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

Category: Terror War

  • White House; Carter “increasingly irrelevant” (Updated)

    Former worst US President in my memory, Jimmy Carter, feeling left out of limelight lately, took time to bash the President on BBC last week, while taking a glancing blow at Tony Blair, according to the Washington Post;

    The former president also lashed out at British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Asked by BBC Radio how he would judge Blair’s support of Bush, Carter said: “Abominable. Loyal. Blind. Apparently subservient. And I think the almost undeviating support by Great Britain for the ill-advised policies of President Bush in Iraq have been a major tragedy for the world.”

    Of course, this a foreign policy critique from the guy who not only aided the mullahs’ rise to power in Iran by abandoning our tradition ally the Shah, but he also facilitated the creation of the Taliban in Afghanistan by being such a spastic creampuff that the Soviets invaded Afghanistan during his Presidency without fear of retribution (except that we boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics – that must’ve really stung, huh?).

    Well, according to the Post (Reuters Wire service story), the White House fired back at Carter yesterday;

    White House spokesman Tony Fratto had declined to react on Saturday but on Sunday fired back.

    “I think it’s sad that President Carter’s reckless personal criticism is out there,” Fratto told reporters. “I think it’s unfortunate. And I think he is proving to be increasingly irrelevant with these kinds of comments.”

    Carter has been an outspoken critic of Bush, but the White House has largely refrained from attacking him in return. Sunday’s sharp response marks a departure from the deference that sitting presidents traditionally have shown their predecessors.

    Yeah, well Reuters forgets that former Presidents have traditionally kept their stupid mouths shut on policy, too. Especially when they’re talking to the foreign press. Carter has been a non-stop, yammering goofball since Clinton left office and the new administration has ignored him.

    Of course, Clinton sent Carter to negotiate with the Haitian Generals and North Korea (look how well those worked out for us) and he went to insure that Hugo Chavez won his re-election in Venezuela. I’m surprised he had nothing to do with his favorite Commie’s election in Nicaragua (Daniel Ortega, by the way).

    Carter, during his interview, went on to blather;

    In his interview with the [Arkansas] Democrat-Gazette, Carter, who won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, criticized Bush for having “zero peace talks” in Israel. Carter also said the administration “abandoned or directly refuted” every negotiated nuclear arms agreement, as well as environmental efforts, by other presidents.

    Look how well all of Carter’s negotiations have worked out for us – yet he thinks that there is something negotiate over in the Middle East. Hey, dipstick, Arabs don’t want to negotiate – they want to kill us all. Especially YOU.

    Carter went on to ignore history;

    “We now have endorsed the concept of pre-emptive war where we go to war with another nation militarily, even though our own security is not directly threatened, if we want to change the regime there or if we fear that some time in the future our security might be endangered,” Carter said.

    I guess Carter forgot that every other nation on Earth has waged pre-emptive war on us in the last century. Remember the Zimmerman Telegram? The sinking of the Lusitania? How about Pearl Harbor? And ya know what – the Carter Doctrine was a pre-emptive, unilateral move by your administration to protect the free flow of oil in the Persian Gulf.

    Don’t you think it’s time we stopped sitting still like ducks on a pond during opening day? Or would you prefer that we just sit by and wait for terrible things to happen like the embassy seizure in Iran?

    No, of course you don’t think we should get ahead of our enemies – that’s why you got to be the last President who could walk the mile down Pennsylvania Avenue on your inauguration day. By the end of your administration, you’d made the world so dangerous that every President since has had to ride in a bullet-proof limo.

    The RNC wasn’t so gentle with Carter as the White House;

    “Apparently, Sunday mornings in Plains for former President Carter includes hurling reckless accusations at your fellow man,” said Amber Wilkerson, Republican National Committee spokeswoman. She said that it was hard to take Carter seriously because he also “challenged Ronald Reagan’s strategy for the Cold War.”

    Carter’s been wrong about every one of his foreign policy criticisms and attempts over the last 35 years. Why should anyone think he has something substantial to add now?

    UPDATE: Fox News Channel (with an AP contribution) reports that Carter claims he was misunderstood;

    “My remarks were maybe careless or misinterpreted but I wasn’t comparing the overall administration and certainly not talking about anyone personally,” Carter said in an interview Monday when asked to explain.

