On Veterans Day and the day after, George Bush and Karl Rove each finally launched a counterattack on the Democrats and their liberal socialist masters, responding to incessant attacks the Bush Administration has been weathering for years, including the disproven accusations that Vice President Dick Cheney coerced the CIA into altering intelligence to indicate there were WMDs in Iraq, in order to create a defensible reason for invading Iraq and deposing Saddam.

This sudden offensive posture on Mr. Bush’s part is quite understandable, given the fact that spineless Republicans we mistakenly voted into or reelected to Congress haven’t been giving the boss any back-up, too busy as they’ve been arse creeping for the Democrat minority or preening for their next reelection campaigns.

We really need to give a lot of thought to these career ruling class do-nothings when next we go to the polls and consider bringing in some newbies who haven’t had the opportunity to become complacent like those now purporting to represent us.

But as I am well known to do, I digress.

Back on track, one of the things I’ve always liked about reading Cal Thomas is that I find his columns are always spot-on.

In a Veterans Day speech in Tobyhanna, Pa., President Bush took on his critics who have said he lied about intelligence to justify deposing Saddam Hussein. While acknowledging it is ”perfectly legitimate” to criticize his conduct of the war, the president said, ”Some Democrats and anti-war critics are claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war. These critics are fully aware that a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community’s judgments related to Iraq’s weapons programs.”
The president said the stakes in the global war on terror are too high ”and the national interest is too important for politicians to throw out false charges.” He said too many of his critics are ”deeply irresponsible” and sending the wrong signal to America’s enemy and to U.S. troops.
Democrats reacted immediately, accusing the president of using Veterans Day to politicize the war. What have they been doing the other 364 days of the year, if not trying to undermine the war effort by playing politics and contributing to disunity, thus encouraging the enemy?

And Carl Rove?

In his speech to the Federalist Society on Nov. 10, Rove gave a brief history of the consequences of judicial activism and how it has violated the separation of powers clause of the Constitution and contributed to disrespect for the courts and the law.
He noted the changes to the courts that were made in Texas when citizens realized their will and constitution were being frustrated because of ”millions of dollars from a handful of wealthy personal injury trial lawyers” that were ”poured into (Texas) Supreme Court races to shift the philosophical direction of the Court.” He noted the court ”earned the reputation as ‘the best court that money could buy.’ ”’

It’s a great column, read the whole thing.

Cindy Sheehan arrived in Washington, D.C. the other day and set up her portable Camp Wingnut on the Mall, disgustingly close to the Washington Monument. On Friday afternoon when I went to see it and take a few pics, I was reminded of footage of the end of Woodstock, a few raggedy looking burnouts wandering aimlessly, only this one was adjoined by a field of miniature white crosses that could have been a graveyard for gerbils. Only a few were marked, probably by parents who had lost children in Iraq and were willing to demean their mortal sacrifices and their very memories by adding their names to Cindy’s grotesque little travelling sideshow. The ditch lady must have decided that she’s better off not labelling the crosses as she did in Crawford and risking having the parents of fallen warriors again show up to rip crosses bearing their own dead children’s names out of the ground, admonishing that, “You don’t speak for us, Cindy!”

Earlier that day, I had been to Walter Reed, where I had been fortunate, and indeed privileged to meet a few of the young men who had been permanently disabled during combat operations in Iraq. One such soldier, who had lost both his legs, told me that he had been learning to walk with on one prosthesis and was working to master the second. He spoke as though he were describing a new stereo he was buying for his car, no bitterness at all, and said that his injuries were simply a product of war, and that war became necessary when talk was realized to be unproductive. Here was a young man, probably as many as three decades my junior, and he filled me with so much awe and so much respect for him that when I shook his hand and thanked him from the bottom of my heart for his sacrifice, I felt it was totally inadequate. I mean, how can you thank someone enough for giving so much for love of his country?

I asked him about the anti-war liberals who have been holding Friday evening “we support the troops” vigils outside the main gate of the Army hospital complex and how they were viewed by the troops within. He smiled as he told me how on one such Friday night, a motorcycle club called Rolling Thunder had roared in on their Harleys and run the liberals off, and the look of appreciation in his eyes answered my question more than adequately.

The brave heroes at Walter Reed are totally aware that the “we support the troops” vigils are pure malarkey attended by people with liberal anti-war, anti-Bush, anti-America agendas who do not speak for the troops. Even knowing that their transparency fools no one, however, these liberals will continue to play act, while bashing the war and attempting to send a message to these wounded soldiers that they sustained their injuries for naught.

That same Friday evening, the liberals manning the gate experienced a change of program: A number of conservatives had come to town to mount counter-protests against Sheehan’s and other left wing groups’ who had been massing for their own anti-war rallies. Organizations like RightMarch, FreeRepublic, ProtestWarrior,Move America Forward and others, as well as a lot of just plain pissed off conservatives like me were there for Support The Troops and Their Mission Weekend(unfortunately, other business in New York has prevented me from being able to remain all weekend), and a bunch of us turned up to face off with the vigilistas on that evening. There weren’t as many as one might have hoped, about 120 on our side and 50 or 60 on the leftards’ side.

They had prior claim to the sidewalks on both sides of the main gate of the hospital complex, we were opposite them in the same positions and signs abounded on both sides of Orange Street. There were police on hand to insure a nonviolent event.

Pictures I took will follow when I’ve learned how to get them in here, hopefully very soon. I’m still learning my way around the technology herein.

One of their signs said, “Support the troops, give them their full benefits,” whatever that meant, and had us scratching our heads, another said, “Quiet Zone, Soldiers Healing.” Behind the “quiet zone” sign, someone was playing an acoustic guitar, someone else, it seemed, a tambourine, and before long the liberals began singing. All in all, they were majorly pitiful and we were soon making amused bets as to whether or not they were going to start singing “Kumbaya.”

People driving past would swerve toward whichever side they agreed with and honk their horns, often shouting their approval and/or waving. Surprisingly enough as the District of Columbia is a liberal city, we received a lot more “honks” than they did and every single vehicle that drove out of Walter Reed honked for us, ignoring the lefties altogether, knowing them for what they were and what they represented.

When darkness descended, the liberals lit candles, and we were surer than ever that they were about to burst into “Kumbaya.”

Our side definitely had louder shouters than theirs whenever shouting was needed, and it was really a lot of fun.

Abruptly, at about 9:15, the leftards began to disperse. I learned the reason pretty quickly: On Friday nights, a restaurant in Washington called Fran O’Brien’s Stadium Steak House has groups of Walter Reed patients over for a free steak dinner. They go there by bus and return around 9:30, and for some reason the vigilistas want to be gone before the bus reappears, returning the troops to the hospital.

I’d like to think these treasonous liberals prefer to slink away in shame rather than face true patriots who have sacrificed so much for their country, but somehow I doubt it, as the left has already shown us with profound eloquence that shame is something they know nothing about.