June 09, 2006
Sorry, Dude, No Virgins For You!
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.
Posted by Seth at 01:39 PM |
January 07, 2006
Talks With Insurgents
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.
Posted by Seth at 04:15 PM |
December 19, 2005
You Gotta Love This Guy!
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!!!!
Posted by Seth at 02:43 AM |
November 29, 2005
The Economist Weighs In On Iraq
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.
Posted by Seth at 10:30 AM | Comments (2) |
Go Lieberman!
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.
Posted by Seth at 09:41 AM | Comments (4) |
November 21, 2005
Brand New Photo Essay By Michael Yon
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?
Posted by Seth at 07:13 PM | Comments (2) |
November 17, 2005
Where Was The Mainstream Media?
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.
Posted by Seth at 12:46 PM | Comments (4) |
November 01, 2005
New Post From Michael Yon
Michael Yon writes another of his always eagerly awaited posts in his online magazine, this one titled Paying Respect to Those Who've Earned It
Posted by Seth at 06:03 AM |
August 20, 2005
Consequences Of Withdrawal
Mike at Your Republic provides some very serious reasons why any early withdrawal from Iraq would be a disastrous error.
Of course, the bloody not-so-long-term results would elicit cackling glee from the liberals as the MSM would be claiming it was all Bush's fault and, spittle dripping down their quivering chins, the libs would, given their perverse worldview, consider it a victory.
Go have a read...
Posted by Seth at 03:18 AM | Comments (2) |
July 14, 2005
Al-Ja'fari Interview
Iraqi Prime Minister Dr. Ibrahim al-Ja'fari, interviewed by London based daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, provided the viewpoint of himself and his new democratic government regarding the violence in Iraq, the eventual coalition troop withdrawal and the biased coverage Iraq recieves from the Arab media.
...."the first timetable is the exit of the multinational forces at a time that would serve the terrorists and make them destroy the Iraqi citizen and put an end to our democratic experience. The other timetable is to build our security forces and our national army to make them capable of defending Iraq. According to the latter [timetable], the multinational forces will leave with our gratitude, and this is what we have agreed on."
Them's my sentiments exac'ly.
Back in June, a bunch of scum sucking liberal politicians started pressing for an exit date from Iraq. That had to be one of those efforts I've referred to before to make President George W. Bush come out a failure, for purely partisan lefty political reasons. Setting a date would let the terrorists over there know they can stand down and just wait for us to pull out, then renew their attacks with the vim and vigor of the well rested after we've gone.
This would make the liberals and their Democrat lackies, who assininely predicted that Iraq would be a quagmire ala Vietnam, realize their politically corrupt fantasies. If you'll recall, as soon as we exited 'Nam, the communists from the north swarmed in and turned South Vietnam into another "workers' paradise." They murdered, tortured and/ or simply oppressed a citizenry who had trusted us to protect them. Since Iraq is not the Vietnam the libs claimed it would be, they seek to make it so. In order to do this, strictly to make Bush appear to have "fucked up royally", they are more than willing to condemn the Iraqi people to a tragic existence under a severe, fundamentalist Muslim regime. Even the feminist liberals, in order to discredit Bush, are more than happy to assure that the millions of women in Iraq fall under the thumb of subservience to their male counterparts, to the beatings, the lack of respect and the infant genital mutilation that would become coin of the realm.
No sweat, these hypocrite liberals would cheerfully celebrate their dubious victory.
Meanwhile, in the land of reality, there is a whole country full of people who are relishing their freedom from a sadistic despot and his psychopathic sons. They are embracing democracy with all their hearts, and that is good. A free country spawns beau coups less terrorists and its success influences its neighbors.
...."You are aware of what goes on in Iraq concerning the struggle of the Iraqi people... and the enemy of the Iraqi people with all his misdeeds, evils and savagery. Regrettably, many of the satellite television channels ignore and do not display the tragedies that occur in Iraq, such as the rape and murder of women and the violation of the sanctity of women, as though these things did not happen...
"There are crimes committed in Iraq that are not labelled as terrorism[such as] the murder of policemen and heroic Iraqi soldiers... The pure and honest Iraqi woman is killed and this is not reported as terrorism; The innocent Iraqi child is murdered and the Arabic media does not call it terrorism. The Arabic media remains hostile and not objective. I address my admonition to the satellite TV channels to rise to the level of their responsibility by showing the facts and calling a spade a spade."
Hmmmmm.... The Arab media sound an awful lot like our own Mainstream Media, don't they?
Ja'fari warned that the culture of bloodletting that, in his words, characterized the Saddam regime, "has now been adopted by the remaining elements of the [Saddam] regime, who declare: 'Either we govern Iraq or we burn it.' "
From the perspective of our efforts to secure democracy in the Mideast, we have done a lot. We have fostered actual democratic political efforts in a few countries over there, not least of which are Egypt and Lebanon and our efforts in Iraq have borne a democratically elected government there, as well.
The Democrats, for purely political purposes, don't want to acknowledge any of this. They are politically motivated liars (ever heard the term, "the Angry Left?") whose only interest is to depict Bush to be a liar and a failure so they can discredit the GOP and, hopefully for them, get some dishonest, treasonous piece of shit like Hillary Clinton into the Oval Office in the 2008 election. Bye, bye America as we know it....
The battle for Iraq is one we need to win, because in doing so we'll permit an Arab country to flourish and show the rest of the Islamic countries how well their citizens and, as a result their governments, can do when they are run by the will of the people....
Posted by Seth at 09:07 PM |
June 22, 2005
Embracing A New Defeatist Strategy
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.
Posted by Seth at 09:58 AM |
