Joe Lieberman: A Democrat With A Backbone

Our Troops Must Stay
America can't abandon 27 million Iraqis to 10,000 terrorists.

BY JOE LIEBERMAN
Tuesday, November 29, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST

I have just returned from my fourth trip to Iraq in the past 17 months and can report real progress there. More work needs to be done, of course, but the Iraqi people are in reach of a watershed transformation from the primitive, killing tyranny of Saddam to modern, self-governing, self-securing nationhood--unless the great American military that has given them and us this unexpected opportunity is prematurely withdrawn.

Progress is visible and practical. In the Kurdish North, there is continuing security and growing prosperity. The primarily Shiite South remains largely free of terrorism, receives much more electric power and other public services than it did under Saddam, and is experiencing greater economic activity. The Sunni triangle, geographically defined by Baghdad to the east, Tikrit to the north and Ramadi to the west, is where most of the terrorist enemy attacks occur. And yet here, too, there is progress.

There are many more cars on the streets, satellite television dishes on the roofs, and literally millions more cell phones in Iraqi hands than before. All of that says the Iraqi economy is growing. And Sunni candidates are actively campaigning for seats in the National Assembly. People are working their way toward a functioning society and economy in the midst of a very brutal, inhumane, sustained terrorist war against the civilian population and the Iraqi and American military there to protect it.

It is a war between 27 million and 10,000; 27 million Iraqis who want to live lives of freedom, opportunity and prosperity and roughly 10,000 terrorists who are either Saddam revanchists, Iraqi Islamic extremists or al Qaeda foreign fighters who know their wretched causes will be set back if Iraq becomes free and modern. The terrorists are intent on stopping this by instigating a civil war to produce the chaos that will allow Iraq to replace Afghanistan as the base for their fanatical war-making. We are fighting on the side of the 27 million because the outcome of this war is critically important to the security and freedom of America. If the terrorists win, they will be emboldened to strike us directly again and to further undermine the growing stability and progress in the Middle East, which has long been a major American national and economic security priority.

Before going to Iraq last week, I visited Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Israel has been the only genuine democracy in the region, but it is now getting some welcome company from the Iraqis and Palestinians who are in the midst of robust national legislative election campaigns, the Lebanese who have risen up in proud self-determination after the Hariri assassination to eject their Syrian occupiers (the Syrian- and Iranian-backed Hezbollah militias should be next), and the Kuwaitis, Egyptians and Saudis who have taken steps to open up their governments more broadly to their people. In my meeting with the thoughtful prime minister of Iraq, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, he declared with justifiable pride that his country now has the most open, democratic political system in the Arab world. He is right.
In the face of terrorist threats and escalating violence, eight million Iraqis voted for their interim national government in January, almost 10 million participated in the referendum on their new constitution in October, and even more than that are expected to vote in the elections for a full-term government on Dec. 15. Every time the 27 million Iraqis have been given the chance since Saddam was overthrown, they have voted for self-government and hope over the violence and hatred the 10,000 terrorists offer them. Most encouraging has been the behavior of the Sunni community, which, when disappointed by the proposed constitution, registered to vote and went to the polls instead of taking up arms and going to the streets. Last week, I was thrilled to see a vigorous political campaign, and a large number of independent television stations and newspapers covering it.

None of these remarkable changes would have happened without the coalition forces led by the U.S. And, I am convinced, almost all of the progress in Iraq and throughout the Middle East will be lost if those forces are withdrawn faster than the Iraqi military is capable of securing the country.

The leaders of Iraq's duly elected government understand this, and they asked me for reassurance about America's commitment. The question is whether the American people and enough of their representatives in Congress from both parties understand this. I am disappointed by Democrats who are more focused on how President Bush took America into the war in Iraq almost three years ago, and by Republicans who are more worried about whether the war will bring them down in next November's elections, than they are concerned about how we continue the progress in Iraq in the months and years ahead.

Here is an ironic finding I brought back from Iraq. While U.S. public opinion polls show serious declines in support for the war and increasing pessimism about how it will end, polls conducted by Iraqis for Iraqi universities show increasing optimism. Two-thirds say they are better off than they were under Saddam, and a resounding 82% are confident their lives in Iraq will be better a year from now than they are today. What a colossal mistake it would be for America's bipartisan political leadership to choose this moment in history to lose its will and, in the famous phrase, to seize defeat from the jaws of the coming victory.

The leaders of America's military and diplomatic forces in Iraq, Gen. George Casey and Ambassador Zal Khalilzad, have a clear and compelling vision of our mission there. It is to create the environment in which Iraqi democracy, security and prosperity can take hold and the Iraqis themselves can defend their political progress against those 10,000 terrorists who would take it from them.

