The Redhunter

August 19, 2010

Nancy Pelosi to Bring Back House Un-American Affairs Committee

So Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi says that "There is no question that there is a concerted effort to make this a political issue by some, and I join those who have called for looking into how is this opposition to the mosque (is) being funded."

And just as Obama had to "clarify" his remarks on the Cordoba House "Ground Zero mosque" after they raised a stink, the Speaker had to "clarify" a few days later, insisting that no, she did not mean to say that she wanted a congressional inquiry." Like, you know, the House Un-American Affairs Committee.

Worse, she evidently forgot that some rather prominent Democrats have come out against the mosque, such as former governor of Vermont and DNC Chairman Howard Dean and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Oops.

This sort of kookery, dear reader, is one reason why the Democrats are going to lose big this November. It's bad enough that they ram through unpopular legislation after a smorgasbord of deal-making that would make even Bismark wince, but they have incompetent leaders to boot.

Don't get me wrong; the GOP has had it share of nincompoops in charge as well. Speaker of the House Denny Haskert and Chair of the RNC Michael Steele come to mind, as does Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott. But the Democrats are the ones in charge now, and it is they who will be held to account.

How is it that Pelosi can say something so obviously stupid and wrong?

One of if not the most insightful bloggers anywhere is Richard Fernandez, who writes the Belmont Club blog, now at Pajamas Media. Read his entire post on the matter, but here is the gist of it:

Nancy Pelosi thinks the reason why questions about the Ground Zero mosque are following her around is because it's been "all ginned up" and she has called for an investigation into who is funding those raising the questions. Pelosi's remarks provide an insight into a world in which nothing happens unless it is bought and paid for. Since these are the rules the denizens of that universe have lived by, they cannot conceive of a world that does not run on pure corruption.

In the world they live in, everything has a price. Whenever anything is observed to happen, the question is always "who sent you"?

The Ground Zero mosque issue serves two functions, both of which are important. The first is to raise the question of how accountable the administration and the cultural elites are to the sensibilities of the country; and the second is to draw attention to the particular interests that are driving this issue.

The important thing to remember is that Pelosi's call for an investigation into those opposed to building of the mosque are geared towards preventing any further discussion on the subject, not expanding it. Since the administration and its allies control vast prosecutorial resources and powers of publicity, an investigation of the Ground Zero mosque's backers and those opposed will certainly focus on the opposition. The backers will be given a free ride.

We see the same thing with the Tea Party. Rather than discuss the issues that brought about the Tea Parties in the first place; of spending and the role of government in determining health care delivery, they try and change the subject with the McCarthyite charge that the Tea Partiers are all a bunch of racists.

As I said in my last post, the way Obama has handled the issue of the Ground Zero mosque shows him to be wildly out of touch with mainstream America. The way Nancy Pelosi has reacted shows her to be out of sync as well. That Harry Reid responded in a normal manner wont' save them.

Note that my analysis is not so much based on that Obama and Pelosi are for the mosque and Reid against it. Anyone with a lick of political sense knows that being in favor of the mosque is a losing political issue, so if you must be in favor of it just make a few bland statements and move on. Obama and Pelosi have gone off the deep end, though, and this is something the American people will not forget.

__________________

Finally... yes I know Nancy Pelosi isn't going to bring back HUAC, so shoot me. It's an attention-getting title and it got you to read the post.

Posted by Tom at 10:00 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

August 14, 2010

To Shop or Not to Shop at Target?

This is insane for so many reasons:

Target Apologizes for Donation to Conservative Candidate
AOLNews
ST. PAUL, Minn. (Aug. 6) -- The head of Target Corp. apologized Thursday over a political donation to a business group backing a conservative Republican for Minnesota governor, which angered some employees and sparked talk of a customer boycott.

Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel wrote employees to say the discount retailer was "genuinely sorry" over the way a $150,000 contribution to MN Forward donation played out. Steinhafel said Target would set up a review process for future political donations.

MN Forward is running TV ads supporting Republican Tom Emmer, an outspoken conservative opposed to same-sex marriage and other gay-rights initiatives that have come before Minnesota's Legislature.

Steinhafel said the contribution from the corporate treasury to a political effort, which until this year wasn't allowed, was designed to support Emmer's stance on economic issues. Ads run by the group were focused on budget policy, not social issues.

But wait, it gets worse:

Liberal groups push to exploit Target backlash
Liberal groups try to exploit backlash against Target for helping anti-gay marriage candidate
Associated Press
Friday, August 13, 2010

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) -- Protesters have been rallying outside Target Corp. or its stores almost daily since the retailer angered gay rights supporters and progressives by giving money to help a conservative Republican gubernatorial candidate in Minnesota. Liberal groups are pushing to make an example of the company, hoping its woes will deter other businesses from putting their corporate funds into elections.

A national gay rights group is negotiating with Target officials, demanding that the firm balance the scale by making comparable donations to benefit candidates it favors. Meanwhile, the controversy is threatening to complicate Target's business plans in other urban markets. Several city officials in San Francisco, one of the cities where Target hopes to expand, have begun criticizing the company.

"Target is receiving criticism and frustration from their customers because they are doing something wrong, and that should serve absolutely as an example for other companies," said Ilyse Hogue, director of political advocacy for the liberal group MoveOn.org, which is pressing Target to formally renounce involvement in election campaigns.

But conservative organizations are likely to react harshly if Target makes significant concessions to the left-leaning groups.

The flap has revealed new implications of a recent Supreme Court ruling that appeared to benefit corporations by clearing the way for them to spend company funds directly in elections. Companies taking sides in political campaigns risk alienating customers who back other candidates.

Target's $150,000 donation to a business-oriented group supporting Republican Tom Emmer, an outspoken opponent of gay marriage, was one of the first big corporate contributions to become known after the U.S. Supreme Court threw out prohibitions on corporate spending in elections earlier this year.

The Minneapolis-based chain has gone from defending the donation as a business decision to apologizing and saying it would carefully review its future giving. But the protests have continued.

Demonstrators gathered near Target's Minneapolis headquarters on Thursday, and two Facebook groups focused on gay rights are organizing protests at Target stores nationwide this weekend. Immigrant rights supporters have joined the protests, citing Emmer's tough stance on illegal immigration.

The company is in talks with the Human Rights Campaign, a national gay rights organization that wants Target and electronics retailer Best Buy Co., which gave $100,000 to the same group backing Emmer, to match their donations with equal amounts to help gay-friendly candidates.

Fred Sainz, the group's vice president for communications, said he is optimistic both companies will respond to the demand. Target has long cultivated a good relationship with the gay community in Minneapolis, and its gay employees have protested the donation.

"The repair has to be consistent with the harm that was done," Sainz said.

MoveOn, which had feared a heavy flow of corporate donations to groups that help conservative candidates after the Supreme Court decision, protested outside Target headquarters last week.

On the other side, conservatives have begun to rally to support Target, but in smaller numbers. A Facebook page urging "Boycott Target Until They Cease Funding Anti-Gay Politics" has more than 54,000 fans. A page declaring "I will NOT Boycott Target for supporting a Conservative candidate" has a little more than 400 fans.

A Target spokeswoman said the company had nothing to add to chief executive Gregg Steinhafel's statement of apology last week. At Richfield Minn.-based Best Buy, a spokeswoman said the company is reviewing its process for political donations and intended the Minnesota contribution to focus "solely on jobs and an improved economy."

The story goes on, but you get the point.

I don't particularly like Target and this mess just gives me one more reason to avoid them.

The lesson is; do not make contributions as a company to any political candidate or cause. Left or Right. Period.

Posted by Tom at 12:00 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

August 4, 2010

Stark Raving Mad

Does Democrat Representative Pete Stark (CA-13) come across as crazier in the first video or the second? You decide:

About a week ago...

"The federal government can do most anything." No big surprise that Stark doesn't seem to recognize any limits to what the federal government can do. There are a whole slew of Democrats who agree with him.

h/t Powerline for both)

... and on October 18, 2007:

Bush just likes to blow things up!" Soldiers in Iraq are being killed "for the President's amusement!"

All of us say a few things every now and then that are off base, but really, this guy is too much.

Posted by Tom at 8:15 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

March 31, 2010

Obama Care is about the Redistribution of Wealth

Over the weekend we got some honesty from former Vermont Governor and DNC chairman Howard Dean and Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) both admitted that much of ObamaCare was about good old fashioned socialist redistribution of wealth.

No one who paid attention during the campaign can say this is a surprise. We all recall then-Senator Obama's infamous encounter with Joe the Plumber:

"Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn't it?" the plumber asked, complaining that he was being taxed "more and more for fulfilling the American dream."

"It's not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they've got a chance for success too," Obama responded. "My attitude is that if the economy's good for folks from the bottom up, it's gonna be good for everybody ... I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."

via Gateway Pundit, first up is Howard Dean:

Next we have Senator Baucus, also via Gateway Pundit:

"This is also an income shift, it's a shift, a leveling, to help lower middle income Americans. Too often, much of late, the last couple three years the mal-distribution of income in America is gone up way too much, the wealthy are getting way, way too wealthy, and the middle income class is left behind. Wages have not kept up with increased income of the highest income in America. This legislation will have the effect of addressing that mal-distribution of income in America, because health care is now a right for all Americans, and because health care is now affordable for all Americans."

And on what basis is health care now a right? Because you say so? Because we passed a law? I thought we were supposed to justify these things by natural law, natural rights, or at least a reference to, you know, the Constitution. For that matter, where exactly in the Constitution does it specify that it is the role of government to level incomes?

More, if enough Democrats say this sort of thing often enough, can we just admit that this is what Obama and most leading Democrats are about?

The New York Times gets it

In Health Bill, Obama Attacks Wealth Inequality

By David Leonhardt

March 23, 2010

For all the political and economic uncertainties about health reform, at least one thing seems clear: The bill that President Obama signed on Tuesday is the federal government's biggest attack on economic inequality since inequality began rising more than three decades ago.

Everybody's Old Favorite

Barack Obama in a 2001 interview with Chicago Public Radio station WBEZ:

If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court. I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed people, so that now I would have the right to vote. I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order as long as I could pay for it I'd be o.k. But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn't that radical. It didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can't do to you. Says what the Federal government can't do to you, but doesn't say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, and that hasn't shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendancy to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that.

Liberals object loudly whenever we on the right call Obama a socialist, and from a tactical standpoint we may want to avoid using that term.

Posted by Tom at 3:15 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

February 12, 2010

As Usual, Joe Biden is Wrong on Iraq

You just can't make this stuff up:

On Larry King Live last night, Vice President Joe Biden said Iraq "could be one of the great achievements of this administration. You're going to see 90,000 American troops come marching home by the end of the summer. You're going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government."

The vice president said he'd been to Iraq 17 times and visits the country every three months or so. "I know every one of the major players in all the segments of that society" he said. "It's impressed me. I've been impressed how they have been deciding to use the political process rather than guns to settle their differences."

At the briefing today, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs was asked about Biden calling Iraq one of the great potential achievements of the Obama administration given that Biden had previously advocated that the country should be divided into thirds and split among Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis, and then-Sen. Obama opposing the surge of US troops that many experts argue helped bring stability that allowed the reconciliation process to continue.

And to think that some people say Sarah Palin and Dan Quayle are dumb.

Unfortunately, there's no reason to be surprised by the latest idiocy coming from Joe Biden. Not only is the man a walking gaff machine, he's been wrong on almost every foreign policy question of the last 30 years.

Obama is the most narcissistic, arrogant, and vain person ever to occupy the White House, but if (heaven forbid!) Biden should somehow become president he'll be a shoo-inn as number two. Can our Vice-President actually believe that his administration is responsible for our (so far) success in Iraq? Frighteningly, the answer appears to be "yes."

It's bad enough that this administration spends so much of its time blaming it's predecessor for everything. But now they're taking credit for something they weren't even responsible for.

A commenter on Newsbusters reminded me of an analogy that I've heard before:

So let's say my wife has major surgery and it's touch-and-go for quite awhile and the doctor tells us that another surgery is needed to back the first one and hopefully to make it successful. We go ahead with his suggestion and the wife starts doing much better quickly. She still needs to stay in the hospital for various reasons but the big hurdles have been accomplished.

Another doctor takes over for the first one who's now retired and removes her remaining few stitches and turns to me and says "I guess you are happy I was able to save her life."

Whatever you want to think about the wisdom of invading Iraq, or our original strategy while there, it's indisputable that George W. Bush's surge saved the day. I've blogged on this so extensively that from 2007 to 2008 you could just about call this "the Iraq blog." Check out Iraq II 2007 - 2008 under "Categories" at right, and scroll away. Hope you have awhile.

Since we're having such fun with our Vice President let's revisit some of his greatest hits:

Posted by Tom at 9:00 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

April 25, 2009

The Democrat "Truth Commissions"

Yesterday I lambasted President Obama for deciding to allow prosecution of Bush Administration officials who approved harsh interrogation techniques. I also quoted from several news stories that showed that congressional Democrats knew full well years ago what was happening, but for political reasons are choosing to lie about it now.

Today I've got a few additional thoughts on the matter.

If this actually goes forward, Obama will have gone too far, and all in less than 100 days. His 'stimulus' program will set us on the road to long-term economic ruin. Using the economic crisis as an excuse to effectively take over businesses sets us on the road to socialism. Cutting spending for the Navy and Air Force is dangerous. His serial apologies, insults to our country really, while overseas are disgraceful. That he refuses to even use the term "war on terror" is a scandal in and of itself. But these truth commissions, inquiries, whatever you want to call them, put us on the road to becoming a banana republic.

These prosecutions are nothing more than politically motivated witch hunts. Obama is throwing a bone to the kook left. It's not really even about guilt or innocence in any meaningful sense. It's about the criminalization of policy differences.

This is about intimidating any future advisers into only issuing the most bland, politically correct opinions. Anyone who seriously considers anything in an opinion other than the liberal party line risks prosecution. It's an attempt to shut down discussion on certain matters, sort of like what happened recently to Carrie Prejean and the Miss USA pagent.

This is what goes on in a banana republic; the guy who seizes power, or wins an election immediately sets about bringing the losers to trial.

I think the Democrats are also doing this because they think it's politically popular. Kind of like when they supported the invasion of Iraq when that was popular, and then opposed the war when the opinion polls turned south.

As a candidate, and until last week, Obama said that he was against these prosecutions. Apparently he has caved to political pressure. So much for his being a strong leader able to introduce a new type of politics. Whatever happened to "looking to the future?" This seems like concentrating on the past to me. The editors of the Wall Street Journal:

One major concern here is what Mr. Obama's decision to release these memos says about his own political leadership. He claims that one of his goals as President is to restore more comity to our politics, especially concerning national security. He also knows he needs a CIA willing to take risks to keep the country safe. Yet Mr. Obama seems more than willing to indulge the revenge fantasies of the left, as long as its potential victims served a different President. And while he is willing to release classified documents about interrogation techniques, Mr. Obama refuses to release documents that more fully discuss their results.

Apparently civility will have to wait.

All of this also shows the pernicious influence of groups like Movon.org. If they don't want to like Bush Administration policies, fine. What's going on here though is a policy dispute dressed up as criminal acts. This is similar to calls by environmentalists for prosecution of anyone involved in contributing to "global warming," or anti-gun groups or cities suing gun manufactures because their products allegedly violate consumer safety laws.

This makes what Obama and the Democrats are doing just the opposite of what happened to President Clinton. Whether you think his perjury rose to the level of an impeachable offense or not (and it is debatable), it was not a simple policy dispute and it wasn't the popular thing for the Republicans to do (the media at the time warning darkly that they would pay in the next election).

History

If you want to get down to it, it's no different than what any other president has done in times of war. They all do things that are later said to be 'going too far'

President Lincoln suspended habeus corpus three times during the Civil War. Here's one

Lincoln suspended habeas corpus in the confederate border state of Maryland (also a slave state) due to the fear that Maryland might secede from the Union. If secession occurred, it would result in Washington DC being completely surrounded by Confederate states.

His action was challenged in the U.S. Circuit Court in Maryland and overturned, but Lincoln ignored the court's ruling. In 1866 (5 years later), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to suspend habeas corpus since the President did not have that power.

Well that sounds pretty serious. Shall we demolish the Lincoln Memorial?

Now revered by almost all Americans, at the time Lincoln was lambasted by critics for what the liberals today call "shredding the Constitution. "

During World War I, Woodrow Wilson's Postmaster General was given the authority to refuse to deliver any publication he deemed seditious, and there was no appeal to his decision. At least seventy-five periodicals were effectively banned when the post office refused to deliver them.

FDR is worshiped by liberals and yet he "interned" some 110,000 Americans of Japanese descent during World War II.

My message here again is that during time of national emergency American leaders all do what seems right at the time. We have never prosecuted any of them. We must not start now.

So these "truth commissions," investigatations, or whatever the Democrats want to call them represent childishness and naivete on an unparalleled level. The only people who will be impressed are the ones who don't really matter; the Europeans, who have refused to help us in Afghanistan and are in the process of surrendering their nations to Islam.

Our enemies, on the other hand, are laughing at us.

They also know that Obama has done nothing, and I mean nothing, to actually fight terrorism, let alone jihadism. This despite that for the past several years the mantra from the left was "Bush has done nothing to make us safer" or "We aren't any safer now than on Sept 10."

Perhaps it's time for Mark Steyn to update the pronouns in what he said a few years ago:

I think when we listen to terrorists talking about the new caliphate, and there are a bunch of guys sitting in the cave, we think they're nuts. When a guy is sitting in the cave listening to (editor of The New York Times) Bill Keller explain proudly why he betrayed America's national security interests, that guy in the cave would rightly conclude that we're the ones that are nuts.

They must think we're nuts right about now.

