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

Category: Politics

  • 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.

  • Why now?

    Why are we just now finding out about the Secret Service tapping Princess Diane’s telephone conversations? Drudge seems obsessed with it for some reason. Sinces I’ve been away from a computer and the news as a whole (visiting my Air Force son on the Florida Gulf Coast this past weekend), I’m just shocked that the incompetent Clinton Administration expended that much effort surveilling a popular culture figure like Diane while known criminals roamed free around the world without so much as sideward glance from those knuckleheads.

    It’s no wonder that Sandy Berger, in his relaxed-fit Dockers raided the National Security Archives. This is the kind of stuff that should have the American people thinking “hmmm”. What right-thinking voter would want to let the gang that can’t even see straight have the White House again?

  • Democrats’ oppositon; common sense

    From today’s Washington Times, a story from Donald Lambro about Obama’s threat to Hillary’s run at the Presidency;

     “Barack Obama is a threat to Hillary, but only if he makes a contrasting case against her,” said Democratic adviser David Sirota, a top strategist in Ned Lamont’s come-from-behind Democratic primary upset over Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, who went on to win the general election as an independent.
        “If it’s a popularity contest between two well-known Democratic politicians, then he isn’t much of a threat. But if he starts campaigning on the issues of the Iraq war, on economic issues in contrast to Hillary, who voted for the war resolution, opposed calls for early troop withdrawals and supports free-trade issues that have destroyed jobs here, then he’s a real, major threat,” Mr. Sirota said.
        These Democrats say he has the political talent and grass-roots appeal to overtake Mrs. Clinton in a party that is hungry for new leadership.

    If this is really the case, and I have no reason to doubt it, the threat isn’t from the opposition of the two prospective candidates, it’s from a lack of a common sense among Democrat voters.

    They seem to be convinced that the majority of Americans are actually behind them after squeaking by Republicans in the midterms – something they should have been able to do over the last four elections if you believe their rhetoric.

    They actually believe that Americans are generally opposed to tax cuts and free markets. They actually believe that Americans don’t think the war against terror is neccessary.

    Regardless of their party or political proclivities, Americans usually act in their own self-interests, not, as Democrats would have us believe, as some huge generous ATM for the world. Americans are much more worried about their own families, their own take-home pay, their own retirement than they are about that piece of crap “framework” of Pelosi’s.

    I know Democrats are convinced that they got some huge mandate in November, and if they still continue to believe that for the next two years, the American voters will hand them their collective ass.

    ADDED: Read John Fund’s opinion piece in the WSJ on Pelosi and the challenges to ethics promises pre-campaign.

  • The growing threat

    Taking his cue from the Democrats and the islamofacists, Kim Jong Il has decided to start making demands on the US, too. Since the paranoid North Korean strong man thinks the US may have nukes in the South, he’s decided he won’t participate in negotiations to reduce his threat to the region with his missiles thought to be assembled with baling twine.

    It’s been said that the American people always get the government they deserve. In this case, the American voter has been hornswaggled into electing a government that has broadcast a defeatist message. In response, every tinpot dictator in the world is taking the opportunity to take swats at us.

    It is reminiscent of the post-Reagan years when every blowhard with a forum was calling George Bush a wimp. Even nickel-plated Manuel Noriega thought he could get away with ignoring a local popular election of a President that wasn’t his choice for the job and killing a US Marine and his wife. Forced into a corner, GHW Bush launched an invasion of Panama and eight months later had to send troops to Saudi Arabia to push Hussein out of Kuwait.

    All because the media and the Democrats in Congress tried to defeat a Republican in the court of world opinion. This President is getting backed into a corner, too. Not only by impudent third world maniacs, but also at home with stupid and ill-conceived study groups that can’t shoot straight, Congressional Democrats who talk out of both sides of their mouths, and second-guessing Congressional Republicans rushing to the Left and calling themselves moderate.

    The media is calling for bipartisanship which is really a call for moving the whole country Hard Left and moving our troops out of the Middle East just to vindicate their morally bankrupt 60s anti-war policy.

    So what’re all of these rocket surgeons going to do when George W. Bush explodes into action, when he’s forced to neutralize the Korean threat, the Syrian threat, the Iranian and the Venezuelan threat with the force of arms? Worse yet, what’ll they do when he doesn’t do anything?

  • Whistling past the graveyard

    An AP story records how bad the Iraq Study Group’s report really is;

    “This report is a recognition of the limitation of American power,” said Abdel Moneim Said, head of Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic studies in Cairo. “In the short term, America will highly suffer the loss of its reputation and credibility in the region.”

    The only limitation to American power is the extent to which we’ll endanger non-combatants. If we had the same disregard for human life as the jihadists, they’d all be smolder piles of ashes by now. And as far as suffering the loss of our reputation and credibility; there’s something worse than being the “Great Satan”? We lost our reputation and credibility in the region back when Jefferson started battling the Barbary pirates.

    Mustafa Bakri, an outspoken critic of the U.S. and editor of the Egyptian tabloid Al-Osboa, told a state-run television show that the report indicated “the end of America.”

    Now that’s really whistling past the graveyard. It’ll take more than a bunch of Iron Age savages to bring this country and this culture to it’s end. We’ve withstood much worse than anything this odd collection of goat ropers can dish out. That statement alone ought to make the Administration pull out all of the stops for about a month over there. The insertion of about two more combat brigades complete with aerial support ought to teach the Arab Street a thing or two about our limitations.

