Before pulling out the troops, that is. Or something, since there seems to be quite a bit of sectarian disagreement over there in the aftermath of our exodus.

The Veep over there’s actually the star of an arrest warrant naming him as the man behind a bombing plot. He denies any guilt, claiming that the charges are trumped up, courtesy of the Iraqi Prez, who’s of the “opposing” sect.

So who’s telling the truth, and who’s fibbing?

I don’t know about this Islam; Here in the west, our varying religions coexist, as do the sects within same. Among Muslims, they are apparently enemies, or at least that’s what developments indicate to be the case in Iraq.

Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi:

“I am puzzled by the statement of President Obama when he says we left a democratic Iraq and that the judiciary is independent and that there’s transparency and there’s no corruption,” Mr. Hashemi said. “I am the vice president addressing him today as my home is surrounded by tanks: What democracy are you speaking about Mr. Obama?”

Oh, my, that doesn’t sound very promising at all, President Obama, now does it? Perhaps we should’ve stuck around a little longer and figured things out a little better, but what the heck? What’s a little potential mass violence in another country compared to Obama kissing up to his “peace at any price”, middle aged hippie base? Next year is an election year, you know.

Who knows what Iraq will look like or who will be running that country a year from now!

I mean, South Vietnam sure went through some changes, including a sharp, brutal, terrifying decrease in population figures, after America cut and ran out on them…

…General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker wasted their valuable time testifying before Congress.

Oliver North tells it like it is.

Five years ago this week, American soldiers and Marines liberated Baghdad from Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard and the foreign fedayeen who had flooded into the despot’s capital. For those of us who were there, it was an unforgettable event. But as Ambassador Ryan Crocker so cogently noted this week while he and Gen. David Petraeus were testifying before Congress, “The euphoria of that moment evaporated long ago.” The assembled lawmakers, perched on their raised daises, barely noted the anniversary — while subjecting the warrior and the diplomat to a 16-hour spectacle. For the general and the ambassador, it had to be an excruciating exercise in patience and bladder control.

The hearings — two in the Senate and two more in the House — all were choreographed carefully to give maximum exposure to the potentates on the Potomac. The masters of the mainstream media all were gathered. Professional protesters were present. The solons, all carefully prepared by their staffs, made their little speeches and then shamelessly angled for the best “gotcha” question to win the sound bite sweepstakes — and the honor of being replayed repeatedly on the news and entertainment channels. Like so many of these hearings, it was a bit like Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey’s “Greatest Show on Earth” — without a ringmaster. I know — as they say — I’ve “been there, done that.”

Yeah, he’s “been there, done that”, all right (and I can’t say I envy the man for that particular ordeal, when I worked on Wall Street some quarter century ago, my immediate supervisor, who had gone through a congressional grilling over the Hunt Brothers affair, told me in graphic detail what that’s like), though I don’t know if he was ever issued the tee-shirt. I’ll say this though: Despite the rhetoric of our political left, the man is the kind of patriot this country needs a hell of a lot more of, and the kind of journalist the media should be proud of (fat chance of that!) — the kind who calls it like he sees it and retains the perspective that he is an American who knows what it means to serve his country in time of war. The kind of guy who would rather cover a combat situation with shrapnel and bullets whizzing past his head than sit in a lounge in the “Green Zone” and get his information second hand, or buy photos from some photographer who may or may not have Photo-Shopped them to favor the enemy’s propaganda campaigns.

Sadly, the attending members of Congress evinced little interest in hearing from a decorated general fighting a bloody military campaign or a skillful U.S. ambassador trying to help a democratically elected government survive against brutal foreign and internal foes. Rather, it seemed as if our elected representatives would have preferred hearing from soothsayers who could read palms and interpret horoscopes. That our Congress has sunk to such a level is a sad testament to the state of our political process.

Sadly, indeed.

Our Democrat-run Congress isn’t interested in facts, only in a political agenda that hasn’t got room for the concept of victory or for the elements of common sense necessary to protect our country from future terrorist attacks. In order to appeal to their political base, which consists of a Code Pink/Michael Moore/Cindy Sheehan (remember her?)/George Soros/Jane Fonda/Barbra Streissand mentality, they are more concerned with an agenda that would involve our abandoning the Iraqis to an Islamic extremist take-over and the resulting Taliban style rule that would transform Iraq into what would amount to a terrorist stronghold with “legitimate” nation status.

