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

Category: Terror War

  • Campaigning in a time vacuum

    The press is all a-twitter because the Iraqi government seems to agree with foreign policy dunce Barack Obama that a 16-month timetable withdrawal of combat forces from Iraq seems to be the best solution. From the Washington Post;

    But as political theater, the events of the past few days have played unfailingly in the Democrat’s favor. On Friday, a day after Obama left for Afghanistan and Iraq, Bush administration officials announced that the United States and Iraq had agreed on a time horizon for removing troops. Then, twice in three days, Maliki embraced a withdrawal timeline similar to Obama’s.

    And you know what? I might even agree at this point…the difference between me and Barack and the Washington Post is that I’ve taken events over the last year and a half into account to arrive at my conclusion, while the Post and Obama act like they were right to call for the withdrawal for more than two years, absent the success of the surge. So the Post and Obama are actually saying that Obama has special powers that let him see into the future and make determinations based on his special transcendental knowledge.

    For the Post and Obama, the surge never happened, it’s still 2006 and we’re still taking scads of casualties daily in Iraq. They discount the fact that Obama has taken every opportunity to vote against funding the troops, to vote against giving them the equipment they’ve needed and he opposed the surge. Obama, for his own political benefit, did his best to make sure that troops were still suffering massive casualties in Iraq when he assumed the Presidency, just so he could surrender and then Democrats could point at George Bush as a failure.

    Last week, I wrote that William Arkin was still trying to convince Post readers that all was lost in Iraq and that the troops were coming home so they could save their honor. I also wrote about the members of Congress who wrote a letter to the President calling on him to withdraw the troops from Iraq. Robin, my supposed alter-ego at Chickenhawk Express, wrote this weekend that Dahr Jamail, the terrorists’ best friend in Iraq, is still calling Fallujah a quagmire. It’s as if the Left stored it’s collective consciousness in a jar over the door jamb for two years and just uncorked it last week.

    Although Obama may be right on his timetable withdrawal today, he was wrong when he first mentioned it, he’s been wrong on it for two years. Just because events that he had nothing to do with have made him right (what’s the old saw about a broken clock being right twice everyday? Or a blind squirrel finding a nut?), it doesn’t change the fact that he was wrong…dangerously wrong…in the beginning.

  • Losing Afghanistan?

    Last week in Afghanistan, in one engagement with the Taliban, nine US troops were killed and 15 wounded. The press and Obama jumped on the news as proof that we’re losing in Afghanistan – because we can’t be completely successful. If we’re winning in Iraq (against the predictions from the Left) we must be losing elsewhere. Then to compound the tragedy of the engagement, Times Online reported later in the week that the unit “abandoned” the untenable position.
    Well, Zero Ponsdorf sent me this article from Stars and Stripes on Saturday that he found over at the Free Republic.

    But the attack is not a sign of conditions worsening in the country, he said.

    The battle occurred just after dawn at a temporary vehicle patrol base near Wanat. A platoon-sized element of Chosen Company, 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment (Airborne) soldiers and a smaller Afghan National Army force were occupying a hastily built area as they had done many times over the 15 months they’d been in country, [Brigade Commander, Col. Charles “Chip”] Preysler said. The soldiers were there on a reconnaissance mission to establish a presence and find a good location to connect with the local government, populace and Afghan National Police, he said.

    The small outpost had been built just days before the attack and consisted of protective wire and observation posts surrounding strategically placed vehicles. “That’s all it was, a series of vehicles that went out there,” Preysler said.

    “People are saying that this was a full-up [forward operating base]/combat outpost, and that is absolutely false and not true. There were no walls,” Preysler said, latter adding, “FOB denotes that there are walls and perimeters and all that. It’s a vehicle patrol base, temporary in nature.”

    But that doesn’t mean the soldiers were not prepared to take on the enemy, he said.

    “Now, obviously when you halt, you start prepping your defenses, and in this case we had [observation posts] and protective wire, we had the vehicles deployed properly to take advantage of their fields of fire, and we set up like that all over the place, and we do it routinely,” he said.

