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

Author: Jonn Lilyea

  • Corrosive unilateralism?

    Senator Pat Leahy accused President Bush of corrosive unilateralism. What the Hell is that? According to Leahy;

    Leahy plans to rein in President Bush’s program of wiretapping without warrants, rewrite the policy for handling terrorism detainees and more closely scrutinize nominees to the federal courts.

    So Leahy wants to just strip our country of any useful tools that we might have to combat the cancer that has infected the planet. If these programs are as damaging and illegal as Leahy claims, why doesn’t he just start bringing up charges instead of flapping his gums with empty platitudes.

    It’s strange that on the same day Leahy makes this bonehead statement, a federal judge upholds the President’s new terrorism law;

    A federal judge upheld the Bush administration’s new terrorism law Wednesday, agreeing that Guantanamo Bay detainees don’t have the right to challenge their imprisonment in U.S. courts.

    The ruling by U.S. District Judge James Robertson is the first to address the new Military Commissions Act and is a legal victory for the Bush administration at a time when it has been fending off criticism of the law from Democrats and libertarians.

    Judge Robertson rejected a legal challenge by Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden whose case prompted the Supreme Court to strike down the Bush administration’s policy on detainees last year.

    Makes Leahy look just a little bit ignorant of the law, doesn’t it?

    I’ve never hoped for another man’s misfortune, but it would be a sweet day if Tim Johnson needed to be replaced by the Republican governor of South Dakota just to see Senator Leaky denied access to our justice system and our weapons against the terrorists.

    However, in the interim, I wish the best for Senator Johnson and his family.

  • Thank you, Captain Obvious

    Robert Tracinski had a really spot-on piece in the WSJ’s Opinion Journal called Captain Obvious to the Rescue yesterday and since no one has picked up on it yet, I thought I’d just add a link and a teaser;

    In my student days back at the University of Chicago, there was a campus comedy troupe modeled on Second City, their more well-known uptown uncle. The U of C group was pretty funny, if in a somewhat bookish way. (Who else does a comedy routine based on “Oedipus Rex”?) One of their funniest bits was a recurring skit about a superhero named Captain Obvious. In each scene, a character would face a mundane problem, only to be “saved” by the banal and utterly unhelpful advice offered by Captain Obvious. “I’ve locked my keys in my car. What am I going to do?” “Well then,” replies Captain Obvious, “all you have to do is open the door to your car, and then you can get your keys.” Each scene ended the same way, with Captain Obvious proclaiming, “No, don’t thank me. It’s all in a day’s work for Captain Obvious.

    I’ve been reminded of this skit many times since, because I frequently hear the same kind of advice being given in Washington. Take, for example, the recommendations offered, to much fanfare, by the Iraq Study Group.

     

  • But they support the troops

    For some reason, the Democrats got it in their empty heads that their puny win in last month’s election has given them some sort of mandate for immediate withdrawal from Iraq. Dennis Kuchinich, the man-child of the Democrat Party has announced his run for President in 2008  by declaring that he’s the only peace candidate.

    Mr. Kucinich said the Democratic takeover of Congress in last month’s elections suggests the American people want serious change in Iraq.
        “They voted for the Democrats because they expected us to … bring our troops home,” he said. “What kind of credibility will our party have if we say we are opposed to the war but continue to fund it?”

    First of all, mentioning credibility and the Democrat party in the same sentence shows how Little Denny is out-of-touch. But, besides that, does Kucinich realize that a vast number of Americans voted for Republicans and that the average American would prefer to fight Islamic extremism in Iraq than in our country?

    But Kucinich isn’t the only one. Iowa’s Tom Vilsack is also running for President on a peace platform. His website declares that the President needs to adopt the ISG’s recommendations immediately in a press release last week;

    The President’s reaction will send a loud and clear message on whether he’s listening to the American people’s call for a change in policy for Iraq.

    Where was this call? How could the American voter choose to vote against the war when the Democrats never told us what their strategy was before the election?

    Are these guys listening to the American troops? Check out Flopping Aces for the video of Sean Hannity’s interview with the troops who love their country and want to protect us from Islamofacists.

