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

Author: Jonn Lilyea

  • “That’s fine and good, but this is about Iraq”

    The Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin and Michael Grunwald report that the nut…er…net-roots are eating their own DINOs;

    Progressive blogs — including two new ones, Ellen Tauscher Weekly and Dump Ellen Tauscher — were bashing her as a traitor to her party. A new liberal political action committee had just named her its “Worst Offender.” And in Tauscher’s East Bay district office that day in January, eight MoveOn.org activists were accusing her of helping President Bush send more troops to Iraq.

    Helping? Jennifer Barton, the lawmaker’s district director, played them a DVD of Tauscher blasting the increase as an awful idea in a floor speech eight days earlier.

    “The words are fine and good, but we are looking for leadership,” scoffed Susan Schaller, one of the activists.

    Leadership? Barton showed them the eight golden shovels Tauscher had received for bringing transportation projects to her suburban district, along with numerous awards she had won for her work protecting children, wetlands, affordable housing and abortion rights.

    “That’s fine and good,” Schaller repeated, “but this is about Iraq.”

    I guess we can’t expect the mindless drones of the Left to focus on more than one topic at a time. It just illustrates the fact that the Democrats think they can win the Presidential election in 2008 by focusing all of their energy on the war in Iraq. they think that their anti-war campaign is what won them the majority (despite the fact that the polls tell a different story – see Sister Toldya, Captain’s Quarters – despite what the Washington Post says).

    Their “10s of thousands” of protesters have given them the false bravado to start throwing their own under the bus. Despite what that intellectually vacant strategy did for Joe Lieberman.

    By the way, the Washington Post does their best to defend Ellen Tauscher by explaining that she used to support the war and she used to be against Pelosi, but, honest, she’s changed now.

  • Washington Post’s Walter Reed story

    Dana Priest and Anne Hull have a widely circulated story in the Washington Post today about the horrible condition of Building 18 at Walter Reed Army Medial Center, in DC. I haven’t been in the building, but I can imagine they aren’t exagerating much. Having spent two decades in the Army myself, I’m familiar with these kinds of conditions – the conditions that the Carters and Clintons of the world handed us.

    I’m certainly not excusing the Army from culpability here. They should have known that in a city where half of the population are journalists, it seems at times, they were going to get caught at this.

    The main facility at WRAMC is state of the art. I eat breakfast there every Saturday morning (the only place in town that serves SOS on a biscuit – the main thing I missed when I retired). It’s clean and relatively quiet and one of the reasons we moved here back in 1999 – the medical service is the best of any military or Veterans’ facility I’ve seen. My wife and I have both been under the knife at Walter Reed and a better bunch of surgeons and staff you’ll find no where.

    But, the Army has always treated soldiers to bad living conditions for extended temporary assignments. Always. I’m not excusing it, just saying it. And it’s one of the reasons that Walter Reed is closing its doors and moving to the Bethesda Naval facilities. Aside from the horrible labor force available in the area, the out buildings, apart from the main hospital, are nearly 100 years old. Its too expensive for the Army to repair them, especially with leftists who’ve suddenly become “fiscally responsible” and demanding that the government spend on social programs while facilties neccessary for defense are crumbling.

    I could go on-and-on about facilities where we had to live and work because the priority has always been on equipment, training and bullets, but I won’t bore you (if you promise not to bore me with “I walked ten miles through snowdrifts to get to school” stories).

    But I will take exception with one particular part of the story;

    Family members who speak only Spanish have had to rely on Salvadoran housekeepers, a Cuban bus driver, the Panamanian bartender and a Mexican floor cleaner for help. Walter Reed maintains a list of bilingual staffers, but they are rarely called on, according to soldiers and families and Walter Reed staff members.

    My wife, a native Panamanian on the full time medical staff in one of the wards there, regularly helps spanish-only family members, nearly daily at Walter Reed. There are only a few Salvadorans employed at Walter Reed, and no bartenders (what’s a bartender doing at a hospital?) or cuban bus drivers that I know of, so is this just literary liscense? Going on the story of one Puerto Rican lady (how’d she get to Washington – sign language?) is fairly disengenuous.