This is a very liberal “progressive” point of view. Let’s enjoy instant gratification without giving the proverbial rat’s hind quarters about whatever tragedies it will present for us down the road apiece.

So rather than ask pertinent questions or seek the truth about our brave troops’ progress in Iraq…

When will it end? When will we be out? When can we take the money we’re spending on the war and divert it to bailing out our constituent borrowers and lenders caught up in the subprime mortgage mess? Petraeus and Crocker came equipped with facts, maps, charts and progress reports, but for this crowd, they should have brought Ouija boards, tarot cards and a crystal ball.

I don’t know, though I can guess, how fellow right thinkers and other sane Americans feel about this, but speaking for myself, I find it rather chilling that the majority of those we’ve elected to lead our country seem to be addressing this grave responsibility we’ve bestowed upon them using a far left field (perhaps pre-adolescent would be a more accurate term) approach.

They apparently don’t see fit to apply any sort of reality to their reasoning, that’s for sure, it’s more like “screw the down-the-road penalties, get the votes now!”

Well, good for them! When suicide bombers, briefed in Baghdad, walk into restaurants, theatres, shopping malls and other crowded places in New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago and Duluth and blow themselves up along with scores of men, women and children, our fearless leaders can always “blame Bush”.

Speaking of whom…

While Congress was berating the general and the ambassador, the commander in chief was honoring one of the more than 4,000 Americans who have made the ultimate sacrifice in Iraq. In an Oval Office ceremony, President Bush presented the Medal of Honor — our nation’s highest award for valor — to the parents of Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael A. Monsoor, a Navy SEAL. Mike — as his fellow SEALs called him — was killed Sept. 29, 2006, in Ramadi, Iraq, when he threw himself on top of an enemy grenade in order to spare the lives of his fellow SEALs.

His platoon commander, now a lieutenant commander with whom our Fox News team has been embedded, said of the 25-year-old hero, “He made an instantaneous decision to save our teammates.” Though wounded by shrapnel in the explosion, one of those with him that terrible morning said of Monsoor’s unhesitating action: “He never took his eyes off the grenade. His only movement was down toward it. He undoubtedly saved mine and the other SEALs’ lives.”

Monsoor is just the fourth member of our armed forces to be awarded the Medal of Honor since war was declared against us Sept. 11, 2001. Call your grandstanding members of Congress and ask whether they know the four names.

Hmmmm, let’s see, there were Corporal Jason Dunham, USMC, U.S. Army Sergeant First Class Paul Smith and Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael Monsoor, Iraq, and U.S. Navy Lieutenant Michael Murphy, Afghanistan.

Saying “Thank you” is not nearly enough.

I wonder if Representative John Murtha knows these four names or, for that matter, if he even cares. Probably not.

…so short-changed by the mainstream media in almost every area that can be equated with politics, but none so much as our involvement in Iraq.

They deny that we’re fighting an enemy there, peddling a story of pure civil war in which U.S. servicemen are dropping like flies, the Iraqis want us out of there, Iraqi civilian deaths at the hands of terrorists are 100% our fault, etc, etc.

They ignore every positive event that occurs over there.

They make an instant buffet of the slightest allegation that any U.S. troops have committed a wrongdoing, slandering the troops in the most extreme ways before any investigation has even begun.

Since the majority of Americans count on the MSM to deliver them accurate and complete news, the propaganda they actually receive gives them leftward slanted and highly inaccurate reports of the state of affairs in Iraq, and this is the information upon which they rely when it comes time to vote.

The latest example?

Water boarding, keeping interrogation subjects in uncomfortable positions, other techniques that do no physical damage to said subjects, the “plight” of captured terrorists at GITMO, which the left has compared with gulags, concentration camps and the killing fields of the Pol Pot regime, and the embarrassment to which still other jihadi murderers were subjected at Abu Graibh commanded a lengthy and aggressive crusade by the mainstream media, yet graphic pictures of fiendish tortures from a captured al-Qaeda interrogation manual and of the tools of the trade don’t even warrant honorable mention from the MSM. Whose side are they on, again?

