This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Author: Jonn Lilyea

  • Vietnam Memorial vandalized UPDATE

    Last week I wrote about the Viet Nam Memorial vandalization and the Park Service brushed it off as a cleaning accident. I thought it was a little odd that a cleaning crew would even bring a potentially damaging material near the Wall, but without the Park Service’s admission, it was pretty much a dead end.

    Well, Michele Malkin broke the Park Service’s admission that it was indeed vandalism yesterday afternoon (I updated last week’s post with the news). Last night, the local DC Fox broadcast channel ran this story on the 10 o’clock news broadcast – the story has been updated this morning.

    The funny thing is this; in the lead-ins to the 10 o’clock news, the news team said they had video of the perpetrators, however this video of the perpetrators never aired and it’s not included on the video clip on their website, so I wonder if it was just a teaser to get me to watch the news or if someone dumped the idea.

    Robin at Chickenhawk Express has all of the pertinent statements andd links prior to the admission of vandalism and since.

    I just think that it’s a little disengenuous of the Park Service to call it an accident until the Gathering of Eagles and ANSWER leave town – then suddenly it becomes vandalism. There were also rumors of an arrest at the Viet Nam Wall on Saturday, the day of the protest. I can’t speak to those rumors because I was two miles away at the Capitol, and the rumors were forgotten in the shadow of the IVAW charades. So I don’t know – if anyone has firsthand knowledge, please let me know. 

    The Washington Post tries to explain the reticence of the Park Service to call it vandalism;

    The unidentified substance that was found splashed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial earlier this month was the result of vandalism, the U.S. Park Police said yesterday.

    Sgt. Robert Lachance, a Park Police spokesman, said that a detective made the conclusion but that officials would provide no more details because the investigation is continuing.

    Lachance said the case would involve a long-term investigation. “It’s a terrible crime, and we want to solve it,” he said.

    Yeah, well, why didn’t the media display that same caution before the Haditha incident. I’m sure Red-White-and-Blue patriot, John Murtha, Viet Nam veteran and Marine for 30 years (and not one moment more than 30 years) will at any moment decry the vandals as criminals – and demand justice. Waiting with unabated breath here.

    And the Left is spinning the story – apparently, it probably wasn’t someone from the Left neccessarily because the anti-war protest this weekend crossed partylines – according to the koolaid drinking sheep.

  • A week of action; mental masturbation to reach zenith

    If you think that the ANSWER/IVAW protest last Saturday was the a big waste of time, they have a “Week of Action” planned reports the Washington Post;

    Dozens of war opponents, including some who were among the 192 arrested Saturday, spent yesterday training for this week, which will be “the most intense week” of planned actions since the Iraq conflict began, said Brian Becker, national coordinator of the ANSWER Coalition, which organized Saturday’s rally and march and many of the other large antiwar events across the country.

    Apparently, being a dumbass pest takes training – a whole day, so I guess it’s not a long journey. But first of all they needed to get out their horror stories from their arrests this last Saturday;

    Activists came to four training sessions held at George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs yesterday, many trading stories from their arrests or from clashes with several hundred war supporters who lined the march route.

    Yeah, their harrowing ordeal or their arrests best recorded by Jack Langer of Human Events;

    Then, one at a time, around a dozen antiwar veterans of the Iraq War jumped over the wall. The cops grabbed them as they went over, cuffed them with flexicuffs, and marched them away. Emboldened, other protestors hopped the wall. Soon, the cops had scores of protestors lined up, with their hands tied, waiting to be carted off to jail. A kind of collective frenzy overtook the crowd. Old women from Code Pink went over the wall. College kids jumped over. At times there were so many of them that they were left to mill around for a few minutes before an officer became available to cuff them. Altogether, I’d say around 150 protestors were arrested.

    The police showed great restraint. When older protestors or women went over, the cops offered their hand and gently assisted them down off the wall. But after about an hour of this, the cops had had enough. They began pushing back would-be wall jumpers with their riot shields. Then, when two young men danced a little too long for the crowd on top of the wall, the police hit them with pepper spray. Blinded and choking, they went over the wall anyway. A protestor taunted the cops, yelling “Ha-ha, they won.” I suppose if you define “winning” as getting gassed and arrested, then yes, the two men won.