Does America have a good plan for doing this, a strategy for victory in Iraq? Yes we do. And it is important to make it clear to the American people that the plan has not remained stubbornly still but has changed over the years. Mistakes, some of them big, were made after Saddam was removed, and no one who supports the war should hesitate to admit that; but we have learned from those mistakes and, in characteristic American fashion, from what has worked and not worked on the ground. The administration's recent use of the banner "clear, hold and build" accurately describes the strategy as I saw it being implemented last week.
We are now embedding a core of coalition forces in every Iraqi fighting unit, which makes each unit more effective and acts as a multiplier of our forces. Progress in "clearing" and "holding" is being made. The Sixth Infantry Division of the Iraqi Security Forces now controls and polices more than one-third of Baghdad on its own. Coalition and Iraqi forces have together cleared the previously terrorist-controlled cities of Fallujah, Mosul and Tal Afar, and most of the border with Syria. Those areas are now being "held" secure by the Iraqi military themselves. Iraqi and coalition forces are jointly carrying out a mission to clear Ramadi, now the most dangerous city in Al-Anbar province at the west end of the Sunni Triangle.

Nationwide, American military leaders estimate that about one-third of the approximately 100,000 members of the Iraqi military are able to "lead the fight" themselves with logistical support from the U.S., and that that number should double by next year. If that happens, American military forces could begin a drawdown in numbers proportional to the increasing self-sufficiency of the Iraqi forces in 2006. If all goes well, I believe we can have a much smaller American military presence there by the end of 2006 or in 2007, but it is also likely that our presence will need to be significant in Iraq or nearby for years to come.

The economic reconstruction of Iraq has gone slower than it should have, and too much money has been wasted or stolen. Ambassador Khalilzad is now implementing reform that has worked in Afghanistan--Provincial Reconstruction Teams, composed of American economic and political experts, working in partnership in each of Iraq's 18 provinces with its elected leadership, civil service and the private sector. That is the "build" part of the "clear, hold and build" strategy, and so is the work American and international teams are doing to professionalize national and provincial governmental agencies in Iraq.

These are new ideas that are working and changing the reality on the ground, which is undoubtedly why the Iraqi people are optimistic about their future--and why the American people should be, too.

I cannot say enough about the U.S. Army and Marines who are carrying most of the fight for us in Iraq. They are courageous, smart, effective, innovative, very honorable and very proud. After a Thanksgiving meal with a great group of Marines at Camp Fallujah in western Iraq, I asked their commander whether the morale of his troops had been hurt by the growing public dissent in America over the war in Iraq. His answer was insightful, instructive and inspirational: "I would guess that if the opposition and division at home go on a lot longer and get a lot deeper it might have some effect, but, Senator, my Marines are motivated by their devotion to each other and the cause, not by political debates."
Thank you, General. That is a powerful, needed message for the rest of America and its political leadership at this critical moment in our nation's history. Semper Fi.

Mr. Lieberman is a Democratic senator from Connecticut.

___________________

Finally, a Democrat who actually has enough backbone to talk truthfully about what is happening in Iraq and what would happen if we don't follow through. As opposed to the normal spineless demoncratic rantings meant only to appease their leftist constituents.

Is everything perfect in Iraq? No! It never is during war. But there are far more positives than negatives and the MSM refuses to report them. Why is support in America waining for this war? Because of the media onlought of negative news meant to undermine the war effort. It is the exact same playbook that the leftists used during Vietnam. The enemy (Islamofascists now, Communists then)relies on the psychological war to help them win the actual physical war and the American left, their lapdog media, and in-their-pocket spineless politicians are more than happy to oblige.

Outstanding point from Lieberman: "Here is an ironic finding I brought back from Iraq. While U.S. public opinion polls show serious declines in support for the war and increasing pessimism about how it will end, polls conducted by Iraqis for Iraqi universities show increasing optimism. Two-thirds say they are better off than they were under Saddam, and a resounding 82% are confident their lives in Iraq will be better a year from now than they are today. What a colossal mistake it would be for America's bipartisan political leadership to choose this moment in history to lose its will and, in the famous phrase, to seize defeat from the jaws of the coming victory."

Who Is Tookie?

November 28, 2005, 8:09 a.m.
Is Tookie’s Time Up?
Governor Schwarzenegger weighs clemency for the killer of four.


On February 28, 1979, Stanley "Tookie" Williams and three other men drove in two cars to a 7-Eleven store in the city of Whittier, California, a suburb southeast of downtown Los Angeles. The lone clerk on duty at the time was 26-year-old Albert Owens, who was sweeping the store's parking lot when the men arrived. Owens apparently believed the men to be legitimate customers, for he put down his broom and dust pan and followed them into the store. Williams, armed with a sawed-off shotgun, forced Owens into a back storeroom. After ordering Owens to lie on the floor, Williams fired a shotgun blast into the store's security monitor. Then, though Owens had offered no resistance at all, Williams fired two blasts into the prostrate man's back, killing him. When an accomplice asked Williams why he had shot Owens, Williams explained that he didn't want to leave any witnesses. The accomplice would also later testify that Williams told him he killed Owens "because he was white and he was killing all white people."

