Greetings from the Left Coast! In Part I of Short Attention Span Theater, we talked about how some Democrats, particularly those running for President, were counting on us to forget the positions they had taken in the past and believe that what they're telling us now is what they've truly always believed. Well, today we're going to play a little game. I'm going to give you some quotations, and we'll see if you can guess who said what. After you've had a chance to read them, I'll give you the answers. Ready? Here we go:
Quote #1
“I was convinced that Saddam had chemical and biological weapons and was doing everything in his power to get nuclear weapons. There was some disparity in the information I had about how far along he was in that process. I didn’t rely on George Bush for that. And I personally think there’s some dishonesty in suggesting that members of the United States Senate relied on George Bush for that information, because I don’t think it’s true. It’s great politics. But it’s not the truth. I’ve just heard people say, I can’t even tell you who, I’ve just heard people say, ‘Well, you know, George Bush - misled us.’ You know, it’s just— I was there, it’s not what happened. I was on the Intelligence Committee, so I got direct information from the intelligence community. And then I had a series of meetings with former Clinton Administration people. And they were all saying the same thing. Everything I was hearing in the Intelligence Committee was the same thing I was hearing from these guys. And there was nary a dissenting voice."
Quote #2
"Iraq is a long way from Ohio, but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risk that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face."
Quote #3
"The lesson of the 20th century is, and we've learned through harsh experience, the only answer to aggression and outlaw behavior is firmness. He [Saddam Hussein] will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has 10 times since 1983."
Quote #4
"[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs."
Quote #5
"Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process."
Quote #6
"We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandate of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them."
Quote #7
"We know that he [Saddam Hussein] has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country."
Quote #8
"Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power."
Quote #9
"We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction."
Quote #10
"The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons..."
Quote #11
"I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force--if necessary--to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security."
Quote #12
"There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years ... We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction."
Quote #13
“Whether one agrees or disagrees with the Administration’s policy towards Iraq, I don’t think there can be any question about Saddam’s conduct. He has systematically violated, over the course of the past 11 years, every significant UN resolution that has demanded that he disarm and destroy his chemical and biological weapons, and any nuclear capacity. This he has refused to do. He lies and cheats; he snubs the mandate and authority of international weapons inspectors; and he games the system to keep buying time against enforcement of the just and legitimate demands of the United Nations, the Security Council, the United States and our allies. Those are simply the facts.“
Quote #14
"In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members .. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons."
Quote #15
"We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has, and has had for a number of years, a developing capacity for the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction."
Quote #16
"Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime ... He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation ... And now he is miscalculating America's response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction... So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real..."
Quote #17
"I think we have to acknowledge what's gone on in Iraq. Saddam Hussein, in effect, has thumbed his nose at the world community. And I think that the president's approaching this in the right fashion."
How many did you guess? Want a hint? Would you believe that every single quote was from a prominent Democrat? No, really. Here's the breakdown:
Quote #1 - Senator John Edwards in an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg of The New Yorker, January, 2007
Quote #2 - Madeleine Albright, then President Clinton's Secretary of State, in remarks at Ohio State University, February, 1998.
Quote #3 - Sandy Berger, then President Clinton's National Security Advisor, who appeared with Secretary Albright at Ohio State in 1998.
Quote #4 - Letter to President Clinton dated October 9, 1998, signed by (among others) Senators Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, and John Kerry.
Quote #5 - Representative Nancy Pelosi, December, 1998.
Quote #6 - Senator Carl Levin, September, 2002
Quotes #7 & 8 - Al Gore, September, 2002
Quote #9 - Senator Edward Kennedy, September, 2002
Quote #10 - Senator Robert Byrd, October, 2002
Quote #11 - Senator John Kerry, October, 2002
Quote #12 - Senator Jay Rockefeller, October, 2002 (at the time, he was Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee)
Quote #13 - Representative Henry Waxman, October, 2002
Quote #14 - Senator Hillary Clinton, October, 2002
Quote #15 - Senator Bob Graham, December, 2002
Quote #16 - Senator John Kerry, January, 2003
Quote #17 - Senator Harry Reid (yes, that Harry Reid), September, 2002
Yep, every single one of these quotes was uttered by a Democrat. Many are the same Democrats who, today, are saying that President Bush "misled" us into war. They were fooled. The intelligence was cooked. But remember the very first quote by John Edwards? These people were members of the Congress of the United States. They had access to whatever intelligence reports and personnel they needed to satisfy themselves on the issues. Claiming that they were somehow fooled just isn't credible. Particularly if you buy into their other contention that George W. Bush is an idiot. (If he was able to fool that many smart people, he certainly can't be an idiot! Or if he did, they certainly can't be very smart people!) And how are we to explain the fact that they were taking the same positions way back during the Clinton Presidency? Was the Clinton administration guilty of the same deceit?
Let's be intellectually honest for a change. The Democrats would love nothing more than to find some reason to impeach President Bush. If there was a shred of evidence that he had lied or twisted the intelligence, articles of impeachment would have been brought so fast it would have made John Kerry's change of heart (between January, 2003, and Presidential Campaign time) seem positively glacial. The bipartisan (that means there were Democrats on it, folks) Senate Intelligence Committee report of 2004 stated that it "did not find any evidence that administration officials attempted to coerce, influence, or pressure analysts to change their judgments related to Iraq's weapons-of-mass-destruction capabilities." Not being satisfied with that report, another bipartisan commission was formed, the Robb-Silberman Commission. In its March, 2005, report, it found "no evidence of political pressure to influence the intelligence community's pre-war assessments of Iraq's weapons programs...Analysts universally asserted that in no instance did political pressure cause them to skew or alter any of their analytical judgments."
So "Bush lied" is itself one of the biggest lies in circulation out there. Look up "lie" in the dictionary of your choice, and you'll find that it means deliberately saying something you know is not true. Everyone believed Iraq had WMDs. Our intelligence service believed it, and so did the British, the Russians, the Germans, and even the French. Heck, we found out after the fact that Hussein's own generals thought he had them!
The fact is, we don't know what happened to the WMDs. We know he had them. We know he used them, both during his war with Iran and against the Kurds in his own country. And we know that they weren't in Iraq when we got there - or, if they are, they're hidden really well. They could have been, as some believe, smuggled across the border into Syria - God knows Saddam had plenty of notice that we were coming before we got there. In case you missed it, there was an explosion in the Syrian city of Aleppo last July. Jane's Defense Weekly reported in its September 26th, 2007, issue that the explosion had been caused by a rocket fuel accident at a plant where scud missles were being fitted with chemical warheads. Now there's also evidence that Iran has been providing Syria with the raw materials necessary to manufacture mustard gas and Sarin (a nerve gas) - but the fact is we don't know for sure whether they're making it from material they got from Iran or from Saddam's old stockpiles. And the reason we don't know for sure what happened to the WMDs is that Saddam wouldn't tell us. If he had opened up and let the inspectors do their jobs instead of trying to block and harrass them at every turn, he would still be in power, happily feeding people feet first into wood chippers and letting his sons rape newlyweds and torture the national soccer team when they lost.
Ever since they lost the 2004 Presidential election, the Democrats have been trying to convince the American people that we were "misled" into war, and it was all the Republicans' fault. Bad, bad Republicans. They tricked the poor Democrats. Oh, if they could only take back their votes authorizing the war! (Well, OK, that last sentence is true.) But I think it's pretty clear who the liars are. And that's another reason why, as I said earlier, I cannot imagine myself ever again voting for a Democrat.
I do, however, commend John Edwards for finally coming clean on the subject - he seemed content to let the lies go by unchallenged when he was John Kerry's running mate, but "better late than never," as the old saying goes. The fact is, one person who has been consistently telling the truth all along is George W. Bush. He said exactly what he was going to do. He said exactly why he was going to do it. And he's done exactly what he said he would do. And he's continuing to do it in spite of what it has cost him politically. More on that later. Thanks for listening.
Friday, October 5, 2007
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
The Phony Phony Soldier Controversy
Greetings from the Left Coast! I was going to go back and cite more examples of how the Democrats alienated me to the point where I can't imagine ever voting for them again. Turns out I don't have to go back very far - they reminded me again just this week.
In case you've been out of touch and haven't heard, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid went to the floor of the U.S. Senate on Monday, October 1, to accuse Rush Limbaugh of attacking U.S. troops who oppose the war by referring to them as "phony soldiers." He called on the rest of the Senate to sign onto a letter he had drafted to Mark Mays, the CEO of Clear Channel, which handles the syndication of Limbaugh's show, asking Mays to publicly repudiate the comments and to ask Limbaugh to apologize for them. If you want to read Senator Reid's statement, you can find the full text of the statement, and the letter, here.
Ultimately 41 Senators (all Democrats, of course) signed the letter. Wait a minute - don't the Democrat's hold a majority in the Senate? Yep - but only 41 of them were willing to sign the letter. The rest of them tiptoed up to the cliff, peeked over the edge, and decided not to jump.
So - let's look at who the Senators were who were so diligently supporting the troops against the dastardly insinuations of Rush Limbaugh. The letter was originated by Harry "this war is lost" Reid, who, by the way, voted against the resolution to condemn MoveOn's "General Betray Us" ad. It was signed by Senator Chuck Schumer - who assured us that the violence in Anbar Province was decreasing in spite of our soldiers' presence, not because of it - and who also voted against the resolution to condemn the ad. Senator Hillary Clinton, who also voted against condemning the ad, signed the letter. Senator Ted Kennedy, who also voted against condemning the ad, signed the letter. Starting to see a pattern here? Senator John Kerry, who shot himself in the foot (figuratively, this time) during his Presidential campaign by quipping that young people needed to stay in school or they might wake up and find themselves in Iraq, signed the letter. If you want a full list of all 41 Senators who signed the letter, you can find it here. I'll let you do the rest of the research to see just how many of the 41 who thought the "phony soldiers" comment was simply beyond the pale didn't think that the Senate should condemn the "General Betray Us" ad.
