Morning in Vienna

A needed History lesson my friends. They don't want "land for peace", or any such pap, they want the restoration of the Caliphate, from Spain to Vienna. They want fanatical Islamic law imposed on young American women. Don't take mine, or the author's, word: read what they say and write every day. Do a search for the "cult of the assassin" and then read up on the history of the wahhabist movement, which had to be violently repressed every 200 years or so, by slaughtering every living man, woman, and child, in the areas they populated. This was done at the behest of the Caliphate, not by (gasp!) conservative Republicans!...T

There are pivotal moments in history, events in which the course of human affairs is altered forever. One such moment occurred along the Danube River in 1683. On that fateful morning in the later 17th century, the fate of Western Civilization was sealed by the determination of those brave defenders who stood their ground against the might of the Ottoman Turks.

We face a similar crisis today, and the fate of our civilization likewise hangs in the balance. How we handle the current situation in Middle East in the next few months or years may well decide our future for good.

Three centuries ago, the Turks were in their final push against Christendom, the last expansionistic act by the spear of Islam in their jihad to conquer Europe for Allah. It was second big push for the jihad against Christendom

The Saracens had fallen 900 years before to defeat by the Franks under Charles Martel in 732, and had been confined to the Iberian Peninsula until 1492 when their last outpost at Granada fell to Aragon and Castille. In the East the Turks had fought to retake and hold Palestine during the Crusades, and, despite the brief establishment of a Christian Kingdom in that land, had managed to force the Crusaders back into Europe, but had not been successful in penetrating into their heartland.

Constantinople proved far more difficult to conquer than the Muslims had expected, and did not fall until 1453. The great expansion of Islam had obviously lost steam, and the final battle would be fought by a ragtag group of defenders: Lithuanians, Hapsburgs, Saxons, Bavarians, and Poles against Grand Vizier Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Pasha and the might of the Ottoman army. Vienna would be the decisive battle.

The Battle of Vienna ended in defeat for the Muslims, and began the long slide by Islam into near irrelevance, as far as the Europeans cared. The battle opened after a 2 month siege of the Holy Roman Empire's capital city on September 12, 1683 in the pre-dawn hours. It ended that era of Islamic expansion with a defeat at the hands of Jan Ill Sobieski and Charles V of Lorraine.

When the World Trade Center was destroyed in 2001, nobody in the news media seemed to understand the choice of September 11 by al Qaeda as their attack date. It has often been suggested that this was merely a random date chosen for convenience. I beg to differ. It seems clear to me that bin Laden was sending America and the West a message. Al Qaeda had an old score to settle, and was putting us on notice that the era of expansion is resuming after the interruption of Vienna. Night fell on September 12 for the soldiers of Allah, and so our towers fell on the preceding morning three hundred and eighteen years later.

It is important to understand this history in order to understand what we are up against; our enemy has a long memory and seeks to avenge this defeat of its ancestors. The radical Islamists are not upset about our presence in their lands, nor are they upset about Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, nor about our "exploitation" of their oil fields, nor our invasion of Iraq. They are taking a much longer view, a view with vengeance in mind! Vengeance for Tours, vengeance for Granada, vengeance for Vienna. They want to reinvigorate Islam, return to the days of pride and victory and submission by their foes. They want to establish the Caliphate and place the entire world under Sharia law. If we in America fail to understand this, we have failed to understand our enemy.

The Islamic world would have remained a backwater had it not been for a couple of fortuitous occurrences: the discovery of massive amounts of oil under the desert sands and the rise and fall of Soviet Communism. Oil enriched the medieval sheiks and granted them enormous economic power over the West, and the struggle between first Fascism and then Marxism and America lead to continual entanglement in the region by the Great Powers, who would fight by proxy through Israel and the Islamic world. The establishment of Israel was, of course, the genesis of this phase of the Western/Islamic war. It really had nothing to do with Arabs who now call themselves Palestinians (who were few and far between at that time) and everything to do with the Crusades. This was, to many Muslims, a new Crusader kingdom established, this time with Jews instead of Christians. Islam was not going to lose its hard-won territory, and so the Arabs took immediate steps to drive Israel into the sea.

That the Islamic World would be thrashed by Israel every time it attacked simply made the Arabs angrier. Israel could never finish the job for fear of conflict between the U.S.S.R., which backed the Arabs, and America. They did what those who cannot win wars by direct military engagement often do: they took up guerilla warfare.

Terrorism is a new concept in name only. Islam has utilized terror to advance the spread of submission. Consider these passages:

Ishaq: 326 ``If you come upon them, deal so forcibly as to terrify those who would follow, that they may be warned. Make a severe example of them by terrorizing Allah's enemies.``

Quran 8:12 ``I shall terrorize the infidels. So wound their bodies and incapacitate them because they oppose Allah and His Apostle.``
Bukhari: V4B52N220 ``Allah's Apostle said, I have been made victorious with terror.``

And so, with blessing from the Quran, the dirty war began, the war in which innocents and children would be killed, in which the enemy would hide behind women and utilize their enemy`s own virtues against them.

The Terror War makes sense from a military standpoint, since Islam cannot hope to fight on an equal footing against the awesome power of Western military might. In short, our weapons have become so powerful that it would be suicide to go against us on the battlefield, and the jihadis understand this.

Considering that the Byzantines held the Turks off for a very long time with one technological monopoly, the incendiary Greek Fire. Jihadis today grasp the folly of fighting against modern military weapons headlong. Greek Fire may as well be firecrackers next to what we can unleash on them now.

The fall of the Soviet Empire left a power vacuum, and Islam sees this moment as their opportunity to return to a pre-912 mentality and resume their rightful place in history. (The Chinese may beg to differ, but that fight can wait a bit yet.)

They know they are reproducing faster than their rivals, they know their societies are less decadent, they needn`t worry about political opposition in their top-down societal structures, they have expendable soldiers and, since their religion places less emphasis on the value of life, they can convince parents to strap bombs on their children. The time is ripe for World Jihad, and we are indeed, as Newt Gingrich has deemed it, in a World War.

But too many in America (most notably on the right, Pat Buchanan) are echoing the European sentiment, arguing that the war in Lebanon isn`t our fight. Really? If this isn`t our business, then was it Poland`s business to defend Vienna? Did Lithuania have any right to send troops to fight the Ottomans? The Turks hadn`t invaded Poland or Lithuania, after all, and troubles between the Hapsburgs and the Ottomans weren`t any of their business! By this specious reasoning of Buchannan and company, Vienna would have fallen to Islam.

The idea that this is not our fight can be applied to many of the wars America has fought. why did Virginia help defend Massachusettsetts from the British? It wasn`t their fight! Why did the U.S. defend Texas against Mexican encroachment? It wasn`t their fight! Why fight Spain, Imperial Germany, Nazi Germany, North Korea, North Vietnam, Iraq? In none of these cases did any of our foes invade, or threaten to invade, the United States of America, yet we went to war. Why? Because we realized that a threat on a foreign shore will not remain on that foreign shore forever, and that we could not ignore the growing danger. We are not required to await an invasion to act militarily, and thank God neither the Poles nor Lithuanians did so at Vienna. History would appear very differently if we had followed the advice of a Buchanan.

The nature of warfare has itself changed, and this means that the concept of an invasion has likewise changed. An Islamic army is not going to march triumphantly into Washington. Our jihadi friends have been invading our soil in their own way. They hit us from within in the 1993 World Trade Center attack, and the 911 attacks were not executed by operatives from outside of the country, but from terror cells which had infiltrated the United States. Since 911 we have been catching jihadis on our soil. This constitutes a de-facto invasion of our sovereign territory. In short, we already have been invaded!

Did the fact that Benjamin Church or Benedict Arnold were not a part of an invading army make them any less enemies to the Patriots during the Revolution? They worked for a foreign enemy, which made them part of the invasion. Was not Sherman an invader of Georgia, despite the fact that Georgia was part of the United States just prior to the Civil War? To make the case that the enemy must march in from overseas to make them an enemy is just plain silly. The military oath of office is to defend the Constituion against all threats foreign and domestic; Radical Islam is a threat that`s both foreign and domestic, and it`s ultimate aim is to replace the Constitution with Sharia Law.

Of course, Iran already hgas invaded our sovereign territory, and we failed to act against them. The seizure of the American embassy was an act of war, since embassies are considered sovereign territory of the nation they represent.

The realities of modern warfare have changed, and we have to accept this fact. Given the increasing destructiveness of weaponry which can be used against us, and the decrease in travel time, it is no longer feasible to sit back and wait for an enemy to come. A single determined man with backing from a terrorist organization can potentially wipe out much of a city! He can leave a friendly host country (such as Syria or Iran) and destroy New York or unleash deadly bio-weapons within 24 hours!

Time is clearly not on our side. The longer we wait to deal with the problems of terrorism and state sponsorship, the greater the danger grows. Our enemy continues to develop its technological capabilities, and the longer we wait the stronger they will be. We have to act far more quickly and effectively today.

We are at the critical moment in history. We are now the defenders with our backs to the walls of Vienna! We are the soldiers upon whom everything depends! Our courage or failure will set the course for the rest of human history; we have to act! We have the power to do what is necessary, we have the means, but do we have the will?