Since the left would have the American people believe that there is no al-Qaeda activity in Iraq (that would indicate that we actually have an enemy to fight in Iraq), they ignore other stories that place al-Qaeda in the country.

The mainstream media is doing an outstanding job as a propaganda tool for the left. They are also a discerning lot — the only rank and file soldiers and Marines we ever hear from on that quarter seem to be the scarce few they can find who are against the war. Otherwise, most so-called liberal intellectuals will tell you that the folks who are over there fighting have been duped by Bush & Cheney and don’t know what they’re talking about when they support their mission in Iraq. They ignore the large numbers of volunteers who stick around for a second tour, they ignore our troops’ contributions to the betterment of education, lifestyles and infrastructure in Iraq, and the progress they’ve made in training Iraqi police and military personnel to eventually take over all law enforcement and national security duties. They ignore the courage and spirit of the Iraqi people who turned out twelve million strong to vote in a democratic government. They ignore the success of the post Saddam stock market, the copious publications of the burgeoning free press…

…yet when an American soldier is killed, they crow gleefully and shout about it from the rooftops, adding the casualty to their one-sided scorecard. If a U.S. military unit waxes thirty five terrorists, it is: 35 Dead in U.S. Firefight rather than Marines Kill 35 Terrorists.

Over at And Rightly So, Civil Truth has posted a lengthy but well worth the read compilation of beliefs on the war and U.S. politics by a man who not only survived the destruction of 9/11, but a full tour as a Marine in Iraq as well.

Although I haven’t been what one would term “pro-draft”, the writer makes some convincing points in favor of a draft that have me reevaluating my point of view on that score, and other than his choices for President in 2008, I largely agree with most of what he has to say.

President Bush’s veto of the pork-ridden, cut & run, head for the tall timber, tails between our legs, whimpering surrender redeployment deadlined Congressional rendering evidently backed the Democrats far enough into a corner that they were forced to submit a much more sane and acceptable bill.

Of course, this is only a brief respite from the sabotage tactics crowd over on the port side and their mainstream media hacks, those tenaciously anti-American scumbags progressive souls, to borrow a line from a governor I once successfully voted for, “will be bock!”

While I have no doubt that there are at least a few evil virgins out there, I don’t think the devil would share them with his eternal inmates, and I do believe that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has by now finished his boat ride across the River Styx and been confronted by this fact, much to his chagrin.

I’m apparently not alone in this conclusion, as my friend GM Roper has already reported on Zarqawi’s first interview with Satan.

A similar assessment comes to us from Melanie Morgan, whose column also provides a good look at the liberals’ respose to their thankfully late hero al-Zarqawi’s demise.

In an effort to increase the already accellerating violence between Iraqi insurgents and the terrorists from outside Iraq who are fighting the new government, Iraqi and coalition forces, U.S. officials over there are engaging in dialogue with Iraqi guerilla leaders.

U.S. officials have been talking with local Iraqi insurgent leaders to exploit a rift between homegrown insurgents and radical groups such as Al Qaeda, The New York Times reported on Saturday.

Citing a Western diplomat, an Iraqi political leader and an Iraqi insurgent leader, the Times said that the talks were also aimed at drawing the local leaders into the political process.

According to interviews with insurgents and both U.S. and Iraqi officials, clashes between Iraqi groups and al Qaeda have broken out in several cities across the Sunni Triangle and they appear to have intensified in recent months, the Times said.

It seems like al-Qaeda’s popularity has waned quite a bit, there, in all likelihood because the Iraqi rebels, Baathists for the most part, are fighting mainly to regain the stature they enjoyed under Saddam Hussein, perhaps with a small side order of statesmanly impulses.

As such, they see, as most of their fellow countrymen do, that the new Iraq with all its freedoms is far preferable to the Iraq that the Islamofascists of al-Qaeda would embrace if they had any say in the governing of the land of Scheherazade.

And they want that as badly as they want the pox.