Now, aside from the rather astounding spectacle of the Senate Majority Leader of the United States wasting the taxpayers' time and money denouncing a radio talk show host, the allegation is absurd on its face. Anyone who has actually listened to Rush Limbaugh knows that there is no public figure in the nation today, with the possible exception of President Bush himself, who has been more consistently supportive of our troops and their mission than Rush Limbaugh. It is clear from the transcript of the broadcast in question, and the context of the remarks, that Limbaugh was referring to soldiers (or alleged soldiers) who come forward with outrageous claims, are used by the anti-war movement to try to stir up more opposition to the war, but whose claims later turn out to be false.
The day before, Limbaugh had broadcast a segment on Jessie MacBeth, who did just that. (More on him in a minute.) ABC News had also just run a segment on "Operation Stolen Valor," a federal investigation of scam artists who posed as military heros to bilk the government of disability and medical benefits. (As I write this, the video of this segment is still available on the Web, here, under the headline, "Phony War Vets.") You can read the press release from the United States Attorney's Office of Western Washington, which talks about several specific cases from Operation Stolen Valor, which uncovered over $1.4 Million in fraudulent payments, right here. So there has been quite a buzz lately about phony soldiers, and unless Senator Reid has suddenly developed the amazing ability to read minds, it seems a bit far-fetched to take this phrase out of context and claim that Limbaugh was referring to genuine solders and veterans who happen to oppose the war. Almost as far-fetched as the concept of Harry Reid as a staunch defender of our troops.
Jessie MacBeth is a particularly vile example of a phony soldier. He popped up in Tacoma, WA, in early 2006, claiming to have been an Army Ranger who served in Iraq. Among other things, he claimed to have killed more than 200 people, many at close range, some as they prayed in a mosque. "They would actually feel the hot muzzle of my rifle on their forehead," he said in one video interview, "We would burn their bodies...hang their bodies from the rafters in the mosque." He claimed to have been awarded a Purple Heart, and to have been discharged because he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. If you want to know more about his claims of atrocities, just do an Internet search on his name.
This video, and his comments, were not just used in this country - they were broadcast across the Arab world, where they were no doubt used as a recruiting tool by Al Qaeda and other groups to inflame the passions of people who are trying to kill our genuine soldiers who, whether they agree with the President or not, are honorably attempting to carry out their mission. But none of it was true. MacBeth washed out after six weeks of basic training. He was never an Army Ranger. He was never in Iraq. He never killed anyone. He never witnessed the atrocities he claimed to have seen and helped to perpetrate. In June of this year he was convicted of filing a bogus claim for VA benefits that included a falsified military-discharge form. You can read the article in the Seattle Times here.
Once the lies were exposed, the anti-war crowd took down the videos and stopped distributing them. Funny, though, but I don't remember anyone apologizing for the episode. And, internationally, the damage was done. Somehow I doubt that Al Jazeera was interested in publishing a retraction.
There have been phony soldiers around for a long time. Heck, one of the guys who was arrested in Operation Stolen Valor was an 83-year-old who falsely claimed to have been shot down while a pilot in World War II. Korean War, Vietnam War, you name it, we've had scammers who made false claims of military service to defraud the government - and by "the government," by the way, I mean you and me. The government doesn't have any money of its own, all it has is ours. But here's what makes events like the Jessie MacBeth episode so insidious: The liberals in this country are so eager to get anything that they can use to discredit George Bush and his policies that when something comes along that fits their preconceived notions, they rush to embrace it without bothering to find out whether it's actually true. It confirms what they already believe, so it must be true. That's what cost Dan Rather his job at CBS News. And that's what made an anti-war poster boy out of phony soldier Jessie MacBeth.
By the way, Mark Mays wrote a very respectful letter back to Harry Reid. You might want to read it, too. You can find it here. He was a lot nicer than I would have been in his place. What I'd like to know from Senator Reid and the forty other Democrats who signed his letter is this: If you're going to waste our time and money publicly attacking someone for being disrespectful to our troops, why don't you direct your ire at someone who slandered every honorable man and woman serving in our military and whose lies were used to inflame our enemies and probably contributed directly to additional U.S. casualties? Someone like, oh, I don't know, Jessie MacBeth?
Thanks for listening.
P.S.: To our own Senator Patty Murray of Washington, who was one of the 41 signatories: you should be ashamed of yourself.
In case you've been out of touch and haven't heard, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid went to the floor of the U.S. Senate on Monday, October 1, to accuse Rush Limbaugh of attacking U.S. troops who oppose the war by referring to them as "phony soldiers." He called on the rest of the Senate to sign onto a letter he had drafted to Mark Mays, the CEO of Clear Channel, which handles the syndication of Limbaugh's show, asking Mays to publicly repudiate the comments and to ask Limbaugh to apologize for them. If you want to read Senator Reid's statement, you can find the full text of the statement, and the letter, here.
Ultimately 41 Senators (all Democrats, of course) signed the letter. Wait a minute - don't the Democrat's hold a majority in the Senate? Yep - but only 41 of them were willing to sign the letter. The rest of them tiptoed up to the cliff, peeked over the edge, and decided not to jump.
So - let's look at who the Senators were who were so diligently supporting the troops against the dastardly insinuations of Rush Limbaugh. The letter was originated by Harry "this war is lost" Reid, who, by the way, voted against the resolution to condemn MoveOn's "General Betray Us" ad. It was signed by Senator Chuck Schumer - who assured us that the violence in Anbar Province was decreasing in spite of our soldiers' presence, not because of it - and who also voted against the resolution to condemn the ad. Senator Hillary Clinton, who also voted against condemning the ad, signed the letter. Senator Ted Kennedy, who also voted against condemning the ad, signed the letter. Starting to see a pattern here? Senator John Kerry, who shot himself in the foot (figuratively, this time) during his Presidential campaign by quipping that young people needed to stay in school or they might wake up and find themselves in Iraq, signed the letter. If you want a full list of all 41 Senators who signed the letter, you can find it here. I'll let you do the rest of the research to see just how many of the 41 who thought the "phony soldiers" comment was simply beyond the pale didn't think that the Senate should condemn the "General Betray Us" ad.
Now, aside from the rather astounding spectacle of the Senate Majority Leader of the United States wasting the taxpayers' time and money denouncing a radio talk show host, the allegation is absurd on its face. Anyone who has actually listened to Rush Limbaugh knows that there is no public figure in the nation today, with the possible exception of President Bush himself, who has been more consistently supportive of our troops and their mission than Rush Limbaugh. It is clear from the transcript of the broadcast in question, and the context of the remarks, that Limbaugh was referring to soldiers (or alleged soldiers) who come forward with outrageous claims, are used by the anti-war movement to try to stir up more opposition to the war, but whose claims later turn out to be false.
The day before, Limbaugh had broadcast a segment on Jessie MacBeth, who did just that. (More on him in a minute.) ABC News had also just run a segment on "Operation Stolen Valor," a federal investigation of scam artists who posed as military heros to bilk the government of disability and medical benefits. (As I write this, the video of this segment is still available on the Web, here, under the headline, "Phony War Vets.") You can read the press release from the United States Attorney's Office of Western Washington, which talks about several specific cases from Operation Stolen Valor, which uncovered over $1.4 Million in fraudulent payments, right here. So there has been quite a buzz lately about phony soldiers, and unless Senator Reid has suddenly developed the amazing ability to read minds, it seems a bit far-fetched to take this phrase out of context and claim that Limbaugh was referring to genuine solders and veterans who happen to oppose the war. Almost as far-fetched as the concept of Harry Reid as a staunch defender of our troops.
Jessie MacBeth is a particularly vile example of a phony soldier. He popped up in Tacoma, WA, in early 2006, claiming to have been an Army Ranger who served in Iraq. Among other things, he claimed to have killed more than 200 people, many at close range, some as they prayed in a mosque. "They would actually feel the hot muzzle of my rifle on their forehead," he said in one video interview, "We would burn their bodies...hang their bodies from the rafters in the mosque." He claimed to have been awarded a Purple Heart, and to have been discharged because he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. If you want to know more about his claims of atrocities, just do an Internet search on his name.
This video, and his comments, were not just used in this country - they were broadcast across the Arab world, where they were no doubt used as a recruiting tool by Al Qaeda and other groups to inflame the passions of people who are trying to kill our genuine soldiers who, whether they agree with the President or not, are honorably attempting to carry out their mission. But none of it was true. MacBeth washed out after six weeks of basic training. He was never an Army Ranger. He was never in Iraq. He never killed anyone. He never witnessed the atrocities he claimed to have seen and helped to perpetrate. In June of this year he was convicted of filing a bogus claim for VA benefits that included a falsified military-discharge form. You can read the article in the Seattle Times here.
Once the lies were exposed, the anti-war crowd took down the videos and stopped distributing them. Funny, though, but I don't remember anyone apologizing for the episode. And, internationally, the damage was done. Somehow I doubt that Al Jazeera was interested in publishing a retraction.
There have been phony soldiers around for a long time. Heck, one of the guys who was arrested in Operation Stolen Valor was an 83-year-old who falsely claimed to have been shot down while a pilot in World War II. Korean War, Vietnam War, you name it, we've had scammers who made false claims of military service to defraud the government - and by "the government," by the way, I mean you and me. The government doesn't have any money of its own, all it has is ours. But here's what makes events like the Jessie MacBeth episode so insidious: The liberals in this country are so eager to get anything that they can use to discredit George Bush and his policies that when something comes along that fits their preconceived notions, they rush to embrace it without bothering to find out whether it's actually true. It confirms what they already believe, so it must be true. That's what cost Dan Rather his job at CBS News. And that's what made an anti-war poster boy out of phony soldier Jessie MacBeth.
By the way, Mark Mays wrote a very respectful letter back to Harry Reid. You might want to read it, too. You can find it here. He was a lot nicer than I would have been in his place. What I'd like to know from Senator Reid and the forty other Democrats who signed his letter is this: If you're going to waste our time and money publicly attacking someone for being disrespectful to our troops, why don't you direct your ire at someone who slandered every honorable man and woman serving in our military and whose lies were used to inflame our enemies and probably contributed directly to additional U.S. casualties? Someone like, oh, I don't know, Jessie MacBeth?
Thanks for listening.
P.S.: To our own Senator Patty Murray of Washington, who was one of the 41 signatories: you should be ashamed of yourself.
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
There's Good News - But You Gotta Look For It!