    “They’ve been behind from Day One,” said Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), who headed the House Government Reform Committee, which investigated problems at Walter Reed and other Army facilities. “Even the stuff they’ve fixed has only been patched.”

    Who is “they”, Congressman? The Army, the Administration? So Congress already knows about this? So what are they doing about it – since they’re the ones who fund this stuff. Maybe Murtha, et al. should do their jobs instead of trying to be generals.

    When the war first started, I made the rounds a coupla times and wrote down soldiers’ names and hometowns then faxed their congressmen that their constituents were in town. I got few responses and some responses came too late (Republicans were just as guilty as Democrats, by the way). Maybe if Congress got off it’s lazy ass for a change, things would be different. Maybe if they’d focus on THEIR JOB instead everybody else’s.

    And where was the Post seven years ago on this? Building 18 didn’t fall into disrepair beginning January 20, 2001. Oh, that’s right they were too busy writing stories about the wonderful job that the Clinton Administration had done lowering the budget deficit on the backs of the military.

  • Lisping sissy advises Democrats: “make it about Bush”

    EJ Dionne, columnist for the Washington Post, gives advice to the anti-war crowd in Congress;

    The challenge to critics of the war is to make the debate about Bush, not about themselves, and to make clear that the president has rebuffed all efforts to pursue a bipartisan path out of Iraq, beginning with his rejection of the core recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, headed by James A. Baker III and Lee Hamilton.

    UM, EJ, where have you been the last six years? If you hadn’t noticed, everything has always been about the President. And it’s always been clear that the “core recommendations” of the ISG were pie-in-the-sky, fruity recommendations anyway.

    I know little EJ wants us to negotiate with Iran (which underlies his idiot statement about the ISG recommendations) but how are we supposed to sit down with a government whose lead politician says things like this and this. Hardly seems like a rational person that we can trust to keep his word, does it?

    And, EJ, my boy, tell me what good a “bi-partisan solution” to the war in Iraq would do our troops? There’s a way to win that war, and there’s a way to lose that war, but there is no way to compromise between winning and losing that’ll make everyone happy.

    We’ve been compromising up to this point (despite the rantings of the Left) and that’s why we’ve been there so long, taken so many casualties, and spent so much money on this war – because we’ve been trying to asuage the guilt of the Left for making them vote for the war in the first place. We need another Sherman, Patton or Grant, that’s what we need, not bi-partisan compromises.

    Of course Dionne endorses the Murtha proposal;

    For now, the war’s opponents are focused on three strategies. One would be to cut off funds for the war, but there is currently no majority in either house for this. A second approach, expected to come from Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), would propose restrictions on troop deployments — for example, forbidding the redeployment of units that have been home for less than a year and imposing substantial training requirements on the troops who are sent.

    The Murtha measure would at least force a much-needed debate on the damage this war has done to our armed forces and the extraordinary burdens being borne by the brave minority of Americans who serve. It would also sidestep the political damage of doing anything that could be construed by Bush’s supporters as “failing to support our troops.”

    Yeah, we need more debate. Oswego, NY needs more snow, too. And the damage to our troops has already been done, EJ, in case you haven’t been paying attention. There’s already been a recorded incident of your side spitting at a wounded soldier – what more do you need. Murtha cloaks his disdain for the soldiers in pretty phrases about readiness and rest, but he still hates the fact that they might win.

    A third path, offered by Sens. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) and Carl Levin (D-Mich.), would have Congress revisit its original 2002 Iraq resolution to make clear that the war authorized then (against Saddam Hussein and what turned out to be nonexistent weapons of mass destruction) had nothing to do with putting American troops in the midst of a Muslim civil war now.

    This is a setup to begin impeachment proceedings against the President by changing the rules at the end of the third quarter. I know the Left thinks Biden is a fricken rocket surgeon, but anyone who had to use other people’s research for a college paper probably shouldn’t be held in such high esteem by people who think college education is the answer to all of the world’s problems.

    And Dionne ends his piece with a quote from my very own Congressman – in all of his whining glory, Chris Van Hollen (D-MD);

    “The refusal of the administration to try to work with others to resolve this in a responsible manner has created a very polarized atmosphere,” Van Hollen said. “They’ve refused to listen to anyone else.”

