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

Category: Terror War

  • No matter what happens, we’re screwed

    I’m sure ya’all feel like I do – that no matter what Republicans do, the media and the Left are going to complain about it. Just like the other day when Mr. Chertoff said he had a gut feeling the we are going to be attacked by al Qaeda this summer. I’ve had that feeling just about everyday since about 1992.

    When the Bush Adminstration announces a foiled terrorist plot, the Left and the media pooh-pooh the attempt and accuse the Administration of creating an atmosphere of fear. But when Chertoff says he “feels” like there’s another imminent attempt, everyone wants details.

    The Congressional Democrats claim they want the war to end, but anyone with at least half-a-brain knows the only this war will end is if we remove Iran from the equation. But because the Iraq Study Group said we need to engage those goat-ropers in diplomacy, the Democrats wave the ISG report like a bloody shirt everytime someone discusses the only rational way to deal with Iran – a military solution.

    In today’s Washington Post, Peter Baker describes the impasse between the president and the Congressional Democrats;

    A weakened president is desperately playing for time while a Democratic opposition mounts its case against him and Republican lawmakers agonize over how long to stick with him. Bush will keep pressing his strategy in Iraq in hopes that it produces more than the meager results his White House reported yesterday while his foes keep scoring political points and not much else.

    “The town is gridlocked,” said Kenneth M. Duberstein, who served as chief of staff in the Reagan White House. “There is no give at the White House or on the Hill. The Senate doesn’t have 60 votes to do anything. So, at least for the foreseeable future, which may be September, the only result is stalemate. That may benefit the president, and if you listen to the Democrats, they think it benefits them.”

    Both sides have stuck to their familiar positions. Bush has long seen a virtue in refusing to relent to pressure and operating as he sees fit regardless of Congress, while the Democrats, until January, had spent the Bush presidency essentially in the minority, lobbing criticism but with no responsibility for governing. Neither side shows even passing interest in forging a bipartisan consensus, preferring instead to bend the other to its will.

    No one wants to confront Iran – the major opposition player in the world. All for political and not strategic reasons. A rational person would admit that removing the current leadership in Iran is the only way to calm the situation in the Middle East – but no one wants to pay the political price for doing the right thing – the correct thing.

    The press continues to label the strategy in Iraq a failure, without mentioning that Iraq has met nearly half of the arbitrary benchmarks Congress set to determine success there. Ignoring that Congress agreed to wait until September, Nancy Pelosi pretends that agreement never happened;

    “The president stubbornly refuses to develop a redeployment plan or devise a redeployment schedule, preferring to hope, despite the abundance of evidence to the contrary, that his failed policies will somehow make tomorrow better than today,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

    Ya hafta start asking yourself why the Democrats don’t want a victory in the Middle East, someone must begin asking the Democrats why they’re in such a rush to concede defeat. If I were a real journalist, and I really wanted to inform the public about what’s really going on in Washington over Iraq, those are the questions I’d ask Democrats in Congress – but those are exactly the questions everyone in the mainstream media avoid asking.

    Instead they count how many times the President and the Administration use “precipice” and it’s variations in talking about Iraq. Is this grade school? Is this some kind of playground game of “gotcha”? Or are there real lives and the future of our nation hanging in the balance?

  • Fear-mongers in the Associated Press

    Everywhere I turn this morning, some media outlet is telling me that some secret report was leaked and intelligence places al Qaeda back to it’s 2001 strength. At least from the Washington Post there’s no speculation about it’s pre-2001 strength;

    Six years after the Bush administration declared war on al-Qaeda, the terrorist network is gaining strength and has established a safe haven in remote tribal areas of western Pakistan for training and planning attacks, according to a new Bush administration intelligence report to be discussed today at a White House meeting.

    The report, a five-page threat assessment compiled by the National Counterterrorism Center, is titled “Al-Qaida Better Positioned to Strike the West,” intelligence officials said. It concludes that the group has significantly rebuilt itself despite concerted U.S. attempts to smash the network.

    But the Associated Press isn’t that shy;

    A new threat assessment from U.S. counterterrorism analysts says that Al Qaeda has used its safe haven along the Afghan-Pakistan border to restore its operating capabilities to a level unseen since the months before Sept. 11, 2001.

