Another signifcant step

Iraqis nearing agreement on oil revenue sharing. If you take all the foreigners out of Iraq and all those trying to become the next Saddam, you find a much large group who want to live their lives in peace as Iraqis, and to be free from the Saudis, terrorists, Iranian revolutionaries, and Americans. Americans who think the Saudis are our friends, fail to understand that they are the fount of radical Islam for he world.

We should protect our domestic oil industry as a national secury measure to wean ourselves from needing imports from places like Arabia, Venezuela, etc. Even if we had to pay $70 a barrel for oil from shale, the rewards would be massive.

Bottom story of the day

Former White House advisers to George H.W. Bush

are keenly disappointed and concerned about the current President Bush's initial reaction to the report by the
Iraq Study Group.

They consider him rather dismissive of the group's conclusions.

Maybe they should take the hint and quit thinking that they have any legitimate right to dictate to the rest of us and our elected leaders.

If they took their own advice

Why is the AP being so stubborn? They should just admit that they lied, that their reporting is losing them credibility and bring their troops home.

"Iraq isn't fast food"

Reflecting on T. F. Boggs comments on the ISG report, I realized what he is saying in the first weeks of the war. Democracy isn't fast food. We didn't accomplish it in three or five years on a schedule, and we had our own civil war before our own union was assured.

The whole purpose of the ISG, it's clear, was to parrot the Democrats' and the medias' criticisms and justify the argument that Iraqis just aren't capable of making democracy work. To me that's bigotry, pure and simple, and ugly Americanism at its worst. The real issue is the cost, but that's only an excuse for abandoning our own values.

More here and here.

Explanation or Excuse?

Newspaper bias linked to readers' political preferences. Well, duh!

As Stephen Spruiell wonders, "That's fine when it comes to newspapers that serve local constituencies. But what about TV networks that provide news to the entire nation?" The First Amendment's press clause was based on the understanding that various publications would have different politics and that many voices make for greater public awareness of issues and a more robust debate on them. But today's media are hampered by costs of reporting and the use of a few press services with a uniformity of attitudes, because they hire from a limited pool of bien pensants with the "right" education and backgrounds and, more recently, from local stringers who tend to manufacture news as much as they report it.

All of that is quite irrelevant when it comes to broadcast and cable news who have less excuse for pandering to only one slice of their national audience. The result has been the rise of talk radio and Fox News, but with the rise of personal computers, these older media are losing their readers and viewers. Talk radio is less affected, because people listen while doing other tasks. In the end, modern MSM are mere middle-men for the international press services which are now available online. What remains for their consumers is local reporting and "analysis," as people grow more sophisticated and read and post to blogs, the need for media elites to explain things is receding.

No pity for Democrats, but

they're about to receive the same harsh blasts from the media that distorted Bush's policies, mislead us about conditions in Iraq, and helped the Ds win the midterm elections. This is looking like a whipsaw by the media.

They should change the name of the party.

They won the election and the Democrats are still contesting it:

Republican Vern Buchanan might be the official winner in a messy Sarasota-area congressional race, but Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean says the Democratic-controlled Congress should not seat Buchanan without another election.

Quelle Surprise!

Private Saudi citizens are funding Sunni insurgents in Iraq. And Jim Baker wants to formalize their participation in "stabilizing" Iraq. We are dealing with a much larger issue here between Sunnis and Shiites, but nobody seems to get it. I don't believe that Shiites are on our side by any means, but in this case, they deserve to be allowed to form a government and work it out. The very last people we should trust are Syria, Iran and the Saudis.

Andrew McCarthy's take on events in Iraq. We have already won this war. What we're doing now is trying to prevent the return of a minority Sunni regime or a mullocracy to take away the results of the first full and fair elections in the nation's history.

Wisconsin in Flames

Renewed violence in Wisconsin has resulted in 3 deaths and 46 people injured. No one has claimed to be behind the explosion in an industrial warehouse near downtown Milwaukee. America has experienced such carnage on a regular basis since 9/11, although each incident is attributed to accidental causes. Other possible terrorist attacks include a recent spate of e. coli infections through grocery suppliers and fast food chains.

Also, an American Airlines flight was forced to land after a woman passenger lit several matches:

The
FBI questioned a passenger who admitted she struck the matches in an attempt to conceal [the odor of her flatulence.]

A likely story.

I hope I die before I get old.

After hearing James Baker and Lee Hamilton being interviewed by Brit Hume, I'm impressed that they're way over the hill.