Posted by Tom at 10:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 24, 2009

Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

Changing his position, President Obama has now decided to open the door to prosecution of Bush Administration officials who approved harsh interrogation techniques. From the New York Times on Wednesday:

President Obama left the door open Tuesday to creating a bipartisan commission that would investigate the Bush administration's use of harsh interrogation techniques on terrorism suspects, and did not rule out action by the Justice Department against those who fashioned the legal rationale for those techniques.

Obama is caving to pressure from his fellow Democrats. On March 4 Marc A. Thiessen reported this on National Review:

In an interview last week with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared that she "absolutely" supports the criminal investigation and potential prosecution of Bush officials, stating: "We have to have the facts. . . . We are unhappy about certain things; we anecdotally know about certain things....

The investigative train leaves the station this morning, as Sen. Whitehouse and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy hold the first hearing on Leahy's proposal for a "Truth Commission" to investigate the Bush administration. Leahy presents his commission as a "middle ground" between those "who resist any effort to investigate the misdeeds of the recent past" and those "who say that, regardless of the cost in time, resources, and unity, we must prosecute Bush administration officials to lay down a marker."

I hear they've selected their chief prosecutor, er, "investigator:"

Andrey Januaryevich Vyshinskiy (Russian: Андре́й Януа́рьевич Выши́нский, Andrej Januar'evič Vyšinskij) (December 10 [O.S. November 28] 1883, Odessa, Imperial Russia -November 22, 1954, New York), was a Russian and Soviet jurist and diplomat. He is mostly known as a state prosecutor of Stalin's show trials. He served as the Soviet Foreign Minister from 1949 to 1953. Vyshinsky was of Polish and Russian descent and spoke some English and excellent French...

In 1935 he became Prosecutor General of the USSR, the legal mastermind of Joseph Stalin's Great Purge. He is widely cited for the principle that "confession of the accused is the queen of evidence". His monograph that justifies this postulate, Theory of Judicial Proofs in Soviet Justice, was awarded the Stalin Prize in 1947. He was the prosecutor at the Moscow Trials of the Great Purge, lashing its defenseless victims with vituperative, sometimes cruelly witty rhetoric.

Democrats are full of moral righteousness these days, imagining themselves to be as pure as the wind driven snow.

They're not. They're in on this too. A Dec 9, 2007 story in the Washington Post is most revealing

In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.

"The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough," said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange....

Yet long before "waterboarding" entered the public discourse, the CIA gave key legislative overseers about 30 private briefings, some of which included descriptions of that technique and other harsh interrogation methods, according to interviews with multiple U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge.

With one known exception, no formal objections were raised by the lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods during the two years in which waterboarding was employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter. The lawmakers who held oversight roles during the period included Pelosi and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), as well as Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan).

Well well. They knew all along.

A story this past Thursday in The Washington Times reports much the same thing:

The CIA briefed top Democrats and Republicans on the congressional intelligence committees more than 30 times about enhanced interrogation techniques, according to intelligence sources who said the lawmakers tacitly approved the techniques that some Democrats in Congress now say should land Bush administration officials in jail.

Between 2002 and 2006, the top Republicans and Democrats on the House and Senate intelligence committees "each got complete, benchmark briefings on the program," said one of the intelligence sources who is familiar with the briefings.

"If Congress wanted to kill this program, all it had to do was withhold funding," said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about the closed-door briefings.

Those who were briefed included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia and Rep. Jane Harman of California, all Democrats, and Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, Sen. Richard C. Shelby of Alabama and Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, all Republicans.

The Democratic and Republican staff directors for both committees also were briefed, according to the intelligence source and to a declassified memo released Wednesday that detailed some of the Senate committee briefings.

Speaker Pelosi is in full backtrack mode. In a press conference on Thusday she said

"It is not appropriate for me to talk about what happens at briefings. It is very interesting that people are talking so freely. But I can say this: they have been talking about it for a while. At that or any other briefing, and that was the only briefing that I was briefed on in that regard, we were not -- I repeat, we were not -- told that water boarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used.

"What they did tell us is that they had some legislative counsel -- the Office of Legislative Counsel opinions that they could be used, but not that they would. And they further -- further, the point was that if and when they would be used, they would brief Congress at that time, A.

This is hotly disputed by Republicans. As reported today in the Times

Rep. Peter Hoekstra, currently the ranking Republican on the House intelligence panel, described her comments as the "lamest of lame excuses," saying she could have gone to then-Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt to discuss her concerns.

and

House Minority Leader John A. Boehner on Thursday chided Democrats for seeking an investigation of the Bush administration's treatment of captured terror suspects, noting a long list of lawmakers from both parties were briefed about the use of harsh interrogation methods years ago.

"Not a word was raised at the time," said Mr. Boehner, Ohio Republican, adding that he has seen a partial list of Democrats and Republicans briefed on CIA interrogation techniques as far back as 2002.

"There is nothing here that should surprise them," he said.

Very simply, I think Pelosi is lying through her teeth.

It is all very fine for her to say these things to reporters at a press briefing. If she allows her party to push forward with this, our attorneys will supoena her, get a deposition, and under oath she'll have to tell the truth. She'll be confronted with the records, statements of the CIA officers who briefed them, and the Republicans who were also present.

These Democrats were in on this from the beginning. Now they are trying to pretend that they didn't know.

They are playing to the polls. Their policy is whatever the latest poll or focus group shows. After 9-11 the polls said to be tough, so they were tough. Like everyone else, they were scared of another attack, and pulled out all the stops to prevent it. But not that the memory of that awful day has faded, they look at the polls and they show a public that doesn't like George W Bush, ignoring that it's for reasons other than actions taken fighting the GWOT. So they get ontheir moral high horse and sanctimoniously cry "torture!"

It's all like the Iraq war; they were for it when it was popular, and turned against it when the war went south and support sank in the polls.

They allowed kook groups like Movon.org to exert undue inlfuence over their party, and we are seeing the result; the criminalization of foreign policy differences. This is what banana republics do; the winner puts his defeated opponents in jail.

And the vast right-wing conspiracy, which is waiting for all this to unfold, will be out in full force. We've got the finest legal minds in the country lined up around the block to defend anyone they dare put through their show trials.

Stay tuned. More to come.

Posted by Tom at 10:00 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

February 3, 2009

Save us from a Military Takeover!

Via Sister Toldjah comes this on the Huffington Post

WASHINGTON, Feb 2 (IPS) by Gareth Porter - CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus, supported by Defence Secretary Robert Gates, tried to convince President Barack Obama that he had to back down from his campaign pledge to withdraw all U.S. combat troops from Iraq within 16 months at an Oval Office meeting Jan. 21.

But Obama informed Gates, Petraeus and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen that he wasn't convinced and that he wanted Gates and the military leaders to come back quickly with a detailed 16-month plan, according to two sources who have talked with participants in the meeting.

Obama's decision to override Petraeus's recommendation has not ended the conflict between the president and senior military officers over troop withdrawal, however. There are indications that Petraeus and his allies in the military and the Pentagon, including Gen. Ray Odierno, now the top commander in Iraq, have already begun to try to pressure Obama to change his withdrawal policy.

A network of senior military officers is also reported to be preparing to support Petraeus and Odierno by mobilising public opinion against Obama's decision.

Petraeus was visibly unhappy when he left the Oval Office, according to one of the sources. A White House staffer present at the meeting was quoted by the source as saying, "Petraeus made the mistake of thinking he was still dealing with George Bush instead of with Barack Obama."

Petraeus, Gates and Odierno had hoped to sell Obama on a plan that they formulated in the final months of the Bush administration that aimed at getting around a key provision of the U.S.-Iraqi withdrawal agreement signed envisioned re-categorising large numbers of combat troops as support troops. That subterfuge was by the United States last November while ostensibly allowing Obama to deliver on his campaign promise.

It took me a day but I think I've figure out what this is all about.

It's an attempt by the kook antiwar left to make our president into a hero by portraying a fascist military takeover that he must immediately put down.

If you don't believe me follow the link and read the whole thing. It's the story of how active duty military officers are secretly planning a public relations campaign to undermine Obama.

Michael Goldfarb, writing at The Weekly Standard, says file this story under fiction. He's not buying it at all:

"Porter, relying exclusively on anonymous sources, has alleged that America's top general (known to the left as General Betray Us) is acting in defiance of his commander in chief and angling to subvert civilian control of the military. Is it true? Well, Gareth Porter was the man who wrote a book, Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution, attacking the "myth" that Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge were engaged in mass murder. I'm sure he had great anonymous sources for that story, too."

Googling around, I discovered how the left is spinning this; as insubordination that our heroic president must immediately squash. This one is precious:

Generals' Revolt Threatens Obama Presidency

If an article by Gareth Porter in run by InterPress is correct that CentCom Commander Gen. David Petraeus and Iraq Commander Gen. Ray Odierno, backed by a group of lower-ranking generals, are planning to mount a public campaign to try and undermine President Obama's plan for a withdrawal from Iraq in 16 months, Obama needs to act fast and nip this dangerous act of insubordination in the bud....

Obama, on a much more serious issue--the conduct of and termination of a war--is now apparently being more or less openly defied by his top generals, who after all get their glory and power by having troops in battle, and who are also worried that a collapse of the puppet regime in Iraq could leave them looking like losers. They are thus opposing a pullout from Iraq (and a hardly precipitous one at that!) out of self-interest and self-preservation...

There is only one answer to this challenge to presidential authority: President Obama must sack both Petraeus and Odierno...

This is not just a matter of salvaging an Obama presidency. It is also a profound constitutional issue....

Got it? Obama the hero saves us from a fascist military takeover. Sounds like this Porter fellow has seen Seven Days in May one too many times.

Don't misunderstand this post; I am not attacking President Obama, but rather some of his supporters.

I don't see that the Daily Kos has picked up this particular story, but diarist testvet6778 thinks that even retired generals speaking out are a threat to the republic. Really.

Posted by Tom at 8:00 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

January 19, 2009

A History Lesson for Bush Haters Part II

Two of the reasons the left tells us that the war in Iraq is illegal is because it never got the proper UN authorization, and Iraq was a sovereign nation that didn't threaten us.

I disagree with both assertions, but I don't want to argue those points here.

What I want to tell all Bush Haters is that President Clinton also invaded and/or attacked nations without getting authorization from either Congress or the UN, and that posed no threat to us.

Don't believe me?

Haiti

On September 19, 1994, President Clinton launched Operation Uphold Democracy, in which United States forces invaded the Caribbean island nation of Haiti. I'm not going to rehash the entire affair, but suffice it to say that it was done with neither congressional nor United Nations authorization.

And one can hardly say that Haiti posed a threat to the United States.

I supported what we did then and I think it was the right thing now. We restored the duly elected Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and General Raoul Cédras stepped down even before we went in. It was a relatively easy operation in which we only lost one soldier, and on March 31, 1995 we ended our operation and handed it over to the UN.

No authorization from Congress or the UN. And Haiti hardly posed a threat to the US.

Bosnia and Kosovo

The war in the former Yugoslav republics is god-awful complex, and I didn't follow it in detail at the time. Haiti is bad enough, there's no way I'm going to try and rehash what was going on in the Balkans.

Suffice it to say though that in 1999, President Clinton once again ordered United States forces to attack a sovereign nation(s) without authorization from either Congress or the United Nations. Nobody can say that any of the former Yugoslav republics posed a threat to the United States. We called it Operation Allied Force.

Clinton did it under the aegis of NATO, but nowhere in it's charter does it give itself the right to invade a third country. Talk about how the fighting might "spill over" into other countries, or "don't you remember that World War I started there" was balderdash. Article 5 states that "The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all...." but Milosevic posed no threat to anyone in NATO.

So again, if I wanted to make silly arguments against what Clinton did in Bosnia it would be pretty easy. And all of you who love your

But as with Haiti, I supported what President Clinton did and I think he did the right thing now. No one else was going to deal with the situation, so he stepped up to the plate and took charge of a difficult situation.

The Point

My point, of course, is that throwing out talking-points such as "no UN authorization" or "X was a sovereign nation that posed no threat to us" is is childish and it's usually more complicated.

Of course I know that obviously Iraq is a huge affair in which we have spent much blood and treasure. From this perspective it's not the same as Iraq. But if you're going to make an argument on principal it is the same. If you're going to argue that we can't invade nations that don't pose a threat to us you must oppose Clinton's invasion of Haiti and his attack on Yugoslavia.

Not a Clinton Hater

I didn't vote for Bill Clinton in 1992 or 1996, and indeed have not voted for any Democrat ever. All in all I do not think he was a good president.

But I will say that at times he did the right thing. At times he was a good president. Yesterday I defended when he ordered cruise missiles fired at a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory, in a case when the intelligence turned out to be faulty. Other examples of good things are negotiating and signing GATT and NAFTA. He held down federal spending more than either Bush has done, and he signed onto welfare reform (though he had a lot of "help" from Republicans in Congress, who acted a lot more responsibly then than they did under GWB).

So unlike some liberals who don't give George Bush credit for anything, I'm not some wingnut who reflexively criticizes everything the other side does.

That's the lesson for today.

Posted by Tom at 9:30 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

January 18, 2009

A History Lesson for Bush Haters

Attention all Bush Haters

Consider your reaction if this story came across the wires today:

As was reported last week, President Bush launched cruise missiles at Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Sudan as part of what he called "Operation Infinite Justice". The missiles destroyed the factory, Sudan's primary source for ant-malarial and veterinary drugs. The day after the attack, which took place at night, Bush claimed that the factory was producing chemicals used in the production of VX nerve agent. He also claimed that the factory owners were tied to al Qaeda.

In the days since serious doubt has been cast on both of these claims. The evidence for the production of VX nerve agent is particular shaky. It has been revealed that it was based on a single soil sample taken by a CIA agent outside of the factory, which seemed to show the presence of EMPTA (O-Ethyl methylphosphonothioic acid), a VX precursor. But experts now say that testing errors could have been responsible for a "false positive," and at any rate there is no proof that the EMPTA was tied to the factory. Further, although Bush Administration officials first said that EMPTA was banned by the Chemical Weapons Convention, they have since backed off this claim.

Ties to al Qaeda are vague, with administration officials only stating that "intelligence sources" as the basis for their actions.

Administration officials have conceded that they had no congressional or UN authorization for the attack, which was on a sovereign nation not at war with the United States.

Experts say that as a humanitarian crisis looks as a result of the destruction of the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory. Werner Daum, the German ambassador to Sudan, says that it is possible that tens of thousands of Sudanese may die because they won't be able to get the medicines they need.

Everything in the above paragraph is true. It all actually happened. Ok, it's all true except for one thing:

The president that ordered the attack wasn't George W. Bush.

It was William Jefferson Clinton.

The attack described above took place on August 20, 1998. And tens of thousands of Sudanese probably did die as a result. Further, although Sudan demanded an apology, President Clinton never offered one. Look it all up if you don't believe me.

Here's another way to look at what happened: From an editorial published December 13, 2005 in the Washington Times:

From "Why the U.S. bombed," The Washington Times, Oct. 16, 1998, by National Security Adviser Samuel R. Berger:

"Following the Aug. 7 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the United States launched a missile strike against a factory in Khartoum, Sudan, as well as against terrorist camps in Afghanistan. Since then, some critics have suggested that we acted precipitously when we struck the Sudanese Al Shifa plant. But, given what we knew, to not have acted against that facility would have been the height of irresponsibility.

"First, we knew that the Osama bin Laden terrorist organization was bent on large-scale violence against Americans... And we had information that bin Laden has been seeking chemical weapons to use in his terrorist acts.

"Second, we had physical evidence indicating that Al Shifa was the state of chemical weapons activity... We found the presence of EMPTA, a chemical essential for making deadly VX nerve gas...

"Other products were made at Al Shifa. But we have seen such dual-use plants before -- in Iraq. And, indeed, we have information that Iraq has assisted in chemical weapons activity in Sudan.

"Third, we had information linking bin Laden to the Sudanese regime and the Al Shifa plant. Bin Laden lived in Sudan ... until he was expelled under international pressure. He left behind associates and facilities and has maintained a close relationship with the government...

"To those who assert we did not act appropriately, I would ask: With information that bin Laden had attacked Americans before and planned to do so again, that he was seeking chemical weapons to use in future attacks, that he was cooperating with the government of Sudan in those efforts, and that Sudan's Al Shifa plant was linked both to bin Laden and chemical weapons, didn't the United States government have a responsibility to the American people to counter this threat? I believe the unequivocal answer is yes."

Berger was exactly right. President Clinton made his decision based on the best intelligence available. He didn't want to risk VX nerve agent making it's way into the hands of al Qaeda, which was known to operate in Sudan (bin Laden even living there in the 1980s).

No serious person, certainly no Republican of any stature that I know of, has suggested that Bill Clinton or any of his officials be prosecuted for war crimes. Yet it is is entirely accurate to say that based on flawed evidence he destroyed a pharmaceutical plant in a poor third world nation which produced badly needed medicines. We don't know how many black Africans died, but it was surely many, given that the factory was Sudan's primary source for anti-malaria and veterinary drugs.

The left is forever insistent that George Bush and various administration officials be indited for war crimes.

Where are their calls for the indictment of Bill Clinton?

Posted by Tom at 8:45 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

November 9, 2008

Affleck Parodies Olbermann

Ben Affleck captures Keith Olbermann perfectly in this SNL skit. Wherever you are on the political spectrum I think you'll find it hilarious. What's ironic is that Affleck probably agrees with him on most of the issues.

Posted by Tom at 9:22 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

November 2, 2008

More Creepy Obama Supporters

Via Jonah Goldberg at NRO

This is so wrong.

