Judicious Asininity

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Wed Nov 29, 2006

Andrew McCarthy backs "Go Hard"

It's past time

McCarthy has a must read article at NRO. Here's a taste:

In Iraq, we’ve tried to fight the most civilized “light footprint” war of all time.
...
In the wake of 9/11, the American people did not care about democratizing the Muslim world. Or, for that matter, about the Muslim world in general. They still don’t. They want Islamic terrorists and their state sponsors crushed. As for the aftermath, they want something stable that no longer threatens our interests; they care not a wit whether Baghdad’s new government looks like Teaneck’s.

Read the whole piece.

I had similar thoughts in this post, as did Neptunus Lex who wrote:

The definition of a state is ownership of the levers of organized violence. As an organized force, the Mahdi Army represents the same challenge to Iraqi statehood that Hezbollah does in Lebanon, a state within a state and worse: A inner state with a jealous eye upon the larger crown. They must be destroyed, no matter how much al Maliki might squeal.

We have come too far, spent too much in blood and treasure to allow the political calculations of a man whose governmental writ still does not extend throughout the capital city to prevent us from doing what we must.

Go Big, Go Long, Go Home - to these three options I add a fourth: Go Hard.

It is probably wishful thinking to hope that this is the message that Bush will deliver to al Maliki at their postponed meeting.

Mon Nov 27, 2006

MSM is in dire straits

Two stories today spell big trouble for the MSM

Via Stop the ACLU and AP: the Supreme Court has refused to stop the DOJ from reviewing the phone records of former NYT reporter Judith Miller and current NYT reporter Philip Shenon to find out who revealed:

the government’s plans to freeze the assets of two Islamic charities, the Holy Land Foundation and the Global Relief Foundation.

Shenon and Miller called the two organizations for comment after being told by confidential sources of the government’s plans.

The Justice Department says the move tipped off the charities of planned government raids. The federal judge who ruled in the Times’ favor said there is no evidence in the case even suggesting that the reporters tipped off the charities about the raids or that the reporters even knew of the government’s plans to raid either charity.

This is the tip of the iceberg for the NYT and the WPO. Since 9/11, these two papers have spent acres of front page real estate revealing national security secrets leaked by traitors in the CIA, DOD and FBI. Most of the remaining metropolitan papers in the US have reprinted these stories without question. Now, the sources for all these stories can be tracked down and prosecuted.

The other story that strikes a massive blow on MSM cedibility has been picked up by the blogosphere. We denizens in the blogosphere have long known that MSM reporters in Iraq, with some notable exceptions, bed down in a green zone hotel and use Iraqi stringers to do their reporting. The reporters' suspicion of the military means that they rarely cross-check their stringer's stories. So, it is no surprise to learn that the bogus reports of six Sunni men being burned alive come to us via such a stringer, one Qais al-Bashir. Flopping Aces owns this story, with great support from Junkyard Blog.

It will take time, but people will begin to see that the MSM coverage from Iraq has been provided by enemy agents and given the stamp of credibility by the MSM.

I'm fairly certain that the Time magazine reports of a massacre sat Haditha will turn out to be yet another enemy propaganda ploy spread by our MSM and believed by Rep. Murtha.

The next two years are going to be very interesting and our friends in the MSM may well wish they had not rooted so strongly for the enemy and the Democrats, but I repeat myself.

Sun Nov 26, 2006

Russian spys too smart for their own good

Polonium was just too sophisticated unless the target desereved his fate

Jim Miller asks the obvious:

Did the person who ordered this assassination think that the polonium would not be detected? As anyone can figure out, if it were detected, almost everyone would conclude that the Russians had poisoned Litvinenko. Perhaps the mastermind hoped for a terror effect on other opponents of the Putin regime.

While one may think the Russian tactics heavy-handed, one sometimes wishes our spy agencies could deal with our leakers and traitors as effectively. Unfortunately, it seems they are synonymous.

Let's get back to whether or not the target deserved his fate. The Strata-Sphere has some real interesting posts on the subject. Chechen and nukes is not a good combination, and it seems the victim was a Muslim convert:

Ekho, a prominent liberal broadcaster funded by state-owned gas monopoly Gazprom, said Litvinenko would be buried in a Muslim cemetery in London. The station cited Chechenpress, the official news agency of the wartorn republic's insurgency.

Fri Nov 24, 2006

Exit strategy and proportionate response

What's wrong with Victory and Winning?

Had thanksgiving with some relatives and my dear wife got into politics with a BDS infected in-law. Turns out that Bush's biggest fault is that he went into Iraq without an exit strategy. What does that mean? Let's turn to history for a few clues.

Did Roosevelt have an exit strategy from WW2 after the Japs bombed Pear Harbor? Yes. He called it unconditional surrender. There were likely points in the war where the allies could have negotiated with the enemy, called a halt to hostilities, and saved a lot of lives. But no, the stubborn S.O.B., and his successor, carried the war to the enemy until it surrendered unconditionally. It's a pity Bush 41 did not adopt the same approach with our old friend Saddam. It would have saved a lot of heartache and hundreds of thousands of lives if he had taken Baghdad when the chance was there.