    The anarchists really disappointed me. None of them jumped the wall. They portray themselves as the most militant wing of the antiwar movement, but they didn’t even have the guts displayed by the Code Pink grandmas. The anarchists claim to want a revolution, but apparently not a single one of them is willing to risk a misdemeanor arrest to achieve that glorious goal.

    What a soft nation we’ve become when the police are polite and helpful while aresting people – where were the slobbering dogs and the riot batons, for cripes sake. I wonder if the Iranian or Chinese police would that polite. Oh, but I digress – the week of action…

    The Post story goes on to tell us about this action-packed week;

    They are calling today National Truth in Recruiting Day, during which war opponents will try to reach young people in particular, as well as anyone considering joining the military. Activists said yesterday that they planned to visit area recruiting centers, schools and other places young people might go and that war opponents would be doing the same in such spots across the country.

    “You have to ask the right questions, find out what’s motivating them, share with them the truth and dispel myths,” Adam Kokesh, co-chair of Iraq Veterans Against the War, told the crowd, which included local college students as well as older activists, many of whom had traveled from outside the District. “My reasons [for volunteering] were patriotism; I wanted to put my life on the line for my country.” But in hindsight, “I could have been convinced that there were better ways to further democracy in the world.”

    Other strategies include trying to eat up recruiters’ time by calling and visiting centers and pretending to be potential recruits.

    So I guess the recruiters will be harrassed for a week by a bunch of goofy kids making crank calls. Well, September is a good time for that – recruiters have already made their mission for September from last Spring’s high school graduates, so this mastermind Kokesh is just engaging in mental masturbation – he’ll feel better about himself, but will have accomplished nothing.

    As long as Kokesh is talking about the truth, let’s hear him tell us the truth…that he’d been to Iraq and volunteered to go back on another tour, but it was discovered that he’d smuggled an Iraqi pistol back on his first tour and was denied his coveted second tour. He was busted from Sergeant to private for his crime and that’s the reason he hates the military and the war – because he’s a sociopath who can’t follow the marine Corps’ simple rule to not smuggle firearms back from a war.

    While he’s at it, he can tell us how he hadn’t been discharged before he illegally wore his uniform to protest the war last Spring, as he had claimed to the ignorant and pliant press. In fact, he still had his military ID card and used it to gain access to military bases in Germany during the investigation.

    I find it somewhat disengenuous of Kokesh to tell these lies and lying about the numbers of the participants in last Saturday’s protest, yet demanding “truth in recruiting” – as if recuiters aren’t being truthful about military service.

    More from Michelle Malkin’s “The Left’s seditious war on military recruiters“. Tacobell at SandGram gives you a real soldier’s reaction to Kokesh and his merry band of attention whores. He also mentions a record deal for Kokesh – is that what this is? Publicity for a garage band?

  • Gathering of Eagles vs Moonbats (Updates)

    UPDATES: As I sift through my photos, videos and other blogs, I’ve been updating this post since this morning. Just scroll through and you’ll see. Whew! I think I’m done. Enjoy!

    Editor’s Note: If you don’t see the photos, it’s because your system is behind a WebSense internet filter and it blocks Photobucket.

    Well, not unlike the stupid hippies that they are, they were HOURS late. They were supposed to start at noon, but they didn’t get to the Capitol until 3 pm. While we were among them at Lafayette Park, one of the event organizers complained over the loudspeakers that people were having trouble showing up because, mysteriously, Metro had shut down the Blue and Orange Lines (from Virginia and GW University) so they weren’t going to kick off until one o’clock.

    But my friend had arrived moments before on the Blue Line from Virginia – it hadn’t been shut down – so another moonbat lie.We figured they were making excuses for their pitiful numbers.

    By the time they got to the Capitol, the general consensus was that they had less than 4,000 people, there were rumors of only 2,000 – but I’m pretty sure there were more than that. Most of them were moving towards Union Station before the die-in started, so their numbers shrank by about half within 20 minutes of their arrival at the Capitol. In a city of a 1/2 million where a good 10% are college students with little to do on a Saturday afternoon the first few weeks of the semester, a few thousand is a pretty shabby turnout.