    In fact the Washington Post story,  goes so far that it points out that intelligence officials said that al Qaeda is “considerably weaker” than they were in 2001;

    While asserting that al-Qaeda is still considerably weaker than it was before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the new report concludes that the group is stronger than it has been in years. “There is heightened concern given al-Qaeda’s operational activity [and] . . . operational levels” along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, the U.S. official said.

    WaPo is certainly no supporter of the war against terror. Despite the Washington Post’s contrary story, every radio and television news broadcast has repeated the silly AP headline as news.

    Need I remind the Associated Press and their assorted minions in broadcast news that in 2001 al Qaeda had their own country and at least the tacit support of three other countries. Not only have they lost Afghanistan, they don’t have the support of Pakistani government forces any longer. They’ve lost operational bases throughout the region where they enjoyed a virtual open range for training and operations.

    They may be stronger than they were in late 2001 – but that’s only because their willing accomplices in the media (that’s you, AP) make recruiting so easy.

    Elsewhere in the Associated Press story on MyWay;

    The official and others spoke to The Associated Press on condition they not be identified because the report remains classified.

    I hope the Bush Adminstration sends “the official and others” out hunting with Dick Cheney – or hunting with me, for that matter.

  • More Haditha good news

    Sorry that I’m so far behind that I missed the greatest news today. According to Chickenhawk Express, the prosecutor has recommended that charges against LCpl Sharrat be dropped in the Horrible Haditha investigation;

    The Chickenhawk is doing the happy dance today – this is just great news and should be trumpeted from the rooftops…

    An investigating officer has recommended dismissing murder charges against a Marine accused in the slayings of three Iraqi men in a squad action that killed 24 civilians in Haditha, according to a report released Tuesday. The government’s theory that Lance Cpl. Justin L. Sharratt had executed the three men was “incredible” and relied on contradictory statements by Iraqis, Lt. Col. Paul Ware said in the report, released by Sharratt’s defense attorneys.

    She has much more read it all – in fact, Chickenhawk Express is my daily destination for Haditha news. Of course when I started reading the Chickenhawk Express post, the first thing I thought was to call John Murtha’s office for about 900th time this month to find out when he’ll be issuing his apology. But California Conservative had already done it;

    I asked the woman that answered the phone “if Congressman Murtha had a statement following a news story regarding Lt. Col. Paul Ware’s report stating that “The government’s theory that Lance Cpl. Justin L. Sharratt had executed the three men was “incredible” and relied on contradictory statements by Iraqis.”

    Instead of answering that question, she asked “So the trial is over?” I told her that it wasn’t, that the recommendation was nonbinding. Then she asked “So it isn’t over?” I confirmed that it wasn’t. I asked if Congressman Murtha would “like to make a statement considering his accusations made over a year ago on ‘This Week With George Stephanopoulos’”? Here’s her response: “Congressman Murtha doesn’t have a statement because the investigation is still ongoing.”

    Pretty much the same answer I’ve been getting. But, of course, Murtha is just using this for cover. His original statement, and most of the statements before and since, have been to  endear himself to the anti-war crowd in Congress and to get himself some cover because of his morally questionable extra-governmental dealings for which he’s famous – things I’ve catalogued here. He knows that Democrats don’t throw their more criminal members to the wolves when they toe the party line. Remember how quickly James Trafficant went down because of his repeated criticism of his Democrat Party members? So does Murtha know that the reverse is just as true.

  • It’s all about Vietnam, except when it’s about Vietnam

    Democrats can’t let go of the 60s. They think they actually won something when the US began pulling combat troops out of Vietnam in 1972. They forget the bloodbath that happened when Saigon fell in 1975, they forget the Vietnamese incursions into Laos during the Carter Administration (that were halted by the Chinese), they forget Pol Pot’s killing fields. All they care about is regaining their former bloodstained glory on the front pages of “their” media”. 

    In light of the reports coming out of Iraq by alternate means, like Michael Yon Online, since we can’t trust the media to tell us what’s happening over there, Jon Ward of the Washington Times reports that the President pleaded with Americans from Cleveland yesterday;

    “I believe that its in this nations interests to give the commander a chance to fully implement his operations,” Mr. Bush said, speaking at a downtown hotel to a local business group.

    Mr. Bush did not reveal any changes to his strategy or thinking on Iraq and did not talk about his hopes for withdrawing troops, despite reports that conversations on the topic are intensifying inside his administration.

    Instead, Mr. Bush said, “Congress ought to wait for General Petraeus to come back and give us assessment of the strategy that he’s putting in place before they make any decisions.”