    The comments “were interpreted as comparing this whole administration to all other administrations when what I was actually doing was responding to a question about foreign policy between [President Richard] Nixon and this administration, and I think that this administration’s foreign policy compared to Nixon’s was much worse. … I wasn’t comparing this administration with other administrations throughout history but just with President Nixon’s,” he told NBC’s “The Today Show.”

    What a doofus. In his quote above, he used the word “worst” which means he was comparing this administration with at least two other administrations, otherwise he would have used the word “worse” which would be used in comparing two administrations (Nixon versus Bush). Language means stuff.

    Oh, and he admits that he’s irrelevant;

    Carter…said he doesn’t “claim to have any relevancy” on the Iraq issue, though he has sent reports for the president and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on his personal activities monitoring elections around the world.

    Well, he finally got something right. The old coot needs to go back to Plains, sit on the porch of his mansion and rock himself further into obscurity.

    Editor’s Note: I know I’ve said much of this before, but I feel it bears repeating. This a form of self-flagellation over the guilt that my first vote in a Presidential election went to Jimmy Carter. I regretted it within days after his inauguration when his first official act was to give amnesty to draft dodgers. And the main reason I’d voted for him was because he’d promised, during the campaign, to not surrender the Panama Canal (where I was stationed at the time) – we all know how that turned out.

    Later, I spent weeks on Green Ramp in Fort Bragg waiting for the signal to run a Soviet combat brigade out of our Hemisphere – that of course never came to fruition, to our great shame – but our equipment at the time had been manufactured during the Vietnam war and there were no parts available and mostly failed to work – none of us were surprised when Desert One ended because of maintenance failures.

    There was no fuel or money to train; we practiced jumping from the tailgate of moving duece-and-a-half trucks to simulate assembling on the drop zone. When I got promoted to Sergeant from Corporal, my raise was an whopping $22/month.

    So yeah, my beef with Carter is personal and will last until one of us dies. Expect one of these posts everytime he opens his stupid yap.

  • Convert or die

    According to the Associated Press (via Fox News Channel);

    Christians in a Pakistani town beset by pro-Taliban militants sought government protection Wednesday, the eve of a deadline for them to convert to Islam or face violence.

    About 500 Pakistani Christians in Charsadda, a town in the North West Frontier Province bordering Afghanistan, received letters earlier this month telling them to close their churches and convert by Thursday or be the target of “bomb explosions.”

    Several Christians, a tiny minority in the predominantly Muslim country, have fled town and others are living in fear, community leaders said.

    Ron Paul and the Iraq Study Group and Nancy Pelosi say we should negotiate with these people. They don’t seem to be a mood to negotiate. Seems pretty simple to me – they want everyone to either be like them or dead. Where’s the wiggle room?

    The AP story is oddly consistent with what Mike at Flopping Aces wrote last night on Ron Paul’s idiot explanation Tuesday night;

    From the bin Laden’s 2002 “Letter to the American People:”

    What are we calling you to, and what do we want from you?

    (1) The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam.

    (a) The religion of the Unification of God; of freedom from associating partners with Him, and rejection of this; of complete love of Him, the Exalted; of complete submission to His Laws; and of the discarding of all the opinions, orders, theories and religions which contradict with the religion He sent down to His Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). Islam is the religion of all the prophets, and makes no distinction between them – peace be upon them all.

    It is to this religion that we call you; the seal of all the previous religions.
    …
    You are the nation who, rather than ruling by the Shariah of Allah in its Constitution and Laws, choose to invent your own laws as you will and desire. You separate religion from your policies, contradicting the pure nature which affirms Absolute Authority to the Lord and your Creator.

    In comparison, Little Green Footballs tells us that the Saudis are concerned that the Western world is xenophobic towards Arabs, and they don’t understand why we could think that. And islamophobia is a worse form of terrorism than being beheaded or blown to smithereens while doing your grocery shopping;

    “The increasingly negative political and media discourse targeting Muslims and Islam in the United States and Europe has made things all the more difficult,” the foreign ministers said. “Islamophobia became a source of concern, especially after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, but the phenomenon was already there in Western societies in one form or the other,” they pointed out. “It gained further momentum after the Madrid and London bombings. The killing of Dutch film director Theo van Gogh in 2004 was used in a wicked manner by certain quarters to stir up a frenzy against Muslims,” the ministers pointed out. Van Gogh had made a controversial film about Muslim culture.

