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

Author: Jonn Lilyea

  • Leftist Caucus in Congress out of ammo

    Murtha claims he’s a moderate compared to most of the “Progressive Caucus” and the “Out-of-Iraq Caucus” in Congress;

    “This group here today, they’re way ahead of me,” the Pennsylvania Democrat said of the Out-of-Iraq Caucus and the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which are comprised of the most ardently anti-war members of Congress.
        Mr. Murtha, a member of the House Appropriations Committee, spoke to the groups yesterday during a forum about using the budget to prevent the Bush administration from boosting troop levels.
        “I’m doing what I think needs to be done, and I’m doing it as quickly as I can,” said Mr. Murtha, a former Marine who rose to national prominence in 2005 by calling for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq.

    While they’re trying to figure out a way to cut off funds for the President’s “surge”, the White House announced yesterday that there’s enough money in the current budget to fund the “surge”;

     “Funding for the forces and to dispatch them to the region, it’s already in the budget. So we’re going to proceed with those plans,” [Tony] Snow said.
        That leaves Congress with few other options.
        One possibility, proposed by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat, would rescind Congress’ 2002 blanket grant of authority to use force in Iraq, and would require Mr. Bush to gain congressional approval before boosting forces.
        Yesterday, Mr. Kennedy asked the administration to hold off on deploying the troops to give Congress more time to consider the issue.
        “It took the president … two months to make this judgment. Let us have 10 days to try and make a judgment and a decision whether the American people are behind this,” he told Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.

    In other words, Kennedy needs more time to make idiot statements like his “Bush’s Vietnam” speech at the National Press Club the other day. He needs more time to undermine our National Security.

    It’s already bad enough that the enemy knows we have reinforcements enroute, do we need to give them time to prepare for it, too? Do these peckerheaded morons know that this is a war and not a couty fair?

    To the President’s credit, he doesn’t seem to be influenced by idiots in Congress;

        “I think in this situation I do and I fully understand [Congress] could try to stop me from doing it,” Mr Bush said. “But I made my decision. We’re going forward.”

  • Our new neighbors

    Daniel Ortega, newly-elected President of Nicaragua, signed a socialist trade pact yesterday with Venezuela, Bolivia, Venezuela and Cuba according to an AP story. Our good buddy Hugo Chavez was on hand to pass out goodies to the Nicaraguans in attendence including a few tractors to some farmers in front of an electrical plant shipped from Venezuela the day Ortega won his election.

    “Think of what Nicaragua would be like today if the North American imperialists had allowed Daniel to continue his revolution!” [Chavez] said.

    He promised a slew of aid and investment, including 100,000 barrels of oil under preferential terms and the construction of an oil refinery and factories for Venezuelan products. Later, Ortega and Chavez signed agreements giving Nicaragua $20 million in loans with little or no interest for the country’s rural poor as well as help improving health care and education.

    All the while Chavez railed against US policy in the region, policy Chavez has claimed ruined Central American economies. But, not as much as communist guerillas in the region have ruined economies, I’ll wager.

  • Draining the swamp, Pelosi-style [UPDATED]

    According to the Washington Times and Congressional GOP members, these two are related in yesterday’s passage of the minimum wage bill. Pelosi’s constituent, Starkist tuna, benefitted by having it’s plant in Samoa exempted from the minimum wage hike the Democrats have been whining about for a decade. If it’s OK for employers as far away as the Mariannas to be subjected to the hike, and if the hike is needed for all Americans, what’s wrong with Samoans? Is this how Pelosi intends to “drain the swamp” in Congress? Can you imagine if a Republican had done this?

    UPDATE (7:16 AM 1-13-07): According to the Washington Times, Pelosi is moving to close the Samoan loophole now that she’s been busted on it. The most important part of the story, though is the reaction of non-voting Rep. Eni Faleomavaega of Samoa;

    A “decrease in production or departure of one or both of the two canneries in American Samoa could devastate the local economy, resulting in massive layoffs and insurmountable financial difficulties,” he said in a statement provided to The Times.
        “The truth is the global tuna industry is so competitive that it is no longer possible for the federal government to demand mainland minimum wage rates for American Samoa without causing the collapse of our economy and making us welfare wards of the federal government.”
        Melissa Murphy Brown, vice president for Del Monte, warned in a statement yesterday that applying the minimum wage at the tuna packing plants in American Samoa would “severely cripple the local economy.”