Did Nixon have an exit strategy from Vietnam? Sort of. Maybe it was called "peace with honor" or some such mealy-mouthed nonsense. Whatever. Hundreds of thousands of people fled Vietnam when the undefeated North Vietnamese army marched into Saigon. Millions more perished in Cambodia because the world knew America was out of the defeating communism business.

The only exit strategy that works is Victory. Any other version is code for retreat, surrender and our ultimate defeat by the enemy.

If "exit strategy" is bad, "proportionate response" is worse. It's code for "tit for tat" What was the proportionate response to the attack on Pear' Harbor? Arresting Admiral Yamamoto on vandalism charges? Bombing Japan now and then? A League of Nations resolution condemning the attack? Sinking an equal tonnage of Japanese warships to that lost at Pearl Harbor and calling it a day? Pretty obviously, "proportionate response" is pretty stupid when the enemy wants to conquer you. Yet that is what is urged on Israel. That is what is urged on US forces in Iraq when they are attacked. "Tit for tat" doesn't work when the enemy can deliver as many "tits" as it wants, whenever it wants. The only "tat" worth considering is one that removes the enemy's ability to deliver any "tits".

So, when someone asks about an "exit strategy", the simplest and correct response is "victory". And, when someone says we should use a "proportionate response" to an attack, one should reply that the only "proportionate response" is eliminating the enemy's ability to attack for now and forever.

Let's go back to a WW2 hypothetical for a moment. On the eve of Normandy, Roosevelt tells Ike that he has a secret weapon that can wipe Berlin off the face of the Earth and bring the war to a rapid close. Roosevelt adds that the Nazis are close to building the same weapon. What's Ike to do? Pretty much what was done to Japan a few months later. It turns out that Japan had an advanced nuclear weapons program and were working with the Nazis to advance it further.

Now, do we have any sense of déjà vu here?

We have been attacked by Radical Islam as viciously as the Jap attack on Pearl Harbor. One branch, call them the Nazi or Sunni wing, has been taking a bit of a beating. The other branch, call them the Jap or Shi'ite wing has been sitting on the sidelines. Neither wing likes the other much but they sure hate us. Our latter day Japs are on the verge of nukes. What to do? We could try "exit strategy" and leave the world's oil resources to their mercy. We could try "proportionate response", but how do you hit a shadowy enemy working through proxies? Or we could look at WW2 and use all our military resources to destroy the enemy. Roosevelt would be attacking Iran today. Truman would, too. Has Bush got what it takes? Doubtful, unless a few Democrats start remembering that they owe their party's existence to the likes of Roosevelt and Truman.

Wed Nov 22, 2006

France needs a little reminder

Wouldn't want Paris on a nuclear target list, would we?

According to a report on LGF:

French soldiers in Lebanon who feel threatened by aggressive Israeli overflights are permitted to shoot at IAF fighter jets, a high-ranking French military officer told The Jerusalem Post Wednesday, several days after meeting with an IDF general in Paris to discuss what he said was a “blatant violation of the cease-fire.”

Perhaps Tel Aviv should advise France that, if that is their attitude, then, in the unlikely event that Israel actually acquires nuclear weapons, and that one of France's Mid-East allies actually tries to attack Israel with WMD, then, golly josh, Israel might just remember how many French Jews were shipped to Nazi concentration camps, and maybe, might exact a little pay-back. If Tel Aviv is hit, so goes Paris. Sounds like a deal to me. All on the QT, of course.

Do we see a pattern here?

As in how Islam treats women?

Via Instapundit we find this charming item at the Corner by Andy McCarthy:

At his sentencing proceeding, al-Turki declined to apologize because, he said, he was engaged in "traditional Muslim behaviors" and thus did not commit any crimes. The judge, engaging in traditional American judicial behaviors, aptly slammed him with a sentence of 27 years to life in jail.

The prosecutor got a trip to Saudi Arabia to explain why al Turki fared poorly in a proper court.

Meanwhile, let's see what happens back in al-Turki's home territory. Sweetness and Light quotes an AP report on what can can happen to female rape victims:

That night, she said, she had left home to retrieve her picture from a male high school student she used to know. She had just been married - but had not moved in with her husband - and did not want her picture to remain with the student.

While the woman was in the car with the student, she said, two men intercepted them, got into the vehicle and drove the couple to a secluded area where the two were separated. She said she was raped by seven men, three of whom also allegedly raped her friend.

In a trial that ended in November - in which the prosecutor asked for the death penalty for the seven men - four of the men received between one and five years in prison plus 80 to 1,000 lashes, said the woman. Three others are awaiting sentencing. Neither the defendants nor the plaintiffs retained lawyers, as is common here.