Greetings from the Left Coast! I saw an amazing article in the Everett Herald this morning. It was an Associated Press article headlined "Deaths in Iraq Plummet." The opening sentence said, and I quote, "The number of American troops and Iraqi civilians killed in the war fell in September to levels not seen in more than a year." It was, in fact, the lowest number, in both categories, since July, 2006. The number of Iraqi civilian, police, and military deaths was 50% lower than August.
Isn't that interesting? We have 30,000 more troops in the region, many of them deployed to what had been the hotbeds of insurgency, and the number of both American and Iraqi deaths is down! Now, on the face of things, one might think that maybe there is some correlation there. Fortunately, thanks to that brilliant military strategist Senator Chuck Schumer, we know that the violence has gone down "despite the surge, not because of the surge." (See earlier blog entry entitled "General Issues.") Boy, glad you told us that, Senator, or we might have actually thought that the troops were succeeding in their mission.
Now being the curious sort of person that I am, I decided to search some other local papers to see if they carried this news. I no longer subscribe to the Seattle Times - I got tired of its editorial bias. But I did search their Web site. I did find an article that apparently ran in yesterday's Times. The one-sentence first paragraph does say that the US military deaths were the lowest since July, 2006. The article then went on to describe various military actions that took place, then segued into a discussion of how Iraqi politians were criticizing the nonbinding U.S. Senate resolution that called for essentially partitioning Iraq into Shiite, Sunni, and Kurdish regions. The article spent eight paragraphs discussing that issue, and concluded with the observation that, "Nevertheless, ethnic and sectarian turmoil have snarled hopes of negotiating such measures..." One sentence on the drop in military deaths, eight paragraphs on an issue that was totally unrelated to the headline, no mention at all of the dramatic decrease in Iraqi deaths. Concluding paragraph obviously intended to convey the hopelessness of the situation. Hmmm....
How about the Seattle Post-Intelligencer? Boy, I really had to search for this one. I finally found it buried in an article that was headlined "Britain to pull 1,000 troops from Iraq." The article begins, and I quote, "Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced Tuesday that he was slashing the remaining British contingent in Iraq by nearly 20 percent." It goes on to discuss how U.S. military officials are "concerned that the reduced British presence in the south could open security gaps along key supply and transit routes to Kuwait." Way down in the article, second paragraph from the end, it says, "The U.S. military toll for September was at least 65, the lowest since July, 2006..." So, let me see, Britain is slashing their troop levels, the U.S. is concerned about it, the "beleaguered Iraqi leader" says they will be able to pick up the slack, but the head of the Basra security committee said that the departure of British forces from that city "had a negative effect on security," and, oh, by the way, U.S. military deaths were the lowest since July, 2006. Hmmm...
This, boys and girls, is called "spin," and it's one reason why the circulation numbers of lots and lots of newspapers continue to plummet. Don't ever let anyone tell you that a newspaper's editorial bias doesn't affect how they report the news. It does.
A Pew Research paper published back in 2004 stated that only 7% of journalists in national publications, and only 12% of journalists in local publications, described themselves as politically conservative. 34% of national journalists, and 23% of local journalists, described themselves as liberals. The rest believed they were moderate. By contrast, 33% of the general public described themselves as conservatives, and only 20% as liberals. So, in case it wasn't already obvious by the way the news gets reported, the survey confirms that conservative Americans are seriously underrepresented in the media - particularly at the national level - and liberal Americans are overrepresented. If we were talking about racial composition rather than political viewpoint, this would be decried as an unacceptable situation that must be remedied, probably through government-mandated quotas.
More than 75% of both national and local journalists believe it is a bad thing for a news organization to have a "decidedly ideological point of view" in their news coverage, yet more than 40% of both groups said that journalists too often did let their ideological views show in their reporting. And here's a really interesting statistic: When asked whether they could think of a news organization that was especially liberal or especially conservative, two-thirds of the conservative journalists answered yes to both questions. When liberal journalists were asked the same thing, almost 80% of them could think of one that was especially conservative (Fox News got the top honor there), but only 25% of them could think of one that was especially liberal. So three-quarters of the liberal journalists couldn't think of a single news organization that was especially liberal!
This would tend to support the position Bernard Goldberg articulated in his excellent (and highly recommended by yours truly) 2003 book Bias - the liberals in the media honestly believe that they represent mainstream America. When they claim that they're not biased, they're not, in their own minds, lying. They really believe it's true. They tend to move in the same small circle of friends and acquaintances who all believe the same way they do, and they reinforce one another's world view. They're convinced that they're mainstream, and truly don't understand why the rest of America doesn't agree.
All I can say is thank God they don't have the stranglehold on news reporting that they had a generation ago. Today, the truth is there to be found, if you're willing to look for it. Thanks for listening.
Isn't that interesting? We have 30,000 more troops in the region, many of them deployed to what had been the hotbeds of insurgency, and the number of both American and Iraqi deaths is down! Now, on the face of things, one might think that maybe there is some correlation there. Fortunately, thanks to that brilliant military strategist Senator Chuck Schumer, we know that the violence has gone down "despite the surge, not because of the surge." (See earlier blog entry entitled "General Issues.") Boy, glad you told us that, Senator, or we might have actually thought that the troops were succeeding in their mission.
Now being the curious sort of person that I am, I decided to search some other local papers to see if they carried this news. I no longer subscribe to the Seattle Times - I got tired of its editorial bias. But I did search their Web site. I did find an article that apparently ran in yesterday's Times. The one-sentence first paragraph does say that the US military deaths were the lowest since July, 2006. The article then went on to describe various military actions that took place, then segued into a discussion of how Iraqi politians were criticizing the nonbinding U.S. Senate resolution that called for essentially partitioning Iraq into Shiite, Sunni, and Kurdish regions. The article spent eight paragraphs discussing that issue, and concluded with the observation that, "Nevertheless, ethnic and sectarian turmoil have snarled hopes of negotiating such measures..." One sentence on the drop in military deaths, eight paragraphs on an issue that was totally unrelated to the headline, no mention at all of the dramatic decrease in Iraqi deaths. Concluding paragraph obviously intended to convey the hopelessness of the situation. Hmmm....
How about the Seattle Post-Intelligencer? Boy, I really had to search for this one. I finally found it buried in an article that was headlined "Britain to pull 1,000 troops from Iraq." The article begins, and I quote, "Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced Tuesday that he was slashing the remaining British contingent in Iraq by nearly 20 percent." It goes on to discuss how U.S. military officials are "concerned that the reduced British presence in the south could open security gaps along key supply and transit routes to Kuwait." Way down in the article, second paragraph from the end, it says, "The U.S. military toll for September was at least 65, the lowest since July, 2006..." So, let me see, Britain is slashing their troop levels, the U.S. is concerned about it, the "beleaguered Iraqi leader" says they will be able to pick up the slack, but the head of the Basra security committee said that the departure of British forces from that city "had a negative effect on security," and, oh, by the way, U.S. military deaths were the lowest since July, 2006. Hmmm...
This, boys and girls, is called "spin," and it's one reason why the circulation numbers of lots and lots of newspapers continue to plummet. Don't ever let anyone tell you that a newspaper's editorial bias doesn't affect how they report the news. It does.
A Pew Research paper published back in 2004 stated that only 7% of journalists in national publications, and only 12% of journalists in local publications, described themselves as politically conservative. 34% of national journalists, and 23% of local journalists, described themselves as liberals. The rest believed they were moderate. By contrast, 33% of the general public described themselves as conservatives, and only 20% as liberals. So, in case it wasn't already obvious by the way the news gets reported, the survey confirms that conservative Americans are seriously underrepresented in the media - particularly at the national level - and liberal Americans are overrepresented. If we were talking about racial composition rather than political viewpoint, this would be decried as an unacceptable situation that must be remedied, probably through government-mandated quotas.
More than 75% of both national and local journalists believe it is a bad thing for a news organization to have a "decidedly ideological point of view" in their news coverage, yet more than 40% of both groups said that journalists too often did let their ideological views show in their reporting. And here's a really interesting statistic: When asked whether they could think of a news organization that was especially liberal or especially conservative, two-thirds of the conservative journalists answered yes to both questions. When liberal journalists were asked the same thing, almost 80% of them could think of one that was especially conservative (Fox News got the top honor there), but only 25% of them could think of one that was especially liberal. So three-quarters of the liberal journalists couldn't think of a single news organization that was especially liberal!
This would tend to support the position Bernard Goldberg articulated in his excellent (and highly recommended by yours truly) 2003 book Bias - the liberals in the media honestly believe that they represent mainstream America. When they claim that they're not biased, they're not, in their own minds, lying. They really believe it's true. They tend to move in the same small circle of friends and acquaintances who all believe the same way they do, and they reinforce one another's world view. They're convinced that they're mainstream, and truly don't understand why the rest of America doesn't agree.
All I can say is thank God they don't have the stranglehold on news reporting that they had a generation ago. Today, the truth is there to be found, if you're willing to look for it. Thanks for listening.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Teaching Everything But Common Sense
Greetings from the Left Coast! I'm going to do something unusual in this entry, and ask you to read something someone else has written.
One of the hallmarks of Secular-Progressive thought is that it is never willing to make moral judgments about anything. Having rejected the concept that there is an ultimate standard of right and wrong that is external to ourselves, they're not willing to pass judgment on anything or anyone as being "wrong" or "evil" (except for their own government, of course). Nowhere in recent memory has this been as ridiculously obvious as in the invitation extended to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak at Columbia University.
Syndicated columnist Mona Charen wrote an excellent article about this appearance, on the theme that you cannot "advance the search for truth by giving a platform to liars and criminals." Please take the time to click through and read her column. You can find it here.
And if I had children in college today, here's what would scare the heck out of me (quoting from her column): "The New York Times reporter present estimated that 30 percent of the audience was pro-Ahmadinejad. Thirty percent. More than anything, that sends a chill down the spine." Where do you suppose that thirty percent picked up the value system (or lack thereof) that allowed them to look evil in the face and not be able - or willing - to recognize it for what it is?