    Someone please tell Vilsack and Kuscinich that Americans apparently understand the threat better than what they want to give us credit for. And our troops are apparently willing to give it all for us. As long as those two events happen simultaneously, we’re golden.

  • McCaffery gets it wrong, too

    1 First let me say, I have immense respect for retired general Barry McCaffery having served under him a few times. What he did with the 24th Division at Rumailia after Desert Storm was amazing – since I was riding to their rescue while they were wiping out a rogue division of Republican Guards. Turns out they didn’t me.

    However, his piece in the Washington Post this morning illustrates why he should remain retired and he was a better commander than a politician.

    Within the first 12 months we should draw down the U.S. military presence from 15 Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs), of 5,000 troops each, to 10. Within the next 12 months, Centcom forces should further draw down to seven BCTs and withdraw from urban areas to isolated U.S. operating bases — where we could continue to provide oversight and intervention when required to rescue our embedded U.S. training teams, protect the population from violence or save the legal government.

    Finally, we have to design and empower a regional diplomatic peace dialogue in which the Iraqis can take the lead, engaging their regional neighbors as well as their own alienated and fractured internal population.

    Again, like the Baker Commission, McCaffery is calling for a force stationed outside of Iraq to protect military trainers inside Iraq – once again recalling the Mobile Training Team strategy of Viet Nam days. And he calls for a diplomatic solution involving Iran – who doesn’t want diplomacy. If that’s not clear after this week’s Halocaust denial fest in Tehran, I don’t what clear means.

    In fact, as Captain’s Quarters reports this morning, quoting from a New York Times article, even Saudi Arabia warned Dick Cheney that the US pullout in Iraq might trigger a bloodbath there. They also warned against talks with Iran. It looks like the Saudis are afraid of a proxy war between Iran (Shi’ite) and the Saudis (Sunni) in Iraq. The Saudis state that the only reason they haven’t supported Sunnis in Iraq yet is because al Qaeda is mainly Sunni and opposed to the House of Saud. (Congressman Reyes; are you taking notes?)

    There is only one solution, as distasteful and extreme as it seems, and that is to remove the terror support system that resides in Iran. A system that has operated out of Iran for two-and-a-half decades in full view of the rest of the world. There’s no pussy-footing around any more. Iran has shown that it doesn’t want to be in the community of nations by ignoring calls to stop their nuclear program. The government isn’t acting in the interest of their people any longer – they are acting in the interest of a few extremists.

    Yeah, Syria’s a problem, too, but they’d collapse once they lost the support of Iran.

    There’s only one way to defeat an irrational player who has praised Hitler and his extermination of Jews (while denying it ever happened) and that’s with extreme measures. Not playing paddy-cake.

  • THE Man

    Bill Gertz has a great interview in the Washington Times this morning with Air Force Brig. Gen. Mark O. Schissler, the deputy director for the war on terrorism within the strategic plans office of the Pentagon’s Joint Staff.

    It’s nice to see that there are REAL generals left in the military that don’t mind saying what we’ve all been saying out here in the REAL WORLD. Here’s a teaser;

     “But that’s not enough to stop it. We’ve got to break the chain, and that’s … the ideology. We really need to show the errors in Islamist extremist thinking.”
        Gen. Schissler said he is concerned that Washington politics is weakening the will of the nation.
        “I don’t care about the politics. I care about people understanding the facts of what’s our enemy is thinking about, what’s our strategy to defeat them, and for [Americans] to understand that it will take a long fight, mostly because our enemy is committed to the long fight,” he said. “They’re absolutely committed to the 50-, 100-year plan.”

    The American people get so wrapped up in the numbers like some kind of high-scoring basketball game instead of realizing that we have to crush an ideology and grind it into the ground until it’s not cost-effective for these Islamofacists to kill innocent people anywhere in the world. THEY’RE the ones who need to call for talks with the civilized societies, because they’re the ones who have to stop the wholesale slaughter.

    Like I said, it’s good to see that there are planners in the Pentagon that get it – and not just budgets and buying whiz-bang gadgets and talking nice to the press and Congress. I suspect there are more generals like Schissler.