"The big shock came when the judge sentenced me and the man to 90 lashes each," said the woman. The sentence was handed down as part of the rape trial. Lashes are usually spread over several days, dealt around 50 at a time.

The sentences have yet to be carried out, but the punishments ordered have caused an uproar.

"Because I could make no sense (of the sentence) and became in dire need of patience, I muttered after I read the verdict against the Girl of Qatif: ‘My heart is with you,’" wrote Fatima al-Faqeeh in a column in Al-Watan newspaper.

Justice in Saudi Arabia is administered by a system of religious courts according to the kingdom’s strict interpretation of Islamic Sharia law. Judges - appointed by the king on the recommendation of the Supreme Judicial Council - have complete discretion to set sentences, except in cases where Sharia outlines a punishment, such as capital crimes.

That means no two judges would likely hand down the same verdict for similar crimes. A rapist, for instance, could receive anywhere from a light or no sentence to death, depending on the judge.

Interesting how the two cases collide. In America, a man raping an unpaid slave gets his just deserts. In the country that gave birth to Islam, the victim can fare as badly as the rapist(s). Of course, the ACLU and the feminist lobby have no interest in either case. Figures.

Tue Nov 21, 2006

The Iran-Iraq war

It casts a huge shadow over both countries

Take it or leave it, Wikipedia provides a comprehensive overview. Some key points stand out. The war lasted from 1980 until 1988 and cost 1,000,000 casualties. Compare that to the casualties in the current Iraq war. There is no comparison unless one is stupid enough to believe the once respected Lancet.

Iranian victims of Iraqi chemical weapons were massive, according to the Wikipedia citation:

"Nerve gas agents killed about 20,000 Iranian soldiers immediately, according to official reports. Of the 90,000 survivors, some 5,000 seek medical treatment regularly and about 1,000 are still hospitalized with severe, chronic conditions. Many others were hit by mustard gas.

I'm not going to attempt to analyse how the Iran-Iraq war is affecting the current conflict except to say that Iran would want to ensure that Iraq is ruled by friendly forces; i.e. Shi'ites. The US has done them that favor, probably unwittingly.

For our part, we should regard the Iran-Iraq war in the same way as we regarded the WW2 conflict between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany: may the side we back win, but only just. For us, Iraq is the defeated Nazi regime and Iran is the new Evil Empire.

Good insight into the war from an occasional blogger

Better than most MSM Op Eds

Just Opnions writes:

American casualties in Iraq are now 2,863, approximately the death toll resulting from drunk driving in the U.S. in a 20 day period. If the result of the Baker Commission voodoo and the Democratically controlled Congress lead to a "phased redeployment" from Iraq, a very clear message will have been sent to all of our enemies and allies (hard to tell the difference sometimes) around the world. To wit, if you can kill a couple of thousand American soldiers, you can force the retreat of the United States. That is not a high bar. A steady supply of IEDs and a few thousand fanatical cadres can accomplish that anywhere, and, after Iraq, the number of American casualties required will undoubtedly be down-sized. Talk about asymmetrical warfare! The entire U.S. military power can be held hostage with a few million dollars and an ideology, resources that Iran has in quantity. Well, we tried really hard, but It's been six months since the first democratic election in Iraq's history, and Iraq still doesn't look like New Hampshire. Obviously our only option is to figure out how to leave.

The intention of the attack on 9/11 was to take us out of the game. It didn't work. Killing civilians in Spain can swing an election, but killing American civilians seems to just make them fight back. That's why there have been no more attacks on American soil since. Our enemies are crazy, but they're not stupid. Killing American soldiers, however, is a different matter. That seems to work really well. So the focus has shifted from New York to Iraq.

Read the whole piece. However, the solution is not more troops in Iraq; the solution is fighting harder and making Syria and Iran pay a steep price for opposing us in Iraq.

Mon Nov 20, 2006

We need another Iraq option

Forget "Go Big," "Go Long" and "Go Home." How about "Go Hard"?

Powerline has a post about the options being considered by the group looking at Iraq options. Part of the problem seems to be the kid-gloves way the coalition treats the enemy's unlawful combatants. "Catch and release" has recycled terrorists back to the battlefield because the coalition lacked a legal basis for detaining suspects. Michael Yon's dramatic account of a firefight in Mosul, that nearly cost LTC Erik Kurilla his life, contains this passage:

The doctors rolled LTC Kurilla and the terrorist into OR and our surgeons operated on both at the same time. The terrorist turned out to be one Khalid Jasim Nohe, who had first been captured by US forces (2-8 FA) on 21 December, the same day a large bomb exploded in the dining facility on this base and killed 22 people.

That December day, Khalid Jasim Nohe and two compatriots tried to evade US soldiers from 2-8 FA, but the soldiers managed to stop the fleeing car. Then one of the suspects tried to wrestle a weapon from a soldier before all three were detained. They were armed with a sniper rifle, an AK, pistols, a silencer, explosives and other weapons, and had in their possession photographs of US bases, including a map of this base.

That was in December.