Frighteningly, there are more;

There is something about Obama that attracts this weirdness. As Mark Levin wrote earlier this week;

There is a cult-like atmosphere around Barack Obama, which his campaign has carefully and successfully fabricated, which concerns me. The messiah complex. Fainting audience members at rallies. Special Obama flags and an Obama presidential seal. A graphic with the portrayal of the globe and Obama's name on it, which adorns everything from Obama's plane to his street literature. Young school children singing songs praising Obama. Teenagers wearing camouflage outfits and marching in military order chanting Obama's name and the professions he is going to open to them. An Obama world tour, culminating in a speech in Berlin where Obama proclaims we are all citizens of the world. I dare say, this is ominous stuff.

No kidding.

And yes I know there are a few pro-McCain songs out there but it's not at all the same. I've never seen anything like this Obama cult following for any Republican, even Ronald Reagan.

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The Creepyness of Obamamania

Posted by Tom at 8:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 30, 2008

The Creepyness of Obamamania

Update - New video below the fold that's very disturbing.

You just can't make this stuff up.

If I hadn't seen the first one at Andrew Sullivan I would have thought it was a spoof.

The second is a perfect example of what Mark Hemingway calls Manipulated Child Syndrome.

My only question for Obama supporters is, if he's elected president, will we have to call him "Great Leader", or will "Dear Leader" suffice?

Update - New video

Newsbusters says this video is very real and is not a spoof.

Posted by Tom at 8:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 7, 2008

Proving Malkin Right

Michelle Malkin calls it like it is in her editorial today. Here's an excerpt:

There's something about outspoken conservative women that drives the left mad. It's a peculiar pathology I've reported on for more than 15 years, both as a witness and a target. Thus, the onset of Palin Derangement Syndrome in the media, Democratic circles and the cesspools of the blogosphere came as no surprise. They just can't help themselves.

Liberals hold a special animus for constituencies they deem traitors. Minorities who identify as social and economic conservatives have left the plantation and sold out their people. Women who put an "R" by their name have abandoned their ovaries and betrayed their gender. As female Republican officeholders and female conservative public figures have grown in number and visibility, so has the progression of Conservative Female Abuse. The astonishing vitriol and virulent hatred directed at Alaska's Republican Gov. Sarah Palin is the most severe manifestation to date.

As if to prove her right, several liberals left some rather unhinged comments. Here are a few

By: petemurray

1. Ms. Palin has rushed to make political capital from her Down's syndrome child. However, as Alaskan writer and herself a mother of a Down's syndrome daughter, and Democrat, Mary Mullen points out, all the programmes onwhich Alaskan parents of special needs children depend to assist them in helping their children maximize their potential were put in place under Democrat administrations and were opposed tooth and nail by the Republicans.
2. The political wedding of her pregnant 17 year old daughter is nothing less than child-abuse in the cause of political respectability. To pressurize this pregnant child into marriage at this age is to ignore the statistical fact that 95% of such marriages fail with sad personal consequences to all concerned. This child was impregnated when she was 16 and in most advanced societies "Levi" would not be preparing for marriage. He would be preparing his defence to charges of statutory rape.
3. Imagine what a field day Ms. Malkin and the other attack-dogs of the extreme right-wing press would have had if Chelsea Clinton had got herself pregnant at 16 rather than exercsing restraint and growing up a credit to herself and her parents.
4. Is feckless teenage parenting and the equally feckless failure of parents to inculcate decent values in their teenage children now off the agenda for conservative pundits?

September 7, 2008 at 3:35 p.m. | Mark as Offensive

By: SDindependent

It is Sunday, McBush has Palin sequestered, she is not allowed to take a singe question from anyone. According to the lobbyist that runs his campaign, Rick Davis she will not be interviewed until she is ready..... "READY". What the hell is this. She is not READY to answer a question from a reporter but she is READY to step in and take over the presidency.

This has got to be the most ominous scam on the American public since the Bush-Cheny Iraq War on WMD's claim.

September 7, 2008 at 2:18 p.m. | Mark as Offensive

By: kc

More spittle for Cons to lick up. Ms.hatelibs selling some of her wonder spittle for the gullible Cons to swill down. Drink it up and feel empowered by hate. Nothing more liberating in the world then being given permission to hate. Lick it up. Feel the power.
September 6, 2008 at 9:52 p.m. | Mark as Offensive

You can see that when Malkin wrote Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild, she had no lack of material to draw from.

Posted by Tom at 8:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 31, 2007

Flacking 4 Chavez

I watch very little TV, but yesterday while waiting for the football games to start the TV was tuned to CNN. This commercial came on, and it just about made my jaw drop

I knew Joe Kennedy was a leftie, but to flack for Fidel Castro wanna-be Hugo Chavez is way over the top.

Apparently this commercial has been out for a few months. Maybe I should just go back to not watching any TV at all. There also seem to be more than one, but this is all I can find at the moment.

Anyway, I did a bit of research and here's the background, courtesy of the Wall Street Journal

The arrangement is this: Mr. Chávez's Citgo--a Houston-based oil company owned by the Venezuelan government--is supplying home heating oil to Mr. Kennedy's Citizens Energy Corporation at a 40% discount. Citizens, a nonprofit outfit, says it passes the savings onto the poor, aiming to help 400,000 homes in 16 states that would otherwise have trouble heating their homes. In the process, Mr. Kennedy happens to get a high-profile publicity plug. If you think you qualify, says the television ad that drew our attention to this partnership, just dial 1-877-Joe-4-Oil.

Joseph P. Kennedy II, the useful idiot helping burnish Chavez' image, is the eldest son of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, who was of course the younger brother of President John F. Kennedy. Joe Kennedy was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts in 1986 and served until 1999.

As the OpinionJournal piece points out, "Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez is an ally of the Iranian mullahs, a supporter of North Korea, a close friend of Fidel Castro and a good customer for Vladimir Putin's weapon factories." Yet the former congressman has no problem in lending his name and time to help defend this man who is trying his best to subvert Venezuelan democracy.

Kennedy founded Citzens Energy in 1979, and since 1998 has been its Chairman and President. From a description on their website, he "founded the non-profit company in 1979 to provide low-cost heating oil to the poor and elderly." Among other things, they also say that "last year" they provided free energy to 170,000 households, 250 shelters, and 37 Native American tribes. Kennedy defended his choice to accept oil from Venezuela in an article posted at Common Dreams

... those who have no problem staying warm at night should not condemn others for accepting Venezuela's oil. Rhetoric means little to an elderly woman who has to drag an old cot from her basement to sleep by the warmth of the open kitchen stove or give up food or medicine to pay her heating bill. ...

When our partnership with Citgo was announced last year, US Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman praised the discount program as corporate philanthropy. "It's a charitable contribution," he said, "and I wish more companies did it." Charities like the Baseball Hall of Fame and the Muscular Dystrophy Association receive generous donations from Citgo, but no one is telling them to decline the gifts.
...

Criticism of our program isn't about cheap heating oil. It's all about Hugo. While conservative interests in this country don't like him, US businesses don't mind his money and his marketplace.
...

Even though doing business with Venezuela has been very good for capitalists, the issue at hand is Chávez and his politics of socialism. Before we accept the characterizations of him as a socialist threat to our way of life, we ought to look at our own country -- ironically, a system of socialism for the rich and free enterprise for the poor.
...

So, sure, we'll distribute Hugo's oil. Doing so is called compassionate capitalism. Right now, our country's vulnerable families fend for themselves, while the well-to-do can afford to throw snowballs at our program from the security of their warm homes and offices.

There are many issues here, and I'll try and go through a couple of them.

Kennedy is fairly cautious in his description of Chavez. In this and a Boston Globe article that I found, he's circumspect about Chavez, prefering to concentrate on the program itself.

But the entire program is based on the logical fallacy that two wrongs make a right. Kennedy justifies what he's doing because some American businesses operate in Chavez' Venezuela. But what if they didn't? What if we banned them from doing business there, much like the embargo on Cuba? Would Kennedy then break off relations with Citgo? Of course not. The argument is therefore invalid.

Looking around the internet, many leftists defend Kennedy by pointing out that we do business with Saudi Arabia. Again the argument falls for the same reason. I have stated many times on this blog (here's my biggest post on the matter) that we must take strong measures to cut back consumption of oil so as to wean ourselves from Middle East oil. Others have too, notably many on the staff of National Review, a pretty conservative publication by any measure. So attempts to claim that conservatives are just a bunch of hypocrites does not stand up to scrutiny either.

According to Kennedy, the source for aid does not matter. Would he then have accepted aid from apartheit South Africa? Again, of course not.

Kennedy spends much time bashing oil companies, blaming them for everything from high prices to their alleged lack of charitable giving. But this Investors Business Daily editorial, carried on CNN, puts the lie to both those claims

What this is really about is advancing Chavez's U.S. agenda, a big part of which is to blame U.S. oil companies for high oil prices.

High oil prices do squeeze the poor. But oil companies do not control them. Dictators such as Chavez do. Eighty percent of the world's oil is held by inefficient state oil companies. Venezuela is one of the worst, producing its oil with scab labor since a 2003 strike, and it has also confiscated at least $1 billion in U.S. oil assets since then. Some industry analysts estimate that Chavez adds as much as a third of the cost to world oil prices. No wonder he wants someone else, like Big Oil, blamed.

And also, with regard to charity, the editorial points out that

Oil companies, in fact, give far more to charity than Kennedy's $25 million program. In 2006, Chevron gave $90.8 million. British Petroleum (NYSE:BP) gave $106.7 million. Exxon Mobil (NYSE:XOM) gave $138.6 million.

As for the "discounted oil", it's supposedly sold to Citizen Energy at 40% of market value. The problem here is that such a deal only hurts the people of Venezuela. According to the CIA Factbook, the 2006 per capita income for Venezuela was $7,200, and for the United States $43,800. Which such figures do not take into account purchasing power and are therefore somewhat misleading, they are still a good rough indicator. The bottom line is that Chavez is hurting his own people with this program in pursuit of political goals. That Joseph P. Kennedy II eagerly participates makes him a useful idiot.

Perhaps we do need to do more to help poor and disadvantaged people in this country purchase energy. Maybe federal, state, and local governments need to revize their programs and spend more money. We might even need a special tax on electricity or natural gas to pay for it. If this is what Kennedy believes, then fine, he should make his case before the relevant legislative bodies. He should write newspaper editorials. He should solicit private citizens for donations. I try to keep an open mind, and am willing to be convinced we need to do more if he can make the case.

But what I am not going do do is approve of a blatantly political program who's main purpose is to shore up Hugo Chavez, who is trying to undermine democracy and pluralism in his own country and others around the world.

Posted by Tom at 6:34 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

December 10, 2007

The NIE causes an outbreak of BDS

This letter to the editor, which appeared in Sunday's Washington Times, is typical, I think, of what many on the left have been saying after last week's release of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE 20071203) on Iran

Not quite two months ago, President Bush said, "If Iran had a nuclear weapon, it'd be a dangerous threat to world peace. So, I told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested" in ensuring Iran not gain the capacity to develop such weapons.

However, in the past few days it has come out that all 16 of our intelligence agencies have determined that Iran is not developing nuclear weapons ("Estimate of Iran's nukes reversed," Page 1, Tuesday). Now we find out that Mr. Bush was told by these agencies before he made his bizarre reference to World War III that Iran wasn't making weapons. Mr. Bush lied — again.

We all know that Mr. Bush lied to get us into the Iraq war, and now he's doing the same thing again. Every time Mr. Bush says something stupid like World War III, the price of gas goes up 25 cents. Mr. Bush is a madman, and he's trying to start another war. Where is the outrage? Has America sunk so low that when the president tries to start another illegal war no one cares? And we wonder why America is no longer respected in the world community.

MARC PERKEL

San Bruno, Calif.

Mr Perkel, apparently referring to the NIE, says that " it has come out that all 16 of our intelligence agencies have determined that Iran is not developing nuclear weapons."

But the NIE says no such thing. Mr Perkel is clearly possessed by Bush Derangement Syndrome.

Once again, here is what the NIE actually says:

A. We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program; we access with moderate-to-high confidence that Tehran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons....

• We assess with high confidence that until fall 2003, Iranian military entities were working under government direction to develop nuclear weapons.

• We judge with high confidence that the halt lasted at least several years. (Because of intelligence gaps discussed elsewhere in this Estimate, however, DOE and NIC access with only moderate confidence that the halt to those programs represents a halt to Iran's entire nuclear weapons program.)

• We assess with moderate confidence Tehran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007, but we do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons.

Here is how the authors define high and medium confidence:

High confidence generally indicates that our judgements are based on high-quality information, and/or that the nature of the issue makes it possible to render a solid judgement. A "high confidence" judgement is not a fact or certainty, however, and such judgements carry a risk of being wrong.

Moderate confidence generally means that the information is credibly sourced and plausible but not of sufficient quality or corroborated sufficiently to warrant a higher level of confidence.

(boldface emphasis added)

Therefore, the NIE does not make the absolute statement that "Iran is not developing nuclear weapons."

What it says that Iran probably stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003, we don't think they've restarted it, but aren't really sure.

These are distinctions with a difference, and those who want to criticize the president need to get it right.

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The National Intelligence Estimate on Iranian Nuclear Capabilities
More on the NIE

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September 12, 2007

The Fascists of Code Pink

If you haven't seen it before, here is the video of two members of Code Pink getting thrown out of the Petreaus/Crocker hearing on Monday. The Pinko sitting in back taking videos with her cell phone might be Gael Murphy.

Let's get one thing straight right up front; this is not just some harmless protest that we can all laugh at and go on with our business. This is an attempt by a bunch of fascists to destroy American Democracy.

And good for Rep Ike Skelton for taking matters firmly in hand. The Pinkos have continued to disrupt the hearings, at periodic intervals one or more of their members would stand and scream some inanity.

What gets me is how they seem to think they have a right to disrupt the hearing. Unlike traditional civil rights activists who have engaged in civil disobedence, the Pinko in the video above actually fought with police as she was dragged from the room. She apparently thinks she has some sort of right to just stand there and be allowed to scream.

I've had my dealings with Code Pink outside of Walter Reed Army Medical Center (and here), as well as at many Rallies and Protests in Washington DC (look under "Categories" at right). Nothing they do surprises me anymore.

A quick Youtube search turned up another instance in which Code Pink disrupted a committee hearing on the hill. In this video, dated May 10, 2007, Pinko Medea Benjamin is the one ejected from the room.

As usual, the New York Times gets it all wrong

For that matter, (the American people) deserve more than what was offered by Representative Ike Skelton, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. When protesters interrupted the hearing, Mr. Skelton ordered them removed from the room, which is understandable. But then he said that they would be prosecuted. That seemed like an unnecessarily authoritarian response to people who just wanted to be heard.

What utter nonsense. The members of Code Pink didn't just want to be heard, they wanted to disrupt a vital institution of our democracy. They have the same rights the rest of us have, and the same opportunity to be heard. They can start a newspaper or magazine, and can stand on streetcorners handing out literature. They can and have received many permits to hold demonstrations in Washington DC and elsewhere. It is right and proper that every group, no matter how offensive, be allowed their First Amendment rights.

But this does not mean that we have to listen. And just as one cannot cry "fire" in a theater if there isn't one, we simply have to have standards of decorum in parlimentary proceedures if democracy is to continue. Code Pink thinks that they can disrupt our representatives when they are conducting official business. They are wrong and must not be allowed to get away with it.

This is not at all to say they should be treated harshly. Far from it, I'm sure the Capitol Hill Police performed their duties professionally, and that whatever penalties the Pinkos receive will not be oppressive. This, too, is as it should be.

Note that in both videos above it was a Democrat who threw them out, so no one can claim partisanship. This is not, or should not, be a Republican-Democrat or Left-Right issue. Everyone is threatened by these sorts of tactics. I would be mortally embarrassed if someone claiming to be conservative did such a thing, and I would condemn them immediately.

Posted by Tom at 8:56 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Moveon.org Slanders General Petraeus II

So far not a single Democrat Congressman or Senator has denounced the slanderous Moveon.org attack on General Petraeus. I checked the site of my own Democrat Senator, James Webb, and he is completely silent on the matter. He ran as a conservative Democrat. Let's see if that was just hot air or if he does the right thing.

Instead, once again Senator John McCain stands tall in a Congress full of Liliputians

"I remain deeply disappointed by the failure of leading Democrat presidential candidates to personally and publicly denounce the smear tactics used against General Petraeus by MoveOn.org. There is no greater slander to a soldier than an accusation of betrayal to his nation. I do not understand why those seeking to be commander-in-chief have yet to forcefully denounce, in their own words, this McCarthyite attack on our commander. I hope they would reconsider their silence and not let this slander of an exceptional American stand."

Be sure to also read his opening statement before the Senate Armed Forces Committee hearing with General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker.

Becuase of his stances on immigration and campaign finance I've never thought I could support him for president, but if he keeps this up I'll definately reconsider.

The Washington Times points out that

The Democrats who take MoveOn.org's money are the same ones who cry "my patriotism!" whenever someone observes how weak they are on national security. They're either silent or engage in Mr. Reid's tepid talk in defense of common decency. Democrats dismiss Gen. Petraeus as not being an "independent evaluator" — that's Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California — or accuse him of "carefully manipulating the statistics" — that's Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois. Others who cannot summon the boldness to say anything in public praise MoveOn.org's ability to do the dirty work.

If these attacks are not smears on the patriotism of Gen. Petraeus, nothing could be. The left expects its "my patriotism!" indignation to be taken seriously, but and expect others to stand by as the smear is launched. It does not add up.

My response to any leftist who is upset that someone has questioned his patriotism is "fine, we'll stop questionin your patriotism, the moment you stop calling our President and military leaders liars".

And those Democrats who claim that Gen Petraeus has presented misleading information need to put their money where their mouth is. If they truely believe such things, they need to file perjury charges, or recommend that he be brought up on charges and tried in a courts-martial.