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Hizballah Is On The Ropes

Thank God for Israel...(no, I'm not having delusions of Charleton Heston). Here is the best strategic analysis of what is happening in Lebanon, Israel, and yes, Syria, that I have seen. And I hope, unlike the Author, that he is wrong about Syria's choice. That would mean total victory...T

The Clock Ticks for Hizballah as Assad Loves His Palaces More Than Nasrallah

Amid the relentless images of the dead extracted from a building in Qana, amid the fiery anger those images generated – from Lebanon to Europe and from Egypt to Indonesia - and amid deafening global cries for an immediate ceasefire, a curiously contradictory picture is emerging from the battlefields of Hizballistan: Hizballah is on the ropes, running short of resources and desperate for a ceasefire for its very survival.

While the world has held itself aghast at ‘Israeli aggression,’ Israel has been relentless in pursuit of what has been described as the fiercest Arab fighting force in the region. Undeterred by global outcry as over two thousand rockets and missiles have rained down upon Israeli cities with relatively little note, Israel has made good on their Prime Minister’s declaration of “Enough.”

Israel is providing a lesson on fighting the war on terror.

The mighty Hizballah, rightfully feared as the most lethally armed terrorist organization on the planet, is now on the ropes. Only their lifeline from Syria sustains them in the midst of devastating strikes from the Israeli Air Force. From the hundreds of rocket launchers in southern Lebanon to weapons depots and infrastructure all the way up the Bekaa Valley in Baalbek, Hizballah’s operational headquarters city, the IAF has exacted a heavy toll from Hizballah since the attack in Israel in which Hizballah terrorists killed eight IDF soldiers and abducted the two surviving.

In fact, in a radio interview with John Batchelor, retired Air Force General Tom McInerney detailed a debriefing with a senior IDF official in which he detailed that Israel believes their airstrikes have eliminated 70% of the long-range Iranian ZelZal missile systems in Hizballah hands. McInerney noted that over 1000 Hizballah infrastructure targets have been struck by Israeli air power up and down the Bekaa Valley (once called the most heavily defended air corridor on the planet) and throughout Southern Lebanon, including weapons storage facilities, command and control centers, vehicle repair facilities and 18 Hizballah financial centers which serve in the place of banks.
While sustaining these enormous losses, Hizballah is having difficulty re-supplying across the Syrian border. Convoys from Syria are struck by F-16’s and drones once they are within Lebanese borders, often with the massive secondary explosions that indicate arms shipments. The Israelis believe that Bashar Assad is “directly involved” in the attempts to smuggle rockets, other arms and ammunition to Hizballah, and the release of the results of ‘defense establishment’ intelligence is Israel’s way of sending a message to the Syrian president.

In what is likely to be perceived as a potential escalation, Bashar Assad told the Syrian Army to raise its readiness and they have reportedly been sent from their barracks and posts to the field. But this is very unlikely any Syrian attempt to re-enter Lebanon to come to the aid of Hizballah, as the IDF can dispatch of the Syrian military forces with far greater ease than they can Hizballah. Syria wants nothing of Israel’s IDF/IAF war machine. That’s what Hizballah is for.

As Assad senses Israel’s growing frustration over the doomed yet constant shipments of arms into Hizballah, the move is most likely to get them spread out in a reflexive and defensive maneuver. To leave them in their barracks is to create a ‘target rich environment’ under each roof should Israel decide to send a less subtle message to Assad.

Sure, Assad may have sounded tough when he said, “The barbaric war of annihilation the Israeli aggression is waging on our people in Lebanon and Palestine is increasing in ferocity,” but that’s what dictators and state sponsors of terrorism are supposed to say. What likely was in his mind as his message was typed for distribution was far more fearful than fearsome. As they are for Iran, Hizballah is Syria’s front-line Special Forces. Behind them, it gets mighty thin mighty fast.

Curiously, Israel also said that, according to their intelligence, Hizballah is not allowed to fire Iranian missiles without Iranian permission and that few have been fired. The most notable was the C-802 Silkworms that put an Israeli frigate out of commission and sunk an Egyptian transport ship. But, after the Hizballah-manned Lebanese Army ground radars were eliminated in short order, the C-802’s have been dormant.

Israel’s intelligence lets out what it wants to let out (fact or fiction) for specific design. So what is the design here? It’s simple. Israel is intent on putting it’s boot squarely on Hizballah’s throat, once and for all, and allowing both Iran and Syria to stay clear.

Hizballah is Iran’s ground force against Israel. Iran has no other offensive capabilities in the Levant aside from missiles launched from their own borders that will likely get shot out of the air. After Hizballah, they’re out of options at the moment. Israel knows this and is giving Iran a face-saving way to quietly back out. After all, Iran never ‘gave permission’ for Hizballah to fire their weapons. Israel is saying, “Take your 60 recently sent jihadists back and go home.” If Iran ignores this, there really is little they can do in any event, as the logistical conduit utilized from Syria is increasingly being collapsed under the weight of Israeli air power.

But Hizballah is also Syria’s principle ground force against Israel. Syria’s shallow army is the one force aside from Hizballah that can muster a fight within the battlespace. It would be a short fight at that. But in any event, for Syria, Israel hands a different message without a face-saving option. By declaring the Assad is ‘directly invovled,’ Israel is warning him, ‘“We know what you’re doing and we hold you personally responsible.”

Israel does not need to roll tanks on Damascus or even drop a few 2000-pounders on military installations. They simply need to convey that it’s just as easy to bank east from Baalbek as it is to bank west. Leave the option to Assad. He likes his palaces. He’ll make the right self-preserving choice.

And with that, the supply lines are cut off, leaving Hizballah alone with their pride and their banter, backing northward in a battered creep up the Bekaa Valley. It is an unpleasant feeling when your eyes are feeding your brain the images of where you’ve been rather than where you’re going…especially in a fight.

So, while the Iranians, the Syrians, the Lebanese, Hizballah and seemingly the entire world demands a ceasefire, Israel knows that a ceasefire is nothing more than a quiet pause for re-arming Hizballah. They’ll have none of it.

Israel’s inner security cabinet just authorized the ‘widening of the ground offensive.’ Take that in context with the above messages to all parties involved. While the IDF may not roll Merkavas all the way up to Baalbek, the Hizballah that emerges from a fight they could not finish will be denied southern Lebanese territory and a shell of its former self, requiring years - and much treasure - to reconsitute.

“Enough.”

Assad loves his palaces and Iran is trapped on the wrong side of the Persian Gulf.

The clock ticks for Hizballah.
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News Flash: Conservatives Defend One of Their Own

Amen on this one! I remember when Reagan was shot. The media's collective yawn was surpassed only by their theories of "how the reaganites will spin the shooting to their advantage". Why, The very day he was shot was the NCAA men's championship game between Indiana U and North Carolina. I was in Bloomington, at a public viewing, while the game was postponed for 2-3 hours awaiting results of the shooting. The collective shouts of "He ain't dead, start the game" were typical of what one saw from the MSM...T

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OTY2OTBhOTYzY2NhZTE3ZWM1MDc0ODA3Y2EyNzA3NTE=
When Ronald Reagan was shot by John Hinckley, Jr., I seem to recall a curious silence in the media. Nobody danced in the street, exactly, but no keening was heard from Dan Rather at CBS, as the President fought for his life on the operating table. Reagan just wasn't JFK, RFK, or Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., you see. While the nation breathed a sigh of relief when Reagan survived, the media didn't miss a beat. (In fact, Reagan's wounds were far more dangerous and debilitating than was ever reported.)

Conservatives don't get much of a defense in America, even from other conservatives. Newt Gingrich is an intellectual feast for many of us--- always spinning off new and interesting ideas, based on freedom, not coercion. But when the media finally brought him down as House Speaker, nary a word was heard in his defense, even from "staunch" conservatives (who apparently forgot what the word "staunch" actually means).

Clarence Thomas suffered what he rightly called a "high-tech lynching" in his Supreme Court nomination hearings, and he had to finally turn on his media attackers himself, before the tide turned in his favor. Conservatives never gave him much of an effective defense.
We have seen dozens and dozens of media lynchings in the last twenty years. When the Left draws blood we generally leave our friends bleeding and dying in the street. On the Democrat side, when Hillary Clinton was actually physically approached by Republican Senate candidate Rick Lazio in a TV debate, he was trashed by the New York Times for "violating her personal space." Lazio never recovered from the horror. Almost touching Hillary lost him the election, and conservatives watched and let it happen.

More recently when Rush Limbaugh and Tom Delay were falsely accused of criminal behavior by Leftist prosecutors, they were simply left to their own devices. Rush came out only a few million dollars poorer, and Delay is still in court.
Well, the times, they are a-changin'. Maybe.

National Review published a vigorous defense of Michael Ledeen, who was just trashed in the usual fashion by some sleaze journo for Rolling Stone. Nothing new there, you say. All prominent conservatives get trashed by the sleaze legions of the Left. (Yawn). No, there's no news in the public attack on Ledeen. The big news is that by some miracle, he is being defended by his colleagues at National Review, Andrew McCarthy and Mark Levin.

Ledeen's big sin is to call attention to the Mad Mullahcracy in Tehran, which is even now speeding toward its first Big Bomb. The Khomeiniacs created, directed, supplied, and indoctrinated Hezbollah in Lebanon. Those bombs you see killing children on television today are entirely the doing of the mad theocracy. Lebanon would have made peace with Israel long ago had it been allowed to by Syria and Iran.