What our folks over there are doing by stirring the pot is a smart move — with the Iraqi rebels, our own forces and Iraqi troops all ranged against them, we’ll get rid of al-Qaeda-in-Iraq that much more quickly and…

Insurgents told the newspaper that there is widespread hatred for al Qaeda among ordinary Iraqis. Abu Amin, an insurgent leader in Yusefiya and a former captain in the Iraqi Army, told the Times the Americans were especially interested in securing help against al Qaeda, about whom they asked many questions: “Do you have a relationship with? Can you help us attack al Qaeda? Can you uproot al Qaeda from Iraq?”

…with any luck, finally convince the insurgents to give the new government a try. What they don’t seem to have yet grasped is that the prime reason they have a minority representing them in the government is because they are a minority in Iraq — their previous power existed at the pleasure of a dictator who is no longer running the country, and now the majority rules, but in a democracy they have the right of dialogue and debate that, approached with reason, can do more to improve their lot than any number of weapons, threats and bombings.

Here’s the latest column from Mark Steyn, right-thinking master wordsmith, titled Iraq Vote Leaves Dems Looking Like Losers.

One day Iraq will be a G7 member hosting the Olympics in the world’s No. 1 luxury vacation resort of Fallujah, and the Defeaticrat Party will still be running around screaming it’s a quagmire. It’s not just that Iraq is going better than expected, but that it’s a huge success that’s being very deftly managed: The timeframe imposed on the democratic process turns out to have worked very well — the transfer of sovereignty, the vote on a constitutional assembly, the ratification of the constitution, the vote for a legislature — and, with the benefit of hindsight, it now looks like an ingeniously constructed way to bring the various parties on board in the right order: first the Kurds, then the Shia, now the Sunni. That doesn’t leave many folks over on the other side except Zarqawi and Dean. What do the two have in common? They’re both foreigners, neither of whom have the slightest interest in the Iraqi people.

LMAO!!!!

The Economist has presented their own list of reasons why our military should maintain its presence in Iraq until the job is completed.

Iraq is not Vietnam. Most Iraqis share America’s aims, and the Sunnis, who boycotted the first general election in January, are now taking part in peaceful politics.

President Bush’s efforts to spread democracy in the region are starting to bear fruit.

The Arab world may be turning against extremist elements in the insurgency – the jihadists led by al-Qaida’s leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) has argued that American troops are now a barrier to further progress, and a withdrawal would deprive Zarqawi of the one thing that unites the Sunnis and jihadists.
“This has seductive logic, but flies in the face of the evidence,” The Economist states. “Most of the insurgents’ victims are Iraqis, not American soldiers. There are still too few American troops, not too many. And the Iraqi forces that America is training are not yet ready to stand on their own feet.”

A fixed timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops would embolden the insurgents.

By leaving Iraq, the U.S. would not buy peace. Zarqawi and his fellow fanatics have vowed to attack America around the globe.

An American “retreat” would grant militant Islam an enormous victory, and Arabs who want to modernize their region would conclude that they cannot count on the U.S. to stand by its friends.
“The cost to America of staying in Iraq may be high, but the cost of retreat would be higher,” The Economist concludes.

“Yet it is also well past time for George Bush to spell out to the American people much more clearly and honestly than he has hitherto done why their sons and daughters fighting in Iraq should remain in harm’s way.”

As regards the last point, I believe this would be much easier to accomplish if the media was honest and not biased so far to the left that they are cheerfully derelict in their duty to report anything resembling the truth if it means reporting that something, anything the Bush Administration has a hand in is even remotely successful, and if they were above the sins of misquoting him or pulling random lines out of the context of his speeches.

Joe Lieberman, Democrat, has an Op-Ed in today’s Wall Street Journal that gives his position on our presence in Iraq after visiting the country and seeing things first hand.

His opinion differs greatly from those of his fellow high profile Democrats, their liberal masters and the Mainstream Media.

He believes we should stay until the job is finished.

Progress is visible and practical. In the Kurdish North, there is continuing security and growing prosperity. The primarily Shiite South remains largely free of terrorism, receives much more electric power and other public services than it did under Saddam, and is experiencing greater economic activity. The Sunni triangle, geographically defined by Baghdad to the east, Tikrit to the north and Ramadi to the west, is where most of the terrorist enemy attacks occur. And yet here, too, there is progress.