After reviewing several of the more offensive statements leading Democrats have made about Petraeus, the Wall Street Journal asks if

(This can) really be the new standard of political rhetoric across the Democratic Party? There was a time when the party's institutional elites, such as the Times, would have pulled it back from reducing politics to all or nothing. They would have blown the whistle on such accusations. Now they are leading the charge.

Under these new terms, public policy is no longer subject to debate, discussion and disagreement over competing views and interpretations. Instead, the opposition is reduced to the status of liar. Now the opposition is not merely wrong, but lacks legitimacy and political standing. The goal here is not to debate, but to destroy.

No doubt that in the 90s many on the right got carried away with their denunciations of President Clinton. I sometimes found myself half-believing in some of it. It's a strong temptation to believe the worst about your political enemies. But after all of the investigations, I was persuaded that yes, Vince Foster really did kill himself in Fort Marcy Park, and that no, the government did not intentially set fire to the Waco compound.

The next time there's a Democrat president I'll have to watch myself, that I don't automatically buy into every bad thing that's said about him...or her. Perhaps in that sense the 90s and today are good lessons for us all.

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Moveon.org Slanders General Petraeus

Posted by Tom at 8:16 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

September 10, 2007

Moveon.org Slanders General Petraeus

Yes I know, half the conservative blogosphere is up in arms about this outrage, and I'm late in posting about it, but it deserves wide attention so here goes.

This ad by Moveon.org appeared today in the New York Times

What a disgrace. So much for "we support the troops but oppose the war", in case anyone ever believed that lie.

But it's Moveon.org that is lying. Take this one sentence from the ad:

"Every independent report on the ground situation in Iraq shows t hat the surge strategy has failed."

Besides committing the logical fallacy of making a universal statement (in which case a single exception invalidates the premise), only someone on the loony left could believe such a thing. There are hundreds of independent reports by qualified individuals who say that the strategy is, in fact, working. I've linked to dozens on this site alone.

The "facts" on the Moveon.org webpage to support their assertion are laughable.

I used to wonder if I should question the patriotism of the Moveon.org people. No more.

Let me be clear here: No I am not saying that if you do not support the surge strategy, or think that it is working, you are unpatriotic. Nor am I saying that if you think that the invasion was a mistake and that the best thing to do is withdraw you are unpatriotic.

If you believe these things, make your case using facts and logic. But this ad is pure character assassination.

And this is what I meant by my above statement that up until now I wasn't quite sure where to place Moveon.org. Groups like International ANSWER, Code Pink (the nuts who got thrown out of today's hearing), United for Peace and Justice and any of the organizations that are members of it are not patriots. They are part of the hate-America left, and they are not patriots.

But I never wanted to make that group too broad. I didn't and don't want to get into the habit of saying that every group that opposes what I think is right to be anti-American or unpatriotic. As such, I wanted to be careful before I characterized Moveon.org

But I now conclude that they have joined the ranks of the hate-America left. Congratulations, idiots.

More

I can't do better than Michelle Malkin so be sure and visit her site for more on the Moveon.org outrage.

Byron York asks if Moveon.org has betrayed the Democrat Party by going too far in this ad. I listened to much of the hearings today, and when Republicans brought up the ad, Democrats seemed quick to distance themselves. Here's the money quote from York's piece

...the thing that should trouble party leaders is not that MoveOn is capable of silly stunts. It’s not even that MoveOn is capable of making slanderous comments about U.S. military officials. And it’s not that MoveOn is against the war in Iraq, which polls show many Americans believe was a mistake. Rather, MoveOn’s latest campaign is a continuation of a drive to oppose not just the action in Iraq, but the war on terror in general, and, in a larger sense, America’s use of military power in its own defense.

Captain Ed also questions their patriotism. As do I.

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July 5, 2007

Book Review: Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild

Liberals, or at least a goodly portion of them, have come unglued these past 7 years. I don't mean that they're just mad at President Bush over Iraq or Katrina, or at Republicans in Congress over the Terri Schiavo affair.

I mean some of them have absolutely gone nuts.

Michelle Malkin documents this phenomenon in her 2005 book Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild. It's 170 pages of, well, unhinged actions by liberals.

Just so we're clear, the purpose of this book was not to do some soft of scientific study of the left and right to see which side is worse. There's no "balance" in this book simply because that's not the point. And truth be told, this is not the type of book that I normally don't buy or review here. I picked it up mainly because she was at CPAC 2007, and wanted her autograph. I already had In Defense of Internment, so I chose this one.

Read the title again if you don't get it; her purpose is to "expose liberals gone wild". And expose she does.

Malkin provides example after example of one nutty liberal after another doing absolutely crazy things. Here are some of the subject areas.

- Racism and sexism. Some of the most vile attacks are on Condolezza Rice, but Malkin has received her share. "You are one sick gook" is among the nicer things they say about her. Most of what she reprints in the book is vile beyond description. Conservtives who happen to be minorities are regularly called an "oreo", "coconut", or "banana" (black/brown/yellow on the outside but white inside, if you're not familiar).

- For some reason many on the left seem not be able to communicate without resorting to foul language. I've seen much of this myself at many "anti-war" demonstrations.

- Ever since at least the 80s it has been typical of leftists to try and prevent conservatives from speaking at public events. As of late it has become fashionable to ambush and throw a pie at the face of the speaker.

- Assassination fascination. You don't have to go far on left-wing sites to read people wishing Bush or Cheney were dead. But we're not just talking about Internet posts. One Sarah Vowell even wrote a book about her fixation called Assassination Vacation. Another wrote a play called "I'm Gonna Kill the President!" the president, of course, being George W Bush. Yet a third example is Nicholson Baker's novel Checkpoint, another fantasy about murdering you-know-who.

- Hollywood. Sigh. We've always known that they're mostly a bunch of leftists, but ever since the election of George W Bush they've become... unhinged.

- Colleges and Universities get another big sigh. Ward Churchill may have gotten much of the media attention, but believe you me, he's not alone in his opinions.

- The hard left absolutely does not support the troops. Stories of stolen or vandalized yellow ribbons, keyed cars (ones that displayed an American flag or support the troops sticker) and such are legendary in places like Seattle. Leftist administrators and professors wage unrelenting war on military campus recruiters.

And all this was before the Amanda Marcotte affair.

The book is entertaining to read, though you can only take so much of it at any one sitting. Page after page of one crazy liberal after another gets to be a but much after awhile. If you want documentation on the above without buying the book, just go to her website and type "unhinged" into the search tool. Enjoy.

Michelle Malkin herself drives some liberals crazy.

Not like Ann Coulter, to be sure, who taunts liberals and so brings much of it on herself.

Only chapter of this book is about the hatred that is directed towards Malkin herself. No doubt that anyone in public life will receive death threats, and will receive messages of hate. But but with Malkin so much of it is racist and sexist in nature. Perhaps because she is an attractive woman, the sexual nature of the attacks is particulary vicious. And we all know that any minority (Malkin's parents are Filipino, her maiden name is Maglalang) conservative comes in for especially rude treatment. In 2005 she posted a sample of the hate mail that she receives every day. I'm sure nothing has changed.

This book has driven some liberals crazy. It's obvious fromt he reviews on Amazon that there's a war being raged by the left to bring the *star* rating for the book down. I suppose you can say the right is equally trying to drive the ratings up, my point is simply that if you read some of the left reviews I'll think you'll agree that some of them are, well, unhinged.

Interestingly, the author of the Publishers Weekly review on Amazon also can't resist taking a gratuitous shot at the book, saying that she

...scoured blogs, speeches, media commentaries and even transcripts from Oprah for material, though she misses the boat in a number of instances, most notably in her obliviousness to sarcasm and irony, and she overextends her analytical prowess by offering shallow, shoddy critiques of theater, literature and modern art.

"sarcasm and irony"? What a joke. The examples of unhinged behaviour she cites are pretty clearly from people who have gone round the bend.

Avoiding the Temptation

It's always tempting to think that "the other side" is worse in every respect; they're more corrupt, hypocritical, unreasoned, nasty, unhinged. It's also tempting to excuse certain behaviors when they occur on your side, while condeming it on the other. This temptation to be avoided.

An equal temtation to be avoided is falling into habit of throwing up your hands and saying the "both sides do it". Sometimes this is true, and sometimes it isn't. There are times when Republicans, as a whole, are more corrupt than the Democrats, and vice versa. Likewise, there are times when one side is more nasty than the other. I believe we live in a time where as a whole the left is nastier than the right.

Some of this, I think, is simply due to the fact that liberals were out of power in both houses of Congress and the presidency. We shall see what happens if a Democrat wins the White House in 2008 and they retain the House and Senate.

Yes It Occurs on the Right

When Code Pink leader Medea Benjamin says that "Whenever I appear on TV shows such as Hannity and Colmes or Bill O'Reilly, I receive vicious messages on my phone and threatening emails that scare my children and anger my husband with their variations on the theme of "Die, you ugly, communist, lesbian, American-hating bitch."" I believe her.

When Ralph Peters says he gets email from the Islam-hating right telling him that Islam is evil and that he is "a foolish "dhimmi," blind to the conspiratorial nature of Islam", I believe him too.

And we've all been to websites in which authors or commenters go too far in attacking the left.

Lastly, yes I recall the 1990s when it many on the right fell for every Vince Foster/Waco/ dead bodyguard/case of sexual harassment case out there. I felt the temptation, but always found myself backing off when reading "the other side".

The Final Analysis

In the end I have to agree with Malkin that these past several years the left is more unhinged than the right. The insults at Christians, the racist and sexist attacks, are simply unparalleled on the right. The outlandish behavior and outrageous statements come mostly from the left.

I also know this; that when (and it's always only a matter of time) the Democrats control the White House and at least one house of congress, I'll get out Unhinged and vow not to become a right-wing equivalent of the liberals that Malkin exposes. And I'll try and hold other conservatives to the same standard.

Michelle Malkin blogs at MichelleMalkin.com Her ground-breaking video blog is HotAir.com

July 26 Update

Michelle documents more unhinged leftist behavior. You won't believe some of this stuff. Given some of the stuff they say about her, I'd say she's one of the the bravest woman around. Keep on bloggin'!

Posted by Tom at 8:35 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

April 27, 2007

Code Pink Calls Our Troops Terrorists

At last Friday's FReep in front of Walter Reed Army Medical Center, several members of the odious Code Pink walked up to our group because they were jealous of some press attention we were receiving. A a film crew from French-Canadian TV 3 in Quebec was filming an interview they were doing with Free Republic DC Chapter President Kristinn Taylor when the Pinkos arrived. Pinko Gael Murphy was in the lead.

One of their number called our troops terrorists. Watch the video

Hardly a surpise that they'd say something like that, but it does reveal for the unitiated just who they really are.

Go read the full report with photos on what happened that evening at Free Republic.

See my "The Case Against Code Pink" for more information. Discover the Network also has the goods on them.

Posted by Tom at 10:43 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

October 1, 2006

Leftist Loons Assail Michelle Malkin II

Yesterday I posted on how the idiots at two leftist website, Wonkette and IsThatLegal, fell for what was an obviously fake photo of Michelle Malkin, and then called her a hypocrite. The situation had gotten bad enough by week's end that the Washington Times named the two offenders their Knaves of the Week.

Today Malkin wrote a fairly brilliant hard-hitting defense of, well, her defending herself. It deserves to be read in it's entirety, but here is the gist of it

There are many unhinged people who would like me to shut up. There are those who engage routinely in active defamation and empty ad hominem attacks. There are also those who enable, excuse, and snicker at these attacks.

When I ignore them, lies are perpetuated and assumed to be true. When I respond, I am belittled as a self-promoter, whiner, humorless scold, and opportunist. Trolls at places like the Democratic Underground and obscure far-left blogs don't warrant responses. But when the attacks come from a publicly subsidized UNC law professor and the largest blog conglomerate (valued at $76 million in 2005), they cannot go unanswered.

There seem to be some very dense people who don't understand that this is not just about a bikini Photoshop. It is about disseminating the fake photo to cast me in a false light and "prove" that I'm somehow a hypocrite.

Today I'd like to address two issues related to all this; one, the vile slanderous attacks that minority conservatives receive from liberals, and two, the issue of hypocrisy.

Liberal Bigotry

Liberals, leftists, call them what you will, but some are guilty of the most vicious forms of race and sex (no not "gender", that would be bad English) prejudice against women and minorities who adopt conservative political views.

Michael Steele is a black conservative who is running for US Senate on the GOP ticket in Maryland. Yet Maryland Democrats think that it is just fine to make racial attacks on him.

Kate O'Beirne, of National Review, wrote Women Who Make the World Worse. an attack on the feminst establishment. Leftists responded with a campaign to leave ugly "reviews" on the Amazon website.

Michelle Malkin, however, has received worse than either of these two, or any other conservative writer, from what I can tell. Brave woman that she is, she documents the sexual and racial attacks on her in posts. See here, here, here, here and here for examples.

As you can see, it's some pretty nasty stuff.

Malkin is a woman an Asian, and, let's be honest, very attractive. For this last reason certain lefties seem fixated on making the most vile sexual comments about her.

You see, in the world of liberaldom, it is "illegal" to be a woman or minority and be a conservatives. You are a "traitor" to the cause. To them, it is "just obvious" that all women and minorities should be liberals. Whenever one expresses conservative views, these liberals are enraged. They resort to any and all forms of name-calling.

This is exactly what the modern-day left is all about. They preach endlessly about "tolerance", but they are themselves only tolerant of those who agree with them exactly.

On Hypocrisy

My argument with the left, however, isn't really that they are a bunch of hypocrites. My argument with them is that 1) too many of them engage in racist and sexist attacks on conservatives, and 2) they don't understand the concept of hypocrisy or it's meaning.

I wrote a post on the use and misuse of the charge of hypocrisy about a year ago, and if I may I'll just quote myself

We need to distinguish between inconsistency and hypocrisy, for they are often mistaken for one another. Inconsistency is when a person does or says two things that are at odds with one another. In 1990 John Kerry voted against going to war with Iraq over Kuwait. When running for president in 2004, he said that he opposed the war in Iraq because we did not have a large international coalition. In taking this position Kerry was certainly inconsistent, but he was not a hypocrite.

An argument stands or falls on its own merits, not those of the person making it. Adultery is a sin, a bad thing. This is so whether the person admonishing us to be faithful to our spouses is faithful himself. It was either a good idea or not to invade Iraq, and whether or not the person making the case for invasion had ever served in the armed forces or not is irrelvant.

Hypocrisy is certainly something to be avoided, both in one's personal life and in recommending public policy. While the preacher who says that we must lead clean lives is certainly speaking the truth, but his message is dimished if he is caught in bed with another man's wife.

(Further), one of the most maddening characteristics of our modern culture is one in which the person who tries do live right but falls is considered a worse person than the person who doesn't try at all, and indeed flaunts his immorality. Considered even worse is the person who dares to tell others that they should live moral lives, yet who themselves yields to temptation.

Who is subjected to more abuse by the media and professionaly punditry; Monika Lewinsky or Jim Bakker?

To be sure, Bakker defrauded his followers of millions, so the analogy is not perfect (they never are). But consider their reactions when caught: Lewinsky seems proud of her affair with the president, while Bakker wrote I was Wrong, a 1996 mea culpa. I rather doubt we will ever see a similar book from Lewinsky, nor will one be demanded from her.

So we may conclude that while hypocrisy is something to be avoided, as a sin it has so en blown out of proportion that being a hypocrite is viewed as worse than someone who commits a sin and doesn't care who knows it. This is wrong.

In other words, folks, you have to argue the facts of the case. If Saddam Hussein gets up in front of us and says that murder is wrong, we may laugh at his hypocrisy, but ultimately we have to admit that he is right.

The bottom line is that all too often the charge of hypocrisy is made by people who want to avoid debating the issues. It's much easier to simply call your opponent a hypocrite than argue the facts and logic of the case.

Back To Malkin

Bringing all this back to Michelle Malkin, her loonly leftist attackers, Wonkette and Eric Muller attacked her for being a hypocrite. They did so because she has written columns critical of the sexualization of our culture, and of young girls in particular. Malkin, like most of us conservatives, values modesty. To us, "Girls Gone Wild" is not funny
but pathetic. Clothing stores such as Victoria Secret and Abercrombie & Fitch are stores to avoid, not to shop at. And the Bratz series of toys are certainly nothing social conservatives are going to buy.

So these leftist loons discover a photograph which allegedly shows a young Malkin in a bikini. Ah Ha! This, they say, "proves" that she is a hypocrite.

Uh, no.

On Redemption, The Prodigal Son, and "Breaking the Faith"

Luke 15:11–32 tells the story of the "Prodigal Son". We all know the story, or should: A man has two sons, one of whom leaves and goes off to live the wild life. The other stays home and is faithful. One day the first son returns, pleads forgiveness, and the father not only takes him in but throws a huge party. The second son is indignant, but the father tells him to not be angry but to rejoice, for it is good that the other son was once lost, but now is found.

Redemption is therfore possible. No matter what you've done, you can redeem youself.

Ok, so far so good. Here's where it gets tough, and what a lot of liberals wont' want to read: Once redeemed, you can tell others that they should change their ways.

People who are doing wrong things don't want to hear this. The person in their midst who wants to change is a threat that must be beaten down. If the person insists, fine, but must not be allowed to come back and tell the group that they must reform.

So amongst a group of drinkers or drug users no one in the group is allowed to leave. Anyone who dares express the view that all is not right will be immediately ridiculed. If he leaves, reforms, and comes back, he will be attacked as a hypocrite.

But this is not accurate. The hypcrite is someone who preaches one thing and does another. Someone who reforms and comes back to tell others that they shouldn't be doing what they do is not a hypocrite at all.