Williams and his three accomplices netted about $120 in cash for their efforts that night.

Less than two weeks later, at about five in the morning on March 11, Williams went to the Brookhaven Motel at 10411 South Vermont Avenue, less than a ten-minute drive due east from Los Angeles International Airport. After breaking into the motel's office, Williams shot and killed 76-year-old Yen-I Yang and his 63-year-old wife, Tsai-Shai Yang. Next he killed their daughter, 43-year-old Yee-Chen Lin. As in the Owens killing, the murder weapon was a 12-gauge shotgun. The take in this crime was about $100.

Williams was identified as a suspect in the killings and arrested. In March 1981 a jury convicted him of all four murders and also found true the "special circumstances" that under California law exposed him to the death penalty, to wit, multiple murders and murder committed during the act of robbery. The jury recommended the death penalty, and on April 15, 1981, the trial judge did in fact sentence Williams to death.

Today Williams remains very much alive and enjoying a most peculiar brand of celebrity, the type previously heaped on men like Mumia Abu-Jamal, the unrepentant and still-living killer of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. But, while Abu-Jamal's case languishes in the courts nearly 24 years after the murder for which he was sentenced to death, and while Abu-Jamal himself advances steadily toward the natural death that appears to await him, time is at long last running out for Tookie Williams. On October 11 of this year, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear Williams's final appeal, and as things now stand he will be executed by lethal injection at 12:01 A.M. on December 13.

Some people, for various reasons, find this objectionable. As if mirroring the Abu-Jamal case, Williams's supporters, including the expected sprinkling of misguided celebrities and former celebrities from Hollywood, have orchestrated a p.r. campaign aimed at sparing Williams from the fate the law has prescribed for him. Included on the Save Tookie website are sample letters to be sent to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has the authority to grant clemency and commute the sentence to life imprisonment. "You should know that I am in favor of the death penalty (in the most reprehensible cases)," reads one such letter, "and my politics are conservative — I am by no means a do-gooder liberal. However, I believe in the case of Tookie Williams . . ." Schwarzenegger has agreed to meet privately with Williams's attorneys and representatives of the victims' families on December 8.

The Tookie-philes now follow parallel but seemingly irreconcilable courses in their effort to save their hero from the death chamber. On one hand, Williams and some of his supporters claim he is innocent of the crimes for which he was convicted. They offer the predictable assertions that Williams was railroaded onto death row by corrupt cops and unscrupulous prosecutors, both of whom were abetted by perjurious witnesses. Among those rebutting these obfuscations is Steve Cooley, district attorney for Los Angeles County, whose office has assembled a point-by-point analysis of the overwhelming evidence of Williams's guilt.

On the other hand is the proposition that Williams has redeemed himself during his 24 years in prison, that he has renounced gang life and urged others to do likewise. He has authored children's books, they say, warning youngsters against following in his own wayward footsteps. He has even, his supporters are quick to point out, been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. (The fact that even a crazed, murderous thug like Yasser Arafat actually won such an award has not deterred them from trumpeting said nomination.) But two questions occur: If Williams is indeed innocent, what is it, exactly, he has redeemed himself from? And, if an imprisoned Williams truly has been a courageous voice against gang violence, how is it that his admonitions went unheard within his own family? Stanley Williams Jr., 30, is currently serving a 16-year sentence in California for second-degree murder. Sometimes the apple falls very close to the tree indeed.

Such incongruities matter little in the carnival that now surrounds the impending execution. On November 19, a "Save Tookie" rally was held outside the gates of San Quentin State Prison, near San Francisco. Among the speakers was rap star Snoop Dogg. Williams's influence "is really rubbing off on me," said the rapper, "and I control lots of people on the streets, and what I do right, they do right."

So, there you have it, from no less a moral authority than Snoop Dogg. But Mr. Dogg is not so well known for having "done right" himself. He is better known to police and probation officers as Calvin Broadus, and he's been convicted of cocaine sales and of being an ex-felon in possession of a handgun. Like Tookie Williams, he was a Crip gang member in his salad days, but unlike Williams he was able to secure a not-guilty verdict in his own 1996 murder trial, making him a model of virtue by comparison.

If Williams has indeed deterred some young men from making unfortunate choices, so much the better for him when he faces God's judgment. But it is the law's judgment he must face on December 13, a judgment that has been affirmed at every step in an appellate process that has now stretched on, ludicrously, for nearly 25 years. Governor Schwarzenegger's decision will be a heart-wrenching one but a clear one nonetheless. Yes, let Tookie Williams's life serve as a warning to others, but let his death do so as well. Let the sentence be carried out, and let justice, finally, be done.