    This first picture is an upside down flag in Lafayette Park. But they still love this country, right? But the remarkable thing about it (and it wasn’t the only upside down flag) is that all of the flags the moonbats carried through the march were right-side up. So that tells me that someone made a conscious effort to tell all of the upside down flag guys to right their flags – and you know it was for their image, not because of their ideology;

    Another of the upside down flags in front of the White House that mysteriously righted itself before the march;

    Robin from Chickenhawk Express asked me to get photos of folks in uniform, so here’s one;

    An Arty officer from the 24th Division – I’m pretty sure the 24th Division was inactivated before President Bush became president – so he’s making a vacuous point.

    This fellow has more money than brains – he’s way too old to have been issued that uniform by the Army;

    And this Veterans For Peace stuff really cheeses me off. It hints that I’m a Veteran For War because I don’t belong to their testoterone-deficient organization. I’m not “for” war – I’m “for” national security and given the current enemy, war is the only answer. If you think war isn’t the answer, you didn’t understand the question.

    And by the looks of his scraggly ass, he was probably a chapter case anyway.

    If you don’t have a uniform to wear to the event, well, just wear your yacht skipper’s hat;

    Too many signs and not enough moonbats;

    This guy stalked me until I took his picture, so it should make him happy that he made the blog;

    I guess he’s madder at Israel than he is at Bush. But, if you wanted to take a whacky picture with the President, they had cutouts;

    This is my personal nemisis, he stalks me at every event, I have a video of him today in which he calls me “an enemy of peace” (Actually, I’m thinking of changing the name of the blog to Enemy of Peace – it has a nice ring to it, ya know). He’s wearing the same pretentious “Peace” shirt he wears at every event, too. What I did to piss off the Travelocity Roaming Gnome, I’ll never know.

    I’d like for this fellow to name one instance where nonviolence worked to solve anything when dealing with babarians;

    The real rockstars of this rally, though, was supposed to be Adam Kokesh and his IVAW crowd. But I didn’t see them – well I saw them, but only as shadows moving around inside their rockstar bus away from the crowds and adoring fans;

    Apparently, they’re not so hot on attacking Iran, either;

    Well, we left the moonbats behind and went to the Gathering of Eagles down on the National Mall.

    A much more lively group. Here’s a video of a Gold Star father’s speech to the crowd. (I’d embed this stuff if I could figure the darn thing out.

    And the highlight of the day for me, was meeting Michelle Malkin;

    You’ll notice the jumpwings on my cap are on a 1/325 AIR flash – I wore it today to honor the son of my good friend, COBDanny, who happens to be in Iraq while assigned to my old Battalion, the Red Falcons – the spearpoint of the surge. Hooah!

    The funny thing is, I took this picture of Michele Malkin just prior and didn’t even recognize her;

    The GOE group had better signs, too;

    When the Moonbats finally started their parade of fools – THREE HOURS LATE – our side was out in front of them;

    And this is the only sign that I saw that really expressed the moonbats true feelings;

    In this photo, the protesters stretched a huge red banner across the road to keep the protesters bunched up so it looked like a bigger crowd. But it took about five minutes for them to pass as this video shows;

    As this video attests, they thinned out pretty quickly. And this video shows how many they ended with at the Capitol – hardly the hundred thousand that’s being bandied about the web. And it hardly looks like the tightly compressed crowds that the media has been showing in their photos.

    This is a video of Leftist fellow recruiting for the Army. And this ugly cow kept mooing the same thing over and over – “Take your ass to Iraq”. That’s the only response they have – “Go to Iraq”. Why? So we won’t be here to hold you accountable for your intellectually vacant yammering?

    This is a video of a Gold Star father confronting a protester.

    Meet Jake. His right forearm and hand are missing from an IED attack. I found him standing with his friend outside where the die-in was going on. I talked with him a while and I asked him how he was holding up, rockhard troop that he is. He answered, “This isn’t what I went to war for, dude. These people suck.”

    They sure do, Jake, they sure do.

    Michele Malkin has more about GOE at Walter Reed and the Live blogging today’s event. More from Gateway Pundit and Robin at Chickenhawk Express with the view from outside – all the stuff I missed because I was alternately surrounded by goofuses and heroes. Redhunter was there with great report from the GOE crowd, too. One thing is certain – everyone got pictures of Michele Malkin. That little girl was all over this thing.