First, the conclusion that Bush's policies in Iraq have all failed baffles me. It seems to me that a lot of Shiites there think they have made great progress and would ask that they be continued. One post from Sgt. T. F. Boggs has more authority that the panel and most of its witnesses:

What the group desperately needed was at least one their members to have been in the military and had recent experience in Iraq. The problem with having an entire panel with no one under the age of 67 is that none of them could possibly know what the situation is actually like on the ground in Iraq. Now I concede that it is possible to have a good understanding of things as they stand in Iraq but unless you interact with the people of Iraq and spend a year or years of your life on ground you cannot possibly have a complete picture of the situation.

We cannot appease our enemies and we cannot continue to cut and run when the going gets tough. As it stands in the world right now our enemies view America as a country full of queasy people who are inclined to cut and run when things take a turn for the worse.

That bit of common sense costs us nothing.

Second, Baker's belief that we can flip Syria is goofy. The main recommendation of stepping up training and beginning to draw down troop strength is fine by me, if the generals there agree. But I'm alarmed by the idea that Iraq's neighbors should be invited to move in. Iraq should be able to govern itself, sustain itself and defend itself, but that won't happen if we invite the Saudis, Syria and Iran to participate. I haven't hear one American leader mention the struggle to dominate Islam, which I think is more ominous and a greater concern for Iraq's Shia population than almost anything else.

Another thing I haven't heard is the effect of a pull out and hand off on America's "ability to influence events." If we leave because of the discontent the Democrats, the media and the insurgents have been able to spread here at home, which is what this report is all about, there will be no reason for anybody anywhere to give hoot what we think about anything in the future. We might as well just withdraw our troops from around the world and see what happens. That's all that the Democrats' approach to foreign policy amounts to, and it's nothing more than pushing our problem into the future for some other generation to deal with, in the hope that the U.N. will do what nobody has the stomach to do. JFK would be switching parties.

We are not losing this war. We're allowing our pitiful understanding of history to deplete our resolve to fight it, which is much more shameful.

Heh.

Criticized because he's not a Democrat.

The Boston Globe after taking Mitt Romney to task for hiring a lawn maintenance service which hires illegal immigrants ("Romney never inquired about their status.") now castigates him for authorizing the state police to enforce federal immigration laws by checking "immigration status during a traffic stop or other routine work if they believe something is amiss." It starts to look like they don't like him because he's not Ted Kennedy.

Bottom Story of the Day

John McCain disagrees with the ISG report because it doesn't call for enough new troops to be sent.

Polar Moon Camp? Sounds about as much fun as a camp over winter at the South Pole of Earth.

This is NOT the same as the Polish Lunar Base proposed by PASA.

Was that really his last wish?

The widow of a soldier killed in Afghanistan has succeeded in having the Pentacle, the five-pointed star inside a circle on a memorial plaque by the government. Justice Breyer would approve.

If I were killed in action, I'd want Bugs Bunny on my plaque.

Be Afraid

Who needs that old Constitution thingy, anyway?

Justice Stephen G. Breyer says the Supreme Court must promote the political rights of minorities and look beyond the Constitution's text when necessary to ensure that "no one gets too powerful."

That sounds like quite an assumption of power to me. It doesn't take much creativity to portray yourself as a member of a minority these days. It's starting to look like there is no majority anymore. We're all minorities now.

If I were John Bolton, I'd want out too.

From Kofi Anan's latest statement claiming that life under Saddam was better than now, it would be easy to conclude that our participation in the U.N. is a waste of his time and our money. I'm sure that the E.U. would be happy to find a place for it in Belgium.

Is it Dunkirk yet?

Michael Barone puts George Bush's position today in historical perspective and finds him in pretty good company:

Bush, like Truman and Churchill, seems determined not to concede defeat. And remember that for Truman on Korea and for Churchill after Dunkirk, no promising military courses were immediately apparent. Truman, after firing Gen. Douglas MacArthur, had forsaken the threat–a nuclear attack–that his successor Dwight Eisenhower deployed to get the Communists to agree to a truce. But Truman's perseverance despite his 22 percent job approval–much lower than Bush's–was essential in preserving the independence of South Korea, which now has the world's 14th-largest economy. Churchill, facing Hitler alone, could promise only "blood, toil, tears, and sweat" until his enemies' mistakes–Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union, the Japanese strike on Pearl Harbor–gave him the allies that made victory possible. Churchill's stubbornness prevented a Nazi victory in midsummer 1940.

In fifty years, who will remember the critics, unless Bush and we allow them to talk us out of achieving our goal. It is astonishing, in light of those bleak situations, that so many have apparently concluded that we need to give up. Somehow this nation must throw off the Kerryesque mood of defeat and weariness that our media are whispering in our ears, and repudiate their supercilious and negative propaganda.

