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

Category: Foreign Policy

  • More common sense from Joe Lieberman

    This morning’s Washington Post has another op/ed from Joe Lieberman – one that I find hard to argue with.

    Last week a series of coordinated suicide bombings killed more than 170 people. The victims were not soldiers or government officials but civilians — innocent men, women and children indiscriminately murdered on their way home from work and school.

    If such an atrocity had been perpetrated in the United States, Europe or Israel, our response would surely have been anger at the fanatics responsible and resolve not to surrender to their barbarism.

    Well, if it had been perpetrated in the US, it would depend on which party was running the White House that would determine where the blame would be placed. When Bill Clinton was president and the World Trade center was attacked, Americans generally blamed Islamic terrorists. When the WTC was attacked a second time while George W. Bush was President, Americans generally disagreed about who was at fault. Not that anyone is playing politics with American lives or anything (eyes roll skyward).

    Fortunately, former Democrat Joe Lieberman sees the same political game playing out in this case, too;

    Unfortunately, because this slaughter took place in Baghdad, the carnage was seized upon as the latest talking point by advocates of withdrawal here in Washington. Rather than condemning the attacks and the terrorists who committed them, critics trumpeted them as proof that Gen. David Petraeus’s security strategy has failed and that the war is “lost.”

    In fact, a skeptic might say that al Qaida and the Democrats are acting in tandem to defeat our policy in Iraq.

    And today, perversely, the Senate is likely to vote on a binding timeline of withdrawal from Iraq.

    This reaction is dangerously wrong. It reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of both the reality in Iraq and the nature of the enemy we are fighting there.

    What is needed in Iraq policy is not overheated rhetoric but a sober assessment of the progress we have made and the challenges we still face.

    Unfortunately, overheated rhetoric is the only thing we get from Democrats because the place politics before our national security. That was illustrated in the 218-208 vote in the House yesterday to pass a bill that the President has declared dead on arrival. The Democrats know what the President will and will not sign, they’re the ones who are constantly whining about the lack of bi-partisanship, so why didn’t they craft legislation that they know the President will sign instead of some political payment to the extremes of their party’s contituency?

    Lieberman also summarizes what no one else on the Left cares to admit;

    Al-Qaeda’s strategy for victory in Iraq is clear. It is trying to kill as many innocent people as possible in the hope of reigniting Shiite sectarian violence and terrorizing the Sunnis into submission.

    In other words, just as Petraeus and his troops are working to empower and unite Iraqi moderates by establishing basic security, al-Qaeda is trying to divide and conquer with spectacular acts of butchery.

    It makes all of us intellectually honest people wonder why the Democrats would buy into such a defeatist and ill-considered strategy if their motives weren’t purely political.

    Senator Lieberman sums his piece up nicely;

    Al-Qaeda, after all, isn’t carrying out mass murder against civilians in the streets of Baghdad because it wants a more equitable distribution of oil revenue. Its aim in Iraq isn’t to get a seat at the political table; it wants to blow up the table — along with everyone seated at it.

    The Democrats know that, even if the Code Pink and KosKids don’t. But their answer to complex problems is simple. S.A. Miller of the Washington Times quoted David Obey this morning in the Washington Times;

    “This bill gives the president the exit strategy from the Iraqi civil war that up until now he has not had,” said Rep. David R. Obey, Wisconsin Democrat and House Appropriations Committee chairman.

    See? The war in Iraq is just politics as usual. Disregard the lives, disregard that the downtrodden and oppressed of the world will toss away all hope when we leave the Iraqis to the will of the Islamist extremists – like we left the South Vietnamese in ’75, the Iraqi Shi’ites in ’91, the Somalis in ’93, the Haitians in ’95. Just to appease al-Qaida and the Code Pink crybabies.

    John Murtha as much as admits that its purely political to AP’s Anne Flaherty (via the Washington Examiner);

    Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., said Democrats were still considering their next step. He said after Bush’s veto, one option would be funding the war through September as Bush wants but setting benchmarks that the Iraqi government must meet.

    “I think everything that passes will have some sort of condition (placed) on it,” he said. Ultimately, Murtha added, the 2008 military budget considered by Congress in June “is where you’ll see the real battle,” he said.