    The Iraq Study Group’s report was the top headline in many Arab newspapers on Thursday, including the Egyptian opposition daily Al- Wafd, which declared: “Bush confesses defeat in Iraq.”

    AP must be writing news stories in Egypt, too.

    “Al-Qaida must smell victory, but its a negative victory that comes from the defeat of America in Iraq,” Said of the Al-Ahram center said.

    In Jordan, Al Arab Al Yawm editor-in-chief Taher al-Adwan suggested that Iran could “fill the vacuum” in neighboring Iraq if Arab countries don’t step up and counter U.S. failures.

    “Will the noise of this bullet (the report) reach the Arab capitals, especially the neighboring countries … to push them to formalize a unified Arab position toward Iraq and fill the vacuum by Iraqi national forces who are against the occupation and the Iranian influence,” he wrote.

    So I guess there are some Arabs who see the danger in our premature departure. Let’s hope other Arabs hear them through the caucaphonous prehistorical chants of their “leaders”.

     

  • Gore gives expert advice to President

    Yesterday in an interview with ABC, Al Gore, that expert on deploying combat forces, called the war in Iraq “the worst strategic mistake in USA history”. So since he’s such an expert on warfighting, I decided to to post proof that he knows what he’s talking about;

    Al Gore in Vietnam

    Gore went on to say “I would urge the President to try to separate out the personal issues of being blamed in history for his mistake and instead recognizing that it is not about him. It’s about our country.” Ironically, it’s the same advice I would have given Al Gore after the 2000 election when he whined for weeks about Republicans stealing elections. (Did I say weeks? I meant years) 

    The war in Iraq was only a logical extension of the war against terror. It makes more sense to kill jihadists in Iraq as opposed to Afghanistan. geographically, it’s ideal. Placed between Syria and Iran, the two biggest state-sponsors of terror, and wide open terrain with big fields of fire as opposed to Afghanistan’s relatively isolated location and mountainous terrain.

    Strategically, the Bush Administration’s plan to use Iraq as the battlefield is brilliant – Iraq attracts large numbers of foreign jihadists while our expert troops pop their empty heads open with well-placed 5.56mm and 7.62mm fire.

    Further on in the interview, Gore avoids the interviewer’s question about whether he’d immediately withdraw troops if he were president. That’s the Democrat plan - broad, blathering criticism about the current administration while deftly dodging opportunities to offer solutions.  I guess that’s the only way they can figure how to avoid lying – not saying anything.

  • Two from column A and one from column B

    The Iraq Study Group gave their report to the President this morning, and since they leaked their report last week, there are no new surprises. It demonstrates how useless these “bipartisan” commissions have become;

    As expected, the panel’s recommendations attempt to cut a middle path between demands by many Democrats for a firm timetable for a U.S. withdrawal and President Bush’s insistence that U.S. troops remain in Iraq until the job is done.

    How do you compromise on the right answer? I know it’s popular to subscribe to the platitude that there are no more right answers, but obviously, that’s just wrong. You can’t compromise on the answer to the math problem 1+1=?, just like you can’t compromise on the answer on how to be successful against the dark forces arrayed against us. Either we are or we aren’t.

    Democrats can’t even agree on a strategy. In Newsweek this week, Silvestre Reyes, the incoming Intelligence Committee chair said;

    “We’re not going to have stability in Iraq until we eliminate those militias, those private armies,” Reyes said. “We have to consider the need for additional troops to be in Iraq, to take out the militias and stabilize Iraq … We certainly can’t leave Iraq and run the risk that it becomes [like] Afghanistan” was before the 2001 invasion by the United States.

    So which is it, guys? More troops like Reyes says or a withdrawal like the Baker Commission suggests?

    And as I said in earlier post, this “quick reaction force” to support the mobile training teams left behind in Iraq just won’t work. It didn’t work in Viet Nam and it won’t work in Iraq. It’s be like supporting the San Francisco police department from Oregon – it’s too far to be a deterrent. And what is the QRF going to do when it’s not needed?

    This reminds me of the 9/11 Commission report that never really decided anything except that they all agreed that someone brought down the World trade center on September 11th, 2001. They had no real recommendations, they never pointed a finger at the real culprits, and no real workable solutions to prevent the inevitable future attack. Because the whole report was a compromise between competing political factions, rather than a report from experts on the subject.

    The report is no different. Attempting to reach a political compromise on what action we should take to win in the Middle East, this “study group” has only muddied further the waters. I’d like to take the study group, put them in body armor, give them a rifle and send them out to patrol in Baghdad – maybe then they’d have a better idea as to what our troops need, because the answer isn’t in some regurgitated campaign commercial.

  • Just one question

    Can anyone tell me what John Bolton has done in the last 16 months to not deserve the job as our Ambassador to the United Nations? Can anyone can point to any specific incident that indicates that he wouldn’t serve the interests of the American People? Did his supposed bad temper cost us some valuable concession from an adversary? Has he embarrassed the country somehow? Well…other than the fact that he was appointed to the post by a Republican President, I mean.

    John Kerry offers his insight;

    “With the Middle East on the verge of chaos and the nuclear threats from Iran and North Korea increasing, we need a United Nations ambassador who has the full support of Congress and can help rally the international community to tackle the serious threats we face.”

    But the Republicans have created this partisanship, right? The President has alienated the Democrats, right?