About two weeks ago, word came that Nohe’s case had been dismissed by a judge on 7 August. The Coalition was livid. According to American officers, solid cases are continually dismissed without apparent cause. Whatever the reason, the result was that less than two weeks after his release from Abu Ghraib, Nohe was back in Mosul shooting at American soldiers.

LTC Kurilla repeatedly told me of - and I repeatedly wrote about - terrorists who get released only to cause more trouble. Kurilla talked about it almost daily. Apparently, the vigor of his protests had made him an opponent of some in the Army’s Detention Facilities chain of command, but had otherwise not changed the policy. And now Kurilla lay shot and in surgery in the same operating room with one of the catch-and-release-terrorists he and other soldiers had been warning everyone about.

If the US changes its policy from "catch-and-release" to "catch-and-kill", a policy perfectly acceptable when dealing with unlawful combatants, the terrorists will think twice about acting.

One of the biggest killers of US forces in Iraq has been the IED. These booby traps can't be laid without the people in the area knowing what was going on. We saw this in the infamous Haditha case that Sweetness and Light covered in a series of great posts. The US policy should be that failure to warn coalition forces about IEDs, ambushes and other terrorist activity constitutes giving aid and comfort to the enemy. The "reward" for any neighborhood where an IED goes off or an attack occurs should be demolition of the neighborhood. Pretty soon Iraqis will learn that letting terrorists operate in their neighborhoods is not a good idea.

Iraq is a tribal society where the loyalty hierarchy is family, clan, tribe, race and religion. The leaders at these various levels need to be held accountable for the actions of their members. This can be done humanely by fines and the withholding of aid and money. If that doesn't work, then demolishing the local sheik's house and the nearest mosque might induce the elders to rein in the hot heads.

Our enemies misintepret Western magnanimity as weakness. It is time to disabuse them of that notion. Our military needs to live the motto "No better friend, no worse enemy" to the full. The sort of crap that Ilario Pantano went through should have resulted in court martials for the prosecutors who pursued that case.

That's the little stuff in a "Go Hard" approach. Now for the big stuff.

As this blog and numerous other voices have recommended, Al Sadr and his Mahdi army needs to destroyed. I'd recomend executing that outstanding arrest warrant on Al Sadr and letting the US military loose on the Mahdi Army until it no longer exists. Sure, some of the civilians that the terrorists shelter behind might get killed in the process. They'd soon learn not to shelter terrorists.

Much of the trouble in Iraq is due to Syrian and Iranian support and incitement. So far that support has cost that pair of terrorist sponsoring nations nothing. It is long past time to make them pay. Bombing their military bases would be a start and it could be escalated up to the threat of open warfare. The trigger would be finding Iranian or Syrian supplied arms or agents or both.

The only policy change that is needed is to let our military do what they are trained to do: defend the good and destroy the bad. Take off the kid gloves, remove the PC rules, and let our forces fight the way they did in WW2, the last real war that we won.

Fri Nov 17, 2006

We need to stay in Iraq forever

Where better to build massive military bases?

We're at war with Islamic fascism. Iraq is at the center of the Islamic world. It straddles the split between the Shi'ite and Sunni sects. It is next door to Iran and Syria, our mortal enemies. Where better to create massive military bases, loaded with missile defense systems, nuclear weapons, spy-planes, drones, fighters, bombers, highly trained soldiers and enough armor to roll over any tin-pot Arab army in 3 days flat?

We would not have to bother much with what's going on inside Iraq so long as they behave themselves. We would send a strong message to our enemies. Best of all, we would have a new base to replace the bases we've maintained in Germany and Japan ever since the end of the last big war we actually won.

Thu Nov 16, 2006

Winning in Iraq

The only way is to win the war outside of Iraq

Jm Miller says:

What do I think we should do? I think we should win, and that the best way to do that is to build up the Iraqi army.

I disagree. The problems in Iraq can be linked directly to Syria and Iran. Here's what I would do, if I were Bush. I would make a lot of speeches emphasizing that this war began long before 9/11. Then I would talk about the 220 Marines killed in Lebanon by Hezbollah. Then I would say what a mistake it was to withdraw from Lebanon after that attack. When that lesson sinks in I would talk about the links between Iran, Syria and Hezbollah. After that set-up, I would say that the US stands with Israel in its fight against Hezbollah and the US Marines deserve revenge. It is long past time for the US to stand with its only reliable ally in the Middle East. After that, the US is set up to help Israel destroy Hezbollah and attack Syria. The trip-wire would be Hezbollah's re-arming.

Perhaps, after such action, Iran's mad mullahs might reconsider their nukes program and their subversion of Iraq.

One other thing I would do is charge Muqtada al-Sadr with the murder of Casey Sheehan, arrest al-Sadr , and ship him and his accomplices to Gitmo to await prosecution for war crimes when the war is over.