    So they sent this to the President knowing it’d get vetoed. If they were serious about ending this war successfully, they would have hammered out something the President would sign, or something they could over-ride his veto with a 2/3 majority. Instead, they want to make empty political, pointless statements. Just wasting time. How many troops will get killed, how many more attacks will be planned against us while the Democrats play partisan towel-snapping? 

  • Obama in his own world

    Reading Stephen Dinan from the Washington Times today, I see that Obama thinks that the US has let the world down – whatever that means. But he’s going to pick the world back up. How? Why, with your tax dollars – he’s going to buy friendship like that pathetic little rich dork in grade school who handed out nickels to people to act like he’s their friend;

    Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama said yesterday that the United States has let the world down under the leadership of President Bush, who he said has been a “disappointment” to other countries, as he proposed doubling the foreign-aid budget as a way of recapturing global leadership. 

    Yeah, I’m pretty sure the Euro-weenies miss the days Bill Clinton would show up with a bag of goodies to hand out to them – and he’d ignore the goodies they had stacked in the corner from Saddam Hussein.

    Obama had more pie-in-the-sky stuff;

    Mr. Obama called for boosting the size of the U.S. Army and Marines, training more troops in language skills and expanding efforts to contain the spread of weapons of mass destruction. And he called for doubling U.S. foreign assistance spending by 2012 — a move that he said would mean $50 billion a year — noting that doing so would help meet the goal set by British Prime Minister Tony Blair. 

    I thought the military was having trouble meeting recruiting goals as it is, how’s he going to expand the military without a draft? Does he think we have a secret farm where we get soldiers bred for the job and all we have to do is increase production a hair?

    And it’s nice to see that he plans on meeting our contribution goals set by foreign governments. Maybe the Euro-weenies can dictate policy to us again, too, like they when they committed us to Kosovo and Bosnia.

    He claims that $50 billion isn’t all that much – it’s only 1% of our GDP. he sounds like a used carsalesman telling us that we can afford the monthly payment on that BMW when we know we really can’t.
     

  • Fences make good neighbors

    I’m beginning to wonder what the Left has against walls and fences. Reading the most partisan hack in the Washington Post, Eugene Robinson, on the subject of the “gated communities” in Baghdad makes me think that the Left has never liked a fence or wall;

    Basically, we’re turning Baghdad into Belfast.

    This is supposed to be a temporary expedient, a way to tamp down Iraq’s sectarian civil war — in the capital, at least, the ostensible goal of George W. Bush’s fraudulent “surge” policy — by making it harder for the antagonists to get at each other’s throats. The “peace lines” in Belfast, separating Protestants from Catholics, were supposed to be temporary, too. That network of walls was begun in the 1970s.

    The construction of barriers and checkpoints that turn Baghdad neighborhoods into what U.S. officers sardonically call “gated communities” is another sign — as if more evidence were needed — that Bush’s “surge” is nothing more than a maneuver to buy time. His open-ended commitment for U.S. forces to patrol those barriers and guard those checkpoints will become the next president’s problem.

    But the Left is adamantly opposed to walls anywhere, as near as I can tell. Republicans want a wall along our southern border to keep illegal immigrants from infiltrating into our country and then dying of thirst or from bands of roving preditors.

    The Left also oppose the Israelis building a wall to protect themselves from Palestinian baby-killers. And it almost seems to be working.

    If the Left are peace-mongers, as they claim, wouldn’t building protective walls be a reasonable alternative to snipers and armed paramilitary police forces enforcing curfews at the point of a gun? It almost seems reasonable to me.

    During the 60s, 70s and 80s, the Left resigned themselves to the fact that the Communists had erected a deadly barrier across Europe to keep the Soviet population enslaved. The Left continues to tolerate the barrier that slashes the Korean pennisula’s two opposing ideologies. 

    In fact, the Left trembled when Ronald Reagan demanded that Soviet Premier Gorbachov tear down his wall from the shadow of the Brandenburg Gate.  And they lamented the end of history, and the failures of their ideology when that wall finally fell.

    I guess walls are only a good idea when they’re used to preserve Leftist ideology against evil capitalists instead of a bulwark for peace.

    Omar from Iraq the Model (writing on Pajamas Media) gives his thoughts on the walls from an Iraqi point of view – not from a partisan-hack-masquerading-as-a-journalist-point-of-view.