    Imagine that – everytime an Arab commits an act of terrorism against perfectly innocent people, living their lives peaceably and no one in the Arab World condemns the act, and the Arab people dance in the streets celebrating the act, hatred towards Arabs increases.

    Sounds like Scrappleface.

  • John Doe Protection Act

    As you’ve probably read on other blogs, Congressman Steve Pearce (R-NM) has introduced what is being called the John Doe Protection Act across the internet. Audrey Hudson of the Washington Times has been a real tiger on this whole issue since the Flying Imams started this whole thing last November;

    Muslim religious leaders removed from a Minneapolis flight last week exhibited behavior associated with a security probe by terrorists and were not merely engaged in prayers, according to witnesses, police reports and aviation security officials.
        Witnesses said three of the imams were praying loudly in the concourse and repeatedly shouted “Allah” when passengers were called for boarding US Airways Flight 300 to Phoenix.
        “I was suspicious by the way they were praying very loud,” the gate agent told the Minneapolis Police Department.
        Passengers and flight attendants told law-enforcement officials the imams switched from their assigned seats to a pattern associated with the September 11 terrorist attacks and also found in probes of U.S. security since the attacks — two in the front row first-class, two in the middle of the plane on the exit aisle and two in the rear of the cabin.
        “That would alarm me,” said a federal air marshal who asked to remain anonymous. “They now control all of the entry and exit routes to the plane.”
        A pilot from another airline said: “That behavior has been identified as a terrorist probe in the airline industry.”

    Audrey also warned us last month about the threat to the “John Does” who reported their suspicious behavior;

    A group of imams suing US Airways for discrimination amended their lawsuit this week to target only the “John Doe” passengers who they say are racist and falsely accused them of behaving suspiciously.
        The six imams were removed from a flight in Minneapolis in November for disruptive behavior reported by passengers and members of the flight crew.
        The lawsuit filed earlier this month targeted “passengers who contacted US Airways to report the alleged ‘suspicious’ behavior of plaintiffs performing their prayer at the airport terminal.”
        The amended lawsuit identifies possible John Does as individuals who “may have made false reports against plaintiffs solely with the intent to discriminate against them on the basis of their race, religion, ethnicity and national origin.”  

    Today she’s writing about the legislation introduced by Joe Lieberman in the Senate and Congressman Pearce in the House;

    A bipartisan coalition in the House and Senate is pushing legislation to protect Americans from being sued for reporting to authorities suspicious activity that may lead to a terrorist attack.
        “If you see something, you should say something, and not have to worry about being sued,” said Sen. Jon Kyl, Arizona Republican.
        The measure was introduced in the Senate late Friday and is sponsored by Sen. Joe Lieberman, Connecticut independent and chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, along with Mr. Kyl and Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the panel’s ranking Republican.

         A House version introduced yesterday is sponsored by Rep. Steve Pearce, New Mexico Republican; Rep. Peter T. King, New York Republican and ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee; and Rep. Bill Shuster, Pennsylvania Republican.
        “In a post-9/11 reality, passenger vigilance is essential to security. If we fail to protect passengers that report suspicious behavior, it would be a huge victory for terrorists,” Mr. King said.

    The House legislation is HR 2291 and HR 1640 (this link takes you to thomas.loc.gov, just type in the HR# in the search box to read the bills – they don’t have permanent links). I’ve got a call in to Lieberman’s office to find out the Senate designation that hasn’t been returned yet. The House Resolution 1640 reads;

      (a) In General- An individual shall not be liable for any injury or damages relating to such individual’s qualified disclosure of suspicious behavior. A civil action for damages related to such disclosure may not be brought in any State or Federal court.
      (b) Qualified Disclosure of Suspicious Behavior- For purposes of this section, the term `qualified disclosure of suspicious behavior’ means any disclosure of the allegedly suspicious behavior of another individual or individuals to a Federal, State, or local law enforcement agency or other security personnel that is made in good faith and with the reasonable belief that such behavior is suspicious.

    HR 2991 reads;

      Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

     SECTION 1. IMMUNITY FOR REPORTING SUSPICIOUS BEHAVIOR.

      (a) In General- Any person who, in good faith, makes, or causes to be made, a voluntary disclosure of any suspicious transaction, activity, or occurrence indicating that an individual may be engaging, or preparing to engage, in an action described in section 3 to any employee or agent of the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Transportation, or the Department of Justice, any Federal, State, or local law enforcement officer, any transportation security officer, or any employee or agent of a transportation system shall be immune from civil liability to any person for such disclosure under any Federal, State, or local law.