    The Army did not “abandon” the base after the attack, as many media reporters have suggested, Preysler said.

    But that won’t stop the incident from being a bloody shirt for Obama to wave. In fact, everywhere I looked yesterday, that one incident has made the fact that we’re losing in Afghanistan a foregone conclusion in every discussion. Funny, but the troops don’t think we’ve lost.

  • Delusional Congress

    On July 14th, Michael Yon typed these words;

    The war continues to abate in Iraq. Violence is still present, but, of course, Iraq was a relatively violent place long before Coalition forces moved in. I would go so far as to say that barring any major and unexpected developments (like an Israeli air strike on Iran and the retaliations that would follow), a fair-minded person could say with reasonable certainty that the war has ended. A new and better nation is growing legs. What’s left is messy politics that likely will be punctuated by low-level violence and the occasional spectacular attack. Yet, the will of the Iraqi people has changed, and the Iraqi military has dramatically improved, so those spectacular attacks are diminishing along with the regular violence.

    Yon verified what we all believed and what we’ve all hoped for since the surge began. Fewer Americans died last month than at anytime since the war begun. CNN reports that the troops in Iraq are itching to go to Afghanistan to finish off al Qaeda. But on July 11th, 13 members of Congress were urging the President to surrender in Iraq;

    letter.jpg

    It’s as if we all live in different worlds. The signatories of that letter are;

    letter-sigs.jpg

    That was a letter that these Congress people wrote in support of IVAW’s newest celebrity Matthis Chiroux to help him get out of the trouble he’s brought on himself by refusing to report for duty in Iraq…last month. In the letter these members of Congress “reaffirm their support for all military members who speak out, advocate and otherwise support efforts to bring the troops home.” I wonder how often these particular members of Congress have thought about supporting all military members. Period.

    I found this letter on IVAW’s website posted yesterday. Whatever will the Iraq Veterans Against the War do when there is no war in Iraq? It’s almost over now, and they’re still trying to surrender. That probably explains why they’re acting like maniacs. You’ll see what I mean by that when TSO does his latest post on Adam Kokesh.

  • Washington Post turns on Obama briefly

    In yesterday’s editorial, the Washington Post editorial board harshly denounced Obama’s inability to change his 16-month time table withdrawal policy for Iraq;

     BARACK OBAMA yesterday accused President Bush and Sen. John McCain of rigidity on Iraq: “They said we couldn’t leave when violence was up, they say we can’t leave when violence is down.” Mr. Obama then confirmed his own foolish consistency.

    […]

    Mr. Obama’s charge against the Republicans was not entirely fair, since Mr. Bush has overseen the withdrawal of five American brigades from Iraq this year, and Mr. McCain has suggested that he would bring most of the rest of the troops home by early 2013. Mr. Obama’s timeline would end in the summer of 2010, a year or two before the earliest dates proposed recently by members of the Iraqi government.

    The Post went on to criticize Obama’s position as the surge began;

    At the time he first proposed his timetable, Mr. Obama argued — wrongly, as it turned out — that U.S. troops could not stop a sectarian civil war.

    The Post is just getting all of this out of the way so they can call it “old news” in October and still maintain a semblance of even-handedness. But the fact remains that Barack Obama has been wrong on Iraq since the beginning. The Left criticizes President Bush for being strong-willed when they’ve thought he was wrong. How about Barack Obama who can’t see the truth in front of his stupid face?
    All of his judgments through the entire war, from the beginning, if we can believe that he was against the war from the beginning, have been wrong. Even if he changes his position today, that doesn’t change the fact that he’s been wrong since the get-go.

    That’s not good leadership, just making the popular decision – that’s Jimmy Carter /Bill Clinton political maneuvering. It’s the failed politics of the past.

  • Obama threatens Pakistan…again

    Suddenly finding his cowboy side, Obama has decided that Pakistan is a bigger threat than Iran. TimesOnline reports that he has once again threatened to invade Pakistan;

    “We cannot tolerate a terrorist sanctuary, and as president, I won’t,” Mr Obama said. “We must make it clear that if Pakistan cannot or will not act, we will take out high-level terrorist targets like bin Laden if we have them in our sights.”