    Maybe Robinson should have taken the time to ask Iraqis what they thought of the walls instead of just going off-cocked against the Administration, specifically, and Republicans, generally, in his usual modus operandi. 

  • Ahmadinejad; deal or no deal

    All of the wire services seem to be enthralled in the news that Iranian President Ahmadinejad has offered to have a media-circus style talk face-to-face with President Bush. From AP:

    “Last year, I announced readiness for a televised debate over global issues with his excellency Mr. Bush. And now we announce that I am ready to negotiate with him about bilateral issues as well as regional and international issues,” Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying on the Web site of Al-Alam.

    The Iranian leader did not elaborate on what specifically he wanted to talk to Bush about, but he said the talks “should be held with media present.”

    Of course the media should be present from his point of view. While the US would have to be polite and smile, the Iranian can flail his arms about and sound tough in President Bush’s face. What a wonderful propaganda piece that would be for the tyrants of the world.

    So Ahmadinejad wants to talk peace – the why does he make veiled threats?

    Ahmadinejad also told Al-Alam that he thought the U.S. was “unlikely” to use military force against Iran because of its nuclear program.

    Iran’s nuclear program is for peaceful energy production, ostensibly, yet Ahmadinejad sees it as a defensive weapon. So which is it, Amie, boy? Above his viewing stand last week at a military parade, according to the Hindustan Times, was this sign;

    “Peaceful nuclear technology is a fundamental and basic need for our country.”

    But then he threatens the rest of the world with his real or imagined nuclear power.

    Then out of the other side of his mouth, the Iranian thug refuses to comply with EU preconditions to a talk with them. According to AFP;

    President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday vowed that Iran would not give up its “right” to enrich uranium, ahead of key talks between its chief nuclear negotiator and the EU foreign policy chief. 

    “The suspension of uranium enrichment is not legal and the Western demands for this are political,” Ahmadinejad told Iran’s Arabic language channel Al-Alam television, according to a simultaneous translation of the live interview.

    Of course the reasons are political. That’s what political preconditions for poltical discussions are – political. Want them to be religious?

    I wonder when the nations of the world are going to admit that Iran is no longer a rational actor. Certainly not as long as they make idiot statements like this one reported by Reuters;

    But Ahmadinejad said: “Iran will not accept it because the sanctions are not legal, so you cannot ask a country to suspend its legal activities in return for a suspension of an illegal move.”

    How can sanctions against Iran be illegal since it is the policy of every organization of governments to stop the expansion of nuclear weapon availability, but Iran is not only trying to build on their own program, but they’ve offered aid to other Gulf States in building their own nuclear programs.

    “Our doctrine is a defensive one. Iran will not attack any country in the world. I repeat we will not attack any country in the world. But if we are attacked we will respond,” said Ahmadinejad.

    That’s all well and good, except that they don’t recognize Israel as a country, do they? From Ace of Spades, we learn that Iran’s “defensive doctrine” includes commanding Hizbollah’s attacks in Lebanon and against Israel;

    “The religious doctrine which dictates Hizbullah’s actions in general and those relating to the Jihad in particular, is based on the rulings of the spiritual leader in Teheran. The spiritual leader has the power to permit our actions, and the spiritual leader can forbid them.

    “In order to know what is permitted and forbidden regarding the Jihad, we ask for and receive overall permission and only then do we carry out the operation.

    “Even with regard to the suicide bombings, no one is allowed to kill himself without religious authorization.

    “Even the rocket attacks on Israel, against the civilian population [Aug 2006] … in order to apply pressure, even this required overall religious authorization.”

    From the AP article again;

    The Iranian leader said a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities was a wrong approach to solving the issue.

    “If some think that by resorting to threats they (can) change the world in favor of themselves, they are wrong,” Al-Alam quoted him as saying.

    But he’s leaving us little choice, is he? He won’t comply with conditions for a peaceful resolution. He claims sanctions are illegal, he claims his program won’t be discontinued. What other choice does the world have?

    Since every civilized nation on the planet has proven, at one time or another to be weak-kneed in the face of Iranian anti-social behavior, what other conclusion can Ahmadinejad arrive at other than the fact that we’re a bunch of sissies who won’t stand up to his backward, backwater nation of sheepherders.