    It sounds reasonable, but fairly unrealistic given the political backbiting that’s happening eve in the President’s own party. But, the Democrats, the party of Insanity (doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results each time), plan on running through the same bill they ran through a scant few weeks ago, hoping for different results. From Sean Lengell, Washington Times;

    Senate Democrats yesterday called for withdrawing most U.S. troops from Iraq by April 30 — less than two months after a similar measure was soundly defeated — as the White House dispatched its top war advisers to Capitol Hill to embolden Republican allies.

    Sen. Carl Levin, Michigan Democrat and chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said setting a troop withdrawal timetable will force Iraqi political leaders to take responsibility for their own country.

    “The legislation that we are proposing … would give commanders the flexibility to the pace of reductions and the units to be reduced, and I think it’s the appropriate way to go,” said Sen. Jack Reed, Rhode Island Democrat, who co-sponsored the measure with Mr. Levin.

    Republicans leaders called the maneuver premature, saying that President Bush’s surge strategy is starting to pay dividends and that any major changes shouldn’t occur before Gen. David H. Petraeus provides his September report on the state of the war.

    Well, we just can’t let the troops win too many battles, can we? So it’s time for the Democrats to do the sabateur work that al Qaeda can’t seem to do these days. With Cindy Sheehan breathing down her botoxed and stretched neckflaps, Nancy Pelosi is planning an entire month of intellectually bankrupt votes to undermine the troops’ victories in Iraq;

    House Democrats are planning a series of votes this month on Iraq that they hope will ratchet up pressure on the White House and congressional Republicans to change course on the unpopular war or suffer political consequences.

    Sensing that additional GOP members might follow the more skeptical path taken recently by Sens. Richard Lugar (Ind.) and Pete Domenici (N.M.) and Rep. John Doolittle (Calif.), Democratic leaders have decided to ignore White House requests that lawmakers wait until September to see how President Bush’s surge works.

    “I think you’re seeing signs that the dam’s about to bust,” said Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.), tapped as leadership’s coordinator for Iraq strategy. “Someone on the Republican side has to be like Fulbright during the Vietnam War.”

    Just like Vietnam, huh Larson – the anti-US Left wants to relive their golden days. It doesn’t matter that history has proven them wrong then, or that history will prove them wrong on this one, too. just so long as they get to see their name in the paper.

    The Washington Post still claims there’s a large defection of Republicans from the President’s war plans – but they can only name a few, oddly;

    Facing crumbling support for the war among their own members, Senate Republican leaders yesterday sought to block bipartisan efforts to force a change in the American military mission in Iraq.

    But the GOP leadership’s use of a parliamentary tactic requiring at least 60 votes to pass any war legislation only encouraged the growing number of Republican dissenters to rally and seek new ways to force President Bush’s hand. They are weighing a series of proposals that would change the troops’ mission from combat to counterterrorism, border protection and the training of Iraqi security forces.
     
    “I think we should continue to ratchet up the pressure — in addition to our words — to let the White House know we are very sincere,” said Sen. George V. Voinovich (R-Ohio), who broke with the president last month.

    Voinovich and Snowe are the only two defectors in the article. Add in Domenici and Spector, that’s four. It’s hardly a defection, it’s barely newsworthy – cetainly not enough to write a whole column. But there’s the Post spending bandwidth on a stupid subject while they could write stories about the troops’ several victories this week, or the horror that al Qaeda has inflicted on Iraqis.  The Post could actually report on the war rather than those idiot conversations they have with useless politicians.

    In the meantime, Cindy Sheehan is zeroing in on the old SanFran Hag;

     Cindy Sheehan bid farewell to her former “peace camp” near President Bush’s ranch and began a nearly two-week trek Tuesday toward Washington, D.C., with her sights set on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
    Sheehan, a Californian, officially announced that she intends to run as an independent against Pelosi in 2008 if the San Francisco congresswoman doesn’t move to impeach Bush by July 23, the day she expects to reach Washington.

    “I know what Californians care about,” Sheehan said. “They don’t care about the ruling power elite.”

    Yeah, Cindy, you probably know about as much about what Americans care about as Nancy – but I wouldn’t embarrass myself by saying it aloud in public if I were you. I guess we can’t count on you to keep your promises, either. Promises like leaving the stage and letting the adults run the country. If ever there was someone less worthy of my attention, I don’t know who that would be.