One of the hallmarks of Secular-Progressive thought is that it is never willing to make moral judgments about anything. Having rejected the concept that there is an ultimate standard of right and wrong that is external to ourselves, they're not willing to pass judgment on anything or anyone as being "wrong" or "evil" (except for their own government, of course). Nowhere in recent memory has this been as ridiculously obvious as in the invitation extended to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak at Columbia University.
Syndicated columnist Mona Charen wrote an excellent article about this appearance, on the theme that you cannot "advance the search for truth by giving a platform to liars and criminals." Please take the time to click through and read her column. You can find it here.
And if I had children in college today, here's what would scare the heck out of me (quoting from her column): "The New York Times reporter present estimated that 30 percent of the audience was pro-Ahmadinejad. Thirty percent. More than anything, that sends a chill down the spine." Where do you suppose that thirty percent picked up the value system (or lack thereof) that allowed them to look evil in the face and not be able - or willing - to recognize it for what it is?
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Can't MoveOn Quite Yet
Greetings from the Left Coast! A couple of posts ago, I talked about how disgusted I was at the way the Democrats have reacted to both General Petraeus' report to Congress and to the MoveOn ad characterizing him as "General Betray Us." I pointed out, in particular, that a week had gone by since the ad had run, and none of the leading Democrat Presidential candidates had denounced it.
Well, last week, the Senate actually brought a motion to the floor to formally condemn the ad. Guess who voted against the motion to condemn the MoveOn ad? Twenty-five Senators voted against the motion to condemn the ad. (By lightning calculation that means that fully one-fourth of the Senate of the United States apparently thought that the ad was just fine.) Would you believe all twenty-five were Democrats? Among the twenty-five were Senator Hillary Clinton, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, along with the usual suspects: Senators Boxer, Durbin, Feingold, Kennedy, Kerry, our own Patty Murray, Schumer, etc. Barak Obama, our own Maria Cantwell, and Joe Biden courageously abstained from voting.
I'm sure that if someone ever manages to get them to explain their votes, they'll say that it was a free speech issue, and that whether they approved of it or not, the Senate shouldn't be voting on something like that. Democrats love to advocate free speech, as long as it's speech they agree with. If you pay close attention, though, you'll see that they're not crazy about supporting the other kind. Well, to quote the Honorable Tom Lantos, "With all due respect...I must say, I don't buy it."
In case you don't know, MoveOn.org was organized during the Clinton Presidency, and took its name from the idea that Congress should just censure the President and "move on" rather than go through the impeachment process. Billionaire George Soros is a major financial backer of MoveOn, and they have poured many millions of dollars into trying to get Democrats elected.
They're not shy about throwing a Democrat overboard, either - they were big backers of Ned Lamont, who defeated Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut Democratic Primary of 2006, because Joe took some positions they didn't like very much, particularly in regard to the War on Terror. A lot of mainstream Democrats didn't bother to vote in the primary election, but MoveOn was able to mobilize the more radical left which came out to vote for Ned. Party officials took the position that the people had spoken, Ned Lamont had won the primary, he was the official Democrat on the ticket, and that was that. Tough luck, Joe.
Yes, we can take some comfort in the fact that mainstream Democrats did come out in the general election and did reject Ned Lamont in favor of Senator Lieberman, who ran, and won, as an independent - but the fact is that if you're a Democrat, criticizing MoveOn can be, shall we say, a career-altering decision. Also, I suppose it might be awkward for Senator Clinton to say anything bad about them seeing as how they were originally formed as a Clinton support group.
So, you be the judge: Did the Group of 25 oppose this measure out of deep-seated convictions that Congress shouldn't be condemning organizations for exercising their free speech rights - no matter how hateful or irresponsible that speech might be - or because they didn't want to take a chance on losing millions of dollars of campaign contributions or, worse yet, see those millions used against them?
Oh, and to Senators Cantwell, Biden, and particularly Senator Obama, at least have the guts to take a position on one side or the other, will you? President Harry Truman (a Democrat) was famous for the "The Buck Stops Here" sign on his desk. He understood that when you sit in the Oval Office, you don't get to abstain from making decisions. People who aspire to occupy that office might want to keep that in mind.
Thanks for listening...
Well, last week, the Senate actually brought a motion to the floor to formally condemn the ad. Guess who voted against the motion to condemn the MoveOn ad? Twenty-five Senators voted against the motion to condemn the ad. (By lightning calculation that means that fully one-fourth of the Senate of the United States apparently thought that the ad was just fine.) Would you believe all twenty-five were Democrats? Among the twenty-five were Senator Hillary Clinton, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, along with the usual suspects: Senators Boxer, Durbin, Feingold, Kennedy, Kerry, our own Patty Murray, Schumer, etc. Barak Obama, our own Maria Cantwell, and Joe Biden courageously abstained from voting.
I'm sure that if someone ever manages to get them to explain their votes, they'll say that it was a free speech issue, and that whether they approved of it or not, the Senate shouldn't be voting on something like that. Democrats love to advocate free speech, as long as it's speech they agree with. If you pay close attention, though, you'll see that they're not crazy about supporting the other kind. Well, to quote the Honorable Tom Lantos, "With all due respect...I must say, I don't buy it."
In case you don't know, MoveOn.org was organized during the Clinton Presidency, and took its name from the idea that Congress should just censure the President and "move on" rather than go through the impeachment process. Billionaire George Soros is a major financial backer of MoveOn, and they have poured many millions of dollars into trying to get Democrats elected.
They're not shy about throwing a Democrat overboard, either - they were big backers of Ned Lamont, who defeated Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut Democratic Primary of 2006, because Joe took some positions they didn't like very much, particularly in regard to the War on Terror. A lot of mainstream Democrats didn't bother to vote in the primary election, but MoveOn was able to mobilize the more radical left which came out to vote for Ned. Party officials took the position that the people had spoken, Ned Lamont had won the primary, he was the official Democrat on the ticket, and that was that. Tough luck, Joe.
Yes, we can take some comfort in the fact that mainstream Democrats did come out in the general election and did reject Ned Lamont in favor of Senator Lieberman, who ran, and won, as an independent - but the fact is that if you're a Democrat, criticizing MoveOn can be, shall we say, a career-altering decision. Also, I suppose it might be awkward for Senator Clinton to say anything bad about them seeing as how they were originally formed as a Clinton support group.
So, you be the judge: Did the Group of 25 oppose this measure out of deep-seated convictions that Congress shouldn't be condemning organizations for exercising their free speech rights - no matter how hateful or irresponsible that speech might be - or because they didn't want to take a chance on losing millions of dollars of campaign contributions or, worse yet, see those millions used against them?
Oh, and to Senators Cantwell, Biden, and particularly Senator Obama, at least have the guts to take a position on one side or the other, will you? President Harry Truman (a Democrat) was famous for the "The Buck Stops Here" sign on his desk. He understood that when you sit in the Oval Office, you don't get to abstain from making decisions. People who aspire to occupy that office might want to keep that in mind.
Thanks for listening...
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Short Attention Span Theater
Greetings from the Left Coast! In my last entry, I started explaining why the Democrats have lost my vote and won't get it back in the foreseeable future. This post will continue in that vein.
On October 9, 2002, a Senator took the floor of the United States Senate. Here, in part, is what he said:
“With respect to Saddam Hussein and the threat he presents, we must ask ourselves a simple question: Why? Why is Saddam Hussein pursuing weapons that most nations have agreed to limit or give up? Why is Saddam Hussein guilty of breaking his own cease-fire agreement with the international community? Why is Saddam Hussein attempting to develop nuclear weapons when most nations don't even try, and responsible nations that have them attempt to limit their potential for disaster? Why did Saddam Hussein threaten and provoke? Why does he develop missiles that exceed allowable limits? Why did Saddam Hussein lie and deceive the inspection teams previously? Why did Saddam Hussein not account for all of the weapons of mass destruction which UNSCOM identified? Why is he seeking to develop unmanned airborne vehicles for delivery of biological agents?...
“It would be naive to the point of grave danger not to believe that, left to his own devices, Saddam Hussein will provoke, misjudge, or stumble into a future, more dangerous confrontation with the civilized world. He has as much as promised it. He has already created a stunning track record of miscalculation. He miscalculated an 8-year war with Iran. He miscalculated the invasion of Kuwait. He miscalculated America's responses to it. He miscalculated the result of setting oil rigs on fire. He miscalculated the impact of sending Scuds into Israel. He miscalculated his own military might. He miscalculated the Arab world's response to his plight. He miscalculated in attempting an assassination of a former President of the United States. And he is miscalculating now America's judgments about his miscalculations.
"All those miscalculations are compounded by the rest of history. A brutal, oppressive dictator, guilty of personally murdering and condoning murder and torture, grotesque violence against women, execution of political opponents, a war criminal who used chemical weapons against another nation and, of course, as we know, against his own people, the Kurds. He has diverted funds from the Oil-for-Food program, intended by the international community to go to his own people. He has supported and harbored terrorist groups, particularly radical Palestinian groups such as Abu Nidal, and he has given money to families of suicide murderers in Israel…
“It is the total of all of these acts that provided the foundation for the world's determination in 1991 at the end of the gulf war that Saddam Hussein must: unconditionally accept the destruction, removal, or rendering harmless under international supervision of his chemical and biological weapons and ballistic missile delivery systems... [and] unconditionally agree not to acquire or develop nuclear weapons or nuclear weapon-usable material.
"Saddam Hussein signed that agreement. Saddam Hussein is in office today because of that agreement. It is the only reason he survived in 1991. In 1991, the world collectively made a judgment that this man should not have weapons of mass destruction. And we are here today in the year 2002 with an uninspected 4-year interval during which time we know through intelligence he not only has kept them, but he continues to grow them.
"I believe the record of Saddam Hussein's ruthless, reckless breach of international values and standards of behavior which is at the core of the cease-fire agreement, with no reach, no stretch, is cause enough for the world community to hold him accountable by use of force, if necessary. The threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real, but as I said, it is not new. It has been with us since the end of that war, and particularly in the last 4 years we know after Operation Desert Fox failed to force him to reaccept them, that he has continued to build those weapons.
"He has had a free hand for 4 years to reconstitute these weapons, allowing the world, during the interval, to lose the focus we had on weapons of mass destruction and the issue of proliferation…
“I have said publicly for years that weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam Hussein pose a real and grave threat to our security and that of our allies in the Persian Gulf region. Saddam Hussein's record bears this out.