Australia experiences global warming

Oops, climate change

I lived in Melbourne, Australia, for 18 years. It doesn't get cold. It never snows. Just like Melbourne in Florida. If you wanted to see snow you drove a couple of hundred miles to a mountain ski resort. November in the Southern hemisphere is the last month of spring. It's supposed to be warming up.

Al Gore visits Australia to promote his crusade against global warming and what happens? Australia gets hit by a wintery cold snap that wouldn't be out of place in the snow belt of the US. Tim Blair is on the case and blames the Gore Effect.

All those scientists claiming the Earth is facing an imminent catastrophe from global warming face a credibility problem when ordinary Australians are freezing their butts off in November.

In an earlier post, Tim Blair notes that:

New Zealand produces only 0.2% of world greenhouse gas emissions; shut that nation down, and you’d witness a reduction in greenhouse emissions of just one-fifth of one percent. Beginning to get an idea now of how impossibly demented is the notion of an individual influencing global warming? (Hypocritical environmental activists are aware of this; that’s why they fly everywhere.) Hilariously, the Kyoto Protocol requires that clean little New Zealand hands over billions to (of all places) Russia for its enviro sins.

We’re living in crazy times. Ponder this the next time an apocalyptic greenoid mentions the “hottest [month, year, whatever] in recorded history”; that “recorded history” (the last 200 years, at best) represents just 0.000004% or so of the planet’s entire 4.6 billion year existence.

Well, they've been trying to erase the medieval warming period from the record. God help them when they realize that CO₂ concentrations are at the lowest levels ever. Go back to the beginning of the Carboniferous era, when present day coal deposits were starting to be laid down, and CO₂ concentrations were an order of magnitude higher than they are today. Always remember that we are living in an inter-glacial era and the biggest climate change danger we face is the next ice age. The real challenge for humanity will be preventing/surviving the next ice age.

Democrats start by shooting themselves in both feet

Good for the GOP in 2008; bad for the country now

Captain Ed sums up the problems Pelosi has inflicted on the Democrats:

Steny Hoyer and Jane Harman have proven themselves capable party spokespeople, and have a record for independent thinking. Pelosi opposes them both strictly for personal reasons. She doesn't like Harman, feeling that her fellow Californian hasn't been partisan enough in her role on the Intel committee, and Hoyer ran against her for Minority Leader in 2001. For those personal reasons, Pelosi wants to turn to a corrupt ex-judge and a bumbling porker for party leadership positions, making a mockery of her promises of reform.

Democrats are in a bad position. They can't afford to throw Pelosi under the bus after promoting her as the first woman Speaker in American history. They can't afford to have Hastings and Murtha in leadership positions and then face the voters in 2008 who wanted reform and change. They can't afford to undermine her authority and openly campaign for the reversal of Hastings' appointment and the failure of her Murtha endorsement.

Days after their electoral triumph, Pelosi has led the party into a dead end, and they have two more years of her leadership to endure. Democrats will have to do one of the above tasks and resolve their conundrum, but any way they move, they damage their standing. An open revolt might be the best option for them at this point, perhaps led by Hoyer himself.

It's hard to imagine the public reacting favorably to Murtha and Hastings. The electorate was supposed to have been turned off by the culture of pork and corruption that infected the GOP. They vote in the Democrats and are rewarded with John "Okinawa" Murtha, the baron of pork, and impeached Judge Alcee Hastings in leadership positions. Keep up the good work, Nancy.

Of course, the GOP isn't doing much better when they resurrect Trent "I love trial lawyers a" Lott.

Update: Murtha & Pelosi lose, Hoyer & sanity win.

Mon Nov 13, 2006

If not Bolton, then who?

I have the perfect replacement for the UN job

One of my favorite bloggers, Jim Miller, has a post extolling the virtues of the man who would be just perfect for the UN job. Hint: he's the man who called France and Germany "Old Europe". He's also become available rather recently.

Thu Nov 09, 2006

Are the Democrats serious about National Security?

Pelosi's big test is coming up

Will she appoint impeached ex-judge Congressman Alcee Hasting to chair the House Intelligence Committee? Macsmind links to a TCS story about Hasting's dubious past and complete unsuitability for the job. Harmen has done a good job, at least for a Democrat. It's extremely hard to see why she should go in favor of the unsavory Mr. Hastings.

Lighter blogging than usual

Off to run a marathon in ~~Allen~~Webb territory

Back Sunday. Marathoning is fun, Just ask Lance Armstrong:

Seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong finished his first New York Marathon in under three hours on Sunday, calling the feat the most difficult thing he's ever done in his sports career.

"I can tell you, 20 years of pro sports, endurance sports, from triathlons to cycling, all of the Tours, even the worst days on the Tours, nothing was as hard as that and nothing left me feeling the way I feel now, in terms of just sheer fatigue and soreness," Armstrong told a post-race press conference.

"For the level of condition that I have now, that was without a doubt the hardest physical thing I have ever done."

"I never felt a point where I hit the wall, it was really a gradual progression of fatigue and soreness."