— Jack Dunphy is an officer in the Los Angeles Police Department. "Jack Dunphy" is the author's nom de cyber. The opinions expressed are his own and almost certainly do not reflect those of the LAPD management.

_________________________

Just one more cause-de jour for moronic Hollywood celebs to attach their name to. Well, heck, if Snoop Dogg says he's a good guy, he must be a good guy! But Snoop, what about the four murders he committed, and what about the violent gang he started that is responsible for untold numbers of murders and violent crimes?!

Snoop: "Don't worry about thizzle, brothizzle. Tookizzle wrotizzle somizzle grizzle chizzle books!"

Translation: Don't worry about that, brother. Tookie wrote some great children's books!

Iraq War Vote Exposes Dems

New Idea for the Antiwar Party: Aid the Enemy
By Ann Coulter
FrontPageMagazine.com | November 25, 2005

In the Iraq war so far, the U.S. military has deposed a dictator who had already used weapons of mass destruction and would have used them again. As we now know, Saddam Hussein was working with al-Qaeda and was trying to acquire long-range missiles from North Korea and enriched uranium from Niger.

Saddam is on trial. His psychopath sons are dead. We've captured or killed scores of foreign terrorists in Baghdad. Rape rooms and torture chambers are back in R. Kelly's Miami Beach mansion where they belong.

The Iraqi people have voted in two free, democratic elections this year. In a rash and unconsidered move, they even gave women the right to vote.

Iraqis have ratified a constitution and will vote for a National Assembly next month. The long-suffering Kurds are free and no longer require 24x7 protection by U.S. fighter jets.

Libya's Moammar Gadhafi has voluntarily dismantled his Weapons of Mass Destruction, Syria has withdrawn from Lebanon, and the Palestinians are holding elections.

(Last but certainly not least, the Marsh Arabs' wetlands ecosystem in central Iraq that Saddam drained is being restored, so even the Democrats' war goals in Iraq are being met.)

The American military has accomplished all this with just over 2,000 deaths. These deaths are especially painful because they fall on our greatest Americans. Still, look at what the military has done and compare the cost to 600,000 deaths in the Civil War, 400,000 deaths in World War II and 60,000 deaths in Vietnam (before Walter Cronkite finally threw in the towel and declared victory for North Vietnam).

What is known as a "hawk" in today's Democratic Party looks at what our military has accomplished and – during the war, while our troops are in harm's way – demands that we withdraw our troops.

In an upbeat speech now being aired repeatedly on al-Jazeera, last week Rep. John Murtha said U.S. troops "cannot accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. It is time to bring them home." Claiming the war is "a flawed policy wrapped in illusion," Murtha said the "American public is way ahead of us."

Fed up with being endlessly told "the American people" have turned against the war in Iraq, Republicans asked the Democrats to show what they had in their hand and vote on a resolution to withdraw the troops.

By a vote of 403-3, the House of Representatives wasn't willing to bet that "the American people" want to pull out of Iraq. (This vote also marked the first time in recent history that the Democrats did not respond to getting their butts kicked by demanding a recount.)

The vote is all the more shocking because of what it says about the Democrats' motives in attacking the war – as well as alerting us to three members of Congress we really need to keep an eye on.

It is simply a fact that Democrats like Murtha are encouraging the Iraqi insurgents when they say the war is going badly and it's time to bring the troops home. Whether or not there is any merit to the idea, calling for a troop withdrawal – or "redeployment," as liberals pointlessly distinguish – will delay our inevitable victory and cost more American lives.

Antiwar protests in the United States during the Vietnam War were a major source of moral support to the enemy. We know that not only from plain common sense, but from the statements of former North Vietnamese military leaders who evidently didn't get the memo telling them not to say so. In an Aug. 3, 1995, interview in the Wall Street Journal, Bui Tin, a former colonel in the North Vietnamese army, called the American peace movement "essential" to the North Vietnamese victory.

"Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9 a.m. to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement," he said. "Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and ministers gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses."

What are we to make of the fact that – as we now know – the Democrats don't even want to withdraw troops from Iraq? By their own account, there is no merit to their demands. Before the vote, Democrats could at least defend themselves from sedition by pleading stupidity. Now we know they don't believe what they are saying about the war. (Thanks to that vote, the Islamo-fascists know it, too.)

The Democrats are giving aid and comfort to the enemy for no purpose other than giving aid and comfort to the enemy. There is no plausible explanation for the Democrats' behavior other than that they long to see U.S. troops shot, humiliated, and driven from the field of battle.

They fill the airwaves with treason, but when called to vote on withdrawing troops, disavow their own public statements. These people are not only traitors, they are gutless traitors.

___________________

I love Ann! Beauty, brains, and always kicks the dems where it hurts the most. It is amazing to me how hollow the democrats are. No ideas, no vision, no backbone.......