    He’s so tough with our allies, isn’t he? Yet he trembles at thought of Ahmadinejad or talking tough to the Islamic Republic – the real source of the threat to this nation.

    Disregarding the fact that thousands of al Qaeda operatives have given up the ghost in Iraq, Obama continued to deride the operation in Iraq;

    Insisting that Iraq is not now and never was the “central front in the war on terror”, the White House hopeful dismissed John McCain’s contention that his withdrawal plan amounted to surrender. His Republican rival had focused exclusively on a country which had no involvement in the September 11 attacks at the expense of wider strategic aims crucial to America’s security, he said.

    McCain’s campaign was quick to counter Obama’s tough talk;

    “Senator Obama is departing soon on a trip abroad that will include a fact-finding mission to Iraq and Afghanistan,” he said in remarks released by his campaign.

    “I note that he is speaking today about his plans for Iraq and Afghanistan before he has even left, before he has talked to General Petraeus, before he has seen the progress in Iraq, and before he has set foot in Afghanistan for the first time.

    “In my experience, fact-finding missions usually work best the other way around: first you assess the facts on the ground, then you present a new strategy.”

    Since when has Obama presented a coherent policy on anything. That evil McCain campaign expects him to start now?

    Added: In related news, someone (forgive for not remembering who) emailed me this morning about Obama scrubbing his website of his policy statements against the surge. This writer asked me if I could chase down cached copies like I did on Kokesh last month. Before I could get my hands free today, Gateway Pundit and Wizbang beat me to it.

    Meanwhile, The Jawa Report writes that Michael Yon has declared the war in Iraq won. So Obama missed cleaning up the record of his policy by a coupla days. The thing is, when you’re President, you don’t get any Mulligans when it comes to policy. Ask Jimmy Carter. Bush and McCain have been right all along – cleaning up the whiney BS from your website and acting like a cowboy after the tough part doesn’t count.

  • It’s Sept. 10th, 2001 again

    We all remember where we were on September 11th, 2001, we remember seeing the towers collapse. Some of us forget that the world and history didn’t begin on that day and at that moment. But here to remind us is the Washington Post which has decided to regale us with the Chandra Levy murder story.

    If you shake those pre-9/11 cobwebs from your head, you might remember that the news channels were saturated with the latest photos of then-Congressman Gary Condit or various members of his family and their doings on any given day.  In fact I remember my second or third thought  after seeing the cloud of smoke roiling from the Pentagon while I stood in our conference room window facing west was of how thankful Condit would be that the media would forget about his affair and the speculation of his involvement in Levy’s disappearance.

    So the Washington Post has decided that the war against terror is over and they want to change the subject and distract their audience from real campaign issues by turning the clock back to the day before Mohammed Atta and his posse struck us. After all, if we keep thinking about the war against terror, we might find weaknesses in the Post’s chosen candidate.

  • Losing our 1st Amendment rights in foreign courts

    Senators Arlen Specter and Joe Lieberman write in the Wall Street Journal about foreign courts eroding our own rights to free speech with specious judgments against Americans;

     Under American law, a libel plaintiff must prove that defamatory material is false. In England, the burden is reversed. Disputed statements are presumed to be false unless proven otherwise. And the loser in the case must pay the winner’s legal fees.

    Consequently, English courts have become a popular destination for libel suits against American authors. In 2003, U.S. scholar Rachel Ehrenfeld asserted in her book, “Funding Evil: How Terrorism Is Financed and How to Stop It,” that Saudi banker Khalid Bin Mahfouz helped fund Osama bin Laden. The book was published in the U.S. by a U.S. company. But 23 copies were bought online by English residents, so English courts permitted the Saudi to file a libel suit there.

    Ms. Ehrenfeld did not appear in court, so Mr. Bin Mahfouz won a $250,000 default judgment against her. He has filed or threatened to file at least 30 other suits in England

    It also has stunted the spread of the Left’s writers as well as the Right;

    Fear of a similar lawsuit forced Random House U.K. in 2004 to cancel publication of “House of Bush, House of Saud,” a best seller in the U.S. that was written by an American author.