There are many more cars on the streets, satellite television dishes on the roofs, and literally millions more cell phones in Iraqi hands than before. All of that says the Iraqi economy is growing. And Sunni candidates are actively campaigning for seats in the National Assembly. People are working their way toward a functioning society and economy in the midst of a very brutal, inhumane, sustained terrorist war against the civilian population and the Iraqi and American military there to protect it.

We’re failing over there, huh? The Bush policies are not working, huh? We need to cut and run, oh, sorry, I meant “redeploy,” huh? According to Lieberman, we aren’t, they aren’t and we definitely shouldn’t, in that order.

It is a war between 27 million and 10,000; 27 million Iraqis who want to live lives of freedom, opportunity and prosperity and roughly 10,000 terrorists who are either Saddam revanchists, Iraqi Islamic extremists or al Qaeda foreign fighters who know their wretched causes will be set back if Iraq becomes free and modern. The terrorists are intent on stopping this by instigating a civil war to produce the chaos that will allow Iraq to replace Afghanistan as the base for their fanatical war-making. We are fighting on the side of the 27 million because the outcome of this war is critically important to the security and freedom of America. If the terrorists win, they will be emboldened to strike us directly again and to further undermine the growing stability and progress in the Middle East, which has long been a major American national and economic security priority.

How is it that a Democrat who spends some time over there comes away with a view that is in total counterpoint to those of most of his same party colleagues?

It could be that he’s neither a liar nor a coward, or that he is simply more concerned with the wellbeing of Americans and a secure future for his country than he is with partisan politics.

Still, I wonder what kind of pressure this article will earn him from the other folks on the left and if there is indeed pressure, if he’ll bluntly stay the course rather than sacrifice patriotism, honor and truth to the liberal party line, which acknowledges none of these.

In this case, my bet’s that he’ll stick to his guns.

In the face of terrorist threats and escalating violence, eight million Iraqis voted for their interim national government in January, almost 10 million participated in the referendum on their new constitution in October, and even more than that are expected to vote in the elections for a full-term government on Dec. 15. Every time the 27 million Iraqis have been given the chance since Saddam was overthrown, they have voted for self-government and hope over the violence and hatred the 10,000 terrorists offer them. Most encouraging has been the behavior of the Sunni community, which, when disappointed by the proposed constitution, registered to vote and went to the polls instead of taking up arms and going to the streets. Last week, I was thrilled to see a vigorous political campaign, and a large number of independent television stations and newspapers covering it.

None of these remarkable changes would have happened without the coalition forces led by the U.S. And, I am convinced, almost all of the progress in Iraq and throughout the Middle East will be lost if those forces are withdrawn faster than the Iraqi military is capable of securing the country.

They say we have no plan.

Does America have a good plan for doing this, a strategy for victory in Iraq? Yes we do. And it is important to make it clear to the American people that the plan has not remained stubbornly still but has changed over the years. Mistakes, some of them big, were made after Saddam was removed, and no one who supports the war should hesitate to admit that; but we have learned from those mistakes and, in characteristic American fashion, from what has worked and not worked on the ground. The administration’s recent use of the banner “clear, hold and build” accurately describes the strategy as I saw it being implemented last week.

And as to our brave military personnel in Iraq?

I cannot say enough about the U.S. Army and Marines who are carrying most of the fight for us in Iraq. They are courageous, smart, effective, innovative, very honorable and very proud. After a Thanksgiving meal with a great group of Marines at Camp Fallujah in western Iraq, I asked their commander whether the morale of his troops had been hurt by the growing public dissent in America over the war in Iraq. His answer was insightful, instructive and inspirational: “I would guess that if the opposition and division at home go on a lot longer and get a lot deeper it might have some effect, but, Senator, my Marines are motivated by their devotion to each other and the cause, not by political debates.”

Thank you, General. That is a powerful, needed message for the rest of America and its political leadership at this critical moment in our nation’s history. Semper Fi.

Thank you, Joe, for bringing home the truth and sharing it.