Armstrong's time was 2 hours, 59 minutes and 36 seconds, just under the three hour goal he had set for himself before the race.

Lance was paced by such marathon greats Alberto Salazar, Joan Benoit Samuelson, German Silva and defending Olympic champion Hicham El Guerrouj.

By the end of the race the record-holding Tour conqueror needed to thickly tape his right shin before giving the press conference.

"I think I bit off more than I could chew, I thought the marathon would be easier," Armstrong said.

"(My shins) started to hurt in the second half, especially the right one. I could barely walk up here, because the calves are completely knotted up."

"Before the race that was my goal, I wanted to break 3 hours. But if you told me with 3 miles to go, 'You're going to do 3:05,' I wouldn't have cared," he said. "Honestly, at the end I was so tired, I couldn't care. Now I'm glad I did."

These days I'd be happy to finish an hour after Lance. But then I'm a lot older than Lance.

Wed Nov 08, 2006

Now Iraq is like Vietnam

God help the Iraqi peoples

David Warren writes:

It didn’t matter who won control of each house -- the fix was already in. Look at the composition of the Baker-Hamilton commission, which the outgoing Congress had already appointed to “find a way out of Iraq” -- a bipartisan commission, representing the foreign-policy opponents of President Bush in both the Republican and Democratic parties. Soon it will formally report.

James Baker, secretary of state under President Bush’s father, was the man who, in 1989, secured an American exit from Lebanon by effectively surrendering the country to Assad’s Syria. Lee Hamilton, former Democrat chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, joined him in stacking the Commission’s study groups with men and women representing the pre-9/11 foreign policy consensus, which could be summarized in the phrase, “stability through disengagement”. On the Baker-Hamilton plan, Congress will take the war in Iraq out of President Bush’s hands, as Congress took the Vietnam War out of President Nixon’s. Iraq will then be delivered into the hands of Iran’s ayatollahs.

Warren wrote that before the switch at Defense. Gates is of the same ilk as Baker.

The biggest losers will be the Sunnis in Iraq. As the US withdraws, the Mahdi army, with Iranian assistance, will exact bloody vengeance on the Sunnis for the sins of Saddam, including the Iraq-Iran war.

Talk about a self-inflicted wound; had the Sunnis co-operated with the US after the invasion instead of launching an insurgency in co-operation with Al Qaeda they would not now be at the mercy of the Shi'ites.

Rumsfeld resigns

Al Qaeda and Iran win some more

Welcome to Dhimmitude, or was that Demotude? Same difference.

Can Bush find a new Secretary of Defense who can get past the Democratic controlled Senate confirmation hearings and win the war? That's an oxymoron. There isn't any such person, unless Bush moves fast and names a replacement before the Democrats are handed the keys.

Update (via Jawa Report):

Robert Gates is Bush's choice to replace Rumsfeld.

Memo to Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Australia and Israel

US Security guarantees are not worth the paper they are written on

Arm yourself to the hilt. Uncle Sam is out of the defense business. The people have spoken and the politicians will obey in their usual spineless, unprincipled manner.

Will there be any US troops in Iraq by 2008? Doubtful.
How many more will die in Iraq? More than even the Lancet could estimate.
Will Iran get nuclear weapons? Yes.
Will Iran use them? Yes, launched from the western border of its Iraq provinces.
Will there be more terrorist attacks in Europe and the US? You can bet your life on it.
Will North Korea get nukes? They already have them.
Will the US retreat from Iraq create more terrorists? By the millions.

Even if the Democrats come to their senses, a doubtful proposition at best, the damage has been done. Al Qaeda has proven that a few hundred suicide bombers and IEDs can win a US election for them.

If you were in Osama's shoes, would you stop your attacks? Will the Mad Mullahs negotiate in good faith on their nukes? Not a chance.

Tue Nov 07, 2006

Dems (and Al Qaeda) appear to be winning at 9:30pm

Looks like I got it dead wrong

Chalk up a victory for Al Qaeda. Their media strategy has worked perfectly. The good news is that Dem control of one or both houses will result in deadlock on domestic policy. The bad news is that the war on Islamic fascism will grind to a halt as the Dems use their control over the purse strings and their subpoena power to sap the will of the lame-duck Bush administration.

Osama, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Mad Mullahs, Assad, Khaled Mashal, Mullah Omar and the whole cast of our enemies must be rubbing their hands in glee tonight and shouting "Allahu Akbar" each time a Republican candidate bites the dust. The only bad news, from their point of view, is that Lieberman won easily.