For calling attention to reality, Ledeen was duly trashed by Rolling Stone, a pillar of the Liberal Media Establishment. For one thing, Ledeen is obviously a Judeoconservative ... I mean, neoconservative. For another, mind-reading liberals can tell from Michael Ledeen's beady little eyes that he's evil. They just know these things. It's just this feeling they get, with a little help from the New York Times.
McCarthy & Levin point out that Ledeen has never called for a military attack on Tehran's theocrats, but wants us to support a pro-democracy movement. Even the Left might be expected to favor a pro-democracy revolt against a violent and corrupt reactionary theocracy that hangs teenage girls by the neck until dead--- for being too sexy. But no: Ledeen was duly smeared, accused of forging the infamous Niger yellowcake document that is even now financing Valerie Plame's little nest egg.

(Why Ledeen? you ask. What's the evidence? But that's the point: No evidence is needed. Ledeen is accused on pure, paranoid suspicion. Don't ask.)

We wish Michael Ledeen well. He may not be sleeping well these days, worrying about real things--- not the impish tricks of Rolling Stone but an Iranian Bomb. Conservatives are expected to be adults, even if their "personal space is invaded."

But conservatives might start caring about the human sacrifices that are so often demanded by the Left. The Mayas, it is said, needed to sacrifice at least one young child each night, to ensure that the sun would come up the next day. Today the cult of the Left needs to sacrifice at least one conservative every few months, to assure itself that it is still in control of the dominant narrative in America. As long as they run the media, they won't have to actually think. But the times they are a-changin', and the children of the Sixties are finally losing control.

When conservatives start defending each other, we know that America has a chance to get back on track.
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Wonder why oil prices are so high? Try China, India and Hugo Chavez in Venezuela...."That's 10 MILLION barrels"....ahh ha hahhhhh!.....T 

Israel's war separates the decent left from the indecent left

This piece, ostensibly about the terrorists, and their useful idiots in the west, is really just the finest, most comprehensive list of the stunning record of failure rung up by the left in the last 60 years. From the Cold war to welfare, it truly is a breathtaking accomplishment, to be so wrong, so often. Print this one, and add it to your handbooks, fellow conspirators!...T

I believe the Left has been wrong on virtually every great moral issue in the last 30 years.

During that period, it was wrong on the Cold War -- it devoted far more energy to fighting anti-communism than to fighting communism.
It was wrong for attacking Israel for its destruction of Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor.

It was wrong on welfare.

It was wrong in its demanding less morally and intellectually from black Americans than from all other Americans.

It was wrong in advocating bilingual education for children of immigrants.

It was wrong in generally holding American society rather than violent criminals responsible for violent crime.

It was wrong in imposing its view on abortion on America through the courts rather than through the democratic process.
It was wrong in teaching a generation of men and women that men and women differ because of socialization not because of innate sex differences.

It was wrong in reducing sex to a purely biological and health issue for a generation of young Americans.

It was wrong in identifying "flag waving" with fascism.

It was wrong in supporting the teachers' unions rather than students and educational reform.

It was wrong in allying itself with trial lawyers and blocking tort reform.

It was wrong in blocking the military from recruiting on campuses and teaching a generation of young Americans that "war is not the answer" when war is at times the one moral answer.

It was wrong in arguing that America is not based on Judeo-Christian values, but on secular ones like Western Europe.

It was wrong in advancing multiculturalism, which is an extreme form of moral relativism that holds all cultures morally identical and which is a doctrine designed to undermine American national identity.

In just about every instance, one could say that the Left was foolish, the Left was naive, the Left was wrong, even that the Left was dangerous. But in all of those cases, one could imagine a decent person holding any or even all of these positions.

But we now have a bright line that divides the decent -- albeit usually wrong -- Left from the indecent Left.

The Left's anti-Israel positions until now were based, at least in theory, on its opposition to Israeli occupation of Arab land and its belief in the "cycle of violence" between Israel and its enemies. However, this time there is no occupied land involved and the violence is not a cycle with its implied lack of a beginning. There is a clear aggressor -- a terror organization devoted to Islamicizing the Middle East and annihilating Israel -- and no occupation.

That is why the Israeli Left is almost universally in favor of Israel's war against Hezbollah. Amos Oz, probably Israel's best-known novelist and leading spokesman of its Left, a lifetime critic of Israeli policy vis a vis the Palestinians, wrote in the Los Angeles Times:

"Many times in the past, the Israeli peace movement has criticized Israeli military operations. Not this time. . . . This time, Israel is not invading Lebanon. It is defending itself from daily harassment and bombardment of dozens of our towns and villages. . . . There can be no moral equation between Hezbollah and Israel. Hezbollah is targeting Israeli civilians wherever they are, while Israel is targeting mostly Hezbollah."

Likewise, another longtime liberal critic of Israel, historian and Boston Globe columnist James Carroll, wrote last week:

"As one who rejects war, I regret Israel's heavy bombing of Lebanon last week, as I deplored Israeli attacks in population centers and on infrastructure in Gaza. . . . Yet, given the rejectionism of both Hamas and Hezbollah . . . is the path of negotiations actually open to Israel? . . . There is no moral equivalence between enemies here. . . . It seems urgent [to] reaffirm foundational support for Israel. . . . The fury of anti-Israel rage among Arabs and Muslims is accounted for only partially by the present conflict. It resuscitates . . . the long European habit of scapegoating Jews. . . . No one should think that embedded contempt for Jews -- anti-Semitism -- is not part of the current crisis."
Amos Oz and James Carroll are men of the Left who have been tested and passed the most clarifying moral litmus test of our time -- Israel's fight for existence against the primitives, fanatics and sadists in Hezbollah and Hamas and elsewhere in the Arab/Muslim world who wish to destroy it. Anyone on the Left who cannot see this is either bad, a useful idiot for Islamic terrorists, anti-Semitic or all three. There is no other explanation for morally condemning Israel's war on Hezbollah.

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The Only Exit Strategy

Departing from the themes of Politics and Media affairs (the usual themes of this page), let's focus on the one issue that has remained unsolved for decades, yet which has always been easily resolvable to those of clear thinking bent. Let Israel win; then there can be peace. Not until then will this occur. As Stolypin once put it: "First, order, then reform"...T

WASHINGTON -- There is crisis and there is opportunity. Amid the general wringing of hands over the seemingly endless and escalating Israel-Hezbollah fighting, everyone asks: Where will it end?

The answer, blindingly clear, begins with understanding that this crisis represents a rare, perhaps irreproducible, opportunity.

Every important party in the region and in the world, except the radical Islamists in Tehran and their clients in Damascus, wants Hezbollah disarmed and removed from south Lebanon so that it is no longer able to destabilize the peace of both Lebanon and the broader Middle East.

Which parties? Start with the great powers. In September 2004, they passed U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559, demanding that Hezbollah disarm and allow the Lebanese army to take back control of south Lebanon.

The resolution enjoyed the sponsorship of the United States and, yes, France. As the former mandatory power in Lebanon, France was important in helping the Lebanese expel Syria during last year's Cedar Revolution, but it understands that Lebanon's independence and security are forfeit so long as Hezbollah -- a lawless, terrorist, private militia answering to Syria and Iran -- occupies south Lebanon as a rogue mini-state.

Then there are the Arabs, beginning with the Lebanese who want Hezbollah out. The majority of Lebanese -- Christian, Druze, Sunni Muslim and secular -- bitterly resent their country being hijacked by Hezbollah and turned into a war zone. And in the name of what Lebanese interest? Israel evacuated every square inch of Lebanon six years ago.

The other Arabs have spoken, too. In a stunning development, the 22-member Arab League criticized Hezbollah for provoking the current crisis. It is unprecedented for the Arab League to criticize any Arab party while it is actively engaged in hostilities with Israel. But the Arab states know that Hezbollah, a Shiite militia in the service of Persian Iran, is a threat not just to Lebanon but to them as well. Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan have openly criticized Hezbollah for starting a war on what is essentially Iran's timetable (to distract attention from Iran's pending referral to the Security Council for sanctions over its nuclear program). They are far more worried about Iran and its proxies than about Israel. They are therefore eager to see Hezbollah disarmed and defanged.

Fine. Everyone agrees it must be done. But who to do it? No one. The Lebanese are too weak. The Europeans don't invade anyone. After its bitter experience of 20 years ago, the U.S. has a Lebanon allergy. And Israel could not act out of the blue because it would immediately have been branded the aggressor and forced to retreat.

Hence the golden, unprecedented opportunity. Hezbollah makes a fatal mistake. It crosses the U.N.-delineated international frontier to attack Israel, kill soldiers and take hostages. This cross-border aggression is so naked that even Russia joins in the G-8 summit communique blaming Hezbollah for the violence and calling for the restoration of Lebanese sovereignty in the south.

But only one country has the capacity to do the job. That is Israel, now recognized by the world as forced into this fight by Hezbollah's aggression.

The road to a solution is therefore clear: Israel liberates south Lebanon and gives it back to the Lebanese.

It starts by preparing the ground with air power, just as the Gulf War began with a 40-day air campaign. But if all that happens is the air campaign, the result will be failure. Hezbollah will remain in place, Israel will remain under the gun, Lebanon will remain divided and unfree. And this war will start again at a time of Hezbollah and Iran's choosing.