"I have talked about that record. Iraq never fully accounted for the major gaps and inconsistencies in declarations provided to the inspectors of the pre-Gulf war weapons of mass destruction program, nor did the Iraq regime provide credible proof that it had completely destroyed its weapons and production infrastructure.
"He has continually failed to meet the obligations imposed by the international community on Iraq at the end of the Persian Gulf war, that the Iraqi regime provide credible proof to declare and destroy its weapons of mass destruction and delivery systems and to forego the development of nuclear weapons. During the 7 years of weapons inspections, the Iraqi regime repeatedly frustrated the work of the UNSCOM--Special Commission--inspectors, culminating in 1998 in their ouster. Even during the period of inspections, Iraq never fully accounted for major gaps and inconsistencies in declarations provided to the inspectors of its pre-gulf war WMD programs, nor did the Iraqi regime provide credible proof that it had completely destroyed its weapons stockpiles and production infrastructure.
"It is clear that in the 4 years since the UNSCOM inspectors were forced out, Saddam Hussein has continued his quest for weapons of mass destruction. According to intelligence, Iraq has chemical and biological weapons as well as missiles with ranges in excess of the 150 kilometer restriction imposed by the United Nations in the ceasefire resolution. Although Iraq's chemical weapons capability was reduced during the UNSCOM inspections, Iraq has maintained its chemical weapons effort over the last 4 years. Evidence suggests that it has begun renewed production of chemical warfare agents, probably including mustard gas, sarin, cyclosarin, and VX. Intelligence reports show that Iraq has invested more heavily in its biological weapons programs over the 4 years, with the result that all key aspects of this program--R&D, production and weaponization--are active. Most elements of the program are larger and more advanced than they were before the gulf war. Iraq has some lethal and incapacitating agents and is capable of quickly producing and weaponizing a variety of such agents, including anthrax, for delivery on a range of vehicles such as bombs, missiles, aerial sprayers, and covert operatives which could bring them to the United States homeland. Since inspectors left, the Iraqi regime has energized its missile program, probably now consisting of a few dozen Scud-type missiles with ranges of 650 to 900 kilometers that could hit Israel, Saudi Arabia and other U.S. allies in the region. In addition, Iraq is developing unmanned aerial vehicles UAVs, capable of delivering chemical and biological warfare agents, which could threaten Iraq's neighbors as well as American forces in the Persian Gulf.
"Prior to the gulf war, Iraq had an advanced nuclear weapons development program. Although UNSCOM and IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors learned much about Iraq's efforts in this area, Iraq has failed to provide complete information on all aspects of its program. Iraq has maintained its nuclear scientists and technicians as well as sufficient dual-use manufacturing capability to support a reconstituted nuclear weapons program. Iraqi defectors who once worked for Iraq's nuclear weapons establishment have reportedly told American officials that acquiring nuclear weapons is a top priority for Saddam Hussein's regime.
"According to the CIA's report, all U.S. intelligence experts agree that Iraq is seeking nuclear weapons. There is little question that Saddam Hussein wants to develop nuclear weapons. The more difficult question to answer is when Iraq could actually achieve this goal. That depends on is its ability to acquire weapons-grade fissile material. If Iraq could acquire this material from abroad, the CIA estimates that it could have a nuclear weapon within 1 year…
“As bad as he is, Saddam Hussein, the dictator, is not the cause of war. Saddam Hussein sitting in Baghdad with an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction is a different matter. In the wake of September 11, who among us can say, with any certainty, to anybody, that those weapons might not be used against our troops or against allies in the region? Who can say that this master of miscalculation will not develop a weapon of mass destruction even greater--a nuclear weapon--then reinvade Kuwait, push the Kurds out, attack Israel, any number of scenarios to try to further his ambitions to be the pan-Arab leader or simply to confront in the region, and once again miscalculate the response, to believe he is stronger because he has those weapons?
"And while the administration has failed to provide any direct link between Iraq and the events of September 11, can we afford to ignore the possibility that Saddam Hussein might accidentally, as well as purposely, allow those weapons to slide off to one group or other in a region where weapons are the currency of trade? How do we leave that to chance?
"That is why the enforcement mechanism through the United Nations and the reality of the potential of the use of force is so critical to achieve the protection of long-term interests, not just of the United States but of the world, to understand that the dynamic has changed, that we are living in a different status today, that we cannot sit by and be as complacent or even negligent about weapons of mass destruction and proliferation as we have been in the past.
"The Iraqi regime's record over the decade leaves little doubt that Saddam Hussein wants to retain his arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and, obviously, as we have said, grow it. These weapons represent an unacceptable threat…
“If in the end these efforts fail, and if in the end we are at war, we will have an obligation, ultimately, to the Iraqi people with whom we are not at war. This is a war against a regime, mostly one man. So other nations in the region and all of us will need to help create an Iraq that is a place and a force for stability and openness in the region. That effort is going to be long term, costly, and not without difficulty, given Iraq's ethnic and religious divisions and history of domestic turbulence…
“Saddam Hussein has a choice: He can continue to defy the international community, or he can fulfill his longstanding obligations to disarm. He is the person who has brought the world to this brink of confrontation.
"He is the dictator who can end the stalemate simply by following the terms of the agreement which left him in power…”
So...did you guess who that Senator was? Some raving, right-wing, war-mongering, conservative Republican? Naw...that was Senator John Kerry. Of course, little more than a year later, he was hoping that the American people wouldn't remember this speech. He was saying that he was deceived. The intelligence was manipulated. We were all misled. The scary thing is that almost half of the voters in the 2004 Presidential election apparently bought the story! Talk about a short attention span!
Bovine feces. He was a United States Senator - he had access to the same intelligence everyone else did. Go back and read through the comments again. Do they sound like someone who has been duped into supporting a position that he doesn't really believe in? On the contrary, it sounds to me like the words of a man who had a very clear understanding of the situation and the risk it posed to our nation and the world. That's probably why he voted for the war before he voted against it...or was it that he voted against it before he voted for it...oh heck, if he can't even keep his own positions straight, how does he expect me to?
The fact is that I agree with pretty much everything he said in that October, 2002 speech. But when it appeared that he might be able to get some political gain out of turning around and bashing the Bush administration for actually doing what he said we should do - holding Saddam Hussein accountable for his actions - he blithely reversed course and insulted my intelligence by apparently believing that I was too stupid to remember what he'd said before!
Didn't work, Senator Kerry...I did remember. The Congressional Record can be an inconvenient thing at times, can't it? And I won't forget the two-faced behavior you indulged in for political gain while young men and women were dying half a world away. Nor will I forgive you, nor the party that sponsored you. Of course, for those of us who actually remember the Vietnam War, and your behavior when you came back from it, this shouldn't have come as a huge surprise. For the life of me, I can't understand how this man has any credibility left, or how the citizens of Massachusetts can vote to send him back to the Senate year after year and still look themselves in the faces in their bathroom mirrors every morning. (Of course, they keep sending Ted Kennedy back to the Senate too, but that's another entry for another day.)
This is just one example of the two-faced behavior of leading Democrats before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. I've got more, but I'm not sure how many I'll actually write about here because it's not good for my blood pressure. Anyway, thanks for listening.
On October 9, 2002, a Senator took the floor of the United States Senate. Here, in part, is what he said:
“With respect to Saddam Hussein and the threat he presents, we must ask ourselves a simple question: Why? Why is Saddam Hussein pursuing weapons that most nations have agreed to limit or give up? Why is Saddam Hussein guilty of breaking his own cease-fire agreement with the international community? Why is Saddam Hussein attempting to develop nuclear weapons when most nations don't even try, and responsible nations that have them attempt to limit their potential for disaster? Why did Saddam Hussein threaten and provoke? Why does he develop missiles that exceed allowable limits? Why did Saddam Hussein lie and deceive the inspection teams previously? Why did Saddam Hussein not account for all of the weapons of mass destruction which UNSCOM identified? Why is he seeking to develop unmanned airborne vehicles for delivery of biological agents?...
“It would be naive to the point of grave danger not to believe that, left to his own devices, Saddam Hussein will provoke, misjudge, or stumble into a future, more dangerous confrontation with the civilized world. He has as much as promised it. He has already created a stunning track record of miscalculation. He miscalculated an 8-year war with Iran. He miscalculated the invasion of Kuwait. He miscalculated America's responses to it. He miscalculated the result of setting oil rigs on fire. He miscalculated the impact of sending Scuds into Israel. He miscalculated his own military might. He miscalculated the Arab world's response to his plight. He miscalculated in attempting an assassination of a former President of the United States. And he is miscalculating now America's judgments about his miscalculations.
"All those miscalculations are compounded by the rest of history. A brutal, oppressive dictator, guilty of personally murdering and condoning murder and torture, grotesque violence against women, execution of political opponents, a war criminal who used chemical weapons against another nation and, of course, as we know, against his own people, the Kurds. He has diverted funds from the Oil-for-Food program, intended by the international community to go to his own people. He has supported and harbored terrorist groups, particularly radical Palestinian groups such as Abu Nidal, and he has given money to families of suicide murderers in Israel…
“It is the total of all of these acts that provided the foundation for the world's determination in 1991 at the end of the gulf war that Saddam Hussein must: unconditionally accept the destruction, removal, or rendering harmless under international supervision of his chemical and biological weapons and ballistic missile delivery systems... [and] unconditionally agree not to acquire or develop nuclear weapons or nuclear weapon-usable material.
"Saddam Hussein signed that agreement. Saddam Hussein is in office today because of that agreement. It is the only reason he survived in 1991. In 1991, the world collectively made a judgment that this man should not have weapons of mass destruction. And we are here today in the year 2002 with an uninspected 4-year interval during which time we know through intelligence he not only has kept them, but he continues to grow them.
"I believe the record of Saddam Hussein's ruthless, reckless breach of international values and standards of behavior which is at the core of the cease-fire agreement, with no reach, no stretch, is cause enough for the world community to hold him accountable by use of force, if necessary. The threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real, but as I said, it is not new. It has been with us since the end of that war, and particularly in the last 4 years we know after Operation Desert Fox failed to force him to reaccept them, that he has continued to build those weapons.