    Now the Democrats have claimed that raising the minimum wage wouldn’t hav an adverse effect on our economy, but here they are defending NOT raising the minimum by warning of the impact it would have on the economy. So which is it?

  • China joining the community of nations?

    In the Jerusalem Post (by way of Best of the Web) reports that the Chinese are having a change of heart about Iran’s nuclear program;

    In January 2006, Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, who diplomatic officials in Jerusalem have said is as concerned about a nuclear Iran as Israel, went to China and reportedly told the Chinese leadership that Saudi Arabia would make up for any oil shortfall that might arise were the Iranians to cut back oil to China as punishment for sanctions.

    Whether this is what had a decisive impact on the Chinese is uncertain, but it is clear that in December the Chinese, who historically have proven allergic to the idea of sanctions because of a fear that they may be used against it over issues such as human rights, Tibet and Taiwan, did support the initial UN Security Council sanctions against Iran.

    I’m sure that Iran’s falling oil production has something to do with it, too. Since the Chinese have decided that they want to trade with the world and lean towards free markets, they’ll be more civic-minded when dealing with other nations. Probably less so towards their own workforce, though.

    While Iran does not pose a direct threat to China, Beijing is concerned that a nuclear Iran would destabilize the region, something that could push oil prices way up and jeopardize the flow of oil – both of which could have a devastating effect on China’s breakneck economy.

    The power of capitalism at work.

  • Sadr sweating US “surge”

    So a Sadr aide, Sheikh Abdel Razzaq al-Nadawi makes the point of threatening that US troops “may return in coffins” in this Breitbart article.

    The problem of Iraq is the US presence and the increasing this presence will double the problem,” Nadawi told AFP on Friday.

    “This is not the first plan announced by Bush. All plans have failed and this plan will not be any better. We do not welcome this strategy and moreover we do not welcome the US soldiers,” he said.

    Nadawi accused Bush of taking decisions about Iraq’s security without consulting Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s government, who owes his job to the votes of 32 Sadrist deputies.

    Pretty brave stuff, but it reminds me of Baghdad Bob’s “There are no Americans in Baghdad” remark and Sadam’s “mother of all battles” speech. Everytime Arabs get backed into a corner or they’re facing anhilation, they put on a brave face and start yapping about how many Americans will die.

    I guess these Sadr-ites forget that they were almost irradicated a short couple of years ago and survive only because we got weak-kneed about Iraqi democracy. I think next time, ol’ Butterball-in-black and his fellow hairy fatties will pay the ultimate price.

     

  • WaPo undermining morale in the US

    I read with disgust a completely irrelevant story from the Washington Post’s Sudarsan Raghavan this morning about how a bunch of privates disagree with the President’s strategy in Iraq;

    Moments before he stepped into his squad’s Stryker — a large, bathtub-shaped vehicle encased in a cage — [Specialist] Caldwell echoed a sentiment shared by many in his squad: “They’re kicking a dead horse here. The Iraqi army can’t stand up on their own.”

    A specialist has about two years in the Army, and although I’m sure Specialist Caldwell is a fine combat soldier, I’m equally sure he’s not brilliant military strategist. having been in combat myself, I know that a soldier only sees a tiny part of the war, not having access to all of the intelligence and the benefit of seeing the big picture.

    But let’s see some other quotes;

    “The general feeling among us is we’re not really doing anything here,” Caldwell said. “We clear one neighborhood, then another one fires up. It’s an ongoing battle. It never ends.”

    Caldwell doesn’t see that there are perfectly peaceful areas of Iraq where there is no sectarian violence. After my time in combat, I spent most of my time asking superiors what happened.

    I know what me and my troops did, but since we were exchanging fire with the enemy one minute and then setting up a rest stop the next, I wasn’t even sure if the war was still going on or not. It took me months of research and asking simple questions to sort out the entire Gulf War and figure out my place in it. And I was a platoon sergeant.