Just as in Kuwait 1991, what must follow the air campaign is a land invasion to clear the ground and expel the occupier. Israel must retake south Lebanon and expel Hezbollah. It would then declare the obvious: that it has no claim to Lebanese territory and is prepared to withdraw and hand south Lebanon over to the Lebanese army (augmented perhaps by an international force), thus finally bringing about what the world has demanded -- implementation of Resolution 1559 and restoration of south Lebanon to Lebanese sovereignty.

Only two questions remain: Israel's will and America's wisdom. Does Prime Minister Ehud Olmert have the courage to do what is so obviously necessary? And will Secretary of State Rice's upcoming peace trip to the Middle East force a premature cease-fire that spares her the humiliation of coming home empty-handed but prevents precisely the kind of decisive military outcome that would secure the interests of Israel, Lebanon, the moderate Arabs and the West?
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A Small Detour on Our Road to Dictatorship

This one tackles the psyche of both the MSM and the dribbling, rabid, Schizophrenic left. You know, the ones who believe that Bush bombed the towers as a pretext to impose dictatorship, and that Dan Rather is a right wing tool. This page being about the relationship between politics and media, this piece nonetheless extrapolates this topic better than any I've seen.....T

Many on the left tell us that our republic is held in thrall by a mass-murdering dictator. He regularly tramples on our constitutional guarantees of privacy. He flouts the law at his pleasure. With a crack of his whip, he bids his minions in Congress to slavishly pass enabling legislation that dirties our water and air, makes rich his cronies, clandestinely establishes a Christian caliphate right here in America, and secretly plots with corporations to steal elections.

And to make matters worse, this tyrant of a man is able to do all this by hoodwinking vast swaths of America’s electorate; unless, of course, you’ve been given God’s good grace to glean the truth from a “lapdog” press who have been hypnotized by their corporate masters to under-report, misreport, and simply ignore all these horrific doings in our nation’s capital. For in the end, it is those that prove themselves immune from this Napoleon’s magic spells who will save our republic and bring peace, freedom, and justice back to the galaxy.

Happy Birthday, Mr. President.

The left’s “riot of conceits” as R. Emmett Tyrell puts it, have never been more pronounced than when they raise the specter of Bush as dictator. It is not a new charge leveled against American Presidents. Even legends like Jackson and Lincoln had detractors who accused them of ruling with the iron fist of tyranny. And while both of those worthies defied the Supreme Court for one reason or another, in retrospect we can see that their actions fell far short of even the dictionary definition of dictator, which defines the word as “one holding complete autocratic control” or “one ruling absolutely and often oppressively.”

But the actual definition of words has never stopped the left when it comes to erecting politically correct straw men. “Racism,” sexism,” “homophobia,” and “dictator” have meaning beyond the common usage of those terms that the rest of us, bound by tradition and respect for the English language, are constrained from following. In short, if the left wants to define dictatorship down, who’s going to stop them?
Certainly not Philip Slater, former chairman of the Brandeis University Sociology department, who wrote in The Huffington Post:

“Why are some patriotic Americans supporting a president who seems so bent on destroying America—America’s constitution, America’s democracy, America’s good name, America’s credibility, America’s land, air, and water, America’s solvency, America’s educational system, America’s security, America’s children, and America’s future…”(HT: The New Editor)

Slater doesn’t use the word “dictator” in his article, but I daresay if he actually believes George Bush is destroying “America’s constitution” [sic] and “America’s democracy,” the implication can’t be anything less than his belief in Bush as tyrant. This from a man who advocates constitutionally destroying the presidency by separating the functions of Head of State from Chief Executive – an interesting construct in that the good professor nominates the actor Morgan Freeman to fill the same symbolic role played by Queen Elizabeth II in the British system. Perhaps someone should get in touch with Mr. Freeman’s agent and see if he’s available for a long running government gig. Since I haven’t seen him much in the movies lately, he might jump at the gig.

And who can forget CNN’s curmudgeonly host Jack Cafferty opining on air following the revelation back in May that NSA computers were gathering vast numbers of telephone records looking for patterns that would lead the machines to reveal terrorists and their sympathizers here in the United States. With flashing eyes and jutted chin, Cafferty thanked God that Senator Arlen Specter was asking questions about the program because

“He might be all that’s standing between us and a full-blown dictatorship in this country.”

Leave aside for a moment the comical idea of Arlen Specter as democracy’s White Knight and examine Cafferty’s contention that Specter was alone in standing against the Administration in their march toward gathering absolute power unto themselves. The program had been vetted by lawyers from both the Justice Department and the NSA and appropriate Members of Congress informed. For the latter, the President can, in special circumstances, inform only the “Big Eight” in sensitive matters of national security. These 8 individuals include the Majority and Minority Leaders in the House and Senate as well as the Chair and Vice Chair of the Intelligence Committees of both houses. This was done as it also had been done with the NSA intercept program revealed last December by the New York Times.
One can argue whether or not this consultation was enough in light of the invasive nature of both of those programs. This is legitimate debate – one that we will be having for as long as there is a war against Islamism. The tension between civil liberties and national security in a free society is inevitable, especially in time of war. But in case the left hasn’t noticed, dictators don’t “consult” anyone about anything. Just ask Hugo Chavez.

The Venezuelan tyrant recently received a boost in this country from that Icon of the Anti-Establishment Left, the Rosa Parks of the Anti War Movement, Cindy Sheehan who said yesterday that she would rather live in Chavez-led Venezuela than George Bush’s America. While Sheehan’s anti-war, anti-Semitic, and anti-American rants have been well documented, it is her obscenity laced descriptions of George Bush as Tyrant in Chief that the press has tip-toed around in a rather gingerly fashion:

The US government is now ruled by murderous hypocrites…criminals who should be arrested, charged appropriately, confined behind bars.”

“Our country has been overtaken by murderous thugs…gangsters who lust after fortunes and power; never caring that their addictions are at the expense of our loved ones, and the blood of innocent people near and far.”

“The biggest terrorist is George W. Bush.”

The press aren’t the only ones trying to disengage from Mrs. Sheehan’s unbalanced diatribes against the President. Democratic politicians who once fawned and feted the Goddess of Peace have turned their backs on this mother of all whackos. But her support remains strong among the netnuts on the internet who still believe, as New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd once said, that Sheehan has “absolute moral authority” when talking about George Bush and the war.

And that is the nub of the left’s argument that George Bush is either an aspiring dictator or already a de-facto member of that exclusive club. In order to see Bush as unprincipled tyrant, one must be wearing the special glasses that allow the viewer to see the unseen, to read between the lines of stories from a press too frightened and cowed to tell the truth of what is really going on in the Administration.
The fact that some fairly intelligent people actually believe this claptrap would be shocking, except for the fact that we live in extraordinary times that have caused us to degenerate into a society where it is perfectly reasonable to think the absolute worst of your political or ideological opponent. Both right and left are guilty of this myopia, although the liberal left has taken political opposition and ascribed actual evil to their nemesis.

Jeff Jacoby’s article yesterday in the Boston Globe made the point that the Administration’s reaction to the Hamdan decision should, in normal times, put to rest any idea that George Bush was seeking to rule by dictatorial fiat:

President Bush learns the court’s ruling in Hamdan has gone against him. A five-justice majority held the military commissions created by the administration to try the Guantanamo detainees are invalid, since they were never authorized by congressional statute. The justices seem to have repudiated Bush’s claim that the Constitution invests the president with sweeping unilateral authority in wartime. ``The court’s conclusion ultimately rests upon a single ground,” Justice Stephen Breyer pointedly notes in a concurrence. “Congress has not issued the Executive a `blank check.’ ”

Whereupon Bush says—what? ``The justices have made their decision; now let them enforce it?” Something even more acidic? Perhaps he repeats a statement he has made previously—``I’m the decider, and I decide what is best”?

Not quite. He says he takes the court’s decision ``seriously.” A few moments later he says it again. And then comes this: ``We’ve got people looking at it right now to determine how we can work with Congress, if that’s available, to solve the problem.” There is no disdain. No bravado. No criticism. Just an acknowledgment that the Supreme Court has spoken and the executive branch will comply.

Some dictator.

Alas, while the Administration has already begun working with Congress to lay out the specifics in order to comply with the ruling, the left has conveniently ignored this bursting of their dictator balloon and kept up a steady drumbeat of ever wilder notions that Bush is the second coming of Ivan the Terrible. This criticism of Jacoby’s reasoned article is from the liberal blog Shakespeare’s Sister:

Failure to even mention in passing the rigorous endeavors of the Bush administration to undermine checks and imbalance the three branches of government is the least of his omissions, however. Perhaps the most important person who Jacoby fails to mention in his list of “D-word” spouting lunatics, is Bush himself.

“You don’t get everything you want. A dictatorship would be a lot easier.” (Governing Magazine 7/98) — From Paul Begala’s “Is Our Children Learning?”

“I told all four that there are going to be some times where we don’t agree with each other, but that’s OK. If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I’m the dictator.” — CNN.com, December 18, 2000

“A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there’s no question about it. ” — Business Week, July 30, 2001

Convicted out of his own mouth? Or the freely elected President of the United States stating the obvious?

The above is revealing in that for the dedicated lefty, it is impossible to take anything the President says as he means it. It is necessary instead to substitute a meaning wholly irrelevant to the issue the President was raising – an issue commented on in one form or another by every President in history – in order to validate a set of beliefs that places the commenter in the privileged position of knowing something hidden from the rest of us; that because dictatorship is “easier” it follows that Bush wishes to be one.