"He has had a free hand for 4 years to reconstitute these weapons, allowing the world, during the interval, to lose the focus we had on weapons of mass destruction and the issue of proliferation…
“I have said publicly for years that weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam Hussein pose a real and grave threat to our security and that of our allies in the Persian Gulf region. Saddam Hussein's record bears this out.
"I have talked about that record. Iraq never fully accounted for the major gaps and inconsistencies in declarations provided to the inspectors of the pre-Gulf war weapons of mass destruction program, nor did the Iraq regime provide credible proof that it had completely destroyed its weapons and production infrastructure.
"He has continually failed to meet the obligations imposed by the international community on Iraq at the end of the Persian Gulf war, that the Iraqi regime provide credible proof to declare and destroy its weapons of mass destruction and delivery systems and to forego the development of nuclear weapons. During the 7 years of weapons inspections, the Iraqi regime repeatedly frustrated the work of the UNSCOM--Special Commission--inspectors, culminating in 1998 in their ouster. Even during the period of inspections, Iraq never fully accounted for major gaps and inconsistencies in declarations provided to the inspectors of its pre-gulf war WMD programs, nor did the Iraqi regime provide credible proof that it had completely destroyed its weapons stockpiles and production infrastructure.
"It is clear that in the 4 years since the UNSCOM inspectors were forced out, Saddam Hussein has continued his quest for weapons of mass destruction. According to intelligence, Iraq has chemical and biological weapons as well as missiles with ranges in excess of the 150 kilometer restriction imposed by the United Nations in the ceasefire resolution. Although Iraq's chemical weapons capability was reduced during the UNSCOM inspections, Iraq has maintained its chemical weapons effort over the last 4 years. Evidence suggests that it has begun renewed production of chemical warfare agents, probably including mustard gas, sarin, cyclosarin, and VX. Intelligence reports show that Iraq has invested more heavily in its biological weapons programs over the 4 years, with the result that all key aspects of this program--R&D, production and weaponization--are active. Most elements of the program are larger and more advanced than they were before the gulf war. Iraq has some lethal and incapacitating agents and is capable of quickly producing and weaponizing a variety of such agents, including anthrax, for delivery on a range of vehicles such as bombs, missiles, aerial sprayers, and covert operatives which could bring them to the United States homeland. Since inspectors left, the Iraqi regime has energized its missile program, probably now consisting of a few dozen Scud-type missiles with ranges of 650 to 900 kilometers that could hit Israel, Saudi Arabia and other U.S. allies in the region. In addition, Iraq is developing unmanned aerial vehicles UAVs, capable of delivering chemical and biological warfare agents, which could threaten Iraq's neighbors as well as American forces in the Persian Gulf.
"Prior to the gulf war, Iraq had an advanced nuclear weapons development program. Although UNSCOM and IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors learned much about Iraq's efforts in this area, Iraq has failed to provide complete information on all aspects of its program. Iraq has maintained its nuclear scientists and technicians as well as sufficient dual-use manufacturing capability to support a reconstituted nuclear weapons program. Iraqi defectors who once worked for Iraq's nuclear weapons establishment have reportedly told American officials that acquiring nuclear weapons is a top priority for Saddam Hussein's regime.
"According to the CIA's report, all U.S. intelligence experts agree that Iraq is seeking nuclear weapons. There is little question that Saddam Hussein wants to develop nuclear weapons. The more difficult question to answer is when Iraq could actually achieve this goal. That depends on is its ability to acquire weapons-grade fissile material. If Iraq could acquire this material from abroad, the CIA estimates that it could have a nuclear weapon within 1 year…
“As bad as he is, Saddam Hussein, the dictator, is not the cause of war. Saddam Hussein sitting in Baghdad with an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction is a different matter. In the wake of September 11, who among us can say, with any certainty, to anybody, that those weapons might not be used against our troops or against allies in the region? Who can say that this master of miscalculation will not develop a weapon of mass destruction even greater--a nuclear weapon--then reinvade Kuwait, push the Kurds out, attack Israel, any number of scenarios to try to further his ambitions to be the pan-Arab leader or simply to confront in the region, and once again miscalculate the response, to believe he is stronger because he has those weapons?
"And while the administration has failed to provide any direct link between Iraq and the events of September 11, can we afford to ignore the possibility that Saddam Hussein might accidentally, as well as purposely, allow those weapons to slide off to one group or other in a region where weapons are the currency of trade? How do we leave that to chance?
"That is why the enforcement mechanism through the United Nations and the reality of the potential of the use of force is so critical to achieve the protection of long-term interests, not just of the United States but of the world, to understand that the dynamic has changed, that we are living in a different status today, that we cannot sit by and be as complacent or even negligent about weapons of mass destruction and proliferation as we have been in the past.
"The Iraqi regime's record over the decade leaves little doubt that Saddam Hussein wants to retain his arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and, obviously, as we have said, grow it. These weapons represent an unacceptable threat…
“If in the end these efforts fail, and if in the end we are at war, we will have an obligation, ultimately, to the Iraqi people with whom we are not at war. This is a war against a regime, mostly one man. So other nations in the region and all of us will need to help create an Iraq that is a place and a force for stability and openness in the region. That effort is going to be long term, costly, and not without difficulty, given Iraq's ethnic and religious divisions and history of domestic turbulence…
“Saddam Hussein has a choice: He can continue to defy the international community, or he can fulfill his longstanding obligations to disarm. He is the person who has brought the world to this brink of confrontation.
"He is the dictator who can end the stalemate simply by following the terms of the agreement which left him in power…”
So...did you guess who that Senator was? Some raving, right-wing, war-mongering, conservative Republican? Naw...that was Senator John Kerry. Of course, little more than a year later, he was hoping that the American people wouldn't remember this speech. He was saying that he was deceived. The intelligence was manipulated. We were all misled. The scary thing is that almost half of the voters in the 2004 Presidential election apparently bought the story! Talk about a short attention span!
Bovine feces. He was a United States Senator - he had access to the same intelligence everyone else did. Go back and read through the comments again. Do they sound like someone who has been duped into supporting a position that he doesn't really believe in? On the contrary, it sounds to me like the words of a man who had a very clear understanding of the situation and the risk it posed to our nation and the world. That's probably why he voted for the war before he voted against it...or was it that he voted against it before he voted for it...oh heck, if he can't even keep his own positions straight, how does he expect me to?
The fact is that I agree with pretty much everything he said in that October, 2002 speech. But when it appeared that he might be able to get some political gain out of turning around and bashing the Bush administration for actually doing what he said we should do - holding Saddam Hussein accountable for his actions - he blithely reversed course and insulted my intelligence by apparently believing that I was too stupid to remember what he'd said before!
Didn't work, Senator Kerry...I did remember. The Congressional Record can be an inconvenient thing at times, can't it? And I won't forget the two-faced behavior you indulged in for political gain while young men and women were dying half a world away. Nor will I forgive you, nor the party that sponsored you. Of course, for those of us who actually remember the Vietnam War, and your behavior when you came back from it, this shouldn't have come as a huge surprise. For the life of me, I can't understand how this man has any credibility left, or how the citizens of Massachusetts can vote to send him back to the Senate year after year and still look themselves in the faces in their bathroom mirrors every morning. (Of course, they keep sending Ted Kennedy back to the Senate too, but that's another entry for another day.)
This is just one example of the two-faced behavior of leading Democrats before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. I've got more, but I'm not sure how many I'll actually write about here because it's not good for my blood pressure. Anyway, thanks for listening.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
General Issues
Greetings from the Left Coast! In previous entries, I said I'd try to explain why I can't envision a situation where I would ever again vote for a Democrat. Let's start with the recent testimony of General David Petraeus before Congress, since that's what finally pushed me over the edge into the blogosphere.
But first, I have a couple of vocabulary words to share with you, just for the fun of it (emphasis added):
"Treason - (1) Violation of allegiance toward one's country or sovereign, especially the betrayal of one's country by waging war against it or by consciously and purposely acting to aid its enemies. (2) A betrayal of trust or confidence." (from the American Heritage Dictionary)
The Dictionary.com entry, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, also states: "Treason is any attempt to overthrow the government or impair the well-being of a state to which one owes allegiance; the crime of giving aid or comfort to the enemies of one's government. Sedition is any act, writing, speech, etc., directed unlawfully against state authority, the government, or constitution, or calculated to bring it into contempt or to incite others to hostility, ill will or disaffection."
Moving right along now...
Back in January, the Senate unanimously confirmed General David Petraeus as the commander of the Multi-National Force in Iraq. By "unanimously," I mean that no one voted against him. There were nineteen Senators, both Republican and Democrat, who didn't vote. Seems to me that was a pretty important vote, and one that you'd want to be on the record for, but let's put that aside for the moment, and look at some of the Senators who voted for the General's confirmation. That list included Senators Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Dick Durbin, Dianne Feinstein, Ted Kennedy, Barak Obama, Harry Reid, and Chuck Schumer. Yep, all of those Senators believed that General Petraeus was the best man for the job. Couldn't speak highly enough of his qualifications.
Now, as part of his testimony during his confirmation hearings, General Petraeus was very frank about what he was going to need to perform the job that he was, in effect, interviewing for. In particular, he addressed the planned troop surge. You'd think that if you're hiring someone to take on a difficult job, and that person tells you what he needs to be successful at that job, you would do one of two things: either hire him and make sure he has what he says he needs, or hire someone else. Seems to me it would be the height of stupidity to hire that person, speak glowingly about what a great person he is and how perfect he is for the job, and then not give him what he says he needs to be successful. Yet the ink was barely dry on the General's new orders when the Democrats began doing all they could to prevent the troop surge the General said he needed. Brings to mind Mark Twain's famous quote: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." Of course, the Constitution says that the President is the Commander-In-Chief, so the General got what he asked for.