    The San Francisco Sentinel blog touts the ANSWER demonstration as the largest protest since January (which isn’t hard since all of the others were flops and January wasn’t so hot, either). ANSWER’s numbers are just over the top; they claim 100,000 marched with them – that’s just ridiculous. Even the AP story they use as a source only says “several thousand”. Like I said, there were less than four thousand that diminished to two thousand when the march ended. There were probably one or two thousand counter-protesters.

    Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs has the news on the arrests at the DIe-in (Geez, I missed that part).

    More from Kate of A Columbo-Americana’s Perspective – another MM sighting. Age of Hooper catches the corpse of Ramsey Clark on parade. Keep watching the sky – I mean Skye at Midnight Blue. I met her there, too, so I’m sure she’ll have some pics up soon (she also got a picture with Michelle Malkin). Big Dog wandered into the moonbat crowd when they were at their slobbering worst, as Big Dogs usually do and comes out unscathed with a report of biting incidents.

    Powerline has pics of the Die-In and Victory Caucus has tons of photos and links to more blogs. Pam at BlogmeisterUSA and PC Free Zone has more pictures of the GOE side.

    For some reason, veterans getting arrested is more honorable than veterans who continue to serve their brothers and sisters in uniform. Some Leftists wish for the good old days, while others think we’re “scared little babies“.

    The Washington Post calls it “Dueling Demonstrations“, but it’s not really a duel when one side is has no clue what he’s doing. Bloodthirsty Liberal conducts a post-mortem on media coverage.

    The Washington Times provides a more balanced account than the Post or AP.

    Since Kokesh went out of his way to get arrested a week ago Thursday for putting up posters in a National Park with the press on hand to record his arrest, and since he also went out of his way to get arrested yesterday (Saturday, Sept. 15th) I gotta figure that they sense the failing support for their movement and they’re trying to whip up some outrage among the sheep. Like I said last week, we’re witnessing the death throes of the anti-war movement. Just like the American people are tired of hearing about the war, they’re also getting tired of hearing about the primadonnas of the anti-war movement.

    They ride in rock star buses, play to the echo chamber and jet off to another scripted event, and Americans understand that they’re just trying to make a living by not working.

  • Protest preview

    Well, tomorrow is ANSWER‘s and IVAW‘s “Mass” march against the war. They plan on meeting up at the White House at noon from all I can gather and meandering along Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol for their “Die-In”. The Gathering of Eagles, Free Republic and Protest Warriors will be lining their route.

    GOE plans on a rally at 9am on the National Mall near 7th Street. Protest Warriors will be protecting the Navy Memorial from the same type of injustice that has been done to it in the past.

    Yours truly plans to arrive at the Farragut North Metro Station (on the Red line) about 10 am (after my morning bike ride and my SOS breakfast at the Walter Reed mess hall) and I’ll get ya’all some pictures of the hairy-legged crowd as I walk about a half-mile to the good guys. I’m trying to find an internet hotspot near the march route, but I’ve not been successful so far, so ya’all might hafta wait until I get home before I get the pictures up on the blog. But I’ll take my laptop just in case.

    On my quick recon around the city today, I haven’t seen the usual hippie-types anywhere. Usually I see them straggling in from the bus station and the train station all day long, but they’ve been noticably absent today. I get the impression that Kokesh‘s expectation for 4,000 die-in volunteers might be a little ambitious.

    I’ll grant that they may have lots of buses show up at the last minute, but, as I said, this pre-protest day is a whole lot quieter than the ones I’ve seen in the past.

    On the other hand, I have seen several motorcycles flying American flags cruisng the city. But anyway we’ll see tomorrow.

    If anyone is planning to link up with us tomorrow (I have two so far that have expressed an interest), you can catch up me at Farragut North Metro Station or at the Navy Memorial. I’ll email my cell number if necessary. Keep watching this space for photos!Â

  • Jack Reed; this drawdown is not a drawdown

    Last night, the President announced, to no surprise, that the surge has worked so well militarily that he’ll begin drawing down our force presence in Iraq (Washington Examiner/AP);

    Bush said 5,700 U.S. forces would be home by Christmas instead of leaving Iraq beginning in the spring as originally planned. Four more combat brigades would pull out of Iraq as currently scheduled by July.