But idiots like Wonkette and Muller don't see it this way. To them, once you've done something wrong, you are forever more forbidden to tell others that they shouldn't do it. So if you used drugs in your youth, and then, as an older person advise young people that they oughtn't engage in such behavior, you are a "hypocrite".

Such thinking, however, is stupidity defined. Actually no, it's not stupidity, it's more that the people who make this charge want to engage in the behavior themselves or think the behavior acceptable, and can't tolerate dissention.

Now, to reiterate, this issue doesn't come up in the aforementioned case of Malkin, because the photo in question was an obvious fake. But so what if it was? How in the world does being photographed in a bikini make it illigitimate for you to criticize the sexualization of our culture in general or of children in particular? But as Malikin says, those who criticize her the harshest usually haven't actually read what she has written.

I think it best that I let Malkin have the last word

Since mm.com came into existence, I've been attacked regularly as a whore and a c**t and a puppet and a dupe and a sellout, etc. etc. etc. It comes with the territory--particularly when you happen to be a woman, a minority, and a conservative. The extensive arguments and blog posts and columns and books I've written are reduced to bumper-sticker putdowns by critics and their fellow travelers who couldn't be bothered to actually read what I've written day in and day out for the last two years on the blog and the past 14 years in my books and columns. I poked fun at this pathology in my last book. I think what drives a lot of the haters crazy is that despite their ceaseless sniping, they can't shut me up.

Rock on, Michelle.

Posted by Tom at 8:32 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

September 30, 2006

Leftist Loons Assail Michelle Malkin

If you want to go after somebody's political views, fine. If you want to call them a nut, crazy, dangerous, ignorant, a fool or a fanatic, that's fine too.

But racist and sexist attacks should be beyond the pale.

Unfortunately, there are a few leftist retards that haven't gotten the message.

One of them is the editors of Wonkette, Alex Pareene and Ana Marie Cox, and the other is Eric Muller of IsThatLegal?

For their juvenile attacks on Malkin, they were awarded the title Knaves of the Week by the Washington Times.

I'm not going to rehash the entire episode, for that you can go to Michelle's posts on the episode here and here and follow the links.

Anyone who has followed Michelle's blog or seen her newspaper columns knows that she has written about the sexualization of young girls, and how harmful to them and society this is. Eric Muller, who is actually a law professor at the University of North Carolina, responded by linking to a a photo which allegedly showed a young Malkin in a bikini. This, he said, shows that she is a hypicrite. Except that, uh, the photo is an obvious photoshop forgery. Then Wonkette posted a few pieces also claiming that Malkin is a hypocrite.

Besides the insanity of thinking that a simple pose in a bikini invalidates Malkin's thesis (I guess Muller and Wonkette can't be bothered to read what she actually wrote), and besides that the photo is such an obvious fake that only someone afflicted with Malkin Derangement Syndrome would believe it to be real, there's the whole business of the slimey and disgusting way that they tried to use it against her. In this respect, Wonkette was the worst, the writing on that site being very juvenile. Muller is a bit better, but not by much.

Michelle Malkin is a no-holds-barred conservative writer. She pulls no punches and calls them like she sees them. But she's always kept her criticism above board, never sinking to the level of racial or sexual slurs. I'd say I agree with her 90% of the time.

Now, Wonkette is one of those blogs that I've heard of but never visited. I'd gathered that it was a gossip-column sort of thing, and figured it was similar to what you see in major newspapers, a sort of "talk of the town" section. I even seem to recall that Ava Marie Cox was on CNN one time along with Andrew Sullivan to comment on one of President Bush's State of the Union addresses.

But today when I saw Michelle's post I decided to follow the link to Wonkette and see for myself. Was I ever in for a surprise. "Politics for people with dirty minds" is what you get when you search for them on Google. Uh huh. Bottom line is that it's a stupid site and quite beyond me what people see in it. But this isn't the first time that Wonkette has sunk to this level with Malkin. The first time was much worse.

Muller? Well, for a university professor he's a disgrace.

This Episode is the Least of It

As these things go with Michelle Malkin, this episode was pretty mild. Leftists have a fixation on attacking her in the most vile sexual and racist manner.

Don't believe me? She's got it all documented, see here, here, here, here and here. Actually there's more, but you'll get the point.

Not Just Michelle

Michael Steele is running as a Republican for US Senate in the state of Maryland. He is also black. He also has been the victim of racial slurs from liberals.

Last November I reported on Maryland Democrats who thought that there was "nothing wrong" with racial attacks on a black man, as long as he was a Republican.

From the Washington Times story that prompted my post is worth quoting at length

Black Democratic leaders in Maryland say that racially tinged attacks against Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele in his bid for the U.S. Senate are fair because he is a conservative Republican.

Such attacks against the first black man to win a statewide election in Maryland include pelting him with Oreo cookies during a campaign appearance, calling him an "Uncle Tom" and depicting him as a black-faced minstrel on a liberal Web log.

Operatives for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) also obtained a copy of his credit report -- the only Republican candidate so targeted.

But black Democrats say there is nothing wrong with "pointing out the obvious."

"There is a difference between pointing out the obvious and calling someone names," said a campaign spokesman for Kweisi Mfume, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate and former president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

State Sen. Lisa A. Gladden, a black Baltimore Democrat, said she does not expect her party to pull any punches, including racial jabs at Mr. Steele, in the race to replace retiring Democratic U.S. Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes.

"Party trumps race, especially on the national level," she said. "If you are bold enough to run, you have to take whatever the voters are going to give you. It's democracy, perhaps at its worse, but it is democracy."

Delegate Salima Siler Marriott, a black Baltimore Democrat, said Mr. Steele invites comparisons to a slave who loves his cruel master or a cookie that is black on the outside and white inside because his conservative political philosophy is, in her view, anti-black.

Unreal.

How about that liberal tolerance?

Posted by Tom at 9:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 17, 2006

Jimmy Carter Does It Again

Many of you will have read or heard of this by now, but it bears repeating. Ex-President Jimmy Carter gave an interview to Spiegel in which he reveals why he was only a one-term president. Ok, not intentionally, but that's how it came out.

I'm not going to spend much time going after him, because it 's too easy, and readers should follow the link to get mad themselves. Don't worry, you won't have to read very far. But here are a few parts of the interview that struck me as particularly outrageous

SPIEGEL: But wasn't Israel the first to get attacked?

Carter: I don't think that Israel has any legal or moral justification for their massive bombing of the entire nation of Lebanon. What happened is that Israel is holding almost 10,000 prisoners, so when the militants in Lebanon or in Gaza take one or two soldiers, Israel looks upon this as a justification for an attack on the civilian population of Lebanon and Gaza. I do not think that's justified, no.

"massive bombing"? Compared to what? Dresden, Tokyo, Linebacker II? We bombed Baghdad more during the Gulf War. Oh wait, he was against that one too.

"entire nation of Lebanon" Oh Lordy.

And lastly there's the appeal to "proportion"; Hezbollah, described by jimma as "militants", only took two soldiers, so the Israeli counterattack was unjustified. By this logic we had no right to demand the unconditional surrender of Japan over Pearl Harbor.

There is so much more in the interview that I could spend all day on it.

Carter's Weakness Emboldened Iran

We could write off the Spiegel interview as the rantings of another deluded leftie, but this leftie is partially responsible for our current mess in the Middle East.

By failing to respond forcefully to the kidnapping of our diplomats by the Iranian "students", Carter essentially told would-be terrorists everywhere that we can be humiliated. Amir Taheri elaborates in a story

In a sense the Nov. 4, 1979 attack on the US Embassy in Tehran could be regarded as the opening scene of a long drama that reached its catharsis on Sept. 11, 2001.

Here is why....

As days passed, with the American diplomats paraded in front of television cameras blindfolded and threatened with execution, it became increasingly clear that there would be no “thunder and lightning” from Washington. By the end of the first week of the drama, that was to last for 444 days and ended the day Ronald Reagan entered the White House, Khomeini’s view of the United States had changed.

Ahmad Khomeini’s memoirs echo the surprise that his father, the ayatollah, showed, as the Carter administration behaved “like a headless chicken.”

What especially surprised Khomeini was that Cater and his aides, notably Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, rather than condemning the seizure and the treatment of the hostages as a barbarous act, appeared apologetic for unspecified mistakes supposedly committed by the US and asked for forgiveness and magnanimity.

Once he had concluded that the US would not take any meaningful action against his regime, Khomeini took over control of the hostages’ enterprise and used it as a means of propping his “anti-imperialist” credentials while outflanking the left.

The surprising show of weakness from Washington also encouraged the mullas and the hostage-holders to come up with a fresh demand each day

The slogan "Death to America" was used for the first time during the hostage crisis, and has been with us ever since. Another, perhaps less known one, is “America cannot do a damn thing” , which was also used for this first time during the crisis.

Taheri sums up

For 22 years the United States, under presidents from both parties, behaved in exactly the way that Khomeini predicted. It took countless successive blows, including the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York, without decisive retaliation. That attitude invited, indeed encouraged, more attacks. The 9/11 tragedy was the denouement of the Nov. 4 attack on the US Embassy in Tehran.

Thank you, Mr Carter.

Posted by Tom at 9:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 12, 2005

A Call to Arms

Citizen Smash issues a Call To Arms:

THE CENTRAL FRONT in the War on Terror is now on Capitol Hill.

One need not be young or even able-bodied to enlist in this campaign. Simple literacy is sufficient. If you feel that our Civilization is worth defending; if you believe Liberty is worth fighting for; if you know in your heart that Freedom will Prevail, then I have a message for you:

I WANT YOU

I have no more patience for critics, bench-warmers, and spectators. It's time to put down your pom-poms, get down from the bleachers, and take the field. If you lack the will, courage, or stamina for this fight, I have no further use for you. You are dismissed.

Follow my lead, or get out of the way.

THE ENEMY is circulating a petition, urging the Congress to withdraw our troops from Iraq. They plan to deliver copies of this petition to Congressional offices across the nation next Wednesday, December 14.

In the meantime, their legions are calling, writing, faxing, and lobbying their Congressional Representatives, and pressuring them to release a statement on the same day endorsing the MoveOn.org Cut & Run Plan.

December 14 is D-day. We have less than one week to prepare.

To this point, I have released three sets of Mission Orders. Mission Four will be released later today.

The first mission is to Call your Congressman. He needs to hear from you -- if he is pro-victory, to know that you support him, and if he is anti-victory, to know that his position will cost him your support. The toll-free number for the U.S. Capitol Switchboard is 1-888-818-6641. If you have not yet done this, you are delinquent. It only takes about two minutes to accomplish. It's very simple: you talk, they listen. CALL NOW.

The second mission is to spread the word about our campaign via talk radio and and other forms of mass communication. This is a force multiplier mission. It's not enough to take action yourself -- I need your help to spread the word. If you don't have time to wait on hold, at least forward these missions via email to like-minded people. DO THIS NOW.

The third mission is to write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper(s). This will take a little bit more thought, time, and effort than the first two missions. But it's not that much when you consider that others are spending several months or even years sweating it out in Iraq and Afghanistan to fight for your freedom, and all you are doing right now is surfing the Internet. Get off your butt and start writing.

What are you waiting for, an engraved invitation?

Dead on target, and I'll go do as much as I have time for.

For the record, I don't know that I'd call even Moveon.org "The Enemy", but at this point they're certainly not in favor of winning (they are the one who are circulating the petition referenced above).

And any resolution before Congress about pulling our troops out is bound to fail.

Nevertheless, we must stay ahead of the curve. If we let them get away with this stuff unchallenged, they will be able to bend the weak to their side. It'll not happen on my watch.

Posted by Tom at 10:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 1, 2005

The Kidnapped Activists

Four activists have been kidnapped in Iraq. Most news outlets have a story or two on this, mostly just describing them as "peace activists"

Which no doubt they believe themselves to be. And noone deserves to be kidnapped or worse. It's the old saw about if you walk down a dangerous street at night flashing a wad of money, and are robbed, you may be naive, but you don't "deserve it".

Further, our prayers should go out to them that they are speadily released.

Just who are the people who have been kidnapped?

Todays Washington Times caught my attention with this AP story:

Four Christian peace activists taken hostage in Iraq belong to a group that has spent more than 15 years walking into some of world's hottest war zones, usually armed only with notes explaining that they aren't there to convert anyone.

Ok, I thought, this is interesting. "arn't there to convert anyone" St Paul would have a few things to say about that.

The Chicago-based organization -- supported by several Protestant denominations that believe Christianity forbids all war and violence -- has sent activists into war zones, including Bosnia and Haiti, since the late 1980s. It has about 160 members around the world and about a dozen in Iraq.

The Bible is not a pacifist document, and most certainly does not "forbid all war and violence", as anyone who has actually read it knows. But ok, let's read on.

The group adamantly opposes the Iraq war, saying the kidnappings are "the result of the actions of the U.S. and U.K. government due to the illegal attack on Iraq and the continuing occupation and oppression of its people."

Despite its name, Christian Peacemaker Teams works in the name of peace, not religion, Miss Phillips said.

"We are very strict about this: We do not do any evangelism; we are not missionaries," she said. "Our interest is to bring an end to the violence and destruction of civilian life in Iraq."

Ok, that does it, I said to myself. I've been on a number of mission trips and know a bit about how these things work. I've also done research into left-wing Christian groups and know how they operate, also (yes I've looked into the religious right, and no I'm not a fan of Falwell or Robertson).

Let's find out exactly these folks are.

What better source to turn to that David Horowitz' excellent database on leftist groups, DiscoverTheNetwork.org? We are immediately rewarded with an article about the group, Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT). Here's what we discover:

* Anti-war NGO with a strong, pro-Palestinian militant, anti-Israel agenda

* Repeatedly condemns Israeli government policies, while making no
mention of the Palestinian terror campaign

* Maintains a seasonal presence along the Arizona/ Mexico border,
where it conducts what it describes as "a campaign to challenge
U.S. immigration policies that result in hundreds of migrant deaths
in the dessert every summer"

*Maintains a continuous presence in Iraq, protesting the U.S.-led
invasion and blaming America for inflicting great suffering on the
Iraqi people

And further

CPT publications also reflect a consistent pro-Palestinian agenda, in sharp contrast to the CPT mission statement related to nonviolent conflict resolution. One example is an article published by the Global Ministries, documenting the January 2003 CPT Ohio Conference. While repeatedly condemning Israeli government policies, there is no mention of the Palestinian terror campaign and the hundreds of murdered Israelis.

...

Clearly, the evidence demonstrates the vast gap between CPT's claims to work for peace "through non-violent means," and its biased political agenda. CPT's strident advocacy is part of the NGO-led divestment campaign designed to promote demonization and isolation of Israel in the framework of the on-going political conflict.

Just as I suspected.

Go ahead and visit CPT's website. It's about what you think expect, they look like the standard leftie "peace" group to me.

As Christians, we must hope and pray that their hostages will be speadily released unharmed. We can expose their political agenda while still wishing them nothing but good on a personal level.

Monday Evening Update

Silly me. James Robbins writing at NRO makes an excellent point that escaped me; kidnapping your allies is pretty stupid:

A sensible terrorist political warfare strategy tries to drive wedges into the enemy society by isolating the groups you will never be able to win over and appealing to as wide a base as possible. The Swords of Truth Brigades should not be threatening the CPT team; they should be holding a joint press conference to denounce the Coalition. The way they are behaving is comparable to the North Vietnamese shooting Jane Fonda with a firing squad instead of a camera in 1972. The terrorists really do not know who their friends are. They kidnap humanitarian workers. They target journalists. They bomb the U.N. Lenin must be spinning in his tomb.

Useful Idiots

Lenin may be spinning in his tomb because of the stupidity of the terrorists, but he's smiling because of the actions of the kidnapped. They are behaving like perfect useful idiots. Do they blame the terrorists? Of course not! From their website:

We are angry because what has happened to our teammates is the result of the actions of the U.S. and U.K. governments due to the illegal attack on Iraq and the continuing occupation and oppression of its people. Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) has worked for the rights of Iraqi prisoners who have been illegally detained and abused by the U.S. government. We were the first people to publicly denounce the torture of Iraqi people at the hands of U.S. forces, long before the western media admitted what was happening at Abu Ghraib.

You just can't make this stuff up.

Posted by Tom at 8:32 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

November 22, 2005

A Pinko Speaks

I caught Laura Ingraham this morning as she was interviewing Jodie Evans of the whacko leftist group Code Pink Women for Pink. It was about as bad as you might think.

I've had numberous encounters with Code Pink and other leftist groups, and if you'd like to about them go to the sidebar and select "Rallies and Protests"

Laura is one of my favorite talk-show hosts, and as usual she was at her best. She exposed Jodi Evens and her group for the "useful idiots" they are.

I tried to write down some of what I heard. The exact wording is not going to be correct, and much is left out, but I did get the meaning of the conversation, or inverview. Here are a few snipets:

Laura: How should we fight terrorism? What is your plan?

Jodie: We need to get out of Iraq.

Laura: Why do you think we should leave Iraq?

Jodie: To end terrorism there.

Laura: What were you doing in the 1990s, when Saddam was killing his own people?

Jodie: We were against the sanctions. The sanctions gave Saddam power. Terrorism will not end until we leave Iraq.

Laura: What about Afghanistan?

Jodie: We trained bin Laden and created the Taliban

Laura: Why won't you condemn the terrorists? I've asked you several times about this and you keep evading me(as I said, I tuned in part way through the interview)!

Jodie: What the terrorists are doing is terrible

Laura: Finally!

Again, this is not at all meant to be an exact transcript, but does catch the flavor of the interview. Every time Laura would ask Jodie about terrorism or the situation in Iraq, or for matter just anything having to do with the global WOT, all Jodie would say was "We need to get out of Iraq". What a broken record.