Chrissy Mathews Loses It!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chris Matthews Meltdown: Hardball Host Unhinged on Talk Radio
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

By Jim Kouri
Nov 23, 2005

MSNBC's talk show host Chris Matthews is a man who obviously: (1) Believes he is the smartest person on television; (2) Enjoys bullying women such as Michelle Malkin on the air; (3) Enjoys bullying senior citizens who may not be as quick with the mouth as he is; (4) Is irrelevent except for a few of his fellow moonbats who actually believe he's a mental giant; (5) Is of the opinion that he's really competition for Fox News Channel's lineup.


Matthews Unhinged on Talk Radio

During a speech he gave in Canada at the University of Toronto, Matthews did what most American liberals do when in a foreign country -- he denigrated his own country. During his usual bloviating Matthews is quoted as saying, "America's enemy in the war on terror is not evil -- they just have a different perspective."

As a result of the Chris Matthews pseudo-intellectual speech, radio talk show host Bob Newman invited him to appear on KOA's "The Gunny Bob Show," aired in Phoenix.

Bob is a decorated Marine and a columnist who specializes in terrorism and counterinsurgency. Matthews agreed to appear on Newman's show. Many listeners may argue it wasn't an appearance as much as it was a total meltdown of a man who got caught displaying anti-American tendencies on a radio show with bigger ratings than Hardball.

Bob Newman was interested in pursuing the meaning of Matthews' statements in Toronto.

According to the Gunny, he repeatedly asked Matthews if he thought terrorists are our enemy. Finally, after Matthews apparently realized that the Gunny wasn't going to allow him to dodge the question, Matthews replied that terrorists are "a sub-set of our enemy," to which Gunny Bob asked what that meant. Matthews flew into a rage and it went downhill from there.

When the Gunny told Matthews that he wasn't buying his bizarre, convoluted explanation of his controversial speech, Matthews started screaming about how awful the Bush administration is and then totally lost it by hanging up on the Gunny with considerable gusto and fury.

Matthews displayed the usual behavior lefties utilize when they feel cornered like rats: start spouting anti-Bush rhetoric and play to the cheap seats where you'll find the left-wing moonbats sitting and cheering. But the hang up in the middle of an interview shows Matthews can give it but can't take it.

"I knew the guy was a hot head with serious discipline problems, but when he came out of the gate swinging and kept dodging questions and offering incomprehensible answers and obvious diversions, I knew I had a live one on the line. I was, however, quite surprised that he felt so humiliated on my show that he decided that hanging up was his best option. I expected more professional behavior from Chris, frankly," the Gunny said.

"The rage Chris demonstrated at me because I had the temerity to challenge not only his controversial speech but his explanation of that speech, as well as his belief that terrorists are a 'sub-set' of America's enemies, was alarming. What kind of journalist conducts himself like that? Especially on a show that has more listeners than he has viewers.

"He blasted into the interview at full bore and went straight for my throat. He quickly realized that sort of tactic wasn't going to work on me. He didn't do his background work to find out who I am and what I used to do for a living. That apparently panicked him and he went ape when I pressed on and on with questions he didn't want to answer on the air."

Jim Kouri, CPP is currently fifth vice-president of the National Association of Chiefs of Police.

_____________________

Typical lib response!

Great Article! (From Canada, No Less)

Bush faces crisis ... But only in the left's fantasies

Toronto Sun ^ 2005-11-14 Salim Mansur

Democrats in the United States and their lib-left allies in the mainstream media have been in an uproar since special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald delivered a grand jury indictment against Lewis "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. Democrats and their media allies feel vindicated in their allegations against President George Bush that he lied in taking the U.S. into war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq. These allegations were liberally thrown around during the 2004 election with no effect on the democratic outcome of Bush and Cheney winning a second term in the White House.

The uproar is an indication of how far to the fringes of American politics the once-great Democratic party has drifted. Neither facts nor history seem to matter to its current leadership, which has focused on ideology wrapped in layers of resentment and hate directed at Bush.
The indictment of Libby was a result of a 22-month investigation into charges of a deliberate leak from within the White House "to out a covert CIA agent" -- Valerie Plame Wilson, wife of Joseph Wilson, a former ambassador. But the investigation only led to an indictment of Libby for obstruction of the grand jury, two counts of perjury and two counts of false statements. Libby has pleaded not guilty and will fight the charges in court.

Here it is worthwhile to recall there was no indictment of any sort against Sandy Berger, former president Bill Clinton's national security advisor, who stuffed some secret papers into his socks and walked out of a building holding national security documents. Berger was fined $50,000, probably paid by friends of Clinton.

There was not, as Fitzgerald answered the media, "any allegation that Mr. Libby knowingly, intentionally outed a covert agent." Moreover, there was no indictment against Karl Rove, Bush's right-hand man. When asked if the grand jury indictment of Libby could be viewed by critics of the Iraq war as a vindication of their charges against the Bush administration, Fitzgerald replied: "This indictment is not about the war ... people who oppose it, people who have mixed feelings about it should not look to this indictment for any resolution ... or any vindication of how they feel." So the matter should rest. But it won't, because Democrats and their lib-left allies, having failed to win any of their arguments in the political arena, have resorted to the courts to fight their political battles.