    So I guess we peg our foreign policy to the whims of gutless coward and crazed dingbats.

    From yesterday’s Day By Day;

     

     

  • So what do we believe?

    On the one hand, we have Rowan Scarbourgh in the Washington Examiner telling us that the general concensus is that al Qaeda is losing ground in Iraq;

    U.S. intelligence officers in Iraq believe 2007 will be looked on someday as “the beginning of the defeat of al Qaeda,” an adviser to the command in Baghdad said Monday.

    Retired Army Gen. John Keane offered the assessment after being briefed by a senior intelligence official who is an expert on the insurgency. The upbeat view marked a shift from 2006 intelligence reports that al Qaeda in Iraq was growing stronger.

    […]

    First, Sunni sheiks are breaking alliances with al Qaeda and joining the coalition. “They are fed up with this barbarism and four years of war,” Keane said during a talk at the American Enterprise Institute.

    Second, the U.S. counteroffensive of more than 155,000 troops is simultaneously attacking al Qaeda safe havens around the country — a tactic not used before.

    But then you turn to the Associated Press’ Anne Flaherty (whose name turns up on nearly every anti-Bush story byline) and you get crap like this – a whole story pegged to an anonymous source, no back-up research, just quoting some guy like there’s no tomorrow (or no Google); 

     A progress report on Iraq will conclude that the U.S.-backed government in Baghdad has not met any of its targets for political, economic and other reforms, speeding up the Bush administration’s reckoning on what to do next, a U.S. official said Monday.

    The “pivot point” for addressing the matter will no longer be Sept. 15, as initially envisioned, when a full report on Bush’s so-called “surge” plan is due, but instead will come this week when the interim mid-July assessment is released, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the draft is still under discussion.

    So the military is winning (barely a month into the “surge”) and AP calls it a failure. Sound like Vietnam even a little bit? And for some reason, the Washington Post thinks that a couple of spineless GOP RINOs has the administration running scared;

    President Bush, facing a growing Republican revolt against his Iraq policy, has rejected calls to change course but will launch a campaign emphasizing his intent to draw down U.S. forces next year and move toward a more limited mission if security conditions improve, senior officials said yesterday.

    Top administration officials have begun talking with key Senate Republicans to walk them through his view of the next phase in the war, beyond the troop increase he announced six months ago today. Bush plans to lay out what an aide called “his vision for the post-surge” starting in Cleveland today to assure the nation that he, too, wants to begin bringing troops home eventually.

    The President isn’t explaining it to regular people because he’s afraid of a few pussies in the Senate – he’s explaining it to regular people because he has to talk above the caucaphony of idiots and morons in the press like Anne Flaherty.

    Yeah, I know, she probably thinks she’s being patriotic by publishing every bit of contrary information she can dredge up. Apparently dissent is back in vogue – no matter what kind of damage they do to our worldwide reputation or to our national security. But, you’d think every once in a while she’d try to publish the absolute truth just to balance out her prejudices.

  • What is a bi-partisan strategy?

    I’m still trying to catch up on news and the idiocy that seems to have permeated the District of Columbia while I was gone (only three days, f’pete’s sake), so excuse me if this old news to you. In the Wall Street Journal’s Editorial column today, “Republican Retreat“, they quoted Dick Lugar;

    “I do not doubt the assessments of military commanders that there has been some progress in security,” Richard Lugar, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, declared on the Senate floor late last month. But that didn’t stop Mr. Lugar from concluding that its chances of success are “very limited.” Why? The “short period framed by our own domestic political debate” won’t allow it, he says. Instead, Mr. Lugar wants a “sustainable bipartisan strategy” along the lines recommended in November by the Iraq Study Group. Last week, New Mexico’s Pete Domenici noisily joined this bandwagon, as have several other Republican Senators, some of whom face tough re-election fights next year.

    All of this nuanced language is just goofy posturing. What the hell is a “sustainable bipartisan strategy”? That’s just buffoonery – you either win or you lose, you either have a strategy to win, or you have a losing strategy. You can’t have it both ways.

    There’s no compromising on strategy to please a political base – the political base aren’t interested in the particulars of fighting wars and they wouldn’t know a battle formation from an SOS breakfast.

    That’s why our founding fathers didn’t make Congress the Commanders-in-Chief – they just hand out the money. You can’t fight wars in Committee. Look how long it’s taken for Congress just to come up with a defense bill. Imagine how long wars would take if the military had to wait for Congress to make a decision about tactics or strategy.