    They’re not backwards? Then why are they punishing women for the way they dress, like we’re told by Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs? They want to join the nuclear club while living in the 12th century.

    But I’m sure Harry Reid can save us. And Hillary is working overtime for the rights of women in Iran.

  • The war is still lost

    So, the war is still lost according to Reid’s defenders in Congress – despite the fact that his press office told me on the phone that Reid was misquoted on Friday. John Murtha, afraid that Reid might steal his title as the biggest troop-hater is reported by Fox News as saying;

    “I am proud of these troops and what they have done,” said Murtha, D-Pa. “They won the war and the mission was accomplished. We cannot win it militarily. It can only be won diplomatically.”

    In typical Democrat fashion, Murtha tries to have it both ways. The troops have done a great job losing the war.

    Not to be out done, Dennis Kucinich, who has been stoned since August 1, 1990, apparently, yips;

    “Our soldiers didn’t lose the war,” said Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio. “I maintain the war was lost the minute the White House fabricated a cause for war.”

    How did the Bush White House fabricate a cause for war when we’ve been at war with Hussein since he invaded Kuwait, Dennis?

    But at least fewer Republicans are jumping ship like they did earlier this year;

    “Whether or not some choose to acknowledge it, we are at war with militant Islamists who seek our destruction,” Ros-Lehtinen said. “Yet some on the other side of the aisle today announced that the war is lost in Iraq. This comment shows little understanding of the ability and determination of our men and women in the Armed Forces.”

    But other Republicans, like Chuck Hagel, can’t help themselves from caving in to the anti-war rhetoric from Reid, like he did this morning in the Washington Post;

    We are at a crossroads at home. One option is that Congress can pass and the president can sign a war-funding bill that gives our troops the resources they need and places responsible conditions on that funding that will press the Iraqi government to perform and make the tough choices. President Bush should not see this as a threat from Congress but as a reasonable progression of events after four bloody and costly years.

    The other option is that the president can veto the funding bill, Congress can overplay its hand, and both sides can get locked into a political standoff — with U.S. troops caught in the middle. This would not produce constructive pressure on the Iraqi government to reconcile its differences, and it would ensure that the United States would remain trapped in Iraq, doing ever-greater damage to our force structure and military capabilities.

    See? If the President just signs on to the Democrats’ $40 billion of pork and wasteful spending everything will be just fine. If the President capitulates and surrenders to the Democrats (and their al Qaida allies), we all win, sort of. Nevermind that a withdrawal timeline was never part of the trumpeted ISG study, and is the major point of contention between the Democrats and the President.

    When Democrats don’t fund our troops, it’ll be the President’s fault that he’s still leading the nation instead of sticking his finger in the wind like Hagel.

    The Democrats are adamant that the President sign their ill-crafted and cobbled-together legislation even though they, themselves, don’t believe in it. But it’s all they can get passed – and they aren’t sure what Plan B should include. From Reuters via WaPo;

    But when a Democratic-controlled panel of Senate and House of Representatives members meets on Monday to iron out differences between their respective bills, the product is expected to contain 2008 withdrawal dates.

    Many lawmakers have been speculating those dates might be nonbinding, as sketched out by a Senate-passed bill.

    More non-binding BS. And the President told them a month ago he was going to veto their sludge, so why are they just now getting around to “mulling” their options as AP reports;

    Democrats are considering their next step after President Bush’s inevitable veto of their war spending proposal, including a possible short-term funding bill that would force Congress to revisit the issue this summer.

    Another alternative is providing the Pentagon the money it needs for the war but insisting that the Iraqi government live up to certain political promises. Or, sending Bush what he wants for now and setting their sights on 2008 spending legislation.

    This is what is considered “leadership” by the Democrats. Instead of dictating what they’ll accept, they navel-gaze and pontificate and keep their fingers crossed that more troops will die in Iraq so the American people will back their assanine duct-tape and baling-wire spending plans.

    But they can’t dictate, because what they won’t admit is that the majority of Americans don’t trust Democrats with foreign policy. If the majority of Americans had the opinions on the war that the Democrats claim we have, they’d have a bullet-proof majority in Congress instead of a razor-thin majority. And Nancy Pelosi’s poll numbers wouldn’t have tanked after her ring-kissing exercise in Syria.