    These troops comprise the troop buildup that Bush ordered in January that boosted U.S. troop strength to 168,000, the highest level of the war. Under the withdrawal plan, troop levels would drop back to around 130,000 by next summer, close to where they were before the buildup.

    Well, it makes sense – since we’ve made places like Anhbar safer and proved to the Iraqis that we’re there to see this through – despite the political rhetoric here, we can reduce our boot prints in Iraq while still being successful.

    But, that’s not good enough for the Democrats, of course. For some reason, Jack Reed, a twelve-year veteran of the armed forces, felt the need to “rebutt” the President’s address (Wall Street Journal Online);

    So tonight, we find ourselves at a critical moment.

    Do we continue to heed the president’s call that all Iraq needs is more time, more money, and the indefinite presence of 130,000 American troops _ the same number as nine months ago? Or do we follow what is in our nation’s best interest and redefine our mission in Iraq?

    Democrats believe it is a time to change course. We think it’s wrong that the president tells us there’s not enough money for our veterans and children’s health care because he is spending $10 billion a month in Iraq. We have put forth a plan to responsibly and rapidly begin a reduction of our troops. Our proposal cannot erase the mistakes of the last four and a half years, but we can chart a better way forward.

    That is why our plan focuses on counterterrorism and training the Iraqi army. It engages in diplomacy to bring warring factions to the table and addresses regional issues that inflame the situation. It begins a responsible and rapid redeployment of our troops out of Iraq. And it returns our focus to those who seek to do us harm: al-Qaida and other terrorist groups.

    An endless and unlimited military presence in Iraq is not an option.

    Like our “endless and unlimited military presence” in Japan, Germany, South Korea, Bosnia and Kosovo? The President is drawing down our combat forces in a safe and timely manner. The Democrats recommend that we negotiate with 12th Century savages who are still cutting off hands and executing criminals in public. Savages who deny that there were millions executed in Europe because of their religion and sexual preferences in the last century. People who execute their own citizens for converting to another religion. How do you negotiate with that culture?

    And of course, the Washington Post snipes at the president from the sidelines;

    For instance, Bush asserted that “Iraq’s national leaders are getting some things done,” such as “sharing oil revenues with the provinces” and allowing “former Baathists to rejoin Iraq’s military or receive government pensions.”

    Yet his statement ignored the fact that U.S. officials have been frustrated that none of those actions have been enshrined into law — and that reports from Baghdad this week indicated that a potential deal on sharing oil revenue is collapsing.

    Well, it’s a work in progress, isn’t it? They’ve been under the jackboot of one thug for nearly thirty years – it takes time to work out details of important issues. How long has Congress been talking about healthcare in this country? Nearly twentyfive years. Saddam’s been gone just over four years. It took us twelve years to get our Constitution done right.

    In another story in the Post, they overplayed the murder of an allied sheik in Anhbar as a blow to the Administration;

    The president’s upbeat assessment of the situation in Iraq during a nationally televised address last night was clouded by the killing earlier in the day of a Sunni sheik who led the turnaround of a key province in alliance with U.S. forces.

    You can almost hear the Post’s reporters dancing with glee over the death of a key player in the surge’s success. Even though AP reports in the Washington Times that the murder has only strengthened the resolve of tribal leaders;

    Mr. Abu Risha’s allies, as well as U.S. and Iraqi officials, insisted the assassination would not deter them from fighting al Qaeda, and the tribal alliance appears to have gained enough momentum to survive the loss of a single figure, no matter how senior. Late yesterday, Mr. Abu Risha’s brother, Ahmed, was selected to replace him as head of the council.

    Reed, ever the whiner, complains that the President has no plan;

    “A nation eager for change in Iraq heard the president speak about his plans for the future. But once again, the president failed to provide either a plan to successfully end the war or a convincing rationale to continue it,” said Sen. Jack Reed, Rhode Island Democrat and a former U.S. Army Ranger and paratrooper.