Last year the invaluable Christopher Hitchens had something to say about people who were against the sanctions, and then opposed our invasion of Iraq:

A few years ago, many of the same liberals and leftists were quoting improbable if not impossible numbers of dead Iraqi children, murdered by the international sanctions imposed on Saddam Hussein. Even at its most propagandistic, this contained an important moral point: Iraqi civilians were suffering for the sins of their dictatorship (and from the lavish corruption of the U.N. supervision of the "oil-for-food" program). OK, then, we'll remove the regime and lift the sanctions. Happy now? Not at all! It turns out that 1) the Saddam regime was only a threat invented by neo-cons and that 2) we don't owe the Iraqi people a thing. Also, we could use the money ourselves.

This would mean that all the protest about dead and malnourished Iraqi infants was all for show. Surely that can't be right?

Afraid so, Hitch.

Posted by Tom at 9:14 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

November 12, 2005

Leftist Whacko Update

The folks at Code Pink at least know the origin of Veterans Day.

Cute, eh?

This was the biggest sign that the Pinkos had as they held their anti-war protest (er, "vigil") outside of Walter Reed Army Medical center yesterday evening. They've been doing this every Friday night for over 30 weeks now. Across the street, countering and out-numbering them, are real pro-troop, pro-Iraq, and pro-democracy people. For complete background, including many photos, on these events go here.

"Armistice", of course, is just another way of saying, "We want to cut-and-run" in Iraq. You'd have to be either hopelessly naive or very evil to believe that the terrorists would honor any armistice we signed with them (assuming they even agreed to one). But we see this attitude thoughout the leftist media.

The Nation magazine, the liberal equivalent to National Review, wants us to pull out immediately:

We will not support any candidate for national office who does not make a speedy end to the war in Iraq a major issue of his or her campaign. We urge all voters to join us in adopting this position. Many worry that the aftermath of withdrawal will be ugly, but we can now see that the consequences of staying will be uglier still. Fear of facing the consequences of Bush's disaster should not be permitted to excuse the creation of a worse disaster by continuing the occupation

.

That anyone can actually believe that Iraq under the rule of Al Qaeda and/or a resurgent Ba'athist regime could be no worse than the current situation is truely amazing. Reasoning with such people is simply not possible. To justify themselves, they dredge out the same old "Bush lied" nonsense that we are starting to see from mainstream Democrats.

On the Nation's site today we also find Medea Benjamin & Gayle Brandeis. Benjamin is a founder of Code Pink. I'm not familiar with Brandeis. They offer their suggestions for supporting the troops:

Send care packages to Iraq: books and snacks and toiletries to mitigate some of the harshness of the desert war zone. Donate to organizations, like the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, that provide help for returning soldiers struggling to put their lives together after war. Stand on street corners with candles and signs that spotlight the injustices our troops face. Support groups like Iraq Veterans Against the War, made up of courageous soldiers speaking out against the war. Urge elected officials to end this misbegotten military adventure. Support clean, green energy programs and lifestyles that move us off our dependence on other countries' oil.

I'll certainly agree with sending care packages. I send weekly letters (with half the sports section of the paper detailing the Sunday football games stuffed inside), and bi-monthly packages through Adopt-a-Platoon. But the rest of what they suggest is just the usual leftist tripe.

Benjamin's group, Code Pink Women for Peace, gave $600,000 in money and supplies to the terrorists in Iraq. If you don't believe me, they admit to it on their website.

They're also sending "Friendship Delegation" to Cuba December 27-January 2, 2006. This, too, is on their website.

One anti-American latin dictator not being enough, on January 23- Feburary 4th they'll be in Venezuela attending the World Socialist Forum. You guessed it, this is on their website too.

The President Strikes Back

Yesterday, during a Veteran's Day speech, President Bush stuck back at his antagonists:

While it's perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began. (Applause.) Some Democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war. These critics are fully aware that a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community's judgments related to Iraq's weapons programs.

They also know that intelligence agencies from around the world agreed with our assessment of Saddam Hussein. They know the United Nations passed more than a dozen resolutions citing his development and possession of weapons of mass destruction. And many of these critics supported my opponent during the last election, who explained his position to support the resolution in the Congress this way: "When I vote to give the President of the United States the authority to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein, it is because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a threat, and a grave threat, to our security." That's why more than a hundred Democrats in the House and the Senate — who had access to the same intelligence — voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power.

The stakes in the global war on terror are too high, and the national interest is too important, for politicians to throw out false charges. These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will. As our troops fight a ruthless enemy determined to destroy our way of life, they deserve to know that their elected leaders who voted to send them to war continue to stand behind them. Our troops deserve to know that this support will remain firm when the going gets tough. And our troops deserve to know that whatever our differences in Washington, our will is strong, our nation is united, and we will settle for nothing less than victory.

Exactly Right.

Peter Fleming, writing on my other blog site, says "About Time!", to which I say, "Amen!"

Meanwhile, Norman Podhoretz has a devastaging critique of those who persist in "Bush lied!" nonsense. His conclusion is that

...so long as we are hunting for liars in this area, let me suggest that we begin with the Democrats now proclaiming that they were duped, and that we then broaden out to all those who in their desperation to delegitimize the larger policy being tested in Iraq—the policy of making the Middle East safe for America by making it safe for democracy—have consistently used distortion, misrepresentation, and selective perception to vilify as immoral a bold and noble enterprise and to brand as an ignominious defeat what is proving itself more and more every day to be a victory of American arms and a vindication of American ideals.

Posted by Tom at 2:11 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

October 26, 2005

Fake Vigil

Here they are, holding their fake vigil in my own home town

What these people claim to be doing is holding a vigil to "mark the death of the 2,000th reported U.S. military death in Iraq and to say that the country’s pro-peace majority wants Congress to stop the deaths by stopping the dollars that are funding the war."

What they're really doing is exploiting war dead to push an insane agenda that at the least would result in more, not less, bloodshed in Iraq, and at worst an al-Qaeda run caliphate throughout the Middle East. AFPS thinks that we should end the war in Iraq immediately, regardless of the consequences. It's on their website here, check it out.

The organizers of this "vigil" are members of a group called the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), and they're a far left group that has been agitating for unilateral US disarmament for decades.

This time they're holding a series of parties (er, "vigils") to celebrate (I mean "mark") the death of 2,000 American soldiers (and I mean to include sailors, Marines, airmen and Coast Guard) in the liberation of Iraq. Acording to their website, there were 606 such "vigils" scheduled to be held today.

Why Do I Call them Fake?

I call them fake because their purpose is to demoralize the American people so that we pull our troops out of Iraq immediately, regardless of the conseqences. In it's entire history this organization has not shown a whit of concern for the welfare of American soldiers.

Let me make this clear: If you simply think we should not have gone into Iraq, that is fine. We can disagree on this. Further, if you think that President Bush and co have made a mess of matters, then fine, too, we can debate these points. But decent opponents of the administration believe that since we are there we must win. If you believe that we should pull out without winning, you are a "useful idiot" and I have no sympathy for you.

And yes, it matters who is organizing the protest or rally. The excuse "I'm just here to show my support/opposition to X but don't support the organizers" doesn't cut it. People have an obligation to check out the organization holding an event if they plan on attending. If you don't think so, imagine if a front group for the Klan held an anti-affirmative action protest. If it then became commonly known that the organizers were Klan members, would you accept that excuse from people who attended? I sure wouldn't.

You can read my post yesterday on the AFSC or simply go to DiscovertheNetwork.org and read all about them .

Unfortunately, they're not alone in exploiting our soldiers.

They're Not Alone

Not to be outdone, Moveon.org is running a TV commercial called "How many more?" This blogger says he saw it run on CNN (Hat tip Michelle Malkin).

The disgusting group Code Pink is also calling for "action" today. Did I tell you where they're going to celebrate New Years? Here's a hint; it's an island to the south of the US run buy a guy who wears old army uniforms and has a beard. If you miss that one you can go with them to Venezuela in late January.

Of course, Code Pink has a lot of experience at holding fake vigils. They hold one every Friday night outside the main entrance to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington DC.

And as I'm sure you all know by now, mother Sheehan says that she'll tie herself to the White House Fence "to protest the milestone of 2,000 U.S. military deaths in Iraq."

Much of the media is playing the game too. Check out this picture posted on MSNBC.

The Right Side

This USAF major points out why the accounting is bogus(hat tip K-Lo at NRO).

The US military doesn't think much of all this, either. U.S. Army Lt. Col. Steve Boylan, spokesman for the coalition in Iraq, has this to say in an email to the press

I ask that when you report on the events, take a moment to think about the effects on the families and those serving in Iraq The 2,000 service members killed in Iraq supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom is not a milestone. It is an artificial mark on the wall set by individuals or groups with specific agendas and ulterior motives.

The Col is right on all counts.

LGF has about a dozen posts on all this. Be sure to check them out.

And last, but most of all, go here to find out all about American heroes in Iraq.

Posted by Tom at 10:08 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

October 6, 2005

Poor Man

Once, again, Al Gore has lost it.

He seemed OK at one point. Heck, during the '80s I almost thought he was on our side on certain issues, like abortion.

But ever since loosing to W in 2000, he has become positively unhinged.

There was the speech during which he ranted and raved like, well, Howard Dean. It wasn't so much what he said, although that was pretty loony too, as how he said it. As Glenn Reynolds pointed out, even Maureen Dowd mocked him for that one.

This time he's gone paranoid.

In a speech the other day at a media conference he said that American democracy was in "grave danger" because...conservative views are now voiced in the media.

I kid you not.

Ok, he didn't exactly say that word for word, just like he never exactly said that he "invented the Internet". But the meaning is plain enough.

He started off by reminiscing about the good old days when we had a "marketplace of ideas" in the media. Those days, according to Gore, were when Americans got virtually all of their news from the print media.

This "marketplace of ideas", he says, was "open to every individual", was based on a "Meritocracy of Ideas", and the "participants were all governed by an unspoken duty to search for general agreement."

So let me get this right. Back when in order to be heard you had to either work for a newspaper (still subject to your editor's whims), start a newspaper, or get a letter-to-the-editor published, this was a freewheeling "marketplace of ideas"? You've got to be kidding.

According to Gore, this is what went wrong:

And yet, as we meet here this morning, more than 40 years have passed since the majority of Americans received their news and information from the printed word. Newspapers are hemorrhaging readers and, for the most part, resisting the temptation to inflate their circulation numbers. Reading itself is in sharp decline, not only in our country but in most of the world. The Republic of Letters has been invaded and occupied by television.

Radio, the internet, movies, telephones, and other media all now vie for our attention - but it is television that still completely dominates the flow of information in modern America. In fact, according to an authoritative global study, Americans now watch television an average of four hours and 28 minutes every day -- 90 minutes more than the world average.

Television stations, Gore says, "...are almost completely inaccessible to individual citizens and almost always uninterested in ideas contributed by individual citizens."

I'll certainly be the first to agree that television is not exactly the source for news, whether you're watching Fox News or CNN. But a threat to our democracy?

And while they may not be directly accessible to individual citizens, in recent years we have seen that they can certainly be held accountable, so Gore is flat-out wrong here. To pick one example, CBS and Dan Rather were raked over the coals for the fake documents on George W Bush.

The reason Gore thinks television is so bad is because "...three-quarters of Americans said they believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible" for 9/11. That and the O.J. trial (Jonah Goldberg has the scoop on where Gore that that 3/4 figure. It's from some group called the Program on International Policy Attitudes). But again, a "threat to our democracy"? Come on.

Gore doesn't come out and say it, but it would seem he's talking about Fox News. As Goldberg says, "...you hear this from liberals all the time."

Earth to Al Gore: Televison is not a recent invention. It has been around for decades. Let's just be honest; the reason for your complaints is that you liberals lost your monopoly on it. No longer do we just have the big 3 and PBS. Fox News is beating CNN and MSNBC hands down in the ratings(hat tip USS Neverdock). And now we have the Internet to hold the rest of the liberal media accountable.

What exactly does Gore want to do about all this? He doesn't really say, other than that we must"...ensure that the Internet remains open and accessible to all citizens without any limitation on the ability of individuals to choose the content they wish regardless of the Internet service provider they use to connect to the Worldwide Web."

As if anything on the Internet other than child porn is going to be limited. Maybe he's against letting the UN get their hands on it, but he doesn't say.

Maybe he wants to bring back the so-called "Fairness Doctrine", which was anything but fair. Who knows.

Poor man, you do have to kind of feel sorry for him.

Speaking of the Media

This from today's Washington Times:

Robert Maginnis, a retired Army colonel and frequent military analyst on radio and TV, is touring Kuwait and Iraq, compliments of the Pentagon, to see how things are going firsthand.

After a dinner last night with Army soldiers, Mr. Maginnis reports to us:

"The soldiers expressed frustration with the fact that most of the U.S. news coverage about Iraq is bad, which contradicts their firsthand view. Two of those soldiers have children stationed with combat units in Iraq. These proud parents appreciate the importance of their Kuwait support mission. A lieutenant colonel volunteered that the American people support the troops but probably don't understand our mission, which explains why national support for the war is declining. A sergeant offered that support would increase if more people served and suggested that returning to a draft might help universal understanding."

Update

I had to run off to work this morning before finishing, and the juxtapositon of Gore's speech and Maginnis' comments should perhaps be explained (though most will get it).

Gore evidently things that the American people are being brainwashed by conservatives on the television news. He evidently believes that if only ordinary citizens had more opportunity to contribute to our national discourse, to speak out, then the lies of those dastardly conservatives would be exposed.

Maginnis' remarks, however, show just how far from reality Gore is. I've read this time and again, how when soldiers return home they are amazed by the press coverage, and how it differs from what they saw.

Unfortunately, Gore is not the only one who has become unhinged.

Dan Rather has also gone paranoid:

Rather spoke at the Fordham University School of Law in New York, and according to the Hollywood Reporter, he "said there is a climate of fear running through newsrooms stronger than he has ever seen in his more than four-decade career." The article said that Rather was "occasionally forcing back tears" while commenting how "politicians 'of every persuasion' had gotten better at applying pressure on the conglomerates that own the broadcast networks. He called it a 'new journalism order.'"

Walter Cronkite thinks we're all stupid:

We're an ignorant nation right now. We're not really capable of making the decisions that have to be made at election time and particularly in the selection of their legislatures and their Congress and the presidency of course. I think we're in serious danger. -- Walter Cronkite, on Larry King Live

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September 17, 2005

Pinkos Update

I thought everone might enjoy some new photo's of our Friday night face-offs with Code Pink, the left-wing outfit notorious for giving some $600,000 to the terrorists (er, "citizens") of Fallujah.

As I discussed a few posts ago, last spring Code Pink decided to hold Friday night anti-war protests outside the main entrance to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington DC. Their signs included such beauties as "Maimed for a Lie". The probable reason they chose Friday evenings is because on that night the hospital sends a busload of the recovering troops to a restaurant in the city. The bus re-enters the hospital grounds at this very entrance between 9 and 9:30. The troops were unable to miss the Code Pink people on the corner right beside the entrance.

Word got out about this, and the people who manage FreeRepublic.com, known as "Freepers", decided that this was intolerable. They organized their own "support the troops" demonstrations on the opposite streetcorners, and have done so every Friday night since. This way the troops on the bus would have have a pro-troops rally to bolster them instead of having to look at a bunch of neo-Marxists. The whole thing was under the media radar until an August 30 CNSnews story attracted national attention.

Yours truely has been there to help counter the Pinkos a total of three times now, with last night being the latest episode. I published my first account a few weeks ago, and below are photos of Sept 9 and Sept 16.

Photos

This is the corner where we maintained our largest presence, where the Freepers put our "MOAB", or Mother Of All Banners". All "pro-troops" signs and banners are on this corner too.

Here is our other corner, on which all anti-Pinko signs and banners are placed. As you can see, the massive banner here is only slightly smaller than the MOB. Both of our corners are across the street from the main entrance.

(I took both of the above photos from one of Code Pink's corners after they had left)

Here are the Pinkos, on the corner where they maintain their largest presence. Their permit gives them two corners (the ones right beside the entrance), and ours does the same for us. As you can see, their largest sign is, ahem, somewhat smaller than either of ours. All of which is somewhat amusing that they can't manage anthing better.

Here is their secondary corner.

Here I am, letting passing motorists know who the people across the street are. This sign, like many of the others, were made by the Freepers. They had an abundance of them for anyone on our side to hold.

The guy in the purple shirt is who I call the "angry bicyclist". He stopped by our corner Sept 9 and wanted to argue with everyone. He kept shouting that he'd done a lot of reading and knew the facts, and who here would debate him, all that. He wanted to get into Security Council resolution 1441 and everything. He was so irate the last thing any of us were going to do is engage him in any type of serious conversation. After a few minutes of back-and-forth we ignored him and he went over to the Pinko's corner.

Here is what it is all about, the troops, returning from the restaurant. In the past few weeks the Pinkos have packed up and gone home promptly at 9pm before the busload of troops arrives. It is my belief that they do this so as to maintain the falsehood that there's is a "vigil", in support of the troops. As I said at the earlier, when they stated this several months ago they had no problem in showing the busload of troops their protest signs.

You can find a lot more at the FreeRepublic.com website.

In this post, the Freepers show a copy of a Code Pink flyer that they say was being handed out to neighborhood residents just last week. The flyer urges residents to call the police on "counter protesters who have been appearing to yell at us Friday nights."

The Pinkos claim is that far from being against the troops, they are fighting for the troops. They say that they are simply holding a "vigil" in support of the troops who are in the hospital. One of their signs says "quite zone", despite the fact that each night they play one or more guitars and sing leftie anti-war songs. Other signs say things like "Full Finding for VA Benefits". Essentially, they are running from who they really are. They are trying to present the image of a benign group that simply does not think our troops should be in Iraq. In reality, they are a dangerous bunch of anti-American fanatics who have given aid and comfort to the enemy.