    But don’t worry. When Hillary is President, she’ll appoint her husband to be a roving diplomat, according to AP via the Washington Times;

     Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said yesterday that if she is elected president, she would make her husband a roaming ambassador to the world, using his skills to repair the nation’s tattered image abroad.
        “I can’t think of a better cheerleader for America than Bill Clinton, can you?” the New York Democrat asked a crowd jammed into a junior high school gymnasium. “He has said he would do anything I asked him to do. I would put him to work.”

    Isn’t that what got us into this mess in the first place? Half-assed engagements with our nation’s enemies like Somalia, Haiti, Iraq, Serbia, Bosnia, East Timor, Iraq again, the Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq again, Rwanda. And don’t forget his apologies to Africans for our role in the slave trade.

    And then to provide some comic relief, Clinton makes this bizarre statement;

    “They have shown contempt for our government,” Mrs. Clinton said. “We’ve got to get back to having qualified people, not cronies, serving in the government of the United States.” 

    As if Whitewater, the missing FBI files, the Travel Office firings, Vince Foster’s death, the IRS investigations, the Kathrine Willy seduction, the Juanita Broadrick cover-up and all of the other, more obvious and famous corruption, crony-ism and deception never happened.

    Yeah, we need more of that.  That’s real Democrat leadership.

    At Hang Right Politics, COgirl reports Nevadans’ opinions of Harry Reid’s comment.

    Dafydd at Big Lizards analyzes the events in Iraq that Reid used to support his pre-emptive surrender.

    No rant against Reid is complete without Joe Lieberman’s response;

    With all due respect, I strongly disagree. Senator Reid’s statement is not based on military facts on the ground in Iraq and does not advance our cause there.

    Michele Malkin has anti-war quotes from John Edwards, email responses from troops and pointed me towards Mohammed from Iraq the Model who asks;

    Instead of telling us to stop fighting back, I’d like to see some people stand up and protest the crimes of the terrorists and tell them to stop the killing and destruction…turn the stop-the-war campaign against the terrorists, is that too much to ask for?

    If we can’t even blame the lone guy that gunned down 32 people last week, how are we gonna summon the testicular fortitude to condemn an entire organization of psychopaths? I guess those poor Iraqis must be laboring under the misperception that we’re a rational people.

  • Reid; The war is lost (Updated)

    I noticed on a couple of blogs and discussion boards last night that Harry Reid can’t wait for the new tactical plan and the new commander in Iraq to have their effect so he called it a defeat pre-emptively. The Washington Post buried the story on page 3 (it’s not on their front web page, either – I had to “search” “Reid+war+is+lost”);

    President Bush warned Thursday that pulling out of Iraq too soon would trigger a bloodbath akin to that of the Cambodian killing fields of the 1970s, while Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid declared that it is too late to stay because the war has already been lost.

    On a day that reverberated with echoes of the Vietnam War era, Bush and Reid (D-Nev.) engaged in a long-distance debate over the lessons of history and the fate of the latest overseas war as part of a struggle over $100 billion in funding for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Reid cast Iraq as another Vietnam and Bush as another Lyndon B. Johnson, while the president described dire consequences if the past repeats itself.

    And over at the Washington Times, Joseph Curl and S.A. Miller report that Reid was having a senior moment and can’t distinguish between things that only happen in his mind and things that happen with real people;

    “This war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything as indicated by the extreme violence in Iraq yesterday,” Mr. Reid, Nevada Democrat, said at a Capitol Hill press conference with anti-war state legislators.
        Mr. Reid said that both Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates agree with his position, though neither has ever declared defeat.
        “You have to make your own decisions as to what the president knows,” said Mr. Reid, who left the press conference without fielding follow-up questions.
        The White House said no one recalled Mr. Reid saying “the war is lost” at the meeting with the president.

    Surprisingly enough, when I called Reid’s office this morning just to be sure that the media didn’t quote him wrong or take him out context, my call got switched to a mail box which was full and then dumped. Hmmm-I wonder if Reid is taking any heat.

    The Washington Post story goes on to illustrate how dingy Harry really is;

    “I know that I was like the odd guy out yesterday at the White House,” Reid said. “But I, at least, told him what he needed to hear, not what he wants to hear. I did that, and my conscience is clear.”