Here is a set of photos taken in Iraq by Michael Yon that we’ll never see in the New York Times.

The left, after all, wouldn’t be interested in the exponential improvements our “human killing machines” have helped the Iraqis enjoy in education for their children and in the sheer numbers of children now able to attend school for the first time.

Do they look happy to see an American, or are those the expressions of bitter hatred from young Iraqis who want us out of their country?

You decide.

It’s funny how liberals argue that the Mainstream Media(MSM) is either politically neutral or “right wing biased,” when anyone with an IQ in the single digits who can read or watch TV can see that the media are biased so far to the left that they totally ignore any relevant, hell, downright important information that doesn’t favor their liberal socialist reporting agenda.

They perpetuate disproven lies by ignoring their “disprovenness”{sorry about that one, but I had rather a late and actively social evening prior to today’s bright new period of consciousness}, so that even after an anti-Bush accusation is debunked, they continue to go with the original story.

Of course, the same can be said for the majority of Democrat politicians. It’s already been proven, for example, that Bush did not lie about the weapons of mass destruction(WMD)in Saddam’s Iraq. He acted on intelligence data that was corroborated even by the intelligence communities of numerous other countries and yet, funny as it seems, some of those same countries, even after voting “yea” on deposing Saddam, waffled at the Eleventh Hour, when they realized Dubya wasn’t playing games, and opposed the invasion.

Of course, some of those countries opposing, like France, were doing so because they had a lot of under-the-table deals going with the dictator, some of which were in direct violation of U.N. sanctions they themselves voted for, and there was, of course, the thieves’ gold mine called the Oil For Food Program, from which French officials profiteered in self-generous fashion.

Yet, our portside politicians and the MSM are still running the “Bush lied” myth. They do this because, sleazeballs that they are, they figure that if you repeat a lie enough, people will begin to accept it as truth. But then, Bill Clinton and his supporters, back at the end of the last century, showed us that the Democrats don’t have a problem with lying politicians, as long as they’re lying from the left.

Even so, there have been reports of WMDs out of Iraq, but the MSM and the liberals ignore them because such reports are contrary to the lies they employ in their never-ending assault on the Bush Administration.

For example, I don’t recall reading anything even remotely related to the discussion in this interview in any MSM venues.

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Bill Tierney, a former military intelligence officer and Arabic speaker who worked at Guantanamo Bay in 2002 and as a counter-infiltration operator in Baghdad in 2004. He was also an inspector (1996-1998) for the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) for overseeing the elimination of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles in Iraq. He worked on the most intrusive inspections during this period and either participated in or planned inspections that led to four of the seventeen resolutions against Iraq.

This interview of Bill Tierney by Jamie Glazov is a must read for anyone with even mild curiosity regarding the truth about the WMD in Iraq.

Here is an excerpt:

The Iraqis had stopped the third group of our inspection team before it could close off the back of the installation. A few minutes later, a soldier came from inside the installation, and all the other guards gathered around him. He said something, there was a big laugh, and all the guards relaxed. A few moments later there was a radio call from the team that had been stopped short. They could here truck engines through the tall (10”) grass in that area. When we were finally allowed in, our team went to the back gate. The Iraqis claimed the gate hadn’t been opened in months, but there was freshly ground rust at the gate hinges. There was a photo from overhead showing tractor trailers with missiles in the trailers leaving the facility.

When pressed, Tariq Aziz criticized the inspectors for not knowing the difference between a missile and a concrete guard tower. He never produced the guard towers for verification. It was during this period that Tariq Aziz pulled out his “no smoking gun” line. Tariq very cleverly changed the meaning of this phrase. The smoking gun refers to an indicator of what you are really looking for - the bullet. Tariq changed the meaning so smoking gun referred to the bullet, in this case the WMD, knowing that as long as there were armed guards between us and the weapons, we would never be able to “find,” as in “put our hands on,” the weapons of mass destruction. The western press mindlessly took this up and became the Iraqis’ tool. I will let the reader decide whether this inspection constitutes a smoking gun.

Of course, the Newspaper of Record would never consider the contents of this interview “fit to print.” It goes against their liberal, anti-America political agenda.

A great big hat tip to Kender.