tell them where to go. And when they get there, they'll be able to get a chance, an opportunity to get registered, and so they can let their families know where they are. But don't start panic here. Okay? We've got a location. It is in the front of the convention center, and that's where we will use to migrate people from it, into the system.

Male reporter: General Honore, we were told that Berman Stadium on the west bank would be another staging area...

Honore: Not to my knowledge. Again, the current place, I just told you one time, is the convention center. Once we complete the plan with the mayor, and is approved by the governor, then we'll start that in the next 12-24 hours. And we understand that there's a problem in getting communications out. That's where we need your help. But let's not confuse the questions with the answers. Buses at the convention center will move our citizens, for whom we have sworn that we will support and defend...and we'll move them on. Let's not get stuck on the last storm. You're asking last storm questions for people who are concerned about the future storm. Don't get stuck on stupid, reporters. We are moving forward. And don't confuse the people please. You are part of the public message. So help us get the message straight. And if you don't understand, maybe you'll confuse it to the people. That's why we like follow-up questions. But right now, it's the convention center, and move on.

Male reporter: General, a little bit more about why that's happening this time, though, and did not have that last time...

Honore: You are stuck on stupid. I'm not going to answer that question. We are going to deal with Rita. This is public information that people are depending on the government to put out. This is the way we've got to do it. So please. I apologize to you, but let's talk about the future. Rita is happening. And right now, we need to get good, clean information out to the people that they can use. And we can have a conversation on the side about the past, in a couple of months.

Now that's leadership. I wish more of our political leaders in Washington could show that kind of leadership.

Check out the rest of Radio Blogger's commentary and his transcript of Glenn Reynolds' radio interview about the press conference. Good stuff.

h/t: Michelle Malkin

REMEMBERING 9/11

Well, 9/11 has come and gone, and I failed to post anything about it. But make no mistake, the importance of the day weighed heavily on my mind. I spent 9/11 --and the entire weekend, for that matter -- in uniform. It was a busy drill weekend. We spent it preparing for an upcoming exercise.

I was surprised and disappointed that no mention was made of the anniversary of 9/11 by the powers that be on my base. Last year 9/11 fell on a drill weekend as well. An announcement was made on the PA system to coincide with the time that the first plane hit the WTC and a moment of silence was observed across the base. This year, as far as I could tell, there was no such announcement.

Equally dismaying was the media's tepid treatment of the occasion. Oh, there were news reports on the anniversary and a few specials on some of the channels, but nothing fitting the importance of the anniversary of the deadliest attack by a foreign power on American soil in history.

I'm concerned that the enormity of what happened -- and the seriousness of the threat we still face -- has been forgotten by many of us. Have we broken our promise to never forget? I hope not. But this eerily prophetic quote from the 1993 video Red Cell keeps reverberating in my head:

I was just up in New York right after the World Trade Center got hit, and two blocks away it's like it's just...as if they didn't pick up garbage last week. You know, "if you weren't involved, don't worry about it." So they forgot about it. That's just part of our American way.

-Cdr. Dick Marcinko, founder of SEAL Team 6

LEADERSHIP AND POLITICS (AND NEVER THE TWAIN SHALL MEET)

Imagine for a moment you are in a burning building. It is a large building. You are unfamiliar with the layout of the building. The fire rages and you are certain that the roof will begin to collapse soon. You and the other people trapped inside look to someone to lead you safely out of the building before the roof collapses. Just then, the building superintendant walks into the room. You feel a sense of relief. Surely he must be able to lead you out.

You and the others gather around the superintendant and wait for instructions. The first words out of his mouth are "if this place had a better sprinkler system, this fire would've been put out right after it started." You're getting nervous about the impending roof collapse, so you ask him how to get out of the building. He responds "if they put better fire route maps in the halls, it'd be easier to find our way out." You generally agree with his statement, but the fire is raging on and he isn't moving. "What do we do?" one of the other people asks the superintendant. "If the fire department had better response time, they could've rescued us already. They were probably just sitting around playing cards for awhile after the alarm sounded" he replies.

The fire rages on, the super isn't moving, and he isn't giving you any useful guidance. Your best course of action is:

a) Draft a strongly worded letter to the company that manufactured the sprinkler system.

b) Form a committee to investigate the fire department's response time.

c) Contact you attorney and inquire about the possibility of suing the building's owner.

d) Find a way out of that building fast and lead the others to safety.

The correct answer is "d". If you had any trouble arriving at this answer, don't feel too badly. You're in good company. Many of our politicians apparently wouldn't know the answer either.

Like the burning building in my example, hurricane Katrina (and its aftermath) is a crisis situation. Solve the problem first, point fingers later. Anyone who is pointing fingers now should be pushed aside immediately. They are not only not helping, they are hindering efforts. Remember the golden rule of crisis situations:

LEAD, FOLLOW, OR GET OUT OF THE WAY!

Unfortunately, many of our politcos are incapable of leading, won't follow, and flat out refuse to get out of the way.