The Irony of calling yourself Progressive

Alec Rawls has posted one of the best essays I've seen since Mark Steyn's America Alone. Steyn gives us more credit than we deserve, considering that we produced most of the Champions of Death, like Paul Ehrlich, John Muir, Al Gore and Rachel Carson, and all the useful idiots in Hollywood and the Media who purvey their nonsense to the masses.

This is progress? Maybe for those few who assume that fewer of the Great Unwashed means more for them, but where do they think their own prosperity comes from? Here's a hint: There is no business without customers.

As I think about the predicted death of civilization occuring in Europe, Russia and Japan, it's ironic to remember that once all the progressives have progressed out of existence, there will be some left who hew to the old values who could rebuild their cultures, if the late multiculturalists hadn't invited in so many "guest workers" who deplore that very concept, and won't care if the native cultures die. At least other have the excuse that they didn't deliberately spread the Black Death or trigger the eruption of Mt. Toba, but who'd believe that we convinced ourselves that we are the plague and just decided to do voluntarily what nature didn't do to us?

False premises lead to false conclusions

John Hulsman and Anatol Lieven write

Iraq is a disaster today partly because of the neoconservative fantasy that democratic nationhood can be built from scratch, at the point of a gun. This is crazed nationalist utopianism - and it is wholly alien to core Republican traditions.

According to Shiite observers like Vali Nasr, Iraq is not a disaster, and will be one only if we abandon the majority of the population to be oppressed by yet another Sunni regime, which seems to be the Saudi Plan if we bail out. Doing so would be another betrayal of the Shia Arabs, and a cause for shame.

With all the brouhaha over civil war and sectarian violence, we seem to forget that the divide between Sunni and Shiite is over a thousand years old and has been fueled more by Sunnis trying to excommunicate Shiites when they mourn the murder of their early Imams and celebrate them as martyrs. Americans don't understand this, because we believe in freedom of religion, but for the Shiites, it has meant a millennium of oppression, violence and denial of human rights. Now that we have given them their best chance in 100 years to take power over their own land, and their leading religious authority is counseling them to support most of what we have proposed in the way of elections, service in the military, constitutional government, critics are urging us to run out because the Middle Eastern cultures seem to resolve matters by tests of strength including violence. This is a fight that has been brewing for a long time, and probably needs to burn itself out, but the al-Sistani (may he live long) position is as neo-con as anybody could ask for.

I have had a hard time making my mind up on this issue, but if there is a George Washington/Martin Luther King for Iraq, it could be Ayatollah al-Sistani. We should recognize that and give him more time to lead his people. That won't guarantee that Iraq will be friendly to us, but it would be the right thing to do.

I'll take necons any day,

over neo-commies.

O reason not the need!

Hey, if I were given $2 million for being locked up for a few months, I wouldn't be complaining. (Take me to Gitmo, please!)

The New York Times seems to think that any mistake in enforcing the law or prosecuting a war is a good reason to abandon either one. When has that ever been true? Every war has its atrocities because of the pressure soldiers are under and because in a guerrilla war it's not easy to tell who the enemy is. And there is no way to totally eliminated the sadsacks who populate some of the lower pay grades of any organization. Why, I'd even bet that some employees of the New York Times have violated laws, such as those against revealing classified information. Now that we've been 5 years without a successful follow up to the 9/11 attacks, the Times seems to think that none of the measures we've taken to prevent one aren't needed. If that's true, maybe we ought to rescind the funds we were going to spend on New York for Homeland Security projects.

Until we have a new watchdog to watch the self-appointed watchdogs in the press when they attack people without cause, I guess we'll just have to rely on shunning..

Therapeutic Justice?

Therapeutic Jurisprudence sounds like a return to the old Blame Society defense. True rehabilitation would be for criminals to recognize their responsibility for their own actions, accept the punishment as a consequence of those actions and resolve not to continue fighting the law in the future. True therapy doesn't consist of denial and blaming others.

Make up your own joke

MEMRI reports:

On November 28, 2006, the Al-Fajr Information Center released the first issue of the Technical MujahidMagazine. The magazine discusses various technical topics, such as security for electronic data and databases, using GPS, and video editing and production. Some articles are aimed at professionals, and others for laymen.

The magazine's self-proclaimed purpose is "to help prevent acts of aggression against Muslims [in cyberspace], and to assist the mujahideen in their efforts."

First issue: The new Iran-pod Nuke.

Then, there's this human interest piece: Saudi Government-Appointed Executioner Interview Discusses His Calling and Demonstrates His Weapons and Methods. He's the Michael Jordan of beheading!

Ugh!

If I cared nothing for politics, I'd still be revolted by people like this.