LIB-LEFT TACTICS

The fact that neither Libby nor Rove was indicted for the reason the investigation was demanded -- the violation of the 1982 Identities Act to protect covert agents -- indicates the political tactic of the American lib-left is to continue throwing piles of rubbish at their opponents in the hope some will stick through the legal system. Indeed, the Joseph/Valerie Wilson saga has been exposed for what it is, a highly egotistical man tilting against an administration over a policy endorsed by a majority of the American people. The story of the CIA, on the other hand, is a history of an organization with a long list of failures, from Vietnam through Iran to Iraq. This is well-known inside Washington, and confirmed by the recent Senate Intelligence Committee findings in the Silbermann-Robb report which cleared the president of charges that the administration pressured the CIA to doctor intelligence reports before going to war.

But none of this matter to the angry left, who seem ever-ready to betray America's interests to the hordes who remain sworn enemies of freedom.

_______________________________

Fantastic article!

I also want to link to an outstanding essay, "Who Is Lying About Iraq?" by Norman Podhoretz.

Who Is Lying About Iraq?

Say what you will about the article, but it is based on FACTS. (as opposed to the lib viewpoints regarding the liberation of Iraq.) It is a long read but certainly worth the time!

IT'S ABOUT TIME!!!!

Bush Forcefully Attacks Iraq Critics

Nov 11 6:21 PM US/Eastern Email this story

By DEB RIECHMANNAssociated Press Writer
TOBYHANNA, Pa.

President Bush strongly rebuked congressional critics of his Iraq war policy Friday, accusing them of being "deeply irresponsible" and sending the wrong signal both to America's enemy and to U.S. troops.
"The stakes in the global war on terror are too high, and the national interest is too important, for politicians to throw out false charges," Bush said in his most combative defense yet of his rationale for invading Iraq in March 2003.
Bush's charges brought a forceful response from senior Democrats in Congress, who accused the president of misleading the country about the justification for war. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who ran unsuccessfully against Bush last year, accused the president of playing "the politics of fear and smear."
Bush's speech was part of a coordinated White House effort to bolster the president's waning credibility and dwindling support for the war, in which more than 2,000 U.S. troops have died.
As casualties have climbed, Bush's popularity has dropped. His approval rating now is at 37 percent in the latest AP-Ipsos poll, an all-time low point for his presidency.
"When I made the decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power, Congress approved it with strong bipartisan support," Bush said in a Veterans Day speech at Tobyhanna Army Depot.
"While it's perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began."
Bush's remarks brought a few jabs from fellow Republicans as well as a sharp counterattack from Democrats.
In a speech in Philadelphia, Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., criticized how the war has been presented to Americans _ both by the media and the White House. Afterward, Santorum said the war has been "less than optimal" and "maybe some blame could be laid" at the White House. "Certainly, mistakes were made," Santorum said.
Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., who is weighing a run for president in 2008, has said he agrees with Democrats who are pressing the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee to move forward with an investigation into whether the administration manipulated intelligence.
"I was probably the main driver on the Republican side because I thought we needed the answers to whether intelligence was misused, intentionally or unintentionally," Hagel told the Omaha World-Herald in a story published Friday.
Defending the march to war, Bush said foreign intelligence services and Democrats and Republicans alike were convinced at the time that Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi leader, had weapons of mass destruction. The United Nations, he noted, had passed more than a dozen resolutions citing Saddam's development and possession of such weapons.
Accusing his critics of making false charges, Bush said: "These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will.
"As our troops fight a ruthless enemy determined to destroy our way of life, they deserve to know that their elected leaders who voted to send them to war continue to stand behind them."
Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada said Democrats would continue to press for a full airing of the facts about prewar intelligence and said asking tough questions was his party's way of standing with the troops.
"Americans seek the truth about how the nation committed our troops to war because the decision to go to war is too serious to be entered into under faulty pretenses," Reid said.
White House officials fanned out to television appearances to reinforce Bush's argument and Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman added his voice. He said Democrats who once worried that Saddam was amassing weapons of mass destruction now want an investigation of the intelligence. "Maybe this investigation will reveal that they were brainwashed," Mehlman said in a speech to be delivered Friday evening in Fort Wayne, Ind.
Criticism about prewar intelligence has been stoked by the recent indictment of Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, in the CIA leak investigation.
The probe aims to identify who leaked the identity of an undercover CIA officer whose husband, a former ambassador, alleged that the administration relied on faulty intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq.
Kerry accused the president of playing politics on a holiday set aside to honor veterans.
"This administration misled a nation into war by cherry-picking intelligence and stretching the truth beyond recognition. That's why Scooter Libby has been indicted. That's why a statement in the State of the Union Address was retracted," said Kerry, who voted in 2002 to give Bush the authority to wage war but later voted against additional funds for Iraq and Afghanistan reconstruction.
"It's a dangerous day for our national security when an administration's word is no good," Kerry said.
Bush chose to go on the road this Veterans Day to make his forceful defense of the war, leaving Cheney in Washington to attend traditional wreath-laying ceremonies at Arlington National Cemetery.
Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., accused Bush of using Veterans Day as "a campaign-like attempt to rebuild his own credibility by tearing down those who seek the truth about the clear manipulation of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq War."
Bush's political adviser Karl Rove, who is still under the cloud of the CIA leak investigation, hopped Air Force One to attend the speech, an indication that it was a political event.
Bush shared the stage with a tan Army depot vehicle, and banners behind him read "Strategy for Victory." "Hail to the Chief," which is rarely played to mark Bush's arrival, blared from speakers in the warehouse.
___