As we approach the final two years of the President’s constitutionally mandated term in office, I have no doubt we will see rampant speculation on the left about whether or not Bush will in fact engineer another terrorist attack and use it as an excuse to remain in office regardless of who wins the Presidential election in 2008. Like the certainty espoused by liberals during the 2004 election that Bush would re-institute military conscription and other idiotic “sure things,” I’m convinced that on January 20, 2009 when the next President takes the oath of office, all the talk of Bush as dictator will disappear overnight and the left’s rhetorical slings and arrows will be readied for the next occupant of the oval office who incurs their displeasure.

Unless she’s a Democrat, of course.

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This from CornetJim...how true! Exaggeration to make a point? only by a hair. They would rather people die than allow Bush a success, or an issue.....T 

Traitorous Filtheth!...T 

Why do "they" hate us?

I'll go even farther than Barone: They hate everything about America. They hate capitalism, they hate freedom of thought (they want to tell us want to think, of course), they hate our prosperity...because they hate themselves..it's really that simple, and that complex...this NYT fiasco is a rare example of them getting caught red-handed, fleeing the scene with a ladies handbag in tow...T

Why do they hate us? No, I'm not talking about Islamofascist terrorists. We know why they hate us: because we have freedom of speech and freedom of religion, because we refuse to treat women as second-class citizens, because we do not kill homosexuals, because we are a free society.

No, the "they" I'm referring to are the editors of The New York Times. And do they hate us? Well, that may be stretching it. But at the least they have gotten into the habit of acting in reckless disregard of our safety.

Last December, the Times ran a story revealing that the National Security Agency was conducting electronic surveillance of calls from suspected al-Qaida terrorists overseas to persons in the United States. This was allegedly a violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. But in fact the president has, under his war powers, the right to order surveillance of our enemies abroad. And it makes no sense to hang up when those enemies call someone in the United States -- rather the contrary. If the government is going to protect us from those who wish to do us grievous harm -- and after Sept. 11 no one can doubt there are many such persons -- then it should try to track them down as thoroughly as possible.

Little wonder that President Bush called in Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and top editor Bill Keller, and asked them not to run the story. But the Times went ahead and published it anyway. Now, thanks to The New York Times, al-Qaida terrorists are aware that their phone calls can be monitored, and presumably have taken precautions.

Last Friday, the Times did it again, printing a story revealing the existence of U.S. government monitoring of financial transactions routed through the Brussels-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, which routes about $6 trillion a day in electronic money transfers around the world. The monitoring is conducted by the CIA and supervised by the Treasury Department. An independent auditing firm has been hired to make sure only terrorist-related transactions are targeted.

Members of Congress were briefed on the program, and it does not seem to violate any law, at least any that the Times could identify. And it has been effective. As the Times reporters admit, it helped to locate the mastermind of the 2002 Bali bombing in Thailand and a Brooklyn man convicted on charges of laundering a $200,000 payment to al-Qaida operatives in Pakistan.

Once again, Bush administration officials asked the Times not to publish the story. Once again, the Times went ahead anyway. "We have listened closely to the administration's arguments for withholding this information, and given them the most serious and respectful consideration," Bill Keller is quoted as saying. It's interesting to note that he feels obliged to report he and his colleagues weren't smirking or cracking jokes. "We remain convinced that the administration's extraordinary access to this vast repository of international financial data, however carefully targeted use of it may be, is a matter of public interest."

This was presumably the view as well of the "nearly 20 current and former government officials and industry executives" who were apparently the sources for the story.

But who elected them to make these decisions? Publication of the Times' December and June stories appears to violate provisions of the broadly written, but until recently, seldom enforced provisions of the Espionage Act. Commentary's Gabriel Schoenfeld has argued that the Times can and probably should be prosecuted.

The counterargument is that it is a dangerous business for the government to prosecute the press. But it certainly is in order to prosecute government officials who have abused their trust by disclosing secrets, especially when those disclosures have reduced the government's ability to keep us safe. And pursuit of those charges would probably require reporters to disclose the names of those sources. As the Times found out in the Judith Miller case, reporters who refuse to answer such questions can go to jail.

Why do they hate us? Why does the Times print stories that put America more at risk of attack? They say that these surveillance programs are subject to abuse, but give no reason to believe that this concern is anything but theoretical. We have a press that is at war with an administration, while our country is at war against merciless enemies. The Times is acting like an adolescent kicking the shins of its parents, hoping to make them hurt while confident of remaining safe under their roof. But how safe will we remain when our protection depends on the Times?
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Why the Democrats May Lose the 2008 Election

This has always been my prediction as well, and I haven't been wrong since 98. We are doing much better than the drive-by-media declare ..(see next article!)....T
Will President Bush's current unpopularity translate into a Democratic recapture of either the House or Senate this fall — or a victory in the 2008 presidential election?

Probably not.

Despite widespread unhappiness with the Republicans, it is hard to envision a majority party run by Howard Dean, John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

Why?

All sorts of apparent and not-so-apparent reasons. First, recent events and trends have complicated Democrats' talking points about George W. Bush's purported failings.

The so-called "jobless" recovery has seen low unemployment rates comparable to the Clinton boom years.

Last September, many people blamed what they viewed as a stingy federal government for the chaos following Hurricane Katrina. But now we learn individuals' fraudulent claims and spending accounted for $1.4 billion in federal largess. Too much was apparently thrown around from big government too generously, rather than too little, too slowly.

Karl Rove was supposedly going to be "frog-marched" out of the White House in cuffs for a role in outing CIA agent Valerie Plame. Instead, the special prosecutor recently found no evidence that he was involved in any wrongdoing.

And then there's Iraq . The recent killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the establishment of a complete Iraqi democratic Cabinet will not ensure a quick victory, as we see from the recent slaughter of American captive soldiers. But both events still weaken the liberal clamor that the American effort at birthing democracy is doomed in Iraq . Calling for a deadline to leave, as Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) and Sen. John Kerry (D-Ma.) advocate, is not so compelling when the current policy is based on training the growing Iraqi security forces so that American troops can come home as soon as possible.

Thus, looking ahead to the elections, there is little that the Democrats will be able to capitalize on.

Take the budget deficit. Total federal annual revenues have increased despite, or because of, the tax cuts. Yet at the same time budget expenditures in the first Bush term grew at a much faster annual rate than during Bill Clinton's administration. So the time-honored remedy for the shortfall calls for cuts and a more conservative budget cruncher, hardly a liberal forte.

Even in an area like illegal immigration where Bush is getting hammered by his own party, the Democrats aren't in good shape. Their similar support for amnesty and guest workers gives them the same Bush negatives on those issues. But they suffer the additional burden of apparent laxity on open borders.

Meanwhile, the Democrats face a more fundamental, existential problem. The addition of China and India to the world capitalist system has brought well over a billion workers into the global marketplace. The planet is now flooded with cheap consumer goods — at precisely the time the U.S. economy keeps creating national wealth at a rapid clip.

The result is that while there may be more inequality than ever before in the no-holds-barred world mart, the middle class and poor in the U.S. have access to "things" — TVs, sound systems, clothes, cars — undreamed of in the past. We are now in the age of MTV and mass conspicuous consumption, not of the grapes of wrath. American class warfare can no longer be defined by the Democratic Party as an elemental need for a 40-hour workweek, unemployment and disability insurance, or Social Security.

Unfortunately, the liberal debate has devolved to why one person has more opportunity for leisure and even nicer things than others do. A sort of envy rather than hunger more often fuels the gripe — and that should require a subtle Democratic acknowledgment that things continue to improve for everyone.

Finally, in the past, savvy Democrats understood the need for a conservative package for such liberal contents. To win the popular vote in presidential races, the formula was to nominate a Southern governor or senator — as in 1964, 1976, 1992, 1996 and 2000 — and then hope either for a Republican scandal such as Watergate or Iran-Contra, or a populist third-party conservative like Ross Perot.

In contrast, recently any time the liberal base got its wish and nominated a Northern progressive — 1968, 1972, 1984, 1988 or 2004 — the party lost the presidency. So far even Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Katrina and Haditha have not equated to past national scandals; nor will there likely be a prairie-fire independent to draw votes away from the Republicans.

Yes, much of the public is grumpy at high gas prices. It does not like the costs in Iraq and continuing budget deficits. And people worry about unchecked illegal immigration and dangers on the horizon, from Iran to North Korea . But when Americans get inside the voting booth, they probably will think the envisioned Democratic remedy is worse than the current perceived Republican disease.
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Betting on Defeat? It’s far from a safe bet

As I read this article, breathlessly, I thought aloud, "yeah!, that's exactly how I feel! That's exactly what I think!". This is the classic interpretation of why we are in Iraq, why we went, and why it matters to the future history of the world. This is why GW will occupy a chapter in the history books, not an endnote (as in "click here for "what is a Lewinski")...T

Lately, it has become popular to recant on Iraq. When 2,500 Americans are lost, and when the improvised explosive device monopolizes the war coverage, it is easy to see why — especially with elections coming up in November, and presidential primaries not long after.