    But, there’s no plan only if you haven’t listening. Everyone knows the plan – this is the worst case of projection in American history. Reed claims Democrats have a plan – but there is no Democrat plan except pull the troops out now and then work with Iran from a point of weakness – the weakness being that we’ll be gone from the Middle East, while Iran is free to terrorize their neighbors and their population with no fear from retribution. Iran is the problem and the Democrats want to strengthen Iran.

    You’d think a “former Army Ranger” would be jubilant at the successes and accomplishments in Iraq. Instead this particular “former Army Ranger” wants to play political games and draw the war out further and cost more American lives in the interim.

  • Hispanic activists urge Congress to turn a blind eye

    I guess the immigration issue has reached the point of absurdity. According to  Washington Examiner’s Dan Genz;

    Several Hispanic immigrant organizations called on Congress Wednesday to pass a moratorium on the enforcement of key immigration laws, saying the system is broken and families are being ripped apart by deportations. Latino Families United and other groups, speaking at a news conference on Capitol Hill, called for a ban on raids, deportations and no-match letters until new immigration reforms are approved. They asserted that the country’s many legal immigrants would make immigration reform a top priority when choosing who to support in 2008 elections.

    “The anxiety that children and families go through when they are raided and split is one of the many reasons why this is going to be a new dimension of the immigration movement,” said Pedro Aviles, director of the National Capital Immigration Coalition.

    Well, then why not pass a moratorium on the arrest of all parents since we don’t want to cause anyone’s children any anxiety? I feel sorry for those toddlers whose parents get caught selling drugs, driving recklessly or being generally foolish on those “Cops” programs. Why don’t we cut all criminals’ children a break? For pete’s sake.

    But illegal immigration critic Greg Letiecq of the Help Save Manassas group called such a proposal “laughable.”

    “To say it would be a better place if we just didn’t enforce our laws is so far beyond ludicrous, I couldn’t imagine anyone taking this tripe seriously,” Letiecq said. “It is not the character of Americans to just give up on something that is important.”

    If people are allowed to pick and choose which of our laws they want to obey, and which they can be held accountable for violating, why have laws at all?

    But Hispanic activists aren’t the only people demanding that the laws not be enforced. The unions are taking up the fight, too;

    Alleging that federal agents violated workers’ rights during raids in December, the workers’ union filed a lawsuit Wednesday to stop immigration officials from conducting what the union says are illegal workplace raids.

    The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Amarillo, Texas, says agents unlawfully detained workers and violated their constitutional rights during raids at six JBS Swift & Co. meatpacking plants. The lawsuit also demands that the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement pay damages to the workers.

    ICE officials investigating identity theft arrested 1,297 workers at the plants, but union officials have said more than 12,000 workers were detained against their will during the operation.

    But there is good news for those of us who think that laws are written to be enforced, from the Herndon, VA police;

    The Herndon Police Department said it has netted more than a dozen suspected illegal aliens in the first two months since it began participating in a federal immigration enforcement program.

    Town police have received Immigration and Customs Enforcement training through the 287(g) program, authorizing selected officers to enforce immigration laws.
     
    According to Herndon Police Chief Toussaint Summers, for the months of June and July – reportedly the first full months of 287(g) participation – 13 out of 19 contacts made in accordance with the program resulted in detained individuals being turned over to the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center. Those suspected illegal aliens will eventually be processed through the federal court system for possible deportation.

    Imagine that – police who are trained and allowed to do so, can actually catch illegal immigrants. Who’d have ever thought that?

  • “Don’t shoot, we’re Republicans”

    Here’s an interesting bit of history I found this morning from the always entertaining “Finestkind Clinic and Fish Market“ about the US Navy ship William D. Porter that almost sunk President Roosevelt;

    Sometimes the things that almost happened are as interesting as the things that did. Nearly every photo history book of World War II shows the famous picture of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt meeting with Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin at Tehran in November 1943. The accompanying caption usually mentions something about the meeting solidifying the alliance that would go on to win World War II. Rarely mentioned, however, is that the historic moment might never have occurred — because the president, the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff and numerous other top American leaders on board USS Iowa were nearly victims of a torpedo attack on the way to the summit.