    So what do the Senators propose to remedy the problem?

    To counter this lawsuit trend, we have introduced the Free Speech Protection Act of 2008, a Senate companion to a House bill introduced by U.S. Rep. Pete King (R., N.Y.) and co-sponsored by Rep. Anthony Weiner (D., N.Y.). This legislation builds on New York State’s “Libel Terrorism Protection Act,” signed into law by Gov. David Paterson on May 1.

    Our bill bars U.S. courts from enforcing libel judgments issued in foreign courts against U.S. residents, if the speech would not be libelous under American law. The bill also permits American authors and publishers to countersue if the material is protected by the First Amendment. If a jury finds that the foreign suit is part of a scheme to suppress free speech rights, it may award treble damages.

    For decades, our enemies, from Nazis to Communists to jihadists, have found ways to circumvent our laws by using our own Constitution against us. This looks like a good commonsense solution to plugging one hole in the dike. My senators will hear from me this morning, bright and early although I can’t imagine even a pair of partisans like Carden and Mikulski being against  this common sense protection of Americans’ rights.

  • From My Inbox

    I guess everyone is getting the sense I’ve run out of stuff to write today, so thankfully, they’ve been emailing me stuff and I’ll share some of it with you here.

    DPUD sent me a link to The Drawn Cutlass who wrote about a Native American sniper in the US Army who just finished a stint in the Canadian Army and decided to switch sides (I kid). It’s a fairly fascinating story, but each of those guys who stand in the breech are fascinating in their own ways.

    My buddy D. wrote “Four Months For Victory” at The Dillard Doctrine.

    WHO/WHAT: On July 9, Vets for Freedom will hold a press conference—featuring over a dozen Iraq war veterans—to launch a national “Four Months, For Victory” media and grassroots campaign. The effort will culminate on Veterans Day (November 11) and is intended to inform the American public and key lawmakers about the phenomenal success that our troops have achieved as a result of the surge and the importance of ensuring victory in Iraq, Afghanistan and the overall Global war on Terrorism.

    The launch includes a multi-million dollar television-advertising buy in target markets and on national cable that will air next week and run throughout July and August. The first television ad will be released at the press conference featuring the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans appearing in the ad. These pointed ads are aimed at informing the American people about the truth regarding progress in Iraq and Afghanistan .

    Here’s the VFF ad I’ve had in my YouTube account waiting for someone more qualified than myself to write about the VFF;

    [youtube 4p1aKqz0_IM nolink]

    Go read the rest at D.’s house.

    Bruce Kessler at The Democracy Project sent me this link to his review of the upcoming “Generation Kill” HBO project about the a Marine unit during the initial invasion of Hussein’s Iraq. He put a lot of work into the research, and even though he hasn’t seen the movie or read the book, he’s assembled a lot of background on it.

    Jacob wants you to read about the DNC hiding the homeless people in Denver during their convention at this American Pundit link.

    In order to keep homeless residents out of sight during the Democratic National Convention, the city of Denver is giving away passes to local activities and televisions have been donated to homeless shelters.

    A plan has been developed to provide interested homeless people with free access to cultural activities. They include the Denver Zoo and the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, and they won’t have to worry about paying for transportation.

    “We’ll have bus tokens if they need them,” Parvensky said.

    Isn’t that nice? For one whole week, the homeless don’t have to worry about what they’ll do with their free time. But then, that’s the Democrats for you – just so long as they do something for the homeless in Denver while the Democrats have to see them, then the Democrats feel good about themselves. Maybe they could give them jobs at the Convention instead…a little life experience. Or buy them new styrofoam cups.

    Speaking of begging…This Ain’t Hell just got it’s first donation from one of your fellow readers. I won’t embarrass him or her but I am grateful. Thanks loads. Now what’s wrong with the rest of you?

    If you won’t send me money, at least send me tips and I’ll add them here.