    This is a useless article that highlights the fact that troops bitch. Troops have bitched since the days of Alexander the Great and they’ll bitch long after this war ends. For the Washington Post to dedicate an entire article to what a couple of privates think about the Iraqi Army is nothing more than undermining morale in the US and fueling anti-war, anti-Bush sentiments.

    Someone tell me when there are Americans working at the Post again. 

  • Lessons in Somalia

    Financial Times is reporting this morning that the European Commision and the Arab League are criticizing the US for using gunships against Islamists in Somalia;

    On Tuesday the Pentagon confirmed that an AC130 aircraft was used to target “the principal al-Qaeda leadership in the region”. The attack marked the first overt US military intervention in the Horn of Africa nation since its doomed invasion in the 1990s.

    The strike was criticised by the European Commission, as well as the Arab League which claimed it had killed “many innocent victims” and demanded that Washington refrain from further attacks. There were no accurate casualty figures.

    And even though the FT.com story says that we missed our targets in Somalia, Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough, in their Inside the Ring column today are reporting;

    Defenses sources said Aden Hashi Ayro, who led the Hizbul Shabaab, a violent army of young Islamists within the Somalian Islamic Courts Union, “is thought to have been wounded.” The Islamic Courts Union captured the capital last year, but a combined Ethiopian-Somalian government force routed the Islamists last month and regained Mogadishu.
        The sources said the United States obtained bloody clothes at the scene where five to 10 al Qaeda-linked suspects were killed.
        The sources declined to say how the clothing was obtained, but one source said U.S. commandos were operating in Somalia.
        Ayro is no small fish. He was trained in one of Osama bin Laden’s terror camps in Afghanistan before the 2001 U.S.-led invasion to topple the hard-line Taliban regime. He operated with al Qaeda members in Somalia and was thought to have associated with the three main targets of Monday’s attack: Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan and Abu Taha al-Sudani. 

    And the frontpage of the Washington Post announces there are now a small number of US troops in Somalia.

    A report in USA Today reports (by way of Captain’s Quarters) that Somalian warlords have decided to join the transitional government there;

    The warlords and the government have agreed to collaborate for the restoration of peace in Somalia,” said government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari.

    This proves two things I’ve been saying for years; the only thing people in that region understand is overwhelming force and it’s better for neighbors to handle miscreants in their particular regions than for the US to act like a global policeman.

    That piddling US mission to Somalia in the 90s was meant to be a meals-on-wheels mission, not an armed force to rebuild a failing society. Our forces operated out of tiny fortresses while the enemy ranged the country-side (like our wild west days). The Clinton Administration thought they could frighten Aidid into succumbing to our desires by conducting pin-prick operations which scared no one and tempting him with carrots.

    Ethiopia applied overwhelming force and drove the Islamists out of the country. It’s the same type of neighborhood policing that should have been taking place in the Middle East and with North Korea for the last few decades and we could have avoided the new arms race among those miscreants in Iran and North Korea.

    But because Old Europe and the Old Arabs can’t see past the nose on their collective face, they’ll be left behind and they’ll grow more irrelevant on the world stage.

  • A step in the right direction

    The following story from the WaPo about US troops raiding the Iranian embassy in Iraq;

    U.S. troops raided an Iranian consulate in northern Iraq late Wednesday night and detained several people, Iran’s main news agency reported today, prompting protests from Tehran just hours after President Bush pledged to crack down on the Islamic Republic’s role in Iraqi violence.

    Iran released news of the raid through its Islamic Republic News Agency in a dispatch that was broadly critical of Bush’s plan to deploy about 21,500 more troops to Iraq.

    The IRNA report said that U.S. forces entered the Iranian consulate in Irbil, in Iraq’s Kurdish-dominated north, and seized computers, documents and other items. The report said five staff members were taken into custody.

    The Iranian foreign ministry appealed to the Iraqi government to obtain the release of its personnel.

    What’s wrong Iran? Don’t like your embassies seized and your diplomats imprisoned?

    Neither do we.