    […]

    After 1943 the ship was commonly hailed by other ships with the greeting: “Don’t shoot! We’re Republicans!” Willie Dee became a black sheep, and sailors like Bill Glover, a 17-year-old from Montgomery, Ala., when he joined the destroyer in 1944, were not happy about being assigned to it. “In less than a year after launching, it had done several things we heard about, so I didn’t want to go to the Porter,” he said. “They acknowledged it when I got on board, laughed about it some. Nobody had gotten hurt, so you could joke about it some. And plus, there was a war on so we had other things to do.”

    Read the whole story at History Net – it’s long but interesting.

  • The new surge

    Now that the troops are in place and they’re “kickin’ ass”, to borrow a phrase from the President, a new surge is under way – this one in Washington, in the halls of the Capitol and the conference rooms in the White House. The surge to bring the troops home.

    In his testimony, General Petreaus recommended 30,000 troops be withdrawn by July 2008. The Republicans agree – the Democrats would have agreed if hadn’t come from General Petraeus. (S.A. Miller The Washington Times);

    But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who failed repeatedly to muster enough votes to compel the president to accept a pullout plan, yesterday said he will try again next week with measures to force significantly larger troop reductions.

    “I call on Senate Republicans not to walk lockstep with the president as they have done for years,” the Nevada Democrat said. “It is time to come over and join us.”

    Mr. Reid said Democrats will introduce four to six war bills, including measures for large-scale troop reductions and to transition the mission from combat to training Iraqi forces and conducting counterterrorism operations.

    He did not provide details of the legislation, but the characterization of measures was nearly identical to failed bills from earlier this year.

    It’s like I said in the comments section of a post yesterday, the Democrats are attached to defeat at the forehead – they continue to cling to failed political tactics.

    Roy Blunt, ever the realist, quiped;

    “We’ve taken a different approach than [Democrats] have on Iraq from the very start,” said Mr. Blunt. “They saw Iraq as a political issue, and we saw it as both a security issue and an issue that had to be above politics for our members.”

    The Democrat candidates are trying to get ahead of the administration (Washington Times’ Brian DeBose)

    “We must get out strategically and carefully, removing troops from secure areas first, and keeping troops in more volatile areas until later, but our drawdown should proceed at a steady pace of one or two brigades each month,” Mr. Obama said.

    A day after hearing the progress report from Army Gen. David H. Petraeus to Congress, Mr. Obama rejected the general’s recommendations and said Iraq’s government has failed to meet its own goals.

    His withdrawal proposal reinforces the Iraq war as the major battleground among the Democratic presidential candidates, who have spent the campaign competing with each other for support from the party’s antiwar voters.

    Yesterday, Mr. Obama’s adversaries said his plan doesn’t go far enough, with former Sen. John Edwards saying the pace of withdrawal moves too slowly and sounds too much like the general’s recommendation to President Bush to withdraw 30,000 troops by July.

    “Taking credit for this gradual withdrawal is like taking credit for gravity,” Mr. Edwards said.

    I’d say that about any withdrawal plan at this point. The President was going to withdraw troops when they weren’t needed any longer – we all knew that. The withdrawal might have been complete by now if the Democrats had kept their stupid mouths shut for the last four years and stopped encouraging our enemies.

    It must really gall Democrats that the President has improved even minutely in the polls according to the NBCNews/Wall Street Journal poll taken September 7-10th.

    As Mr. Bush prepares to follow congressional testimony by the top general in Iraq, David Petraeus, with a televised speech to the nation tonight, the poll shows an uptick in support for the president’s handling of the war as well as a small increase in the proportion of Americans who believe the troop surge is helping and that victory remains possible.

    Those shifts in public opinion remain modest. Solid majorities continue to disapprove of the president’s performance and say victory in Iraq isn’t possible and that the war hasn’t been worth its human and financial costs. “There’s been no surge from the American people,” said Democratic pollster Peter Hart, who conducts the Journal/NBC poll with Republican counterpart Neil Newhouse.

    Yet only one in four Americans say troops should leave now regardless of conditions on the ground. The public’s “heads and hearts are going in two different directions,” Mr. Newhouse said. “They want the troops to come home but think we can’t just leave.”

    As hard as the Democrats have tried to take the advice of the netroots, it just doesn’t seem to be working against the President.