    Maybe, Chris, that’s because you haven’t had a strategy. All you have is “we hate Bush” and “we hate Rumsfeld”. Have you bothered to read the ISG’s recommendations, Chris? It’s fantasy land nonsense written by politicians. Even Sandra Day O’Connor wondered what she even doing in the Group. So did the rest of us.

    Besides, why should the President pay you any notice? You’re not the commander-in-chief, according to the Constitution. You can declare war and fund it and that’s it. Period. The fact that Democrats can’t produce a coherent policy on Iraq is proof of the genious of our founding fathers. There is no compromise to victory – unless of course, victory is what you’re trying to avoid.

    So, I guess the whole point of today’s post is that EJ Dionne, John Murtha, Joe Biden and Chris Von Hollen are not generals – they’re political creatures looking for a political solution to a complex problem – none of them have had to lead troops in combat, none of them understand how their idiot ramblings affect the war and our enemies, so all of them should sit down and stfu. Especially, Little EJ Dionne.

  • Carl Levin’s idea of success

    I’m watching Carl Levin on Fox News Sunday describe limiting troop deployments to Iraq as “increasing the chance of success in Iraq”. How can fewer troops in a war zone enhance success? More trigger-pullers on the ground means more bullets the islamo-facists have to dodge while engaging in their particuar nefarious endeavors. 

    He described the Republican block of the Democrats’ non-binding resolution in the Senate as political gamesmanship. What, then, is the Democrat strategy of even introducing a non-binding rebuke of the President’s strategy, if not political gamesmanship? It’s not law, so why do they think it’s even necessary – unless they just want to satisfy their knee-jerk anti-war base for the time being.

    Did the Republican Congress pass any non-binding resolutions against the Clinton Administration’s foreign follies in Haiti, Bosnia or Kosovo. The, answer of course, is ‘no’. That would have been political gamesmanship. They gave him and the troops their full and complete support.

    No, Mr. Levin, putting more combat troops in Iraq doesn’t hinder our chance for success. I think on a weekend when even the Washington Post publishes an editorial (h/t Captain’s Quarters) condemning Democrats for flexing imaginary political muscles writing “[s]ome of the speeches [in the House] were little more than partisan rhetoric….” ya’all’d be a little more careful what you say. It seems that the fog is lifting a bit on ya’ll’s honeymoon with the press.

    The Post also asks, rightly;

    So why not straightforwardly strip the money out of the appropriations bill — an action Congress is clearly empowered to take — rather than try to micromanage the Army in a way that may be unconstitutional?

    The answer, of course, is that Murtha, Pelosi, Reid, Kennedy, Levin and the rest are just playing politics with the lives of our armed forces. The Post can’t ask that without knowing the answer.

    The Post went on to say that John Murtha, specifically, and Democrats, generally  are ignorant of the situation the situation in Iraq. But I think it’s worse than that. They know what’s going on in Iraq, they know the troops are winning, they know that the troops know they’re winning (like this troop’s email via Flopping Aces) and they’re ignoring it and intentionally mischaracterizing the war in front of the cameras. Murtha and Pelosi have seen for themselves, how can they be that ignorant without it being a purely poitical gambit designed to kill more American soldiers for political gain?

    Perhaps Mitch McConnell said it best in this morning’s Washington Times;

    “There is no place for chicanery at a time of war,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican. “Even some of the president’s most strident opponents know that. They know that the only vote that truly matters is a vote on whether to fund the troops.”

    See Sister Toldya for the video of Sam Johnson’s speech to the House last week. Then tell me Democrats support the troops.

    In the meantime, the “surge” continues. Read the Milblogs at Mudvile Gazette to keep up with the latest. 

  • That flag they’re waving…it’s white

    Fox News reports that House Democrats are ready to vote on their surrender bill. They even sound like they’re surrendering to the Administration while they’re surrendering to the islamists;

    “The bipartisan resolution today may be nonbinding, but it will send a strong message to the president: we here in Congress are committed and supporting our troops,” Pelosi said. “The passage of this legislation will signal change in direction in Iraq that will end the fighting and bring our troops home safely and soon.”