    (b) False Disclosures- Subsection (a) shall not apply to any statement or disclosure that the person making the statement or disclosure knows to be false at the time it is made.

     SEC. 2. IMMUNITY FOR MITIGATION OF THREATS

      Any person in receipt of a report described in section 1 who takes reasonable action to mitigate a suspicious action described in section 3 shall be immune from civil liability to any person for such action under any Federal, State, or local law.

     SEC. 3. COVERED DISCLOSURES.

      The actions described in this section are possible or attempted violations of law relating to–

    (1) a threat to a transportation system or the safety or security of its passengers; or

    (2) an act of terrorism (as defined in section 3077 of title 18, United States Code) that involves, or is directed against, a transportation system or its passengers.

     SEC. 4. ATTORNEY FEES AND COSTS.

      Any person who is named as a defendant in a civil lawsuit for making a voluntary disclosure described in section 1 or for taking an action described in section 2, and is found to be immune from civil liability under this Act, shall be entitled to recover from the plaintiff all reasonable costs and attorney fees allowed by the court in which the lawsuit was decided.

     SEC. 5. EFFECTIVE DATE.

      This Act shall take effect on November 20, 2006, and shall apply to all activities and claims occurring on or after such date.

     

    But the Democrats are hot to strip the language from last month’s Transportion bill as reported by Crotchety Old Bastard  and Little Green Footballs. Michele Malkin has more on the bill.

    I expect everyone to call, write, fax, and email your Congressmembers to support these bills.

  • Anti-counter-terrorism Democrats

    Who could be surprised by the Democrats’ behavior towards one of our strongest allies in the Southern Hemisphere, as reported in the Washington Times’ editorial today;

    Consider the record of Alvaro Uribe, president of Colombia, since his election in 2002. A deal with paramilitary forces has resulted in more than 31,000 fighters surrendering their weapons. By boosting the size and strength of security forces and going after the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Mr. Uribe was able to reduce the guerilla’s presence in central Colombia. The country is safer — the annual murder count, on a steady increase before Mr. Uribe took office, has declined by more than one-third — and Colombia is more prosperous. The rate of increase in gross domestic product has gone up. Throughout his tenure, moreover, Mr. Uribe has been a strong U.S. ally in a region without many.
        With these positive steps, it’s little surprise that Mr. Uribe enjoys solid approval ratings at home. In Washington earlier this month, however, Mr. Uribe found that neither his success nor his support of the United States could win him so much as a cordial reception on Capitol Hill. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, under pressure from interest groups, initially rebuffed requests to meet with Mr. Uribe. She did meet with him, but later issued a press release that did not even mention the U.S.-Colombia free trade agreement that Democrats have held up and that Mr. Uribe had traveled to Washington to advance.
        Instead, the speaker used the meeting as another opportunity to hit at revelations that members of Mr. Uribe’s government had been involved with paramilitary groups. Sen. Patrick Leahy cited the same as reason for blocking some $55 million in military aid to Colombia last month.

    Democrats complain about how other countries perceive us and our foreign policy – who could blame the rest of the world with fickle, irresponsible terrorist-hugging jackasses running the Congress like a pack of elementary school nerds.

    And the Washington Post today, gets to hammering on Uribe claiming that legislators in Columbia have been arrested for participating in para-military groups and that they’re political allies of Uribe’s. If you scroll down towards the end of the Post article, you see Uribe has been instrumental in dismantling the organizations;

    Uribe ordered the commanders jailed in Itagui prison in northern Antioquia state until they confessed their crimes and provided details about the land and other property they had stolen during a long and bloody dirty war. But the disclosures by Semana, coupled with the fact that the commanders have so far revealed little about their crimes, have cast doubt on the government’s effort to dismantle the paramilitary groups and bring justice to victims.

    Just because the dismantling isn’t going as fast as the Democrats and the Post would like, this is certainly no reason to withold funding from one the few leaders in Latin America committed to fighting terrorism in the region. I’d like to see them get this exercised about Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran dismantling their organizations and plans.