    So even though no one in the White House, according to the Washington Times, remembers Harry saying the war is lost, Harry still thinks it happened. And the Washington Times tells us the troops aren’t even in theater while Reid is calling it a failure;

    Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, this week said a little over half of the 25,000-troop surge he requested has arrived in Baghdad.

    Crotchety Old Bastard emailed me last night (for those of you who don’t know, his son deployed to Iraq late last year on the speartip of the surge in the mighty 1/325th Airborne Infantry Regiment) and he’s asking for everyone to post comments that he can print out and dump on Reid’s desk when he visits here soon. Michele Malkin put COB’s letter to Reid on her front page.

    Curt at Flopping Aces has the best multi-media blog post I’ve seen on this latest crybaby Dingy Harry exercise in mental masturbation. Although, Crotchety Old Bastard is much angrier.

    UPDATE: OK, so I got through to Reid’s office this morning at about 8:30 and talked to his press office. The young man explained to me that Reid’s comments were taken out of context and that Senator Reid regrets that he’s been misquoted. Apparently, Reid said “As long as we continue to follow the president’s current strategy, the war is lost.”

    My original contention that Reid is ignoring the fact that the new strategy hasn’t even been fully implemented still stands. Reid’s office told me that the new strategy must include the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group – that the bulk of US troops need to be “redeployed” (his word not mine) out of Iraq.

    That’s just baffling. While Reid is calling the President a reincarnation of Lyndon Johnson, he’s also calling for implementing the Johnson policy of reaction forces to protect mobile training teams. So I guess we’re at the point where we just have to assume that Harry Reid is insane as well as being a lying political sack of camel dung.

  • Summits, summits everywhere…

    Washington Times reports two summits happening for the benefit of Iraq in the next few weeks. One in Egypt on May 3rd for the “Arab Street” and one in the White House for the Democrat leadership next week.

    From WashTimes David Sands, Iraqi hopes are pinned to the outcome of their Egypt meeting;

    “It would be a real slap in the face” if the May 3 gathering at the Egyptian resort city of Sharm el Sheik failed to produce concrete offers, Ibrahim Gambari, the U.N. undersecretary-general overseeing the Iraq-reconstruction program, said in an interview Tuesday with The Washington Times.
        “It could undermine the vision of [Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri] al-Maliki and his government to take the steps needed to restore Iraq’s economy,” the veteran Nigerian diplomat added.
        Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh warned on a Washington visit yesterday that Iran is ready to expand its clout inside Iraq if Arab rivals like Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Kuwait fail to support Iraq’s economic recovery.
        “If the Arab countries do not step up, Iran’s influence in Iraq will grow,” Mr. al-Dabbagh said. 

    Later on in the story, Sands tells us that the US and the “Paris Club” are forgiving substantial portions Iraq’s $120 billion debt, but the Arabs aren’t so forthcoming on forgiving the debts of their Arab neighbor.

    Isn’t that what started this mess in the first place? I remember Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990 because he was deeply indebted to his Arab brothers after fighting off the Iranians and preventing the spread of fundamentalism throughout the Gulf region. Kuwait wouldn’t give him any concessions or breaks on repayment so he took their oilfields (a REAL war for oil). Well, I guess no one has ever accused the Arabs of learning from history.

    The other summit, according to Joseph Curl and S.A. Miller, is the meeting in the White House that President offered to the Democrats the other day and they spent all day yesterday feigning outrage that the President was sticking to his principles rather than caving in to their $20 billion graft-ridden defense supplemental bill.

      “We will listen to his position, but in return we will insist that he listen to concerns of the American people that his policies in Iraq have failed and we need to change course,” they said.
        Earlier in the day, Mr. Reid balked when the White House announced that the Nevada Democrat had agreed to attend the meeting and discuss the $100 billion war-funding bill that Mr. Bush has vowed to veto.
        Reid spokesman Jim Manley had said the Nevada Democrat would rebuff offers to talk until he gets “a signal from the White House that they are prepared to drop their demand that this meeting is a listening session only and this meeting will not include negotiations.”
        Mrs. Pelosi, California Democrat, also began the day declining Mr. Bush’s invitation — reiterating the stance the leaders took Tuesday after the White House characterized Congress’ role in the meeting as listeners not negotiators.
        There was no indication from the White House last night that the president had altered the terms of his invitation.