Mon Nov 06, 2006

Ghandi (the movie) was hagiography, not history

Things you didn't know about Ghandi because the movie didn't tell you

Sue Bob's Diary links to a fascinating article about the movie and the man. It's a long but worthwhile read. Here are a few nuggets:

At a dinner party shortly afterward, a friend of mine, who had visited India
many times and even gone to the trouble of learning Hindi, objected strenuously
that the picture of Gandhi that emerges in the movie is grossly inaccurate,
omitting, as one of many examples, that when Gandhi's wife lay dying of
pneumonia and British doctors insisted that a shot of penicillin would save her,
Gandhi refused to have this alien medicine injected in her body and simply let
her die. (It must be noted that when Gandhi contracted malaria shortly afterward
he accepted for himself the alien medicine quinine, and that when he had
appendicitis he allowed British doctors to perform on him the alien outrage of
an appendectomy.)
...
The film, moreover, does not give the slightest hint as to Gandhi's attitude
toward blacks, and the viewers of 'Gandhi' would naturally suppose that, since
the future Great Soul opposed South African discrimination against Indians, he
would also oppose South African discrimination against black people. But this is
not so. While Gandhi, in South Africa, fought furiously to have Indians
recognized as loyal subjects of the British empire, and to have them enjoy the
full rights of Englishmen, he had no concern for blacks whatever. In fact,
during one of the "Kaffir Wars" he volunteered to organize a brigade of Indians
to put down a Zulu rising, and was decorated himself for valor under fire.

For, yes, Gandhi (Sergeant Major Gandhi) was awarded Victoria's coveted War
Medal. Throughout most of his life Gandhi had the most inordinate admiration for
British soldiers, their sense of duty, their discipline and stoicism in defeat
(a trait he emulated himself). He marveled that they retreated with heads high,
like victors. There was even a time in his life when Gandhi, hardly to be
distinguished from Kipling's Gunga Din, wanted nothing much as to be a Soldier
of the Queen. Since this is not in keeping with the "spirit" of Gandhi, as
decided by Pandit Nehru and Indira Gandhi, it is naturally omitted from the
movie.

Read the whole thinhg. I've got to admit I hadn't realized just how bad the movie was.

Sun Nov 05, 2006

I'm going to stick my head out and say the GOP will win it all

Ignore what the polls say now; look at what they said at this stage last time

Flares into Darkness notes parallels between 2006 and 2004:

UPDATE: The Pew site is currently submerged. RCP has the results here. WaPo at 6 and Pew at 4. That's a 12 point move since yesterday's Newsweak poll and an 11 point move since yesterday's TIME.

Was it something I said?

2nd UPDATE: Digging a little I found this RCP generic synopsis - note that just before the '04 election Pew showed the Reps -4 and the WaPo -6.

Boy! Is that a coincidence or what?

If the polls were inaccurate then, the reasons why may apply even more so now. The first problem is getting a valid sample using telephone numbers. Lots of people have dropped conventional phones in favor of cell phones. This trend has increased. Pollsters miss them.

People treat pollsters like telemarketers. Rule #1. Hang up without a word if you don't recognize the caller. Maybe Republicans ignore phone pollsters at a greater rate than Democrats. Republicans sure ignored exit pollers at a greater rate than Democrats in 2004.

So, I'm going to bed early on Tuesday night. I need the sleep for Saturday.

New York Marathon results

Lance Armstrong did well but Dean Karnazes was the real hero

Lance Arrmstrong finished the New York Marathon in 2:59:36. That's pretty good for a guy who's never run a marathon. Of course, it pales in comparison with first-time marathoner Emil Zatopek of Czechoslovakia, who won the 1952 Olympics marathon on his first attempt at the distance. He'd also won the 5000 meters and 10,000 metes earlier in the games. But then, Emil didn't get very far in the Tour de France!

Dean Karnazes had the goal of running the marathon distance in each of the 50 US states in 50 days. Sometimes he ran actual marathons and other times he ran the course. He ran New York in 3:00:30. Not bad, considering he had run 49 marathons in the previous 49 days. That's 1283.8 miles.

Nice to see a Brazilian break the Kenyan stranglehold on the top marathons.

The nice thing about marathons is that ordinary people can compete in the same race as the best of the world. On many courses you get to see the leaders coming back as you're heading out. That's neat.

This humble marathoner is off to Richnmond next week to run #3 this year.

Fri Nov 03, 2006

Saddam had the plans, raw materials and motivation for going nuclear

Nice of the NYT to remind the electorate of how dangerous Saddam really was

Thanks to the New York Times, we now know that some of the captured Iraqi documents prove that Saddam had nuclear ambitions. The NYT does not report that Saddam already had the ingredients at the time of Operation Iraqi Freedom, as Douglas Hanson documented in this American Thinker article:

Site C is a relatively small site as compared to the rest of the reservation, but the amount of material stored there is not insignificant. In addition to the nearly two tons of low-enriched uranium secured by the US, Site C was home to an additional 500 tons of yellowcake uranium,* This is a conservative estimate as initially reported by Coalition personnel from the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). Ironically, this initial figure is backed up by, of all organizations, Greenpeace.

Yellowcake is uranium ore that has been milled to produce a pure form of the substance known as Uranium Oxide. Further processes, such as conversion and enrichment, are required to make the yellowcake suitable for use as nuclear fuel in a reactor or for use in a nuclear weapon. Interestingly, a quantity of depleted uranium was also found at Tuwaitha. This implies that some enrichment processes occurred on-site, as depleted uranium is the natural byproduct of the enrichment process.