french Negotiations Proceeding Nicely!

Appeasement is a bitch, eh Jacque??!!!

Why france Is Burning?

Why France is burning
Daily Mail, 7 November 2005
http://www.melaniephillips.com

Night after night, France has been under attack by its Arab Muslim minority with the French authorities having totally lost control of the streets. What started as an ugly localised disturbance in Clichy-sous-Bois — a grotty Paris suburb — after two Muslim youths were accidentally electrocuted has spiralled into an unprecedented national crisis. Extreme violent disorder has spread to cities such as Toulouse, Lille, Nantes, the cathedral town of Evreux in Normandy and even to the centre of Paris. Thousands of cars have been set on fire and hundreds of people arrested across France. The rioters have torched post offices and fire stations, schools and synagogues, buses and warehouses, fired upon police, and doused a handicapped woman with petrol and set her alight. Nicolas Sarkozy, the tough-minded Interior Minister, has been blamed for inflaming the situation by his uncompromising language. French policy in general has been blamed for herding poor Arabs into suburban ghettoes where they have been left to fester in high unemployment and poverty.
The disturbances are thus being portrayed as race riots caused by official discrimination and insensitivity. But this is a gross misreading of the situation. It is far more profound and intractable. What we are seeing is, in effect, a French intifada: an uprising by French Muslims against the state.

When the police tried to take back the streets, they were driven out with the demand that they leave what the protesters called the ‘occupied territories’. And far from the claim that the disturbances have been caused by French policy of segregating Muslims into ghettoes, this is a war being waged for separate development. Some Muslims have even called for the introduction of the ancient Ottoman ‘millet’ system of autonomous development for different communities. The director of the Great Mosque of Paris, Dalil Boubakeur, has previously suggested that France should be regarded as a ‘house of covenant’, by which he appears to mean that France should enter into an agreement with its Muslims to grant them autonomy within the state. His response to the current violence is not to take steps to bring his own community under control but to suggest instead that the French government shows ‘respect’ and sends ‘a message of peace’. But M. Sarkozy and the police are determined to take back the streets. The Muslims are equally determined to keep territory they feel they have conquered from the French state with which they feel no identification.

This crisis, however, did not start with the electrocution tragedy in Clichy-sous-Bois. It has been going on for decades. The scale of it is astonishing. Nine thousand police cars have been torched or stoned since the beginning of this year. The problem has not been M. Sarkozy’s tough approach. On the contrary — until now this permanent grumbling insurrection has simply been ignored. For more than twenty years France’s Muslim areas have been out of control. Indeed, they only turned into Muslim ghettoes in the first place because Muslim violence and harassment forced everyone else out. And they became no-go areas for the police, seen by the Muslims as occupation forces entering their territory. In schools in such areas, teachers trying to teach French or European history have been threatened with their lives by both pupils and their parents. In some cases young French people have converted to Islam just to escape the harassment.

Blaming an official policy of segregation is wide of the mark. The fact is that French Muslims want to be segregated. The ghettoes are a way of ensuring a separate Islamic existence without having to assimilate into French society. The fact is that whatever policies different European countries have pursued to deal with minorities, they have not cracked this problem. France has enforced a rigid policy of state secularism and assumed that all minorities would adopt French values simply by being French. By contrast, the British and other Europeans have adopted multiculturalism, which means giving minorities equal status to the majority, and have bent over backwards to be accommodating to them and not give offence. Yet while France was burning, there were riots over several days in Denmark over the publication of cartoons satirising the prophet Mohammed. In the super-tolerant Netherlands, the film-maker Theo van Gogh was murdered exactly a year ago because he had made an ‘insulting’ film about Islam. The Dutch immigration minister has had to wear a bullet-proof vest after shots were fired into her office, and death threats have been made against other ministers who have spoken against Islamist violence. In Britain, British Muslims turned themselves into human bombs last July to murder as many of their fellow citizens as they could. We are told this was because of the war in Iraq. But France was a principal opponent of that war, and yet it is now being torched from Normandy to the Mediterranean.