    So broken down for the less literate, Pelosi is saying that even though this a pointless drill that means absolutely nothing, made by gutless cowards who are afraid to say what they really mean and vote on something that might actually say something, is not an actual law that the Executive Branch has to execute, the President had better do what they say anyway.

    And the supreme girlie-man Henry Waxman, proving that he supports the troops, declares that Iraq is a defeat;

    “What we now have in Iraq is a defeat. We cannot achieve the illusions of the Bush administration that we will be able to create a stable unified liberal democracy in Iraq that is pro-American,” Waxman said on the House floor. “Instead, we have sectarian fighting, death squads and a disabled Middle East that threatens to be engulfed by the nightmare that we have unleashed.”

    Sounds like a bipartisan statement aimed at cooperation with the Administration, doesn’t it?

    And ya gotta love those guys from Massachusetts;

    The American troops are over there fighting so that we can exercise our constitutional rights and obligation to debate these issues and have an opinion on them,” [Rep. John] Tierney [D-MA] said. “If you listen to the troops when they come home or read their letters or the letters of their parents, they don’t understand what the mission is anymore, the goal is undefined.”

    I guess they don’t get TV, radio or newspaper in Massachusetts. Everyone on the planet knows that the goal is a democratic Iraq. Unless they’re from Massachusetts. No one told the troops from Massachusetts what the goal is. It’s a conspiracy to keep Massachusetts ignorant.

    About the vote in the Senate, Dingy Harry Reid says;

    “It’s a vote on whether or not Republicans support the surge,” Reid said.

    That’s right, Senate Republicans, let’s see your gonads. Or the lack thereof.

  • General Murtha pretends to care about the troops

    According to Fox News‘ Greg Simmons, Murtha used an internet-broadcast interview with MoveCongress.org, a far-Left, anti-war website, to try to get his message out. His message? Screw the troops who are currently engaged in Iraq.

    According to his interview, Murtha claims;

    The Bush administration “won’t be able to continue. They won’t be able to do the deployment. They won’t have the equipment. They don’t have the training and they won’t be able to do the work,” Murtha said in the post on the Democrat-friendly Web site MoveCongress.org. “This vote will limit the options of the president and should stop this surge.”

    So with Sadr on the run, US troops in theater shifted around and pressing the enemy, Murtha wants to stop reinforcments and supplies from reaching those under fire at the moment.

    Murtha said the legislation would not necessarily deprive the administration of money but would redirect it, and it would be crafted to protect the troops, not harm them.

    “We need to make sure that everybody understands we’re going to support the troops. We’re going to give the troops everything they need. We’re not going to .. make any of them vulnerable,” Murtha said. “But we’re going to make darn sure that they have what they need before they go over.”

    By crafting legislation with those goals in mind, Murtha said, “that stops the surge for all intents and purposes.”

    What a juvenile, half-assed approach to war. How many more of our troops will be spilling their blood to feed John Murtha’s gagantuan ego while he hides behind troops yet to be deployed while sniping at the folks in theater?

    Murtha tones down the insane, threatening rhetoric for the mainstream media (more specifically the Washington Times’ Jon Ward);

    “This legislation will force the administration to consider alternatives rather than escalating,” said Rep. John P. Murtha, Pennsylvania Democrat, describing limitations he intends to place on an appropriations bill next month.

    Of course, Dennis Kuscinich, the Emporer of Peace is a little more extreme;

     “The American people want us to get out of Iraq,” Mr. Kucinich said. “They expect Democrats to move quickly to end our involvement in Iraq. If Congress approves the supplemental appropriation, President Bush will have the money he needs to keep the war going through the end of his term.”

    Not only does Kuscinich not understand how to fight wars, he also doesn’t understand what the American people want. But then, which Democrat does. They constantly invoke the “American people” in their insane blather, but when was the last time they really listened to the American people?