In addition to the yellowcake, approximately 300 tons of radioisotopes for industrial and medical uses were stored at primarily Site B. These materials, numbering over 1000 radioactive items retrieved from the site, included Cesium-137 and Cobalt-60. Both are extremely radioactive substances that are ideal for use in Radiological Dispersal Devices (RDD), or “dirty bombs.”

Few analysts have mentioned one of Saddam's primary motivations for developing nuclear weapons: the Mad Mullah's nuclear program. Taking out Saddam cut the Gulf nuclear proliferation problem in half.

Thu Nov 02, 2006

Police arrest 10,733 fugitives in U.S.-led sweep

Does that mean the Democrats lose 10,773 votes?

Let's face it. The party that wants felons to vote isn't the GOP. The party that wants to loosen voter registration standards isn't the GOP. The party that slashed the tires of the other party's vans wasn't the GOP. The party that introduced the "Motor Voter" act wasn't the GOP. The party that most often gets embroiled in voter fraud caes isn't the GOP. It's a pretty safe bet that low-life doesn't favor the GOP, including the 10,733 fugitives that just got swept up. That Rove will do anything to steal an election.

Does Kerry deserve a Purple Heart?

For shooting himself in the foot?

That's what my brother-in-law wants to know.

Update: BIL was quoting Rush.

Wed Nov 01, 2006

Remember who Kerry insulted

Braden Files contrasts our life with a GI's service

The GI

Your alarm goes off, you hit the snooze and sleep for another 10 minutes.
He stays up for days on end.

You take a warm shower to help you wake up.
He goes days or weeks without running water.

You complain of a "headache", and call in sick.
He gets shot at as others are hit, and keeps moving forward.

...

You see only what the media wants you to see.
He sees the broken bodies lying around him.

You are asked to go to the store by your parents. You don't.
He does exactly what he is told.

You stay at home and watch TV.
He takes whatever time he is given to call, write home, sleep, and eat.

You crawl into your soft bed, with down pillows, and get comfortable.
He crawls under a tank for shade and a 5 minute nap, only to be woken by gunfire.

You sit there and judge him, saying the world is probably a worse place because of men like him.
If only there were more men like him!

Visit Braden Files to read it all.

Kerry shows his true colors

He's always been against the troops

Best of the Web skewers Kerry for his past slandering of the troops. They recite his most infamous lies about the troops from 1971:

hey had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the country side of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.

This wasn't a one-off attack on his fellow troops. Kerry's honorable ship mates had the goods on him in 2003.

On June 6, 1971, John Kerry described the work of the Swift boats to the Washington Star as follows:
We established an American presence in most cases by showing the flag and firing at sampans and villages along the banks. Those were our instructions, but they seemed so out of line that we finally began to go ashore, against our orders, and investigate the villages that were supposed to be our targets. We discovered we were butchering a lot of innocent people, and morale became so low among the officers on those 'swift boats' that we were called back to Saigon for special instructions from Gen. Abrams. He told us we were doing the right thing. He said our efforts would help win the war in the long run. That's when I realized I could never remain silent about the realities of the war in Vietnam.
What John Kerry told the Washington Star was a lie.

Contrary to Kerry's claim, our consistent policy was to take every precaution to avoid harming civilians. On many occasions we did this at the cost of suffering additional casualties ourselves. We have interviewed hundreds of veterans who served on the Swift Boats or supported them, and there is simply no justification for Kerry's statement. Several members of our organization addressed the issue of atrocities during our May 4 press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

John Kerry also completely misrepresented our meeting with General Abrams and Admiral Zumwalt. Far from being a pep talk for officers distressed by their butchery of civilians, the purpose of this conference with the two highest-ranking American officers in Vietnam was to announce a new Swift boat mission: to drive the Vietcong out of the Ca Mau Peninsula. The goal of Operation SeaLords was to dominate the rivers in this area, and to eventually establish a permanent presence in the Cua Lon River, an effort later named Operation SeaFloat. This was to be done publicly, with the full participation of the media, to negate the claim of North Vietnamese negotiator Lee Duc Tho that Henry Kissinger could not legitimately represent South Vietnam because the U.S. did not control these areas.

We succeeded in that mission. We returned to Anthoi and drove the Vietcong out of the region, and soon the North Vietnamese and Vietcong representatives in Paris returned to the negotiating tables.

Given that history, it seems likely that Kerry meant what he said the first time around. The revised "joke" is even worse. Here's what he was going to say before he said what he said:

I can't overstress the importance of a great education. Do you know where you end up if you don't study, if you aren't smart, if you're intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq.

But didn't Kerry vote for the war before he voted against it? And didn't President Bush, the man who got us "stuck in a war in Iraq" win two elections against the likes of John Kerry? And didn't Bush get an MBA from Harvard? I don't recall Kerry getting into Harvard Law School?

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