Here are the FreeRepublic posts with many good pictures and even video and audio files from Sept 2 and Sept 9. Make sure you go to these posts, because in addition to the great photos, you'll want to read about the "drive by fruiting" of Sept 9!

Next Weekend

Next weekend is either "Support the Troops" or "Protest the War (and the IMF, the World Bank, and support Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, and North Korea)" depending on whose side you're on. The lefties plan on being out in force, and the Freepers, Protest Warriors, and others on the right will be in D.C. also so that hopefully the left does not get all the media attention. I plan on being downtown that Saturday, and will do a post on the goings-on shortly thereafter. Stay tuned.

Posted by Tom at 2:16 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

September 10, 2005

Support the Troops Weekend

Mark your calendars:

September 23, 24, and 26 is Support the Troops weekend.

Rallies are being held in Washington DC area throughout that weekend, so if you live here or can get here please attend one or more.

From the Support the Troops website:

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 23 - 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. - SUPPORT THE TROOPS RALLY OUTSIDE WALTER REED ARMY MEDICAL CENTER, 7200 GEORGIA AVENUE, N.W., WASHINGTON, D.C. ACROSS FROM THE MAIN GATE, ELDER ST. AND GEORGIA AVE. Every Friday night for the past five months, members of FreeRepublic.com have held a patriotic gathering in support of our men and women recuperating at Walter Reed. While they believe that ordinarily, demonstrations are out of place at a hospital, they have done so because an antiwar group named Code Pink has been holding antiwar demonstrations at the main gate to Walter Reed on Friday evenings. We believe Code Pink is trying to hurt the morale of our soldiers and their families, so we will be joining the members of FreeRepublic.com in their show of support for our troops and their loved ones.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24 - 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. - SUPPORT THE TROOPS AND THEIR MISSION RALLY BY DEFENDTHEWHITEHOUSE.ORG, RIGHTMARCH AND PROTEST WARRIOR, IN RESPONSE TO ANTIWAR RALLY ON THE ELLIPSE (LOCATION TBA).
This rally will place participants in close proximity to the antiwar protesters so that the antiwar rallies will not go unanswered by patriotic Americans. Plans for this day are still being formed. You may sign up for a mailing list for information updates on Saturday's events.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24 - 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. - PATRIOTIC COUNTER-DEMONSTRATION BY DEFENDTHEWHITEHOUSE.ORG, FREEREPUBLIC.COM AND PROTEST WARRIOR ALONG ANTIWAR PARADE ROUTE THROUGH FEDERAL TRIANGLE (EXACT LOCATION TBA.)
After the dueling rallies, we will be lining sections of the antiwar march route to show support for America, our troops and their mission fighting the war on terrorism. There will be police lines separating the two groups to ensure the peace.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 25 - Noon to 3 p.m. - OUR MAIN EVENT: RALLY TO HONOR MILITARY FAMILIES ON THE MALL AT 4TH STREET NW (NEAR THE AIR & SPACE MUSEUM) SPONSORED BY MOVE AMERICA FORWARD, RIGHTMARCH.COM, FREEREPUBLIC.COM, PROTEST WARRIOR AND MILITARY FAMILIES VOICE OF VICTORY
This rally is being held to honor military families, their loved ones serving in our armed forces and their mission fighting the war on terrorism in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere around the world. Military family members and those who support them are encouraged to attend to show the nation and the world that they stand firm in their resolve to win the war on terrorism. Speakers will include Gold Star parents, family members of service men and women, veterans and Iraqi citizens as well an appearance by the musical duo The Right Brothers. Current and former Members of Congress are also being invited to speak. The program for the rally will be regularly updated.

I'll be at the Friday night and Saturday events. If you will be able to make it let me know at redhunter43-at-yahoo-dot-com.

Last night I was at Walter Reed with the other freepers. Once again, we outnumbered the Pinkos by maybe two to one, and had much larger and better signs. I don't have a post up about last night, and I don't think Free Republic has theirs up either, but you can read about previous nights outside Walter reed on their website here and here, and on my other blog here (warning; each of these links is pretty graphics intensive, so you'll need a broadband connection).

What the Left is Up To

These patriotic 'counter-protests' are being held because a coalition of far-left groups is descending on Washington DC that weekend. Protesting the War in Iraq is their central gripe, but as usual they are all upset over a variety of things.

They will also being protesting the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, who are holding meetings that weekend.

International A.N.S.W.E.R says that one of their demands is that the U.S. "Stop the Threats Against Venezuela, Cuba, Iran & North Korea". They also list "U.S. out of the Philippines" and "U.S. out of Puerto Rico" as demands. They're completely nuts.

I wouldn't doubt it if the "Free Mumia" people even showed up.

The new Queen of the left, Cindy Sheehan, will conclude her "non-political" 25 state bus tour at the protests that weekend.

It is very important that the left not get all the media coverage. The only way for us to be heard is to show up. Obviously, if you do not live in the Washington DC area I don't expect you to fly in, but if you do have friends or relatives here please let them know about this.

The Other Side

If you want to read what the other side is up to, and can stomach their websites, here are their various "action alerts" and information sites for the Sept 23-24 weekend:

Code Pink

United for Peace and Justice

International A.N.S.W.E.R

Posted by Tom at 8:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 24, 2005

Inconvenient Quotes II

Why stop when you're having fun?

Not satisfied with making fools out of themselves by going on record as saying that Saddam Hussein had WMD and then becoming part of the Bush Lied! chorus, liberals have said some pretty amazingly anti-American things. Consider our second selection of inconvenient quotes:

Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-HI), 10/1/01, Roll Call: "I truly believe if we had a Department of Peace, we could have seen [9/11] coming."

Al Sharpton, 12/1/02, New York Times, on the 9/11 attacks: "America is beginning to reap what it has sown."

Rep. Marcy Kaptur, 3/1/2003, Toledo Blade: "One could say that Osama bin Laden and these non-nation-state fighters with religious purpose are very similar to those kind of atypical revolutionaries that helped cast off the British crown."

(hat tip Captain's Quarters)

Then there's Howard Dean:

The most interesting theory that I've heard so far--which is nothing more than a theory, I can’t think – it can’t be proved – is that he was warned ahead of time by the Saudis.

Oh but it's just something that he heard. That makes it ok.

Bill Clinton, in typically wordy fashion, used the "context" argument, dragging out what every wallowing-in-victimhood Muslim wants to hear, that all their problems are the fault of the crusaders of a thousand years ago (hat tip anklebitingpundits)

Those of us who come from various European lineages are not blameless. Indeed, in the first Crusade, when the Christian soldiers took Jerusalem, they first burned a synagogue with 300 Jews in it, and proceeded to kill every woman and child who was Muslim on the Temple mound. The contemporaneous descriptions of the event describe soldiers walking on the Temple mound, a holy place to Christians, with blood running up to their knees. I can tell you that that story is still being told to today in the Middle East and we are still paying for it. Here in the United States, we were founded as a nation that practiced slavery and slaves were, quite frequently, killed even though they were innocent. This country once looked the other way when significant numbers of Native Americans were dispossessed and killed to get their land or their mineral rights or because they were thought of as less than fully human and we are still paying the price today. Even in the 20th century in America people were terrorized or killed because of their race. And even today, though we have continued to walk, sometimes to stumble, in the right direction, we still have the occasional hate crime rooted in race, religion, or sexual orientation. So terror has a long history.

And last but not least, no list of quotes by left-wing whackos would be complete without something from George Soros (ok, so Clinton's not quite a leftie, but that's beside the point). Courtesy of Hugh Hewitt we have the following:

“War is a false and misleading metaphor in the context of combating terrorism. Treating the attacks of September 11 as crimes against humanity would have been more appropriate. Crimes require police work, not military action. To protect against terrorism, you need precautionary measures, awareness, and intelligence gathering – all of which ultimately depend on the support of the populations among which terrorists operate. Imagine for a moment that September 11 had been treated as a crime. We would have pursued Bin Laden in Afghanistan, but we would not have invaded Iraq. Nor would we have our military struggling to perform police work in full combat gear and getting killed in the process.” (George Soros, The Bubble Of American Supremacy, 2004, p. 18)

• Soros Said The Execution Of 9/11 Attacks “Could Not Have Been More Spectacular.” “Admittedly, the terrorist attack was a historic event in its own right. Hijacking fully loaded airplanes and using them as suicide bombs was an audacious idea, and the execution could not have been more spectacular.” (George Soros, The Bubble Of American Supremacy, 2004, p. 2)

• Soros Said War On Terror Had Claimed More Innocent Victims Than 9/11 Attack Itself. “This is a very tough thing to say, but the fact is, that the war on terror as conducted by this administration, has claimed more innocent victims that the original attack itself.” (George Soros, Remarks At Take Back America Conference, Washington, DC, 6/3/04)

Sickening.

Posted by Tom at 10:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Inconvenient Quotes

Actually they're quite convenient to me. But if you're a liberal who runs around crying Bush Lied! they're quite inconvenient.

Best of all, the quotes are impeccably sourced. They come courtesy of one of my favorite talk show hosts, Glenn Beck. Visit his page to see if he is on a station in your area.

"Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime ... He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation ... And now he is miscalculating America's response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction ... So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real..."
- Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Jan. 23. 2003 | Source

"I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force -- if necessary -- to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security."
- Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Oct. 9, 2002 | Source

"One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line."
- President Clinton, Feb. 4, 1998 | Source

"If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program."
- President Bill Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998 | Source

"We must stop Saddam from ever again jeopardizing the stability and security of his neighbors with weapons of mass destruction."
- Madeline Albright, Feb 1, 1998 | Source

"He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983."
- Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser, Feb, 18, 1998 | Source

"[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs."
Letter to President Clinton.
- (D) Senators Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, others, Oct. 9, 1998 | Source

"Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process."
- Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Dec. 16, 1998 | Source

"Hussein has ... chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies."
- Madeline Albright, Clinton Secretary of State, Nov. 10, 1999 | Source

"We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandate of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and th! e means of delivering them."
- Sen. Carl Levin (D, MI), Sept. 19, 2002 | Source

"We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country."
- Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002 | Source

"Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power."
- Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002 | Source

"We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction."
- Sen. Ted Kennedy (D, MA), Sept. 27, 2002 | Source

"The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons..."
- Sen. Robert Byrd (D, WV), Oct. 3, 2002 | Source

"There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years ... We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction."
- Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D, WV), Oct 10, 2002 | Source

"In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members ... It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons."
- Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY), Oct 10, 2002 | Source

"We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has, and has had for a number of years, a developing capacity for the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction."
- Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL), Dec. 8, 2002 | Source

There are some liberals who will object to my using these quotes. Here's why they're full of it:

So in order to still believe that Bush Lied! you need to believe that Bush and co fooled the Democrats with fake intel. This would make the Democrats are incredibly stupid and easily fooled people. Oops.

Of course, the Robb-Silberman Commission cleared Bush of this charge, but since when has the left let facts stand in the way?

You also have to ignore the fact that even Hans Blix and Jacques Chirac thought that Saddam had WMD. They just didn't think we needed to invade Iraq.

So if you want to believe that the invasion was a mistake, fine. Reasonable people can disagree. But only left-wing whackos think that Bush Lied!

Posted by Tom at 9:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Gitmo Investigation Fraud

So now the Democrats have decided that the most important thing to do in the War on Terror is to provide Al-Jazeera with more anti-American propaganda. As such, they've demanded an independent investigation to look into alleged abuses at Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay, where we are holding several hundred terrorists.

Of course, as it is Al-Jazzera covers in detail the attempt by far-left Congressman John Conyers' and other Democrats to impeach President Bush. That network is full of stories about our supposedly regular torture of prisoners at the camp. Don't think they don't follow what goes on over here.

The Democrats aren't the only ones in the business of trying to make us look bad, as the UN is trying to get in the game too, demanding access to the prison "to check out conditions there." That's rich. This from the same organization that has Cuba, Egypt, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Zimbabwe as members on it's Commission on Human Rights.

I've gone over many times the fallacy of treating the prisoners there as if they were criminals, and interested readers need only select "Guantanamo Bay and the Geneva Convention" at right for the full story.

Right now I'm going to deal with this latest Democrat diversion.

And let us have no doubt, for it is indeed a diversion from the War on Terror. Let me stop right here and point out the obvious; about half of the Democrats are sincere in wanting to win the War on Terror. We and they may disagree on this or that, but it's all an argument within the family.

But Ted Kennedy, Maxine Waters, Nancy Pelosi, John Conyers, Jim McDermott and crowd, they do not seem to care at all if we win. To them it's all a diversion from their plan to put us all under the rule of the EPA (this is HUMOR, trolls).

I've got other posts to write, and since the editors of National Review say it best, I'll just quote them:

It is argued that a commission will help clear the country’s good name. Put aside that the portion of the foreign audience that hates us won’t be swayed by a commission’s findings one way or another. A commission will, in political terms, never clear the Bush administration of anything. The Robb-Silberman Commission cleared Bush officials of the charge that they pressured intelligence officials to hype intelligence about Iraq’s WMD. Democrats and swaths of the media dismissed the report for exactly that reason.

The Pentagon has investigated its detainee practices repeatedly. Air Force Lt. General Randall Schmidt’s investigation into Gitmo — it is his forthcoming report that Newsweek falsely said would contain the toilet-flushing incident — will just be the latest. There is no reason to believe that violations of the rules at the facility, including of the minute procedures for handling the Koran, haven’t resulted in discipline for the violators. And numerous congressional hearings have been held about the detentions there.

An independent commission is not just unnecessary, it’s a cop out. Democrats should simply say what they would do with the detainees, and offer a congressional resolution to that effect and vote on it. Do they oppose tough interrogation techniques for the 20th hijacker? Then they should put themselves on record against them, even if it’s only in a symbolic resolution. Do they think terrorists deserve Geneva Convention protections? That we should attempt (futilely) to try the detainees in the American courts and — failing that — release them? If they are such fans of “accountability,” Democrats shouldn’t blanch at putting such positions in black and white and voting on them.

Of course, they will do no such thing. They instead want to hide behind a commission that at best will duplicate investigative work that has already been done and at worst replicate the 9/11 Commission at its lowest, most politicized moments. The response to calls for such a commission should be simple: “Hell, no.”

Ditto that.

Posted by Tom at 8:56 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

June 4, 2005

What Has She Been Drinking?

First Eason Jordan, then Linda Foley, now the President and CEO of PepsiCo?

In her commencement address to the graduates of Columbia Business School this past May 15, Indra Nooyi accused the United States of giving the finger to the rest of the world.
she said

Here's what she said:

This analogy of the five fingers as the five major continents leaves the long, middle finger for North America, and, in particular, The United States. As the longest of the fingers, it really stands out. The middle finger anchors every function that the hand performs and is the key to all of the fingers working together efficiently and effectively. This is a really good thing, and has given the U.S. a leg-up in global business since the end of World War I.

However, if used inappropriately – just like the U.S. itself - the middle finger can convey a negative message and get us in trouble. You know what I’m talking about. In fact, I suspect you’re hoping that I’ll demonstrate what I mean. And trust me, I’m not looking for volunteers to model.

Discretion being the better part of valor...I think I’ll pass.

What is most crucial to my analogy of the five fingers as the five major continents, is that each of us in the U.S. – the long middle finger – must be careful that when we extend our arm in either a business or political sense, we take pains to assure we are giving a hand...not the finger. Sometimes this is very difficult. Because the U.S. – the middle finger – sticks out so much, we can send the wrong message unintentionally.

Unfortunately, I think this is how the rest of the world looks at the U.S. right now. Not as part of the hand – giving strength and purpose to the rest of the fingers – but, instead, scratching our nose and sending a far different signal.

Yeah? Well, the way I look at you, Ms Nooyi, is that you're nuts. This is your idea of a commencement address?

More to the point, how do people like this rise to the top? Does no one ever stop and say, "so-in-so is really nuts!" There is no way that this the whacko statements we have heard from Nooyi, Eason Jordan, and Linda Foley came out of the blue. They've said this stuff before.

Scott Johnson of Powerline posted PepsiCo's response, which you can read on his Weekly Standard article. Hint; it's not convincing.

Ms Nooyi has also issued one of those "I'm sorry but my remarks were misconstrued" psuedoapologies. You can also read it in the Weekly Standard piece. She says that she is "deeply sorry for offending anyone", but doesn't really take back what she said. At least that's how I read it.

Apparently I'm a bit behind on this one because as I check around I see a lot of other folks have been blogging on it also, including Michelle Malkin, Powerline, and Hugh Hewitt. Well that's what happens when you spend your time setting up a few new blogs. But then again, that's the purpose of blogs, to keep the stories alive that the msm despirately want to ignore.

Am I going to have to give up on Pepsi now?

Posted by Tom at 2:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 15, 2005

Rangel Looses It

In case you thought that the Iraqi elections were a success, Charlie Rangel tells us otherwise. You see, he thinks that it was a success only for the Republican Party

"I don't believe that the American people think that it was worth the lives of 1,200 Americans and 25,000 men and women in the armed services wounded, tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of Iraqis dead,"

Mr. Rangel, a Korean War veteran, told NBC's "Meet the Press" that the war in Iraq is a "fraud" and that the United States cannot and will not bear the price of its children's blood to spread democracy abroad.

"I'm telling you, we went into Iraq not for elections. We went there to knock off Saddam Hussein, but the American people thought it was connected with 9/11, there was weapons of mass destruction, there were connections with al Qaeda. It was all a fraud," Mr. Rangel said

There is so much wrong here that one hardly knows where to begin. Since I don't have the time or patience this morning to go through it all, I'll have to leave it where it is.

Sorry if I made you loose your breakfast.