    Of course, the Washington Post is betting on Democrats and calling their repeat of failed legislation “modest bipartisan measures” mischaractertizing the Democrats’ intentions completely;

    Democratic leaders in Congress have decided to shift course and pursue modest bipartisan measures to alter U.S. military strategy in Iraq, hoping to use incremental changes instead of aggressive legislation to break the grip Republicans have held over the direction of war policy.

    Standing against them will be President Bush, who intends to use a prime-time address tonight to try to ease concerns that his Iraq strategy will lead to an open-ended military commitment.

    Both efforts share a single target: a handful of Republican moderates in the Senate whose votes the Democrats need to overcome the threat of a GOP filibuster. Should enough Republican moderates sign on to a compromise measure, Democrats could finally pass legislation aimed at changing direction of the war.

    “We’re reaching out to the Republicans to allow them to fulfill their word,” Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) said yesterday. “A number of them are quoted significantly saying that come September that there would have to be a change of the course in the war in Iraq.”

    Yeah, we know how Democrats “reach out” – “Our way or the highway”. Mostly because they’ve sold their soul to the netroots – and 30,000 in less than a year isn’t enough to satisfy Nancy Pelosi;

    “President Bush’s policy announced by General Petraeus is a path to 10 more years of war in Iraq. General Petraeus’ testimony to Congress drew a bright line: redeployment is not an option; endless war in Iraq is the Administration’s only option.

    10 more years of war, huh? That’s a bit of hyperbole – it’s 10 more years of a presence in Iraq – like the 11 years of a presence we’ve had in Bosnia, the nine years of a presence in Kosovo, sixty-two years in Japan, sixty-two years in Germany.

    Nor is Harry Reid satisfied with a withdrawal without his consent and blessing;

    “This is unacceptable to me, it’s unacceptable to the American people,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

    Reid said the recommendation by Gen. David Petraeus, expected to be embraced by President Bush in a speech to the nation on Thursday, “is neither a drawdown or a change in mission that we need. His plan is just more of the same.”

    Mission? What change in mission have you recommended, Harry? Besides immediate surrender and “redeployment” to the Indian Ocean or some-damn-where. 

    But the Washington Post reports that some Democrats are getting angry at the Leftroots’ unprecedented pressure to end the war against terror;

    MoveOn.org, a liberal activist group that has spent months pressuring Republicans to turn against the war, is now threatening to turn on Democrats who temper their positions.

    But moderate Democrats are feeling emboldened, after nearly nine months of taking their marching orders from the more liberal wing of the party. Rep. Neil Abercrombie (Hawaii), who is pushing a more bipartisan approach, said the antiwar wing has badly overplayed its hand.

    But the Post tries to alienate General Petraeus from the President by putting the war entirely on his shoulders;

    When he testified before the Senate for his confirmation hearing in January, Petraeus was widely regarded as the quintessential military professional, a credible, independent voice who stood above the political fray.

    But when he returned to Capitol Hill this week for marathon hearings and a media blitz, the general labored to retain that image. Partisans sought to portray him either as a politicized officer carrying water for the White House or as the only possible savior of an increasingly unpopular war.

    The war in Iraq has diminished the reputations of many of its generals. As Petraeus returns to Baghdad to continue carrying out President Bush’s strategy, his image has changed as well. Like it or not, he has become a political player, and more than ever before, the U.S. venture in Iraq has become his own.

    “Up until this week, it was Rumsfeld’s war,” said retired Army Lt. Col. James Jay Carafano, referring to former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. “Now, for better or worse, it’s Dave’s war.”

    Funny, the netroots have been calling it Bush’s War – now all of a sudden it’s “Dave’s War”? Why don’t they just call it a war against common sense?

    The truth is; the Democrats aren’t interested in ending the war – they need it as an issue next November. That’s why they’re presenting the same tired old failed legislation – they know it won’t pass because it contains draconian reductions in forces. It’s a plan for failure and they know the President is too far above plotics and poll numbers to accept it just to save his legacy.

    Like I said yesterday, the Democrats don’t learn from their failures. They think they deserve accolades for being hardheaded, stubborn jackasses. Their bipartisan solutions are nothing more than threats and intimidation. If only they would get as tough and stubborn with our nation’s enemies as they are for purely political reasons.

    But, then, simply by the nature of their political beings, Democrats can’t find it within themselves to be leaders – since they live and die by polls, they are followers.