    So what if Lugar, Domenici and the unnnamed ones are in a political battle? Will any of them be killed as a result? But, in the meantime, how many of our troops are dying because their political posturing rewards every bullet the bad guys fire at them?

    For once, just once, I want to see a politician put the country and the folks fight for them ahead of their political careers.

    The WSJ concludes;

    As for Mr. Lugar’s bipartisan hope, it would be wonderful to think that Washington could come together around a sustainable, long-term Iraq strategy. But how many Democrats are ready to work with Mr. Bush on that? Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid now calls ending the war his “moral” obligation — as if America’s departure would end anything — and he responded to Mr. Domenici’s statement by saying GOP Senators must now vote for a rapid withdrawal.

    The Democrats don’t want to end the war before next November any-damn-way – They need the issue for the election. And Harry Reid wouldn’t know a moral obligation if it bit his hip pocket. Apparently, Lugar and Domenici suffer from the same affliction.

  • al Qaeda threatens Iran

    So, according to the Associated Press (by way of Fox News), al Qaeda in Iraq is threatening Iran to stop supporting Shi’ites;

    Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, who leads the group Islamic State in Iraq , said his Sunni fighters have been preparing for four years to wage a battle against Shiite-dominated Iran.

    “We are giving the Persians, and especially the rulers of Iran, a two-month period to end all kinds of support for the Iraqi Shiite government and to stop direct and indirect intervention … otherwise a severe war is waiting for you,” he said in the 50-minute audiotape released Sunday. The tape, which could not be independently verified, was posted on a Web site commonly used by insurgent groups.

    So, I guess even our biggest enemy admitting that Iran is supplying anti-US militias in Iraq isn’t enough proof that we need to transform Iran into a vacant mudhole, huh?

  • Congress returns ready to battle the President

    I read that headline in the Washington Examiner this morning and the first thing I thought was “how is that news”? They might as well run a headline that says “Man biten by dog” or “Summer expected to be warm”.

    Congressmen returning from their Independence Day break are ready for battle with the White House, with Democrats decrying President Bush’s commutation of former aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s prison sentence and fighting Bush’s latest claim of executive privilege.

    Both events occurred around Congress’ vacation, inflaming an intense battle between Democrats and Bush over his use of executive power. There was relatively high tension on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue as majority Democrats – and increasing numbers of Republicans – challenged Bush’s Iraq war policy.

    In Roll Call this morning, it’s Stephen Dennis’ “Democrats Keep Focus on Libby“($);

    Incensed Democrats plan to use President Bush’s decision to spare Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff, Scooter Libby, from prison to bolster their theme of a GOP “culture of corruption” with hearings this week and on the campaign trail.

    Democrats have few options to strike back at the president, given their slim majorities and the reticence of Democratic leaders to consider impeachment despite an increasing drumbeat from liberal activists and growing support in some polls. The number of Democratic co-signers to an impeachment resolution for Cheney introduced by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) is expected to inch higher this week but remains a tiny subset of the Democratic Caucus.

    But that doesn’t mean Democrats won’t try to score political points.

    According to Dennis, Conyers wants to start an investigation of the pardon and subpoena Libby (to what result, I can’t understand), a witness list is supposed to come out today. Wexler wants to censure Bush – what a crock of dung. Wasting time on stupid political popcorn farts. Meanwhile, Emily Pearce ($) writes, also in Roll Call, that Reid probably won’t get any of the spending bills he needs to pass this year;

    While July is often reserved for appropriations bills in the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has set aside very little time to complete even one or two bills this month, despite the fact that the chamber’s conservatives appear in no mood to help smooth the way and President Bush is expected to veto the majority of spending measures that reach his desk.

    So, instead of doing their job in Congress, the Democrats are just making noise. Useless, pointless political noise.  

    Ya know what headline I’d reallly like to see? “Congress returns ready to battle terrorists”, or “Congress outraged by al Qaeda connections in Glasgow plot” or “Democrats Keep Focus on the War Against Terror”.

    Since when is it more important for our elected representatives to be more ready to do battle with our other elected representatives than they are ready to do battle with the enemies of our people? Or why is it more acceptable to the American people that the politicians are more focused on “scoring political points” than they are on scoring wins against the enemies that want to destroy us all?

    Me? I’ve returned ready to fight all of the enemies of our people – especially the ones in Congress.Â