Posted by Tom at 9:58 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 12, 2005

Lenninist Lynne

As I noted in a post below, attorney Lynne Stewart was convicted Thursday of conspiracy, providing material support to terrorists, defrauding the government and making false statements. She had been representing Egyptian sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman. Rahman is the "blind sheik" who was convicted in 1995 for conspiring to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and destroy several New York landmarks, including the U.N. building and the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels.

We heard the expected garbage from her lawyers (I know, it's also in my post below, but it's so good I just have to quote them again)

"It's a dark day for civil liberties and for civil liberties lawyers in this country," attorney Ron Kuby said Thursday. "In the post 9-11 era, where dissidents are treated as traitors, it's perhaps no surprise that a zealous civil rights lawyer becomes a convict."

Stewart says that "political motivations" were driving the prosecutors.

Most news outlets simply described her as a "veteran civil rights activist". A few, to their credit, went farther, characterizing her as a "left-wing activist", but that's about as far as most stories I've seen go.

Civil rights activist my foot.

She's on record as supporting the worst communist dictactors that the twentieth century had to offer.

Some know the truth. Attorney Scott Johnson of the Powerline blog calls her conviction "a milestone in the war on terrorism." He's right. Stewart is a Fifth Columnist, seeking to destroy us from within. Her motivation for helping the sheik is simple; she hates this country and wants to see it destroyed.

Frontpage Magazine, edited by David Horowitz, someone who knows the left better than most because he was once a member of it, described the importance of the trial this way;

Yesterday’s trial – which was in many ways a trial of the Left itself – will not still the anti-American fanaticism of Stewart’s and Yousry’s campus cult-worshippers. Their hatred of this country blinds them to its greatness just as it excused their evil deeds – and will probably cause them to overlook the pro-terrorist actions of Stewart’s comrades in the future. What the verdict did guarantee is that those who flaunt their country’s laws and help terrorists shed innocent blood will not escape serious consequences, anymore than their terrorist heroes have.

Who exactly is this Lynne Stewart?

There is no better way to understand who she is than to quote her directly. From the invaluable David Horowitz' latest book, Stewart is quoted as saying that

"We have in Washington a poisonous government that spreads its venom to the body politic in all corners of the globe. We now resume...our quests...like David going forth to meet Goliath, like Beowulf the dragon slayer...like Sir Galahad seeking the holy grail. And modern heroes, dare I mention? Ho and Mao and Lenin, Fidel and Nelson Mandela and John Brown, Che Guevara who reminds us 'At the risk of sounding ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love.'"

(emphasis added)

And how does she view "Muslim fundamentalists"?

"They are basically forces of national liberation. And I think that we, as persons who are committed to the liberation of oppressed people, should fasten on the need for self-determination....My own sense is that, were the Islamists to be empowered, there would be movements within their own countries...to liberate."

As for violence;

"I don't believe in anarchistic violence, but in directed violence. That would be violence directed at the institutions which perpetuate capitalism, racism, and sexism, and the people who are the appointed guardians of those institutions, and accompanied by popular support."

I think we know how she sees capitalism, but let's just be sure. She describes corporate capitalism as

"...a consummate evil that unleashes its dogs of war on the helpless; an enemy motivated only by insatiable greed...In this enemy there is no love of the land or the creatures that live there, no compassion for the people. This enemy will destroy the air we breathe and the water we drink as long as the dollars keep filling up their money boxes."

Oh but she's a great "civil rights activist," right? In an interview with Monthly Review, she "was asked to imagine that she ws part of a revolutionary government that had 'liberated' its people from the horrors of capitalism. If stewart herself were to become part of such a government, the interviewer wanted to know, was there a point at which she would think that monitoring and controlling the counterrevolutionary adversaries of that government was acceptable?"

"I don't have any problem with Mao or Stalin or the Vietnamese leaders or certainly Fidel locking up people they see as dangerous. Because so often, dissidence has been used by the greater powers to undermine a people's revolution"

Got it?

(All comments taken from David Horowitz, Unholy Alliance )

Horowitz describes Stewart as "...a protege of William Kunstler and Ramsey Clarke," two icons of the radical left, and both America-haters.

Want more? Check out Scott Johnson's (Powerline blog) "Face to Face with Lynne Stewart"
Johnson sat next to her at a debate on the Patriot Act, hosted by the National Lawyers Guild.

Stewart referred several times to 9/11 as providing the "pretext" or "excuse" for snuffing out idealistic "activists" such as she. Her indictment, she acknowledged, was not brought under the PATRIOT Act but, according to Stewart, it resulted from the same "aura" of hatred directed at Islam in the wake of 9/11. Stewart never once acknowledged the reality of the war against the United States or the peril that those such as her client the blind sheik pose to it. Stewart's conclusion articulated her theme in the old Guild tradition, accusing the Bush administration of accomplishing the "usurpation [of civil liberties] by voracious corporate government."

Enough. I can't take it anymore!

Update

Ok, so I lied. Here's a bit more.

Guess who funded her defense?

Rachel Friedman tells us that she'd like to see mainstream liberals condemn her more forcefully.

Wretchard provides good analysis and perspective

The Nation doesn't seem to have much to say on this. No articles since Dec 23, from what I can tell.

And, hold the presses: the National Lawyers Guild calls for a "Day of Outrage!" in support of Stewart.

Posted by Tom at 11:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 3, 2005

Unholy Alliance

Viewed from a logical perspective, one would think that the left in Europe and the US would view radical Islam as it's greatest enemy. After all, the latter is violently opposed to the "progressive" program that the former espouses. Further, one would imagine that the left would at least be happy that the Taliban have been overthrown in Afghanistan and with progress being made towards a better way of life for the people of that country.

However, as we've known for some time, this view would be mistaken. It would be one thing if the left were simply opposed to the war in Iraq, or expoused the view that "all war is bad" or something like that. It would even be one thing if they ranted on with their wild theories about how the threat from terrorism has been exaggerated by the dastardly "neocons".

But as David Horowitz has amply documented in Unholy Alliance, Radical Islam and the American Left, there are those in our midst who identify with the Islamofacsists to the point of working to betray our nation. Horowitz is one to know the Left better than most, as he was one of their leading figures until the late '70s/early '80s.

Horowitz answers the question as to why the left denounces our efforts in the War on Terror with such venom. First, he says, we must understand how they view the United States. The ideology of the left is really that of nihilism. He quotes Karl Marx

Not only is the radical revolution not about the reform of a socual reality, and therefore it's preservation, it is the opposite. It is about the total destruction of one: "By force of the overall definition, in the present society all laws are unjust, all consciousness is false, all relations must be corrupt, all institutions appear oppressive." In Marx's chilling phrase in The Eighteenth Brumaire, "Everything that exists deserves to perish."

It therefore follows that to the left "Because America is an unjust society, all its wars are unjust by virtue of that fact alone." No further evidence is needed. One need not search far on the Internet to find blogs and articles that espouse these views.

Horowitz documents this sort of thinking himself by quoting and analyzing the writings of the important leftists intellectuals of today; Eric Hobsvawm, Gerda Lerner, Noam Chomsky, Maurice Zeitlin, Todd Gitlin, Howard Zinn, Norman Mailer, and many others.

Horowitz lists the standard Islamic inditements against the west. He then asks

These inditements are easily embraced by the Western leftists. Less comprehensible is their support from the Islamic movements themselves, which represent so many values seemingly antithetic to their progressive creeds. But as previously noted, the history of the Western oleft shows that these are not the insurmountable obstacles they may seem. Radicalism is a cause whose utopian agendas result in an ethic where the ends outweigh and ultimately justify any means. Like the salvationist agendas of jihad, the Left's apocalyptic goal of "social justice" is the equivalent of an earthly redemption. A planet saved, a world without poverty, racism, inequality, war - what means would not be justified to achieve such millennial ends? By way of contrast, less ambitious reform movements are able to weigh gains against probable costs, and avoid the kind of excesses and atrocities endemic to radical causes.

This is the kind of thinking that prompted the Russian communist revolutionaries to assassinate Petr Stolypin, the somewhat reforminst minister to Tsar Nicholas II.

We have a Fifth Column in our midst, and Horowitz has provided excellent documentation for anyone who wants proof.

Posted by Tom at 10:57 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 8, 2004

Crying over Arafat

Would you cry over the impending death of Yassir Arafat? This BBC reporter evidently did:

Barbara Plett, BBC's Middle East correspondent, reported on a BBC Radio 4 program last Saturday her impressions of the sickly Arafat's departure. "When the helicopter carrying the frail old man rose above his ruined compound, I started to cry," she said.

They don't call it the "Biased Broadcasting Corporation" for nothing.

Their reporting got so bad during the 2003 invasion of Iraq the the crew of a British warship, the HMS Ark Royal demanded that BBC broadcasts be turned off.

Posted by Tom at 11:59 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 20, 2004

The New Fifth Column

Late in 1936, during the Spanish Civil War, the Nationalist General Mola was advancing on Madrid with four columns of soldiers. During a radio address he was asked which one would take the city, which was held by Republican forces. He replied that a "fifth column" of hidden supporters within the city would undermine the government from within.

We are today faced with a new Fifth Column in the War on Terror. One that is working to undermine us from within.

From the BBC's website we learn of a new documentary to be broadcast tonight

The Power of Nightmares
Wed 20 Oct, 9:00 pm - 10:00 pm 60mins
Baby It's Cold Outside

In the past our politicians offered us dreams of a better world. Now they promise to protect us from nightmares. The most frightening of these is the threat of an international terror network. But just as the dreams weren't true, neither are these nightmares.

This series shows dramatically how the idea that we are threatened by a hidden and organised terrorist network is an illusion. It is a myth that has spread unquestioned through politics, the security services and the international media.

"Baby It's Cold Outside" is the first of a three part series.

Lest anyone be in doubt as to the Curtis' point of view, the review in the Guardian tells us that

During the three years in which the "war on terror" has been waged, high-profile challenges to its assumptions have been rare. The sheer number of incidents and warnings connected or attributed to the war has left little room, it seems, for heretical thoughts. In this context, the central theme of The Power of Nightmares is riskily counter-intuitive and provocative. Much of the currently perceived threat from international terrorism, the series argues, "is a fantasy that has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians. It is a dark illusion that has spread unquestioned through governments around the world, the security services, and the international media." The series' explanation for this is even bolder: "In an age when all the grand ideas have lost credibility, fear of a phantom enemy is all the politicians have left to maintain their power."

In other words, the entire war is a fraud. Not just the invasion of Iraq, mind you, but the entire concept of a War on Terror, which the writer helpfully puts in quotation marks so you'll get the point. Al Qaeda? Doesn't exist.

The Power of Nightmares seeks to overturn much of what is widely believed about Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida. The latter, it argues, is not an organised international network. It does not have members or a leader. It does not have "sleeper cells". It does not have an overall strategy. In fact, it barely exists at all, except as an idea about cleansing a corrupt world through religious violence.

One hardly knows where to begin. That every point of this inditement is wrong has been amply documented elsewhere. Where does this idea that it is all an illusion come from, then?

Even before the start of the Cold War the left never believed the Soviet Union to be a threat. Far from it. They saw the communist experiment as one of hope for the future of mankind. After returning from a visit to the Soviet Union in 1921, Lincoln Stefans famously proclaimed that "I have seen the future, and it works."

Far from a threat, the "Old Left" saw it as the saviour of mankind.

We're all familiar with the run-up to the Second World War. The British and French ignored what today seem to us as obvious signs that Hitler would settle for nothing less than European domination. The idea that Hitler was anyting more than a nuisance was dismissed by the "enlightened" crowd. Churchill? Well, he was uncouth, a loudmouth, and everyone knew that he drank too much.

When the Cold War started up in the late '40s, again we were told that we were overreacting. Far from being a threat, the Soviet military buildup was simply a response to an understandable fear of us. It was the Soviet Union, we were told, who was surrounded by unfriendly states. We threatened them, and we should learn to understand their position.

The movement received new vigor with the rise of the "New Left" (their own term) in the 1960's, and reached it's climax with the presidency of Jimmy Carter. Carter went so far as to tell us that we had an "inordinate fear of communism."

What ultimately saved the West in each of these examples was not a new military weapon, or better intelligence, or the employment of some new military tactics or strategy. It was willpower. The resolve to stand up and stare down our enemy even, or perhaps especially, in the face of opposition from within.

The key to winning the War on Terror, then, is not military (although it is crucial), nor improvement of our intelligence capabilities (though surely we must), or even a repackaging of our message (which has been neglected). The key lies in Willpower and Resolve. We must develop what I call a philosophy of "anti-nihilism." For unlike what the multi-culturalists would have us believe, our beliefs and values are better than those of the Islamic world. There is an objective truth, and it is that freedom is the best hope for mankind.

And we are indeed in a War on Terror. It is real. Al Qaeda is not a fiction of our imagination, any more than the communists in the United States were during the '30s and '40's were. As the Venona transcripts have shown, there was a serious espionage threat from the Soviet Union. We today are faced with a similar infiltration that will likely only be exposed in it's entirety many years from now. We already have enough evidence to understand the threat.

We all remember the heady days following the attacks of Sept 11. The extreme left kept out of sight. Only a few, Susan Sontag among them, dared to say anything controversial. Her wrongheaded commets made a bit of a splash, then faded from the scene. Only Norman Podhoretz forsaw that the left would rise to oppose this war with all the ferocity they could muster.

It didn't take long, however, for indications of trouble to appear. There was the manufactured "controversy" over whether we should continue our attacks in Afghanistan during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Some who said we should stop the bombing were trying to be genuinly helpful. They feared an uprising by the "Arab Street." But others seemed to be using it as the excuse of-the-day to stop the war. Any reason would do, and this was the must convenient for the moment.

Had we hesitated we would have set a terrible precident. We would have given hope to our enemies and demonstrated weakness instead of resolve. War is, indeed, a terrible business. It is a measure of our humanity that we may wish to delay or avoid bloodletting. There are times, however, when we must carry forward.

None of this is to be construed as advocating indiscriminate killing. I am a firm believer in the Just War principles of proportionality and discrimination.

Nor am I saying that anyone who opposes the invasion of Iraq, or who has criticisms of how we are conducting the War on Terror, is a member of the Fifth Column. You can vote for Kerry and be a patriotic American. You can oppose the invasion of Iraq, although I will disagree with you. You can even wish that we involve the UN and French more, although I will really disagree with you.

What distinguishes members of the Fifth Column are their utter lack of constructive criticism, their blind "peace" mantra, those who apologize for American actions, or those who seek to tell us that it is all in our heads, that Al Qaeda doesn't really exist or is not a threat.

For additional reading, you may enjoy these books. I must warn you, however, they can be profoundly depressing at times.

Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left by David Horowitz
Political Pilgrims: Travels of Western Intellectuals to the Soviet Union, China, and Cuba by Paul Hollander
Anti-Americanism: Critiques at Home and Abroad 1965 - 1990 by Paul Hollander
Useful Idiots: How Liberals got it Wrong in the Cold War and Still Blame America First by Mona Charen

Update

I was reading Paul Hollander's Anti-Americanism again last night and came upon this passage

The people I have in mind - who belong to this broader adversary culture - can be identified by a number of beliefs. Among them is that American intervention almost anywhere in the world is without moral justification. They also aver that the United States bears the lion's share of responsibility for the sufferings of the poor in the Third World. They include prosperous white middle-class people who voted for Jesse Jackson, thosse who would not register for the draft (or who support and encourage nonregistration). They are citizens for whom all American military expenditure is wasteful, who claim to have sleepless nightts over the prospect of nuclear war and press for making their towns "nuclear free zones"(and "sister cities" of those in the USSR and Nicaragua), people who in any conceivable conflict between the U.S. and other powers instinctively place the blame on the U.S., those among the college educated who are persuaded that Orwell's1984 captures most aptly the characteristics of contemporary America. They can also be identified by sporting bumper stickers proclaiming "US out of North America" and "This Country Was Build on the Bones of Indians." They are inclined to believe that the United States is a uniquely hypocritical and destructive society that failed to live up to it's promises. They are for the most part people of goodwill anhd frustrated idealism, persuaded that in no other country are social ideals and practices so far apart as in the United States of America.

We've all met people who fit the description above. The amazing thing is that almost inevitably they have good jobs and families. They have benefited most from American society, and are kept safe through the use of American military force. Although written in 1992, with only a few slight updates those words are as appropriate today as they were then.

It is these people, then, who hate the very concept of a "War on Terror". "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" is their motto. I said it above, and I'll say it again; I am not speaking of those who simply have honest disagreements over how to fight the terrorists, or those who oppose the invasion of Iraq (again, as long as they do it for honest reasons), or even those who think that we should adopt a more "law enforcement" model.

Rather, I speak of those such as Michael Moore, who make "documentaries" filled with lies and half truths, and of his followers. This even includes a past president, Jimmy Carter, who invited Mr Moore to sit with him in his box at the Democratic National Convention. The writers of the BBC documentary discussed above also appear to fit into this category. Most of those who protested outside the Republican National Convention in New York also fit into this category of a "Fifth Column".

Those of us who dare to call these people by their true name can expect vituperation in return. "McCarthyite!" will be among the more tame insults we will endure. But as I've said, the key to winning this war is not about military force, or intelligence gathering, or by broadcasting a better "message", although these things are important. The key is Willpower and Resolve in the face of trials and troubles. The words of Thomas Paine come to mind

These are the times that try men's souls: The summer soldier and sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the servive of his country; but he that stands it NOW, deserves the love of man and woman. Tyranny, like Hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.

Update II

Jamie at Conservapuppies has an excellent post on the BBC "documentary". Check it out.

Update III

After happening upon some leftist websites and blogs, I've just got to write this: Anyone who calls our country, Republicans, or George W Bush "fascist" is a member of the Fifth Column.

Posted by Tom at 11:50 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack