Citing polls indicating a waning of popularity of the war in Iraq, some people on Capitol Hill who are seeking reelection or entertaining ambitions of campaigning for higher office have begun pressing for an exit strategy, complete with a schedule, for our military presence and operations in Iraq. Unfortunately, these are not only Democrats, but also a Republican or two, the latter kissing up to the moderates in our own party as well as those Democrats who have become disillusioned with the liberal moonbats currently running their party. 

The Wall Street Journal’s Brendan Miniter weighs in on the subject in the Opinion Journal.

The Goal in Iraq is victory, not withdrawal

The last thing we need in Iraq is a timeline for withdrawal. Victory sets its own schedule, and it’s not contingent on the U.S. election calendar. Arbitrarily forcing a timetable on the battlefield will only aid the enemy. Yet a growing number of politicians are calling for just that–or, at least, a better(read more negative) official accounting of what’s happening in Iraq. With polls showing less support for the war and pols parroting that public opinion, we’re in danger of losing sight on how to defeat the enemy.

Sen. Joe Biden, a Delaware Democrat, joined the parade over the weekend while also bluntly saying he’s looking at a presidential bid in 2008–although he was careful to add that he thinks the next presidential election will turn on national security. Rep. Harold Ford, Jr., normally a sensible Tennessee Democrat, has also joined the procession and hopes his call for a timeline will help him win the Senate seat Bill Frist is vacating. And it’s not just Democrats, Sen. Chuck Hagel is making similar noises as he considers his own presidential bid. 

The prime objective of the war in Iraq goes ‘way beyond the done-deal defeat of Saddam Hussein, its ultimate goal is to establish a democracy in the midst of dangerous theocracies that are the petrie dishes for the cultivation of global terrorism, demonstrating the advantages of living in a free society to those in the rest of the region who never have.

Iraqis, despite the anti-Bush MSM campaign to depict our efforts in Iraq as a total failure, have been relishing the trappings of their new freedom and their young people have been fighting for it in the uniform of their military forces. We are kicking butt over there, but to complete their mission will take our soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen time, time that we cannot define with exactitude, although as we train and equip more Iraqis to defend their new democracy, we will be decreasing the number of U.S. troops deployed in security capacities.

These politically agendized liberals who want to sacrifice American lives for their own partisan purposes and the Republican pols whose careers are more important to them than doing the right thing for the U.S. and the West in general are traitors in my book: The politicians who want to schedule our withdrawal are educated men and women, most if not all lawyers and earning a law degree requires a great deal of intelligence. To read some of their opinions and see what they vote for in Congress tells me that they have agendas that pay little attention to the real wellbeing of their fellow Americans or the security of our country.

If we schedule a withdrawal of our military presence from Iraq, what do you suppose happens? The al Qaeda and other guerillas in Iraq back off and wait until the due date for us to be gone, then they attack the Iraqi government with strategies they’ve had time to plan carefully and forces they’ve had time to martial with full knowledge of the coalition’s exit date, and the next thing you know, the Iraqis are enslaved by another oppressive, evil regime.

Do we really want what the Democrats do, to make waste of the sacrifices by those American warriors who have given their lives in Iraq?

The hope, of course, is that as democracy takes root in Iraq it will spread to the rest of the region. Since the invasion there have been plenty of encouraging signs. Lebanon and Egypt appear to be moving in the right direction. And even Syria is looking to set up its first stock exchange, perhaps a precurser to liberalizing economic reforms. Inside Iraq a civil government is slowly standing up even as the insurgency continues to pull off deadly attacks.

This is a war of civil society versus the agents of anarchy. We don’t need to set a schedule to accept defeat. We need more civil societies to help us keep a lid on the violence that will otherwise creep into our lives. That’s what the war in Iraq is all about and why winning it remains in our nation’s vital interests. 

Those patriotic Americans who want what’s right but whose beliefs are programmed by what they read, listen to or watch in the MSM, do not have a clue. They have little or no idea that complete success in Iraq will be an important measure in protecting ourselves and other free countries from terrorism. 

On 12 June, I did a post on the moronic Gitmo rhetoric coming from moonwipes like Newsweek and Amnesty International. You know, about flushing Korans(retracted) and the gulag we purportedly run in Cuba, according to Travesty International, who admitted not knowing what was happening at Guantanamo Bay but reported it anyway at their website.

Now there’s more.

CONGRESS LIKELY TO DEFINE WAR DETAINEES

Congress is likely to step into the operation of the Guantanamo Bay detention center with legislation on how the U.S. should legally categorize an unorthodox enemy.

Fitting the enemy in the war on terror into the proper niche is challenging. Al Qaeda terrorists do not wear a uniform. They target civilians and never signed the Geneva Convention governing the treatment of wartime detainees.

U.S. officials say al Qaeda members make up the majority of the 520 inmates at Camp Delta in Cuba and include terrorist leader Osama bin Laden’s bodyguards and one man who authorities suspect was supposed to be the 20th hijacker on the September 11 flights. The other inmates are suspected of being Taliban members.

….Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas L. Hemingway, who is chief legal advisor to the appointing authority for the military commissions, added,(” I?) think that we can hold them as long as the conflict endures. But we have… a very detailed process for eliminating them if they no longer present a threat.”

Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont Democrat and a strong advocate for detainee rights, asked, “Well, we now have a government in Afghanistan, yet the conflict continues. Is that what you’re saying?”    

What an idiotic question! And this coming from a guy who belongs to the body of our government that makes laws!

Gen. Hemingway replied, “The conflict is not with the government of Afghanistan. The conflict is with a nonstate organization.”

…So far, the Pentagon has released more than 200 detainees. About 10 have resurfaced on the battlefield in Afghanistan and been killed or captured, administration officials said.

Ten that we know of because they’ve been recaptured or waxed, how many more are out there, using their freedom from custody to get back to business as usual?

I mean it, I am soooo flabbergasted at all this. This entire affair is based upon nothing concrete, in fact nothing whatsoever, it’s like a vile cartoon and the upswing, if the administration and the right thinking folks on the Hill allow the Democrats to have their way, will be hundreds of terrorists back in circulation while a message is sent to Muslim terrorists everywhere that most Americans are on their side. There is a Republican majority in this country, which is why they’d be wrong in this assumption: It’s that other party, the minority, that seems to be on their side.  

On the DOD’s website today appeared an article posted yesterday by the American Forces Press Service titled,

Americans Can’t Neglect Signs of Progress In Iraq

Americans cannot forget the progress being made in Iraq, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice said from Jerusalem today.

Rice took time off from her trip to the Middle East to speak to Fox News Channel. She said Americans cannot ignore the political and military successes in Iraq.

“I would say to the American people, ‘Yes, this is very hard and very difficult, but we are making a lot of progress in what will be a strategic breakthrough for the United States, which is to have a different kind of Middle East”’ Rice said.

Recent polls show support for operations in Iraq is dropping among the American people. Casualty lists, car bombs and suicide bombers dominate the news, but Rice said there are clear signs of progress. Among them is the capture of “the Emir of Mosul” — Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s lieutenant Abu Talha.

The Iraqi forces are growing in numbers and sophistication, Rice said. Iraqi forces took the lead in security for the January elections, for example. Since then, Iraqi forces have taken on increasing security burdens. The 40th Grigade of the Iraqi army handles security for much of Baghdad. Marines participating in Operation Spear in Karabila are operating with Iraqi forces.

The Iraqi security forces now consist of about 170,000 trained and equipped soldiers and police. As those forces grow and gain experience, the security responsibility for coalition forces will shrink, Rice said. 

We’ve been doing increasing damage to the terrorists over there as our troops and their commanders become increasingly more experienced at fighting the kind of fight they face, and the Iraqi forces have the benefit of being trained by the best soldiers in the world.

The Iraqis have demonstrated their enthusiasm for living in a free country by starting up hundreds of newspapers they can now sell without being tortured for their views, electing their government in a democratic election and fighting the terrorists aggressively alongside coalition members as soldiers for their country. They are rebuilding their country in an image of democracy.

Read the article here.

In my opinion, any waning of support for our enterprise in Iraq is the result of the MSM’s one-sided reporting. Somehow, these “journalists” always seem to be looking in a different direction when something positive occurs, but they never miss a negative event and when one happens, they put the worst possible accent on it. When G.I.s are killed, they positively crow about it and when they provide a tally of casualties to date, they sound like they’re bragging about points they’ve made in some game they are playing.

That’s about the size of it, a game, friends. A game of politics in which the stakes could well be our lives and the partisan Mainstream Media hacks could care less, because their priority is discrediting George W. Bush, not the wellbeing of their fellow Americans, world peace nor even feeding the world’s hungry, despite their claims to the contrary. These are educated people delivering the news to the majority of American voters, and there’s no way anyone with even Jethro Bodine’s level of education could fail to see the importance to our own survival of what we’re doing in Iraq.

For some reason, when I think of all those dems following the MSM’s stories and treating them as gospel, I think of….well…. Lemmings…. 

**** As is usually the case with DOD site links, there is a redirect to their main news page. The linked article is the sixth one down. 

Underneath the lead-in to the article is another link, to an article titled, Rice Urges Patience As Democracy Emerges .

Both are under “More Defense News”.

I haven’t posted for the last few days because I was inordinately busy and was also having to address some move- related problems with my DSL. I seem to be settled in now, at last.

Over at the FBI’s website, there’s a small quiz on the Law Enforcement agency in pop culture, for those who are trivia buffs, 5 questions and 1 bonus question.

If you’ve ever wondered how Starbucks Chairman Howard Shultz built the coffee concern into such a dynamo, try considering the employee loyalty factor as one element of his success. Until I read the bio linked above, I actually gave no thought to the man.

According to the bio, he came from poverty, got out of the projects with a college football scholarship and never looked back.

He worked for Starbucks and during that period of employment, when they only sold their coffee in bean or grounds form to take home, he tried convincing the company that they would do well to open a chain of cafes. They declined to act on his suggestions, he left and later bought the firm, then metamorphised it into what it is today. 

What kind of employee loyalty do you suppose you enjoy when you give 20 hour per week part timers full health coverage, and health coverage to unmarried spouses and institute a generous profit sharing plan, especially in these times when most employers go for the cheapest benefit packages they can scrape up and treat part timers like red headed step children(in fact a lot of companies, including the one that picks up and delivers most packages sent in the United States, I won’t reveal  the name of that company whose acronym is the opposite of ‘downs’, keep most of their rank and file employees on part time status so they don’t have to give them any benefits).  At any rate, Shultz is a great American success story if I’ve ever seen one, and he shares with his employees. The reason, he says, is because he wants to give others the chance to work for the kind of company his father never got to work for. Here’s the link again, check out his bio.

What actually brought on this curiosity about the Starbucks chairman was a link emailed to me by my good friend Steve who, like me, is an avid supporter of Israel. It is a long post on a Muslim website inciting readers to boycott Starbucks because Howard Shultz is also an avid supporter of Israel. He’s done business there, raised funds for Israel and is a very good friend of the Jewish state, so naturally, it stands to reason in the convoluted minds of members of The Religion Of Peace, he is the archenemy of Islam.

The Islamic site’s post begins:

Research Findings  Howard Shultz, chairman of Starbucks is an active Zionist.

Read and enjoy.

The U.K. website must have a more sedate readership than we’re accustomed to on Islamic forums, since there hasn’t been anything in the news as yet about anybody hijacking buses or eighteen wheelers and crashing them into Starbucks coffee houses, or anyone like Mr. Emoticon, here, setting up shop in a nearby mosque. 

Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger is taking on the California tax and spend liberals who, as usual, are looking to sleaze yet more money out of the tax payers with blind-siding, sneaky legislation. Proposition 13, a 1978 initiative that capped California property tax increases, is the issue at hand with the state’s Dems looking to change it or add taxable increments to the prop that would enable them to extract more money from voters.

Santee, San Diego County — Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger’s special election campaign suddenly became all about the landmark Proposition 13 property tax initiative Tuesday when he warned elderly homeowners they could lose their houses to taxes if Democrats and union leaders got their way in the fall.

“They want to back us into a corner so eventually they can force us to raise taxes,” Schwartzenegger told about 25 people in a backyard gettogether at this town outside San Diego.

He accused Democratic legislators of sneaking around with backdoor efforts to “tweak” Prop. 13, the 1978 initiative that put tight caps on property taxes in the state.

….The attack enraged Democratic leaders, who accused the governor of campaigning on issues that aren’t on the Nov 8 ballot.

Changing Prop. 13 to boost taxes on homeowners “isn’t on the ballot and it isn’t even on anyone’s radar screen,” said Maviglio, a spokesman for assembly speaker Fabian Nunez, D- Los Angeles. “The governor is trying to scare people to the polls and that’s shameful.”

Democratic legislators have authored bills that would amend Prop. 13 to make it easier to impose special parcel taxes and backed efforts to boost taxes on commercial property.

The San Francisco Chronicle article that tells the story will not link, but in today’s online edition of the paper, the item reads Guv: It’s About Prop 13.

California is the liberal stronghold of America, the home base of those who think we should be a socialist country, a nation in which the government and, through taxation, the rank and file tax payer and successful businesses are responsible for every last Utopian jerkoff social whim these asshats want to espouse. 

Oh, shit! We’ve blown all the state taxpayers’ money, we’d better hit ‘em up for more….

Their tax the people into the ground, the more the merrier attitude, during previous gubernatorial administrations such as that of Gray Davis, whom we fired in favor of electing the Governator, has driven businesses(can you say, jobs?) out of California and into neighboring states with more agreeable business tax rates.

These people are so far beyond unreasonable that it borders on insanity! They have no concept of budgets, they simply spend money on their bottomless pit feel-good agendas and when the kitty bottoms out, they seek to squeeze more money out of Joe Taxpayer. European countries, whom the liberals admire to the extent of worship, confiscate more of their citizens’ wages and salaries than they allow them to keep, and their economies still fall short of ours by enormous margins(more than double the unemployment, etc).  

We are a Capitalist Republic that’s proved out(the richest, strongest nation on this planet) with a constitution that forbids taxation without representation(remember the Boston Tea Party, or has that, too, been stricken from primary education textbooks by liberal revisionists of history?), and the vast majority of liberal agendas are just that. The liberals’ favorite passtime would seem to be spending our tax dollars on issues that the majority of us would vote against if given the opportunity to do so, if for no other reason than to hang onto enough of the money we earn working to live under reasonable conditions. The liberals want us to be just like France and other failing countries.

Arnold’s referendem for the vote in November is a counter to the California libs’ tendency to obfuscate issues in order to get the voters to pass laws and enact policies they might not vote on if they had the true picture.

A good example is a proposition that was on the ballot here in San Francisco, where all the politicians are liberals, in 2002. The city supervisors(the local equivalent of councilmen) needed a venue for rewarding their more noteworthy supporters, so they decided to form an entertainment commission that would decide issues relating to licencing night clubs and like businesses that would consist of their political cronies. They voted it in among themselves without consulting the voters, and on the proposition ballot they gave the voters a choice as to whether or not the mayor(the baksheesh and political advancement seeking Willie Brown) should be able to appoint X number of members to the commission and the city supervisors the rest. The way it was worded on the ballot made it appear to most local voters that they were actually having a say on whether or not to form the commission to begin with, a “yes” or “no” vote all that was required. In my book, that constitutes misleading the public.  

The California branch of the Angry Left has been maligning Schwartzenegger since he took office and the opinion on the street(read that as “among the state’s liberals”) is that he’s “sold out” the citizens of the state and reneged on what he purported to stand for when he ran for governor.

Bullshirt. Like the rest of today’s Democrats, the majority in California’s legislature would rather sabotage their GOP governor(like the Dems on Capital Hill do to W at every opportunity), letting the rest of us pay the price, in order to undermine his performance and get him voted out in favor of their own candidate in the next election. These anal cavities should be slowly smothered to death, or exported to France where they belong. 

I don’t envy the California governor his job, which has to be a frustrating ordeal in itself just because of the obstructions he faces on a day-to-day basis from the state legislature’s liberal majority.

I am moving today, and SBC won’t have my service transferred until tomorrow, so unless my notebook finds me a wireless network in the meantime, I will be offline for about 24 hours.

shudders

You can preview and order the Gulag Archipelago here. Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s 1973, three volume nonfiction work on the brutal Soviet prison camp system describes a reality that places Amnesty International’s reference to Camp Delta as a gulag squarely at the top of the Bullshit List.

That they can even remotely refer to the Guantanamo Bay detention facility thusly(even if they hadn’t admitted not knowing what goes on there) tells us that they have no credibility whatsoever anymore and are letting their left wing, anti-Bush, anti-U.S., anti-freedom, pro-terrorism agenda do their talking for them.

Asshats.

“Guantanamogate” has reaaallllly gotten out of hand.

We get a Newsweek story based on misinformation and quickly retracted as such, then Amnesty International, admitting that they don’t know what’s happening at Camp Delta, the Gitmo detention facility, but going ahead and calling it a gulag anyway, so,

Based on no factual evidence whatsoever(to Bush hating liberals that’s plenty of proof), the left has begun to crow with their usual glee beneath their patented false veneer of concern and hurl accusations of torture and inhumanity, creating yet another wave of anti-Bush hysteria, demands pouring in from liberal politicians and pundits that the detention center be shut down. What a bunch of reactionary obstructionist buffoons!

Let’s read how Oliver North weighs in on the subject.

An exerpt,

Here’s Amnesty’s “gulag:” Upon arrival, detainees are issued a blanket, a sheet, two orange “jump suits,” flip flops, a foam sleeping pad, two bath towels, a washcloth, toothpaste, soap, shampoo, a prayer rug, and a Koran. They are allowed two 15-minute showers per week; They get recreation time and three culturally sensitive meals per day. Schedules are respectful of Islamic traditions, prayer calls are broadcast five times a day and arrows painted on the floors point to Mecca. Their regular quarters include a flushing toilet, running water, and an off-the-floor bed. Detainees who ask for them are provided with soccer balls, playing cards, chessboards and paperback books. All of this, courtesy of the American taxpayers the detainees have sworn to kill.

Now compare that to a Soviet gulag as described by gulag survivor Alexander Solzhenitsyn. If you haven’t yet read his  (1962) novel, One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovitch, I highly recommend adding it to your reading list.

Another of Solzhenitsyn’s books on the subject (in nonfiction mode) is The Gulag Archipelago. A link to a preview at Amazon.com that includes the opening segment follows in the next post.

Last Monday I posted about the Supreme Court’s ruling that it is okay for the DEA to bust medical marijuana patients.

Fox News, on their online video page, reports that the DEA has said it will not actively pursue medical marijuana patients, but focus its efforts on serious traffickers of nonprescribed marijuana. Fox news videos do not possess their own linkable URLs, but this report is presently on the page, which changes from day to day.

Go to the right sidebar, click on Only On Fox, then on Smoked Out? Here is the link to the page.

I have seen stories about the Court’s ruling and surrounding issues in several MSM venues, but none seem to have mentioned the above development, probably because it’s in the liberal interest to keep the folks concerned mad at the Bush Administration for as long as possible.

I know, the Supremes that ruled against medical marijuana were the liberals, those that dissented the conservatives, but you’ll see: It’ll somehow become Bush’s fault, as always.

There’s also a good take on the issue by Daniel Henninger in The Wall Street Journal Online.

Marijuana!

Supreme Court Just Says No

The Supreme Court’s liberal bloc — Stevens, Ginsburg, Souter and Breyer — ensured Monday with the support of Justices Kennedy and Scalia that people sick from cancer treatment will have to think first about a house call from the federal drug police before using marijuana to treat their symptoms. Even the Court’s language was unfeeling: ”The case comes down to the claim that a locally cultivated product that is used domestically rather than sold on the open market is not subject to federal regulation. Given the…undisputed magnitude of the commercial market for marijuana, Wickard and its progeny foreclose that claim.”

Liberalism to cancer patients: Drop dead.

Read the entire column.