    I guess the Democrats workshopped their response and found out they’d be holding the brown end of the stick. That “concerns of the American” people crap is wearing a little thin. I’ll say it one more time for those of you not paying attention; if you spoke for the American people, we would have elected enough of you that you wouldn’t have to worry about the President’s veto.

    I hope whichever way these meetings break, it’s in the best interest of the iraqi people – who really do need a break from all of this posturing and politicking.

  • Syria’s martyrdom superhighways

    In today’s DC Examiner, Rowan Scarborough tells us that Syria is the entry-point for suicide bombers in Iraq;

    Al-Qaida in Iraq is operating three main entry routes for suicide bombers coming into Iraq from Syria, despite more than three years of U.S. efforts to control the border and convince Damascus to evict the jihadists, an American military officer said Tuesday.

    A bomber struck again in Iraq Tuesday, this time a woman who detonated a bomb under her black abaya, killing herself and 16 others at a police recruiting station. It could not be learned if she was an Iraqi or an imported terrorist. But the U.S. command says the vast majority of suicide bombers — al-Qaida’s principal means of attack — are foreigners.

    This should delight Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi who just last week announced to the world that Syria is the key to peace in the Middle East (if only the US and Israel would trust President Bashar Asad). Now she and Holocaust survivor Tom Lantos hinted that they’d be willing to go to visit Holocaust-denier Ahmadinejad and do for Iran what they did in Syria – lend legitimacy to rogue entities in the Middle East.

    This Op/Ed appeared in the Washington Times (h/t Dadmanly)on February 20th – well before Pelosi headed to Syria – I wonder if she confronted Assad about this intelligence;

      Regional intelligence services and inside sources from within Sunni officer corps opposed to the Assad regime have identified major foreign-fighter training camps in northern Syria and just outside Damascus overseen by Syrian Military Intelligence and run by former Iraqi Ba’athi Generals and senior Saddam Fedayeen commanders.
        One major foreign fighter camp exists in the Latakia province in northern Syria, a mountainous area replete with Syrian Military Intelligence facilities and wide swaths of ostensibly government property closed to the public. The Iraqi officer in charge there is one Maj. Gen. Majid Sulayman. Yet another such camp exists 40 kilometers to the west of the border town of Qamishli, which lies in the Kurdish area in the northeastern tip of Syria bordering Iraq and Turkey; it is run by Maj. Gen. Qays al-Adhami. The al-Shaybani camp lies 30 kilometers south of Damascus and also trains foreign fighters. The al-Ikhals camp lies in the heart of the Qaysun mountain range near Damascus.

    Please read the entire details of the Op/Ed piece.

    And AP reports that the Mahdi Army commanders admit they’ve trained their troops and receive material support in Iran;

    Iranian intelligence operatives have been training Iraqi fighters inside Iran on how to use and assemble deadly roadside bombs known as EFPs, the U.S. military spokesman said today.
        Commanders of a splinter group inside the Shi’ite Mahdi Army militia have said that as many as 4,000 members of their organization were trained in Iran and that they have stockpiles of EFPs, weapons that cause great uneasiness among U.S. forces here because they penetrate heavily armored vehicles.
        U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell would not say how many militia fighters had been trained in Iran but said that questioning of fighters captured as recently as this month confirmed many had been in Iranian training camps.
        “We know that they are being in fact manufactured and smuggled into this country, and we know that training does go on in Iran for people to learn how to assemble them and how to employ them. We know that training has gone on as recently as this past month from detainees? debriefs,” Gen. Caldwell said at a weekly briefing

    So Pelosi and Lantos are hinting at a trip to Iran while Iran is supplying the militias that are keeping us involved in Iraq. How much sense does that make?

    This why Americans don’t trust Democrats with our foreign policy. Their refusal to accept the realities of the world color their politics. They’re like children playing mock-UN in grade school.

    The reason the President called Hussein, Iran and Kim Jong IL the Axis of Evil is because you can’t trust them. They talk out of both sides of their mouths and make public statements that they have no intention of following through. I guess that’s why Democrats have such a kinship with them – Democrats do the same thing before elections. Which might explain why Pelosi’s approval numbers are plummeting.