  • Eighth century justice

    According to an AP story on the Fox News Channel website, al Qaida in Iraq explains that they abducted the three US troops this weekend in retaliation for a rape and murder of an iraqi girl last year;

    “You should remember what you have done to our sister Abeer in the same area,” the statement said, referring to five American soldiers who were charged in the rape and killing of 14-year-old Abeer Qassim al-Janabi and the killings of her parents and her younger sister last year.

    Now, keep in mind that none of these troops are involved in the case, the three who were involved have pleaded guilty. So what the Hell is this about? Just an excuse.

    Let American forces treated every Iraqi, or every Arab, as if they were al Qaida, imagine the outcry. And I’ll betcha that al Qaida would do their share of murdering of young Iraqi girls given the opportunity.

    al Qaida has also made a demand that the US forces stop looking for their captured brothers immediately. Here’s why;

    [One Iraqi man] said the fighting began at about 3:30 a.m. and lasted for about 30 minutes. The officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to security concerns, said the coalition’s search operation in the region has detained more than 100 suspects. The U.S. military did not immediately comment on the report.

    Just like their judgement of the result of the 9-11 attack, the 8th century barbarians misjudged our reaction to this ambush and abduction. This statement indicates that they don’t realize that Democrats aren’t in control of ground operations in Iraq. The generals wouldn’t stop the search even they were ordered to stop – I guess al Qaida missed the part of “Black Hawk Down” where no one was left behind.

    The Washington Post reports that;

    About 4,000 U.S. soldiers, backed by Iraqi troops, searched homes, palm groves and farmland on Sunday for the three missing American soldiers. The attack occurred in an area, known as the Triangle of Death, that has long been considered a breeding ground for Sunni insurgents.

    Iraq’s deputy prime minister, Barham Salih, told CNN that “indications are that al-Qaeda and its affiliate organizations are responsible for this attack.”

    So I wonder if Nancy Pelosi, et al. are willing, at this point, to admit that al Qaida might actually be in Iraq.

  • The more things change…

    Boy, this article from Bill Gertz’ Inside the Ring column this morning in the Washington Times sure does bring back memories;

    According to the officers, U.S. troops are being forced to carry unloaded weapons on most U.S. bases because commanders are more worried about a “negligent” discharge than the very real likelihood of a terrorist attack by an insider on the base. The rule is all the more disconcerting because these troops are in areas where they receive combat pay.
        Defense officials say the fear of “negligent” weapon discharge is due to lack of training and is different from concerns about accidental discharge, which involves a mechanical malfunction that rarely occurs.
        “This selection of political correctness and safety concerns over force protection contrasts markedly with combat experience in World War II, Korea or Vietnam, where soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines were required to be armed — with loaded weapons — at all times,” one official said.
        “This is a gross failure of leadership, and in all likelihood has contributed to the U.S. casualty rate,” the official said.
        The officer in Iraq said the unloaded-gun rule is a symptom of bigger military leadership problems, especially in the Army.

    I remember patrolling the East German border, facing fully cocked and locked East German GAKs, with my magazines for M16 safely locked in an ammo can back on my vehicle 150 meters away.

    On the other hand, I remember the support weinie, in the Port of Jubail during Desert Storm while we waited for our equipment to arrive, that discharged his weapon into the clearing barrel right next to my head.

    Then, there we were in the desert in Saudi Arabia where we allowed to have only one loaded magazine (a hundred meters from the Iraq border) and it had to be in our ammo pouch. We weren’t even allowed to have an unloaded magazine in our weapon so our commander could see that our weapon was unloaded – within walking distance of the enemy.

    It truly is a failure of leadership that combat troops in a combat zone can’t be trusted to carry loaded weapons. I hope General Petraeus and his sergeant major can overcome that failure – with training. 

    In the meantime, Ace of Spades keeps us posted with a coming “grim milestone”.

  • Iraqis want a time schedule for withdrawal?

    That’s what you’d believe after a cursory glance at this story in the Washington Post this morning. Under the headline “Iraqi Lawmakers Back Bill on US Withdrawal“, the Post announces;

    A majority of members of Iraq’s parliament have signed a draft bill that would require a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. soldiers from Iraq and freeze current troop levels. The development was a sign of a growing division between Iraq’s legislators and prime minister that mirrors the widening gulf between the Bush administration and its critics in Congress.