In the subsequent months, we heard over and over again that the surge had failed. Interestingly enough, the Democrats were telling us in March, and in April, and in May that the surge had failed even though all the troops hadn't got there yet! (They were, of course, counting on the American people having a short attention span and not realizing that it does take a few months to move 30,000 soldiers and all of their supplies and equipment halfway around the world. They really don't think much of our intelligence, folks.) It was late June/early July before the surge was at full strength, yet we had already been hearing for months that it had failed to reduce the violence, failed to make Iraq a safer place, failed, failed, failed. Heck, it was in April that we read about Senator Harry Reid telling journalists, "I believe...that this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything..."
In case you missed that, let me just run that by you again. Senator Harry Reid, D-NV, the Senate Majority Leader, who voted to confirm General Petraeus, told journalists that the war was lost and the surge wasn't accomplishing anything a good two months before the surge was even at full strength! That spinning sound you hear is FDR and Harry Truman turning over in their graves.
As time went on, it became more and more difficult to deny that the surge was, in fact, working - it was decreasing the violence, killing or driving out the bad guys, and increasing security. Consider the following quotes from the month of August...from Democrats:
"...The Military Aspects Of President Bush’s New Strategy In Iraq, As Articulated By Him On January 10, 2007, Appear To Have Produced Some Credible And Positive Results." (Senator Carl Levin, D-MI, in a press release dated 8/20/07)
“We’ve Begun To Change Tactics Iraq, And In Some Areas, Particularly In Al Anbar Province, It’s Working.” (Senator Hillary Clinton, D-NY, in an address to a VFW convention, 8/20/07)
“More American Troops Have Brought More Peace To More Parts Of Iraq. I Think That's A Fact.” (Senator Dick Durbin, D-IL, quoted in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 8/9/07)
“The Surge Has Resulted In A Reduction Of Violence In Many Parts Of Iraq … And It Is, I Think, A Product Of More American Soldiers Bringing Peace To Areas Of Iraq That Have Been Ignored In The Past.” (Senator Durbin again, as quoted in the State Journal-Register of IL, 8/9/07)
Ah, but now we're in September, and it's time for General Petraeus to make his report to Congress on the progress of the war and the troop surge. This was, by the way, a report that Congress insisted upon when they confirmed him. As the cold, hard reality began to set in that Petraeus was going to report that progress was being made, and that the troop surge was working, and that (gasp) people might actually remember what they had said back in January (and February, March, April, May, June, and July), panic began to set in as well.
On September 5, Senator Chuck Schumer (who, I remind you, was among those who voted to confirm General Petraeus) stated, on the floor of the United States Senate: "And let me be clear, the violence in Anbar has gone down despite the surge, not because of the surge. The inability of American soldiers to protect these tribes from al Qaeda said to these tribes we have to fight al Qaeda ourselves. It wasn't that the surge brought peace here. It was that the warlords took peace here, created a temporary peace here." Wait - forget, for the moment, the slam against the competence of the U.S. military, which doesn't surprise me, considering the source - you mean al Qaeda is actually in Iraq? I thought they were all in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and that Iraq had nothing to do with the war on terror? And haven't we been hearing for years now that the main problem in Iraq is that the Iraqis won't stand up and fight for themselves? But now that they are standing up and fighting for themselves alongside our guys, that's a bad thing? Sheesh!
On September 7, Senator Dick Durbin (yes, the same Dick Durbin who was quoted just a month before as saying that the surge was working) was quoted as saying, "By carefully manipulating the statistics, the Bush-Patraeus report will try to persuade us that the violence in Iraq is decreasing and thus the surge is working. Even if the figures were right, the conclusion is wrong." Huh? Even if the figures were right, the conclusion is wrong?
Then, on September 10, we had the now-infamous Move On ad in the New York times, referring to General Petraeus as "General Betray Us." This shameful ad, which would have been astounding had it come from any other source, impugned the honor of a decorated four-star General of the Army who has devoted over 30 years of his life to the service of this country, and accused him of "Cooking the Books for the White House." This was before General Petraeus had said a single word in his testimony before Congress. Now, I have read American History, and I'm not going to try to tell you that this is the lowest point ever in American political discourse. Unfortunately, it isn't. But it's extremely interesting to see how leading Democrats have reacted to the ad.
Senator Joe Lieberman, whom I believe to be an honorable man, has denounced it. Senator John Kerry, somewhat to my surprise, has also denounced it, and I give him credit for doing so. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, on the other hand, took the forceful position that she "would have preferred that they not do such an ad," but went on to say that it wasn't for her to say how people expressed themselves. So far, neither of the Democrat's leading Presidential candidates have denounced the ad. Let me repeat that: It's been a week now, and neither Hillary Clinton nor Barak Obama have denounced the ad, even when specifically asked about it.
Now cut to the opening of the Congressional hearing itself. General Petraeus sits in silence while the committee members pontificate on and on. No one has asked him a question yet. California Representative Tom Lantos, makes the following statement: "...the administration has sent you here today to convince the members of these two committees and the Congress that victory is at hand. With all due respect to you, I must say, I don't buy it." In other words, General, before you even begin your testimony today, I'm putting you on notice that I'm not going to believe your testimony if it contradicts my preconceived position. My mind is made up, don't go confusing me with facts. And when it became Senator Barak Obama's turn to question the Senator, he asked...oh, wait a minute - he didn't actually ask anything. He just spent his entire time bloviating. Sorry, my mistake.
Kudos to Representative Duncan Hunter for calling Lantos out, and stating for the record that "...I think it's an outrage that we spent the last week prepping the ground, bashing the credibility of a general officer whose trademark is integrity, who was unanimously supported by the U.S. Senate for his position." So do I, Congressman Hunter, so do I. And, by the way, here's what you didn't hear during the two days of hearings: You didn't hear a single Democrat ask, "General, what can we do to support you and help you accomplish the mission we've asked you to perform? How can we help you win this war?" Why do you suppose that is? If your country is at war, and you care about winning that war, and you don't think things are going well, wouldn't that be a reasonable question to ask?
And the outrage continues. After the hearings, Senator Reid held a press conference in which he said, "the surge has failed to bring the Iraqi government closer to political reconciliation." What!? I don't recall that being the mission, Senator! Of course, he's hoping that in this sound-bite world, people will just pick up on "the surge has failed," and not realize that what he's really saying is that it has failed to do something it wasn't supposed to do in the first place. I've learned that you have to listen very carefully to what politicians say (most of them are, after all, lawyers). You often find, when you carefully analyze the language, that they really didn't say what you think they said. And, believe me, that's not an accident.
Although it's hard to tell with Senator Reid. Just when I think he's amazingly devious and clever, he pulls something like his interview with the Reno Gazette-Journal (September 15) in which he's quoted as saying that "one million Iraqis have been killed since the war started." That would have meant an average of 600 deaths per day, every day since the war began. Iraq's own heath minister, back last November, estimated the number of Iraqi deaths since the war began as between 100,000 and 150,000, and those numbers are double the Brookings Institution estimates, which were largely drawn from United Nations data. So we've increased the number of Iraqi's killed by a factor of 7 or 8 in only 10 months? Wow, and I thought Rosie O'Donnell was over the top with her accusation of 655,000 killed. Now that's one hell of a surge. Apparently, like Alice (of Wonderland fame), Senator Reid has learned how to believe "as many as six impossible things before breakfast." Bear in mind, folks, this is the Senate Majority Leader we're talking about here - this is the man Senate Democrats have chosen to be their standard-bearer.
And now that the President has announced plans to start bringing troops home by the end of the year, and hopefully be back to the pre-surge level by next summer, suddenly that's not good enough. But wait, wasn't it just a couple of months ago, when they were debating the last funding bill, that the Democrats were insisting that we do just that? In fact, if I recall correctly, their last position back in May was that we had to at least establish a time line for when we would start planning to bring the troops home. So isn't this exactly what they wanted? Well, no, it isn't. Because they can't take credit for it unless they're seen as having forced the President to do it. If every al Qaeda operative left Iraq tomorrow, peace broke out across the country the next day, and all the troops were home a week from Tuesday, the Democrats wouldn't be happy unless they could take credit for it.
I am forced to conclude that the people running the Democrat party care about one and only one thing: power. They care about holding onto Congress, and they care about winning the White House in 2008. To do that, they are willing to jeopardize your family's safety and mine. They are willing to undermine the mission of our men and women in uniform and make public statements that demoralize them and embolden the enemy. Some of them are willing to abandon Iraq to the bloodbath that would inevitably follow a precipitous withdrawal, if only they can pin the blame on President Bush and his "failed policy." They would rather see the United States defeated than have President Bush look good. As others have observed, they have now gone so far down the road of declaring that the war is lost, the policy has failed, we can't possibly succeed in the mission, that they are invested in defeat. Victory in Iraq would make them look so bad that they'll do anything to avoid it, unless there's some way that they can claim credit for it.
I have never seen such a cynical display of partisan politics in my lifetime, and I will show my disgust the only ways I can - by voting against them at every opportunity, and by exercising my free speech rights to tell the world why I feel this way.
Thanks for...excuse me? Oh, the vocabulary words? Well, I'm sure that my readers can draw their own conclusions. I'm not accusing anyone of anything. On the other hand, as a famous movie character might say, "Treason is as treason does."
But first, I have a couple of vocabulary words to share with you, just for the fun of it (emphasis added):
"Treason - (1) Violation of allegiance toward one's country or sovereign, especially the betrayal of one's country by waging war against it or by consciously and purposely acting to aid its enemies. (2) A betrayal of trust or confidence." (from the American Heritage Dictionary)
The Dictionary.com entry, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, also states: "Treason is any attempt to overthrow the government or impair the well-being of a state to which one owes allegiance; the crime of giving aid or comfort to the enemies of one's government. Sedition is any act, writing, speech, etc., directed unlawfully against state authority, the government, or constitution, or calculated to bring it into contempt or to incite others to hostility, ill will or disaffection."
Moving right along now...
Back in January, the Senate unanimously confirmed General David Petraeus as the commander of the Multi-National Force in Iraq. By "unanimously," I mean that no one voted against him. There were nineteen Senators, both Republican and Democrat, who didn't vote. Seems to me that was a pretty important vote, and one that you'd want to be on the record for, but let's put that aside for the moment, and look at some of the Senators who voted for the General's confirmation. That list included Senators Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Dick Durbin, Dianne Feinstein, Ted Kennedy, Barak Obama, Harry Reid, and Chuck Schumer. Yep, all of those Senators believed that General Petraeus was the best man for the job. Couldn't speak highly enough of his qualifications.