    In the Senate, Washington Post’s Dana Milbank reports that Dingy Harry Reid has called for a Saturday vote on the Iraq War resolution;

    “Time is of the essence,” Reid told a rapt audience in the Senate television studio yesterday afternoon. “That’s why the Senate will have another Iraq vote on Saturday.”

    I guess he thinks that pressuring the Senators to work a full week will frighten them into submission. Little Chuckie Schumer pipes in;

    The “vote on Saturday is a crucial vote not just for the moment or for the week, but for the history of America,” added an overwrought Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). “We’re calling their bluff. We’re staying here. Now vote yes or no.”

    The Post also points out that he’s caused more of a distraction to Democrat presidential hopefuls than to Republicans, though. So who cares. I guess it’s too hopeful to wish that they’d drown in a river of their tears.

    And, according to the Washington Post, Joe Biden has a time machine;

    Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said he will seek to repeal the 2002 congressional authorization for Bush to wage war in Iraq and substitute legislation that would narrow the mission of troops there and begin to bring some home.

    Haven’t the American people already been heard on that 2002 authorization? How does Biden think he can unfire that revolver? The only thing he can possible do is give aid and comfort to our enemies. But, I guess that’s Joe Biden’s way. Between Biden and Murtha, our enemies must pleased as pigs in clover. 

    And the President gets in his licks;

    But Bush, who has challenged lawmakers not to cut off funds for the troops, took a swipe at his critics during the day.

    “This may become the first time in the history of the United States Congress that it has voted to send a new commander into battle and then voted to oppose his plan that is necessary to succeed in that battle,” the president said.

    And at least some Republicans have something valuable to contribute;

    “The enemy wants our men and women in uniform to think their Congress doesn’t care about them,” said Rep. Sam Johnson, R-Texas, who was a prisoner of war during Vietnam. “We must learn from our mistakes. We cannot leave a job undone like we left in Korea, like we left in Vietnam, like we left in Somalia,” Johnson said.

    Added Rep. Geoff Davis, R-Ky., a West Point graduate who was a flight commander with the Army’s 82nd Airborne: “This nonbinding resolution serves no purpose other than pacifying the Democrats’ political base and lowering morale in our military.”

    Unlike some others.

  • Democrats want to cut taxes?

    According to Sarah Lueck at the Wall Street Journal, Democrats are seeking to give middle class tax payers a tax cut;

    The new Democratic-controlled Congress is looking to rein in looming tax increases on the middle class, possibly covering the cost by raising taxes on upper-income households. And the Bush administration may not stand in the way.

    Of course, Democrats couldn’t just give the American middle class a tax cut without looking for someone else to increase taxes upon, could they? And they’d never think to balance the tax cut with a spending cut, could they?

  • OK, maybe it is Hell–

    My bride and I arrived back from the beach yesterday to witness the biggest bunch of crybabies on the planet trying to run a city. First, let me tell ya’all that it took us longer to get from our suburban Maryland home to Reagan National Airport on the subway than it did to get from Reagan to our hotel in South Beach Miami (that’s including the taxi ride and picking our luggage up from the airline) because a whopping 1/2″ of snow had fallen by the time we left home.

    That was on Tuesday – the snow stopped late Tuesday. This morning, four days later, schools are still closed because the people who get paid to shovel municipal sidewalks, clear shool driveways of snow, keep the school buses maintained are all on their collective ass.

    So instead of someone taking charge, schools are just closed. Is it any wonder that large numbers of schoolchildren don’t take their education seriously when the bloated bureaucracy that’s responsible for teaching those schoolchildren don’t take their jobs seriously?

    How many times have we seen those videos over the past week of kids in Redwood, NY and Oswego, NY plowing through 100″ of snow to get to school? I grew up a little south of there and I remember very few “snow days”.  

    Instead of attending school, the under-educated drones of the DC and bordering MD school districts were all riding the rails to-and-from the malls yesterday when we got back from Miami. They can zip back-and-forth to the malls, but because area bureaucrats can’t drag their ample buttocks out of bed on a schoolday and do the jobs their paid to do, they can’t get educated beyond a grade-school level.

    how is this your problem? Well, DC schools are Federally-funded to the tune of $811 million. How much of that do you figure comes from 1/2 million residents here?