Pundits now daily equivocate in their understandable exasperation at the apparent lack of quantifiable progress. The ranks of public supporters have thinned as final victory seems elusive. It is hard to find any consistent public advocates of the American effort in Iraq other than the editors and writers here at National Review, the Wall Street Journal, Christopher Hitchens, Charles Krauthammer, Mark Steyn, Norman Podhoretz, and a very few principled others.

But for all the despair, note all the problems for those who have triangulated throughout this war.

First, those who undergo the opportune conversion often fall prey to disingenuousness. Take John Kerry’s recent repudiation of his earlier vote for the war in Iraq. To cheers of Democratic activists, he now laments, “We were misled.”

Misled?

Putting aside the question of weapons of mass destruction and the use of the royal “we,” was the senator suggesting that Iraq did not violate the 1991 armistice accords?

Or that Saddam Hussein did not really gas and murder his own people?

Perhaps he was “misled” into thinking Iraqi agents did not really plan to murder former President George Bush?

Or postfacto have we learned that Saddam did not really shield terrorists?

Apparently the Iraqi regime neither violated U.N. accords nor shot at American planes in the no-fly zones.

Senator Kerry, at least if I remember correctly, voted for the joint congressional resolution of October 11, 2002, authorizing a war against Iraq, on the basis of all these and several other causus belli, well apart from fear of WMDs.

Second, those with a shifting position on the war sometimes cannot keep up with a war that is shifting itself, where things change hourly. And when one has no consistent or principled position, the 24-hour battlefield usually proves a fickle barometer by which to exude military wisdom.

Even as critics were equating Haditha with My Lai, al-Zarqawi, the al Qaeda mass murderer in Iraq, was caught and killed. And what was the reaction of the stunned antiwar pundit or politician? Either we heard that there was impropriety involved in killing such a demon, or the former fugitive who was once supposedly proof of our ineptness suddenly was reinvented as having been irrelevant all along.

The Iraqi army — well over 250,000 strong — is growing, and the much smaller American force (about 130,000) is shrinking. How do you call for a deadline for withdrawal when Iraqization was always predicated on withdrawal only after there was no Iraqi dependence on a large, static American force?

After lamenting that the Iraqi government is a mess, we now see a tough prime minister and the selection of his cabinet completed. So it is not easy to offer somber platitudes of defeat when 400,000 coalition and Iraqi troops are daily fighting on the center stage of the war against Islamic terrorism. Someone from Mars might wonder what exactly were the conditions under which a quarter-million Muslim Arabs in Iraq alone went to war against Islamic radicalism.

Third, there is a fine line to be drawn between legitimate criticism of a war that is supposedly not worth American blood and treasure, and general slander of the United States and its military. Yet much of the Left’s rhetoric was not merely anti-Bush, but in its pessimism devolved into de facto anti-Americanism.

Senator Durbin compared Guantanamo Bay to the worst excesses of the Nazis. Senator Kennedy suggested that Abu Ghraib, where thousands perished under Saddam Hussein, had simply “reopened under new management: U.S. management.” Democratic-party chairman Howard Dean confidently asserted that the Iraq war was not winnable. John Kerry in his youth alleged that Americans were like Genghis Khan in their savagery; in his golden years, he once again insists that we are “terrorizing” Iraqi civilians. With friends like these, what war critic needs enemies? Americans can take disapproval that we are not fighting “smart,” but they resent the notion that we are somehow downright evil.

Fourth, the mainstream media is now discredited on Iraq, and their drumbeat of doom and gloom is starting to rile more than pleases the public. Aside from the bias that counts always our losses and rarely our successes, we are sick and tired of manipulations like the lies about flushed Korans, forged memos, and the rush to judgment on Haditha. Most weary Americans want at least a moment to savor the death of a mass-murdering Zarqawi, without having to lament that he might have been saved by quicker medical intervention.

Fifth, the historical assessment of Iraq is still undetermined, despite the pontification of former supporters who think they gain greater absolution the more vehemently they trash a war they once advocated.

The three-week effort to remove Saddam Hussein was a landmark success. The subsequent three-year occupation in his place has been messy, costly, and unpopular. But the result of the third and final stage that Iraq has evolved into — an existential fight between Iraqi democracy and al Qaeda and Islamic fundamentalism — is still uncertain. If we draw the terrorists out, defeat them in the heart of the ancient caliphate, and win the allegiance of enough democratic Iraqis to crush the Islamicists, then our military has won a far greater victory than the removal of Saddam Hussein.

Sixth, note how critics now rarely offer alternative scenarios. All the old gripes such as the paucity of body armor or thin-skinned humvees have withered away. The Iraqi elected government is sympathetic and earnest, so demonizing them ultimately translates into something like “Cut these guys lose; they weren’t worth the effort.” Yes, the American people want out of Iraq, but on terms that preserve the democracy that we paid so dearly to foster.

Even the one legitimate criticism that we were too slow in turning over control to the Iraqis, and that the Bremmer interregnum had too high a public profile, is now largely moot, as Ambassador Khalilzad and Gen. Casey are in the shadows, giving all the credit to the very public Iraqis and taking most of the blame for the bad news.

So we are nearing the denouement of the Iraq war, where we wanted to be all along: in support of a full-fledged and democratically elected government that will either win or lose its own struggle.

Seventh, the old twin charges — no link between al Qaeda and Saddam, no WMDs — are also becoming largely irrelevant or proving untrue. It must have been difficult for Time, Newsweek, and the New York Times, in their coverage of the death of Zarqawi, to admit that he had been active in Iraq well before the end of Saddam Hussein, along with a mishmash of old killers from Abu Nidal to Abdul Rahman Yasin, the Iraqi American who helped plan the first World Trade Center bombing.

In addition, most abroad were convinced before the war that the CIA was right in its pre-war assessments. The publication of the Iraqi archives points to a real, not a phantom and former, WMD capability — in line with efforts elsewhere in the Islamic world, from Iran to Libya, to reclaim something akin to the old Soviet deterrent.

The costs in Iraq have been high and the losses tragic. But nothing in the past three years has convinced me otherwise than that:


1. in a post-September-11 world Saddam had to be removed on ethical and strategic grounds;

2. the insurgency, though unexpected in its intensity, could be put down by a U.S. military that would react and evolve more quickly than the terrorists to changing conditions on the ground;

3. our mistakes, though several and undeniable, are tragically the stuff of war, and so far have not proved to be irreversible or beyond what we experienced in any of our past efforts;

4. the maligned secretary of Defense was right about troop levels and the plan for Iraqization — although demonized for trying to transform the very nature of the American military in the midst of a war;

5. we are engaged in the great humanitarian effort of the age, as “one person, one vote” has brought to the perennially downtrodden Arab Shiites a real chance at equality;

6. the best method of winning this global struggle against fascistic Islamic terrorism remains fostering in the Middle East a third democratic alternative between autocracy and theocracy that alone can deal with the modern world.


Once a democratically elected Iraqi government emerged, and a national army was trained, the only way we could lose this war was to forfeit it at home, through the influence of an adroit, loud minority of critics that for either base or misguided reasons really does wish us to lose. They really do.
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Vietnam, Watergate and Rove

What is bad for America, is good for the present day Democratic party. Conversely, what is good for America reinforces the GOP's poll numbers. I have watched these people my entire life, and I know that Vietnam is their religion, and Watergate is their crucible. Barone just opines on the situation, as he sees it...but you can see that he views the big picture here...The libs are in full Vietnam/Watergate mode, and it will blow up in their collective face, this November.....T
It has been a tough 10 days for those who see current events through the prisms of Vietnam and Watergate. First, the Democrats failed to win a breakthrough victory in the California 50th District special election--a breakthrough that would have summoned up memories of Democrats winning Gerald Ford's old congressional district in a special election in 1974. Instead the Democratic nominee got 45% of the vote, just 1% more than John Kerry did in the district in 2004.
Second, U.S. forces with a precision air strike killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, on the same day that Iraqis finished forming a government. Zarqawi will not be available to gloat over American setbacks or our allies' defeat, as the leaders of the Viet Cong and North Vietnam did.
Third, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald announced that he would not seek an indictment of Karl Rove. The leftward blogosphere had Mr. Rove pegged for the role of Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman. Theories were spun about plea bargains that would implicate Vice President Dick Cheney. Talk of impeachment was in the air. But it turns out that history doesn't repeat itself. George W. Bush, whether you like it or not, is not a second Richard Nixon.

It is hard in retrospect to understand why the left put so much psychic energy into the notion that Mr. Rove would be indicted. He certainly was an important target. No one in American history has been as powerful an aide to a president, both on politics and on public policy, as Karl Rove. Only Robert Kennedy in his brother's administration and Hamilton Jordan in Jimmy Carter's come close, and neither was as involved in electoral politics as Mr. Rove has been.

Still, it was clear early on that the likelihood that Mr. Rove violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act was near zero. Under the law, the agent whose name was disclosed would have had to have served overseas within the preceding five years (Valerie Plame, according to her husband's book, had been stationed in the U.S. since 1997), and Mr. Rove would have had to know that she was undercover (not very likely). The left enjoyed raising an issue on which, for once, it could charge that a Republican administration had undermined national security. But that rang hollow when the left gleefully seized on the New York Times' disclosure of NSA surveillance of phone calls from suspected al Qaeda operatives abroad to persons in the U.S.