    Oh, my! Then why are we there, if the Iraqis don’t want us there? But, wait! Read a few paragraphs down to;

    “We haven’t asked for the immediate withdrawal of multinational forces; we asked that we should build our security forces and make them qualified, and at that point there would be a withdrawal,” said Bahaa al-Araji, a member of parliament allied with the anti-American Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose supporters drafted the bill. “But no one can accept the occupation of his country.”

    (Emphasis mine)

    Oh, well, that’s no shocker that Mookey (Butterball) al-Sadr wants a time-scheduled withdrawal, is it? That way he can rest his militia up on the French Riviera and then have them locked and loaded when the last C130 leaves Baghdad airport.

    So what’s the Washington Post trying to pull here? I guess they’re running a screen for the Democrats – the Democrats know that if they keep sending pre-vetoed legislation to the president, they’ll start looking like Gingrich’s Republicans in the 90s when they tried to force Clinton to spend responsibly and the public will start blaming Democrats for prolonging the war.

    In comes the pinch-hitting press to cover for the Democrats. Take the heat off the Democrats by implying that the Iraqis support a timed withdrawal – and try to keep from mentioning al Sadr who has called the presence of American an occupation.

    Nice try, WaPo.

  • How do we win?

    Exactly how do Democrats think that playing politics with funding for the war will end well for this country? S.A.Miller and Jon Curl of the Washington Times write today;

    The House last night ignored a veto threat and passed a bill to ration war funds, hours after President Bush for the first time offered to negotiate Iraq benchmarks with the Democrat-led Congress.
        The bill, which would fund the war in two-month installments and sets up a possible troop withdrawal in August, passed in a 221-205 vote, with Democrats backing the bill by 219-10 and Republicans opposed by 195-2.

    With incremental funding, how do the Iraqis know they can depend on us to protect them while they build a fledgling government? How can Democrats think this helps?
    Elsewhere in the Times, Sharon Behn writes that the troops are working hard to convince Iraqis that giving US forces information on terrorists is a safe practice;

     “We’ve seen a small increase of individuals willing to talk to us on what they perceive as terrorists. That has led to a couple of people being captured or put into Camp Cropper,” he said, referring to a detention center located on one of the U.S. bases. “The tips we’ve been getting seem better.”
        In one instance, during a several-hour-long patrol in a largely Shi’ite community, U.S. soldiers were called back to a house down a side alley to speak to a man who said he had been beaten by members of the Mahdi Army militia. Deep purple bruises covered his legs, and he said they had tortured him with electricity on his feet.
        After a lot of reassurance, the man gave the soldiers the location of a Mahdi militia member, although it was clear he was terrified.

    How long can the Iraqis trust our troops to stay when they’ve watched us pull out before? We left the Iraqi Shi’ites to Saddam’s henchment in 1991, the Somalis in 1993, the Haitians in 1996 and on-and-on. Why should the iraqis trust to stay and help them when the Left is so bound and determined to surrender to Code Pink and the jihadists? Why would an Iraqi stick his mortal neck out to provide the troops with vital information when we might not be around in a few months and the guys he rats out come back for revenge? Why should they trust us to stay when we’ve given the world no reason to believe we’ll see a war through?

    The Washington Post reports today that Democrats are still under the mispreception that they’re doing the work of the American people;

    “The president has brought us to this point by vetoing the first Iraq Accountability Act and refusing to pay for this war responsibly,” declared House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). “He has grown accustomed to the free hand on Iraq he had before January 4. Those days are over.”

    The final tally came just an hour after antiwar Democrats mustered 171 votes for far tougher legislation that would all but end U.S. military involvement in Iraq within nine months. The 255 to 171 vote against that measure meant that nowhere close to a majority backed it, but the fact that 169 Democrats and two Republicans voted for it surprised opponents and proponents alike.

    “I didn’t think I was going to get anywhere near 171 votes,” said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), the withdrawal bill’s chief author. “This is proof that the United States Congress is getting closer to where the American people already are.”

    If the American people were ready to surrender, the President couldn’t veto – there’d be throngs of everyday guys like me outside the White House. We ain’t out there, Jimbo, so you’re delusioned into believing that all of America thinks like your idiot constituents. If that were true, if we thought like your idiot constituents, we’d be talking about President Kerry right now. 

    I understand the old saw that the “squeaky wheel gets the oil”, but in this case the squeaky wheel is a bunch of morons in pink feather boas – shouldn’t we take that into account when our legislature tries to formulate half-baked foreign policy?