Now, as part of his testimony during his confirmation hearings, General Petraeus was very frank about what he was going to need to perform the job that he was, in effect, interviewing for. In particular, he addressed the planned troop surge. You'd think that if you're hiring someone to take on a difficult job, and that person tells you what he needs to be successful at that job, you would do one of two things: either hire him and make sure he has what he says he needs, or hire someone else. Seems to me it would be the height of stupidity to hire that person, speak glowingly about what a great person he is and how perfect he is for the job, and then not give him what he says he needs to be successful. Yet the ink was barely dry on the General's new orders when the Democrats began doing all they could to prevent the troop surge the General said he needed. Brings to mind Mark Twain's famous quote: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." Of course, the Constitution says that the President is the Commander-In-Chief, so the General got what he asked for.
In the subsequent months, we heard over and over again that the surge had failed. Interestingly enough, the Democrats were telling us in March, and in April, and in May that the surge had failed even though all the troops hadn't got there yet! (They were, of course, counting on the American people having a short attention span and not realizing that it does take a few months to move 30,000 soldiers and all of their supplies and equipment halfway around the world. They really don't think much of our intelligence, folks.) It was late June/early July before the surge was at full strength, yet we had already been hearing for months that it had failed to reduce the violence, failed to make Iraq a safer place, failed, failed, failed. Heck, it was in April that we read about Senator Harry Reid telling journalists, "I believe...that this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything..."
In case you missed that, let me just run that by you again. Senator Harry Reid, D-NV, the Senate Majority Leader, who voted to confirm General Petraeus, told journalists that the war was lost and the surge wasn't accomplishing anything a good two months before the surge was even at full strength! That spinning sound you hear is FDR and Harry Truman turning over in their graves.
As time went on, it became more and more difficult to deny that the surge was, in fact, working - it was decreasing the violence, killing or driving out the bad guys, and increasing security. Consider the following quotes from the month of August...from Democrats:
"...The Military Aspects Of President Bush’s New Strategy In Iraq, As Articulated By Him On January 10, 2007, Appear To Have Produced Some Credible And Positive Results." (Senator Carl Levin, D-MI, in a press release dated 8/20/07)
“We’ve Begun To Change Tactics Iraq, And In Some Areas, Particularly In Al Anbar Province, It’s Working.” (Senator Hillary Clinton, D-NY, in an address to a VFW convention, 8/20/07)
“More American Troops Have Brought More Peace To More Parts Of Iraq. I Think That's A Fact.” (Senator Dick Durbin, D-IL, quoted in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 8/9/07)
“The Surge Has Resulted In A Reduction Of Violence In Many Parts Of Iraq … And It Is, I Think, A Product Of More American Soldiers Bringing Peace To Areas Of Iraq That Have Been Ignored In The Past.” (Senator Durbin again, as quoted in the State Journal-Register of IL, 8/9/07)
Ah, but now we're in September, and it's time for General Petraeus to make his report to Congress on the progress of the war and the troop surge. This was, by the way, a report that Congress insisted upon when they confirmed him. As the cold, hard reality began to set in that Petraeus was going to report that progress was being made, and that the troop surge was working, and that (gasp) people might actually remember what they had said back in January (and February, March, April, May, June, and July), panic began to set in as well.
On September 5, Senator Chuck Schumer (who, I remind you, was among those who voted to confirm General Petraeus) stated, on the floor of the United States Senate: "And let me be clear, the violence in Anbar has gone down despite the surge, not because of the surge. The inability of American soldiers to protect these tribes from al Qaeda said to these tribes we have to fight al Qaeda ourselves. It wasn't that the surge brought peace here. It was that the warlords took peace here, created a temporary peace here." Wait - forget, for the moment, the slam against the competence of the U.S. military, which doesn't surprise me, considering the source - you mean al Qaeda is actually in Iraq? I thought they were all in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and that Iraq had nothing to do with the war on terror? And haven't we been hearing for years now that the main problem in Iraq is that the Iraqis won't stand up and fight for themselves? But now that they are standing up and fighting for themselves alongside our guys, that's a bad thing? Sheesh!
On September 7, Senator Dick Durbin (yes, the same Dick Durbin who was quoted just a month before as saying that the surge was working) was quoted as saying, "By carefully manipulating the statistics, the Bush-Patraeus report will try to persuade us that the violence in Iraq is decreasing and thus the surge is working. Even if the figures were right, the conclusion is wrong." Huh? Even if the figures were right, the conclusion is wrong?
Then, on September 10, we had the now-infamous Move On ad in the New York times, referring to General Petraeus as "General Betray Us." This shameful ad, which would have been astounding had it come from any other source, impugned the honor of a decorated four-star General of the Army who has devoted over 30 years of his life to the service of this country, and accused him of "Cooking the Books for the White House." This was before General Petraeus had said a single word in his testimony before Congress. Now, I have read American History, and I'm not going to try to tell you that this is the lowest point ever in American political discourse. Unfortunately, it isn't. But it's extremely interesting to see how leading Democrats have reacted to the ad.
Senator Joe Lieberman, whom I believe to be an honorable man, has denounced it. Senator John Kerry, somewhat to my surprise, has also denounced it, and I give him credit for doing so. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, on the other hand, took the forceful position that she "would have preferred that they not do such an ad," but went on to say that it wasn't for her to say how people expressed themselves. So far, neither of the Democrat's leading Presidential candidates have denounced the ad. Let me repeat that: It's been a week now, and neither Hillary Clinton nor Barak Obama have denounced the ad, even when specifically asked about it.
Now cut to the opening of the Congressional hearing itself. General Petraeus sits in silence while the committee members pontificate on and on. No one has asked him a question yet. California Representative Tom Lantos, makes the following statement: "...the administration has sent you here today to convince the members of these two committees and the Congress that victory is at hand. With all due respect to you, I must say, I don't buy it." In other words, General, before you even begin your testimony today, I'm putting you on notice that I'm not going to believe your testimony if it contradicts my preconceived position. My mind is made up, don't go confusing me with facts. And when it became Senator Barak Obama's turn to question the Senator, he asked...oh, wait a minute - he didn't actually ask anything. He just spent his entire time bloviating. Sorry, my mistake.
Kudos to Representative Duncan Hunter for calling Lantos out, and stating for the record that "...I think it's an outrage that we spent the last week prepping the ground, bashing the credibility of a general officer whose trademark is integrity, who was unanimously supported by the U.S. Senate for his position." So do I, Congressman Hunter, so do I. And, by the way, here's what you didn't hear during the two days of hearings: You didn't hear a single Democrat ask, "General, what can we do to support you and help you accomplish the mission we've asked you to perform? How can we help you win this war?" Why do you suppose that is? If your country is at war, and you care about winning that war, and you don't think things are going well, wouldn't that be a reasonable question to ask?
And the outrage continues. After the hearings, Senator Reid held a press conference in which he said, "the surge has failed to bring the Iraqi government closer to political reconciliation." What!? I don't recall that being the mission, Senator! Of course, he's hoping that in this sound-bite world, people will just pick up on "the surge has failed," and not realize that what he's really saying is that it has failed to do something it wasn't supposed to do in the first place. I've learned that you have to listen very carefully to what politicians say (most of them are, after all, lawyers). You often find, when you carefully analyze the language, that they really didn't say what you think they said. And, believe me, that's not an accident.
Although it's hard to tell with Senator Reid. Just when I think he's amazingly devious and clever, he pulls something like his interview with the Reno Gazette-Journal (September 15) in which he's quoted as saying that "one million Iraqis have been killed since the war started." That would have meant an average of 600 deaths per day, every day since the war began. Iraq's own heath minister, back last November, estimated the number of Iraqi deaths since the war began as between 100,000 and 150,000, and those numbers are double the Brookings Institution estimates, which were largely drawn from United Nations data. So we've increased the number of Iraqi's killed by a factor of 7 or 8 in only 10 months? Wow, and I thought Rosie O'Donnell was over the top with her accusation of 655,000 killed. Now that's one hell of a surge. Apparently, like Alice (of Wonderland fame), Senator Reid has learned how to believe "as many as six impossible things before breakfast." Bear in mind, folks, this is the Senate Majority Leader we're talking about here - this is the man Senate Democrats have chosen to be their standard-bearer.
And now that the President has announced plans to start bringing troops home by the end of the year, and hopefully be back to the pre-surge level by next summer, suddenly that's not good enough. But wait, wasn't it just a couple of months ago, when they were debating the last funding bill, that the Democrats were insisting that we do just that? In fact, if I recall correctly, their last position back in May was that we had to at least establish a time line for when we would start planning to bring the troops home. So isn't this exactly what they wanted? Well, no, it isn't. Because they can't take credit for it unless they're seen as having forced the President to do it. If every al Qaeda operative left Iraq tomorrow, peace broke out across the country the next day, and all the troops were home a week from Tuesday, the Democrats wouldn't be happy unless they could take credit for it.
I am forced to conclude that the people running the Democrat party care about one and only one thing: power. They care about holding onto Congress, and they care about winning the White House in 2008. To do that, they are willing to jeopardize your family's safety and mine. They are willing to undermine the mission of our men and women in uniform and make public statements that demoralize them and embolden the enemy. Some of them are willing to abandon Iraq to the bloodbath that would inevitably follow a precipitous withdrawal, if only they can pin the blame on President Bush and his "failed policy." They would rather see the United States defeated than have President Bush look good. As others have observed, they have now gone so far down the road of declaring that the war is lost, the policy has failed, we can't possibly succeed in the mission, that they are invested in defeat. Victory in Iraq would make them look so bad that they'll do anything to avoid it, unless there's some way that they can claim credit for it.
I have never seen such a cynical display of partisan politics in my lifetime, and I will show my disgust the only ways I can - by voting against them at every opportunity, and by exercising my free speech rights to tell the world why I feel this way.
Thanks for...excuse me? Oh, the vocabulary words? Well, I'm sure that my readers can draw their own conclusions. I'm not accusing anyone of anything. On the other hand, as a famous movie character might say, "Treason is as treason does."
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