In all this a key role was played by the press. Cries went up early for the appointment of a special prosecutor: Patrick Fitzgerald would be another Archibald Cox or Leon Jaworski. Eager to bring down another Republican administration, the editorialists of the New York Times evidently failed to realize that the case could not be pursued without asking reporters to reveal the names of sources who had been promised confidentiality. America's newsrooms are populated largely by liberals who regard the Vietnam and Watergate stories as the great achievements of their profession. The peak of their ambition is to achieve the fame and wealth of great reporters like David Halberstam and Bob Woodward. But this time it was not Republican administration officials who went to prison. It was Judith Miller, then of the New York Times itself.

Interestingly, Bob Woodward himself contradicted Mr. Fitzgerald's statement, made the day that he announced the one indictment he has obtained, of former vice presidential chief of staff Scooter Libby, that Mr. Libby was the first to disclose Ms. Plame's name to a reporter. The press reaction was to turn on Mr. Woodward, who has been covering this administration as a new story rather than as a reprise of Vietnam and Watergate.

Historians may regard it as a curious thing that the left and the press have been so determined to fit current events into templates based on events that occurred 30 to 40 years ago. The people who effectively framed the issues raised by Vietnam and Watergate did something like the opposite; they insisted that Vietnam was not a reprise of World War II or Korea and that Watergate was something different from the operations J. Edgar Hoover conducted for Franklin Roosevelt or John Kennedy. Journalists in the 1940s, '50s and early '60s tended to believe they had a duty to buttress Americans' faith in their leaders and their government. Journalists since Vietnam and Watergate have tended to believe that they have a duty to undermine such faith, especially when the wrong party is in office.

That belief has its perils for journalism, as the Fitzgerald investigation has shown. The peril that the press may find itself in the hot seat, but even more the peril that it will get the story wrong. The visible slavering over the prospect of a Rove indictment is just another item in the list of reasons why the credibility of the "mainstream media" has been plunging. There's also a peril for the political left. Vietnam and Watergate were arguably triumphs for honest reporting. But they were also defeats for America--and for millions of freedom-loving people in the world. They ushered in an era when the political opposition and much of the press have sought not just to defeat administrations but to delegitimize them. The pursuit of Karl Rove by the left and the press has been just the latest episode in the attempted criminalization of political differences. Is there any hope that it might turn out to be the last?
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Fitzmas in June Ruined for Democrats

In the immortal words of the master himself.........T
"I've been alive 55 years. I've been paying attention to politics probably since I was 12, and I'm being honest with you people. I have never seen -- even after Watergate, I have never seen -- a political party so disengaged from what is real. I have never seen a party with supporters, a major political party, with supporters as dense, as stupid, as dilapidated, as pathetic as those who make up what are now called the future, the Democratic Party.

This party once ruled this country almost as royalty, folks. The Democratic Party had an iron fist, grip, on everything in this country, and I know what's happened. I mean, I don't want to bother you with boring explanations again, but they have now descended and faded away into a collection of people who may be clinically insane because of their inability to grasp what had happened. They had the bowl of cherries for so long, they had the Holy Grail. They owned everything. It was their country to do with whatever they wanted -- and now it's not, and with each passing day, that reality hits them, broadsides them and they simply have no mechanism to deal with it." Click here for full article

Media’s Conveniently Changing View of Zarqawi

The MSM/Drive-by gang has long since dropped all pretense of objectivity. Now they don't even try, deciding instead to launch wave after wave of attacks on their political opponents (republicans all) on the evening news, and in the pages of the New York Times. Voters are noticing, as witnessed in the previous column..................T
If Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and all of al Qaeda’s leaders in Iraq and throughout the world laid down their arms and surrendered to American forces, would the media report it as good news?

Judging from the press’s reaction to the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq by the American military last week, the answer appears to be no.

In fact, this tepid response to the death of the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq – a man who has at times in the past couple of years been depicted by the press as more vital to this terrorist network than the currently in-hiding bin Laden – suggests quite disturbingly that America’s media are fighting a different war than America’s soldiers.

According to NewsBusters, CNN’s senior editor for Arab affairs Octavia Nasr said the following about Zarqawi’s death on “American Morning” Thursday:

“Some people say it will enrage the insurgency, others say it will hurt it pretty bad. But if you think about the different groups in Iraq, you have to think that Zarqawi’s death is not going to be a big deal for them.”

However, CNN didn’t always feel that Zarqawi’s death or capture would be so inconsequential. Just days after Saddam Hussein was found in his spider hole, Paula Zahn brought CNN national correspondent Mike Boettcher on to discuss a new threat in Iraq. Zahn began the December 15, 2003 segment:

“The capture of Saddam Hussein may lead to renewed attention on the search for Osama bin Laden and other terrorists, and next to bin Laden, there is one man emerging as a major threat. He is believed to be the leader of a group much like al Qaeda, and the U.S. wants to catch him before he strikes again.”

Boettcher entered the discussion:

“The reward for his capture is only a fifth of that offered for Saddam Hussein, $5 million to Saddam’s $25 million, but abu-Mus’ab al- Zarqawi, say Middle East intelligence analysts, is emerging as the most dangerous terrorist conducting operations in Iraq, the surrounding region, and perhaps the world.”

Subsequent to this report, Zarqawi’s reward was raised to $25 million, meaning that the importance of his capture increased fivefold. Mysteriously, CNN didn’t see it that way, as in its view, the death of what it once described as “the most dangerous terrorist” in “perhaps the world” somehow became “no big deal.”

At roughly the same time as Nasr was downplaying Zarqawi’s death on CNN, ABC’s Diane Sawyer invited perennial Bush-basher Richard Clarke on “Good Morning America” to solicit his opinion on the subject. As reported by NewsBusters, Sawyer asked,
“[Is] it any safer in Iraq and will the war end any sooner?”

Clarke responded:

“Well, unfortunately the answer is no. This man was a terrible man. He was a symbol of terrorism. He was the face of terrorism, the only real name we knew of an insurgent leader in Iraq. But he commanded only a few hundred people out of tens of thousands involved in the insurgency. And so, unfortunately for the loved ones of troops over in Iraq, this is not going to mean a big difference.”
Sawyer incredulously concluded the segment:

“So for overall terrorism against the U.S., it’s, again, not a major effect.”

Yet, on November 21, 2005, Sawyer and the Good Morning America team weren’t so blasé about capturing or killing Zarqawi. Quite the contrary, Sawyer began her report that morning:

“Right now intelligence officials are pouring over information trying to decide if it’s possible that public enemy number one in Iraq, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, has, in fact, been killed over the weekend. ABC’s chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross tells us what he learned.”
Ross answered:

“If it’s true it’d be major victory for the US in Iraq.”

This raises a rather obvious question: how could what would have been a “major victory” if it had occurred in November 2005 not have “a major effect” when it actually transpires less than seven months later?

Regardless of the answer, it wasn’t just the morning shows experiencing a convenient change of heart towards Zarqawi. A drastically similar conversion occurred on the CBS Evening News Thursday. And, in this instance, it took less than five weeks for the story to change.
Anchor Bob Schieffer invited former CIA member and current CBS News analyst Michael Scheuer on to discuss Zarqawi’s death. Schieffer began the interview:

“Michael, I want to ask you, it’s my understanding you believe this might actually increase danger for US troops.”
Yes, you read that right: on a day when America should have been celebrating the death of one of her greatest enemies, a top CBS anchorman actually brought on a guest to discuss how this might “increase danger for US troops.” Scheuer conveniently responded:

“I think that’s probably the case, Bob.”

Schieffer then asked his guest what the significance of Zarqawi’s death was. Scheuer answered:

“Strategically it’s not very important.”

Yet, the Evening News didn’t always feel that Zarqawi’s death or capture would “increase the danger for US troops” or be strategically “not very important.” Less than five weeks earlier, the Evening News did an entire story called “Task Force 145 leads hunt for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.” Schieffer began that May 2 segment:

“The toll of American military people killed in Iraq reached 2,400 today, with the death of another American soldier killed by a roadside bomb. That news came as our David Martin learned more details of an intense new campaign that American troops have launched to track down top al-Qaeda terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.”

Schieffer then handed it off to Martin, who winded the segment down by saying, “Getting Zarqawi would be a major victory,” and concluded:

“If or when the end comes, he will almost certainly be replaced by another terrorist, but it is unlikely his replacement will be the equal of Zarqawi.”

As such, it is infinitely clear that the media’s view of Zarqawi changed virtually the moment he was killed. In fact, their response to what they had presaged in the past would be great news if it happened was instead designed to dampen the public’s enthusiasm for the event, while at the same time diminish any positive the Bush administration could gain from it here at home.

Sadly, such behavior is yet another example of a press clearly acting in its own best interests without regard for that of the American people much in the same way as the politicians they revere.

After all, it has been suggested for many years that members of America’s two major parties base policy decisions almost exclusively on a calculus for re-election and not on what actually would be beneficial to the public they serve. Many experts believe that such strategic planning begins almost immediately after Election Day, and dictates every move these politicians make until the next important first Tuesday in November.