  • Gore has his priorities straight

    Finally recognizing that he’s a complete and utter disaster as a politician, Gore has decided to compete for something he can win without having to connect with real people;

    Al Gore is waging a fierce campaign for recognition and an Oscar statuette for his global warming documentary, while reviving talk that he’s pursuing a bigger prize: the presidency.
        His recent itinerary has been the ultimate in high profile. The former vice president made self-deprecating jokes on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno,” offered ideas on preserving the environment to Oprah Winfrey and parried questions on Iraq from Matt Lauer on the “Today” show.
        On Saturday, Mr. Gore is hosting a network of 1,600 house parties across the country to watch and discuss his documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” with the Democrat planning to address the gatherings by satellite hookup. The movie is on the short list of feature-length documentaries being considered for Oscar nominations.

    So let Hollywood put up with the manbearpig campaigning against them for a while – so they can see how big a bullet they dodged in 2000 like the rest of us already know.

  • Iran’s Holocaust forum

    I really tried to ignore this, since it’s just plain ignorant for ayone to believe that the only reason Israel exists is because of the deprivations of the 30s and 40s. Jews have been persecuted throughout their history but the narrowminded anti-Zionists have given the world something to get behind together.

    I’ve read the other blogs, like Little Green Footballs, where everyone has said everything about these tiny-brained bigots much better than I could have ever done. I’m simply amazed that the media is treating this like it’s a normal event – like it’s good for us to hear a different opinion on every subject – including the opinion that Israel doesn’t have the right to exist because there was no Halocaust.

    Now I’m not Jewish, but I have to reason to doubt that the Halocaust happened. I’ve been to Dachau and Bergen-Belsen and I could smell the death in the air decades after the Halocaust. I’ve been to the mass grave containing the bodies of over 700 displaced Eastern Europeans behind the barracks at Wildflecken.

    Since the premise of this whole exercise is the expression of free speech, and the free exchange of differing ideas, let’s all go to Iran and discuss whether Mohammed really existed or not. Let’s see how long that discussion would last.

    It sort of reminds of the Democrats hiding behind their “loyal opposition” facade, claiming to not be anti-American, just exchanging ideas. All it really is, in both cases, is undermining order and peace in the world with hate. REAL hate speech not that imagined sort that makes the newspapers in this country.

    I wonder how the Left feels standing shoulder-to-shoulder with human punchline David Dukes.

  • Silvestre fails test. So?

    I watched this unfold on CNN’s Headline News this morning during my workout and I kinda figured it’d happen. Apparently the Left is turning on Silvestre Reyes, Pelosi’s latest choice to prevent Jane Harmon from being the chair of the House Intelligence Committee. 

    Since he came out for more troops in Iraq and stated that we “can’t afford to lose in Iraq” last week, I’d have bet his days as the chairman were numbered since that position is diametrically opposed to Pelosi and the rest of the hate Bush crowd in Congress (and the particular position that got Harmon on Pelosi’s bad side). So now we get to watch them eat their own.

    First off, Reyes should have known better than “take a quiz” from the press anyway. How much good has it ever done anyone to take a quiz or a poll from any news organization. Second of all, Jeff Stein wouldn’t have given the quiz to Reyes if he hadn’t known in advance that he’d fail.

    Besides, who cares if al Qaeda is Sunni or Shi’ite? What stupid difference does it make? Did anyone ever bother to segregate German military groups into Catholic or Lutherans during the war in Europe? Did it ever matter to anyone whether Castro was a Marxist, Stalinist or Trotskyite?

    If al Queda were Shi’ite, would any of their victims be less dead? Would it change their tactics? Would it have the least bit of impact on anything they did or anything we do?

    This is the media just trying to prove to everyone how smart they are. I’ll bet good cash money that Stein didn’t know either before he went in to give this “quiz” to Silvestre.

    Why would I defend a Democrat? Because judging by what he said last week and judging by his voting record on National Security, aside from Harmon, he was probably the best choice for the job given the pool of eligible candidates.

    The mainstream media needs to go back to reporting what is happening and stop trying to create news and stop trying to become the news. It’s not up to CNN or CQ to decide who should have oversight of our intelligence operations.