With disturbing similarity, the atrocious behavior of the drive-by media makes it quite apparent that the same can be said of most press representatives today. Since at least the year 2000, it seems virtually every mainstream report of a current event has been meticulously crafted to further the goals of politicians favored by the media, while acting to thwart the efforts of those whose views are considered to be unacceptable by these supposedly enlightened journalists regardless of what position of power or responsibility they hold.
For those that question this conclusion, just imagine all the terrorists and their leaders in Iraq laying down their arms and declaring a truce with the new Iraqi government as the American media question whether this will be good for peace in the region.
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Democrats Are Winning... Except at the Polls

Composed by the two entities that get it right, every time: Real Clear Politics.com, and Michael Barone, who writes for them here. Forget the apocalyptic predictions of the drive-by media of a demo sweep in November. We are in fine shape, and experts who are in the know expect a status quo election, as do I.....T
"This is just to cover Bush's (rear) so he doesn't have to answer questions" about things in Iraq, said Rep. Pete Stark, second ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee. "This insurgency is such a confused mess that one person, dead or alive at this point, is hardly significant today," said Rep. Jim McDermott, formerly the lead Democrat on the House ethics committee. The deceased, said Rep. Dennis Kucinich, a candidate for the 2004 presidential nomination, was a small part of "a growing anti-American insurgency." He said the United States should get out of Iraq. "We're there for all the wrong reasons."

Such was the reaction of the left wing of the Democratic Party to the killing of al-Qaida terrorist Abu Masab Zarqawi in Iraq. It was not the dominant note sounded by Democrats. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and 2004 presidential nominee John Kerry all hailed the death of Zarqawi in unequivocal terms. And if Democrats also made the point that his death probably won't end the violence in Iraq, they were only echoing what George W. Bush said.

Nevertheless the Stark-McDermott-Kucinich reaction, echoed and amplified, often scatologically, by dozens of commenters on the popular dailykos.com and myDD.com left-wing Websites, tells us something disturbing about the Democratic Party -- and provides a clue why Democrats were unable to eke out a win in last week's special congressional election in the 50th congressional district of California.

It comes down to this: A substantial part of the Democratic Party, some of its politicians and many of its loudest supporters do not want America to succeed in Iraq. So vitriolic and all-consuming is their hatred for George W. Bush that they skip right over the worthy goals we have been, with some considerable success, seeking there -- a democratic government, with guaranteed liberties for all, a vibrant free economy, respect for women -- and call this a war for oil, or for Halliburton.

Successes are discounted, setbacks are trumpeted, the level of American casualties is treated as if it were comparable to those in Vietnam or World War II. Allegations of American misdeeds are repeated over and over; the work of reconstruction and aid of American military personnel and civilians is ignored.

In all this they have been aided and abetted by large elements of the press. The struggle in Iraq has been portrayed as a story of endless and increasing violence. Stories of success and heroism tend to go unreported. Reporters in Iraq deserve respect for their courage -- this has been an unusually deadly war for journalists, largely because they have been targeted by the terrorists. But unfortunately they and the Bush administration have not done a good job of letting us know that last pertinent fact.

We are in an asymmetrical struggle with vicious enemies who slaughter civilians and bystanders and journalists without any regard for the laws of war. But too often we and our enemies are portrayed as moral equivalents. One or two instances of American misconduct are found equal in the balance to a consistent and premeditated campaign of barbarism.

All of this does not go unnoticed by America's voters. The persistence of violence in Iraq has done grave damage to George W. Bush's job rating, and polls show that his fellow Republicans are in trouble. Yet when people actually vote, those numbers don't seem to translate into gains for the Democrats. In 2004, John Kerry got 44 percent of the votes in the 50th district of California. In the April 2006 special primary, Democrat Francine Busby got 44 percent of the votes there. In the runoff last week, she got 45 percent and lost to Republican Brian Bilbray.

The angry Democratic left set the tone for the 2003-04 campaign for the party's presidential nomination, and John Kerry hoped that it would produce a surge in turnout in November 2004. It did: Kerry got 16 percent more popular votes than Al Gore. But George W. Bush got 23 percent more popular votes in 2004 than in 2000.

In California's 50th, both parties made mammoth turnout efforts, but the balance of turnout and of opinion seems to have remained the same, even though Democrats had a seriously contested primary for governor and Republicans didn't. The angry Democratic left and its aiders and abettors in the press seem to have succeeded in souring public opinion, but they haven't succeeded in producing victory margins for the Democrats. Maybe they're doing just the opposite.
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A Good Day's Work. Why Zarqawi's death matters

Burn in Hell, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi!...T
The death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is excellent news in its own right and even more excellent if, as U.S. sources in Iraq are claiming, it resulted from information that derived from people who were or had been close to him. (And, if that claim is black propaganda, then it is clever black propaganda, which is also excellent news.)

It hasn't taken long for the rain to start falling on this parade. Nick Berg's father, a MoveOn type now running for Congress on the Green Party ticket, has already said that he blames President George Bush for the video-beheading of his own son (but of course) and mourned the passing of Zarqawi as he would the death of any man (but of course, again). The latest Atlantic has a brilliantly timed cover story by Mary Anne Weaver, which tends to the view that Zarqawi was essentially an American creation, but seems to undermine its own prominence by suggesting that, in addition to that, Zarqawi wasn't all that important.

Not so fast. Zarqawi contributed enormously to the wrecking of Iraq's experiment in democratic federalism. He was able to help ensure that the Iraqi people did not have one single day of respite between 35 years of war and fascism, and the last three-and-a-half years of misery and sabotage. He chose his targets with an almost diabolical cunning, destroying the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad (and murdering the heroic envoy Sérgio Vieira de Melo) almost before it could begin operations, and killing the leading Shiite Ayatollah Hakim outside his place of worship in Najaf. His decision to declare a jihad against the Shiite population in general, in a document of which Weaver (on no evidence) doubts the authenticity, has been the key innovation of the insurgency: applying lethal pressure to the most vulnerable aspect of Iraqi society. And it has had the intended effect, by undermining Grand Ayatollah Sistani and helping empower Iranian-backed Shiite death squads.

Not bad for a semiliterate goon and former jailhouse enforcer from a Bedouin clan in Jordan. There are two important questions concerning the terrible influence that he has been able to exert. The first is: How much state and para-state support did he enjoy? The second is: What was the nature of his relationship with Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaida?

For the defeatists and pacifists, these are easy questions to answer. Colin Powell was wrong to identify Zarqawi, in his now-notorious U.N. address, as a link between the Saddam regime and the Bin-Ladenists. The man's power was created only by the coalition's intervention, and his connection to al Qaida was principally opportunistic. On this logic, the original mistake of the United States would have been to invade Afghanistan, thereby forcing Zarqawi to flee his camp outside Herat and repositioning him for a new combat elsewhere. Thus, fighting against al-Qaida is a mistake to begin with: It only encourages them.

I think that (for once) Colin Powell was on to something. I know that Kurdish intelligence had been warning the coalition for some time before the invasion that former Afghanistan combatants were making their way into Iraq, which they saw as the next best chance to take advantage of a state that was both "failed" and "rogue." One might add that Iraq under Saddam was not an easy country to enter or to leave, and that no decision on who was allowed in would be taken by a junior officer. Furthermore, the Zarqawi elements appear to have found it their duty to join with the Ansar al-Islam splinter group in Kurdistan, which for some reason thought it was the highest duty of jihad to murder Saddam Hussein's main enemies. But perhaps I have a suspicious mind.

We happen to know that the Baathist regime was recruiting and training foreign fighters and brigading them with the gruesome "Fedayeen Saddam." (This is incidentally a clue to what the successor regime in Iraq might have looked like as the Saddam-plus-sanctions state imploded and Baathism itself went into eclipse.) That bomb at the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, for example, was no improvised explosive device. It was a huge charge of military-grade ordnance. Are we to believe that a newly arrived Bedouin Jordanian thug could so swiftly have scraped acquaintance with senior-level former Baathists? (The charges that destroyed the golden dome of the Shiites in Samarra were likewise rigged and set by professional military demolitionists.)

Zarqawi's relations with Bin Laden are a little more tortuous. Mary Anne Weaver shows fairly convincingly that the two men did not get along and were in some sense rivals for the leadership. That's natural enough: Religious fanatics are schismatic by definition. Zarqawi's visceral hatred of the Shiite heresy was unsettling even to some more mainstream Wahhabi types, as was his undue relish in making snuff videos. (How nice to know that these people do have their standards.) However, when Zarqawi sought the franchise to call his group "al-Qaida in Mesopotamia," he was granted it with only a few admonitions.

Most fascinating of all is the suggestion that Zarqawi was all along receiving help from the mullahs in Iran. He certainly seems to have been able to transit their territory (Herat is on the Iranian border with Afghanistan) and to replenish his forces by the same route. If this suggestive connection is proved, as Weaver suggests it will be, then we have the Shiite fundamentalists in Iran directly sponsoring the murderer of their co-religionists in Iraq. This in turn would mean that the Iranian mullahs stood convicted of the most brutish and cynical irresponsibility, in front of their own people, even as they try to distract attention from their covert nuclear ambitions. That would be worth knowing. And it would become rather difficult to argue that Bush had made them do it, though no doubt the attempt will be made.

If we had withdrawn from Iraq already, as the "peace" movement has been demanding, then one of the most revolting criminals of all time would have been able to claim that he forced us to do it. That would have catapulted Iraq into Stone Age collapse and instated a psychopathic killer as the greatest Muslim soldier since Saladin. As it is, the man is ignominiously dead and his dirty connections a lot closer to being fully exposed. This seems like a good day's work to me.

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