For every country, a different reason can be found to blame it for the attacks being mounted upon it. Yet the common factor is the hostility of Muslims to the countries in which they have settled. Clearly, not all fall into this category. Thousands of British Muslims are highly integrated and live law-abiding and productive lives. But it is equally clear that across Europe, those moderates are either unable or unwilling to stop those who want to impose their values on the majority. And European governments have played into their hands. As the writer Bat Ye’Or reveals in her book Eurabia, the European Union and the Arab League entered into a series of official agreements some thirty years ago guaranteeing that Muslim immigrants in Europe would not be compelled to adapt in any way ‘to the customs of the host countries.’ This is all bound up with the erosion of national identities across Europe. This has affected even France, once a ferocious proponent of French culture which was imposed through a centralised schools system, a strong police force and national military service. But now the schools system and the police have been weakened and national service has gone. Banning the hijab (Islamic headscarf) in schools represented a flickering of the old national certainty as France sniffed the danger that had arisen in its midst. But it was too little, and maybe too late.

Even now Britain, France and the rest of Europe are still in varying stages of denial over Muslim unrest. Reluctant even to admit that religion is central to this phenomenon, they look instead for ways to blame themselves and use the insult of ‘Islamophobia’ to shut down debate. The warning for us from the disturbing events in France could not be clearer. We must end the ruinous doctrine of multiculturalism and reassert British identity and British values — and insist that although Muslims are a valued minority, they must abide by majority rules. But if France fails to hold the line, the fall-out will be incalculable for us and for all of Europe.

________________

Great summary about what is happening in france and why!

MUSLIM Riots Spread Across France And Europe

Some things that Americans can teach the French

By Froma Harrop

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com

Has anyone in the United States noticed that the Paris suburbs have been racked by race riots for a week? That youths in these ghettos are opening fire on police? You'd never know it from American media coverage. There's very little of it on TV, despite the dramatic footage of burning cars. On CNN Headline News, the French riots were given 20 seconds, wedged between an item about Scooter Libby and one about how a musicians' strike at Radio City wouldn't affect the Rockettes. What's more astounding is that Americans, despite their frequent delight in France-bashing, have not used the mayhem to turn a bright spotlight onto the failings of French society. Here we have nine towns in France consumed in what one French union leader called a "civil war," and few American commentators are wagging their fingers over what's wrong with France.

Compare that with 13 years ago, when the world's cameras trained on the violence in Los Angeles. The L.A. riots became the No. 1 story across the globe. The instant analysis from Europe was that the chickens of racial injustice had come home to roost. And there was much self-satisfied clucking about America being a messed-up place and Europe having gotten things right. French President Francois Mitterrand used the L.A. riots to defend France's generous welfare programs. The chaos in America, he said, showed "that the social needs of any country must not be neglected."

The welfare benefits in France are still pretty nifty, and yet the immigrant neighborhoods around Paris are exploding in fury. Something else must be going on. The popular explanation from official France is that the rioters are mostly impoverished Muslims, whipped up by an extremist clergy. There's truth in that, but there's a deeper root cause, which is harder to fix: racism. The immigrants and their children feel like foreigners in a country that will never accept them as truly its own. The French want them to quietly clean their toilets, and then disappear at night.

A similar story unfolded after this summer's London bombings. The perpetrators were Muslim radicals, but the real shock was that the bombers were not immigrants. They were their British-born children, who had received all the public benefits of being British, but felt only rage toward their country. All the bennies in the world won't cover a sense of being reviled. Americans may have something to teach their European friends. The United States absorbs immigrants by the millions. The immigrants don't riot. They work, and they assimilate. It could be that Americans' devotion to working — often ridiculed by leisure-loving Europeans — translates into greater respect for people who work. Ours is a more open society. Perhaps Americans haven't applied a sharp cultural critique because what little coverage they see from Europe tends skip over the ugly parts. In his book "The United States of Europe," Washington Post writer T.R. Reid portrays a continent of unending pleasure and comfort. His Europe is about young people taking their bullet trains from Madrid to weekend skiing in the Alps; first-class health coverage; pure food; and secure pensions. But the 300-page book devotes only two sentences to Islamic immigrants, mainly a dry reference to the growth in their numbers.

Eerily, the sparks that ignited the violence in Los Angeles and the Paris suburbs were virtually identical: resentment over perceived abuse by police. In Los Angeles, the trigger was the jury acquittal of the officers caught beating Rodney King, a black man, on film. In France, it was the death of two North African youths, electrocuted when they touched a power transformer. The rioters say police were chasing the young men. The police say that was not the case.
In 1992, presidential candidate Bill Clinton went to South Central Los Angeles and appealed for calm. This week, French President Jacques Chirac is appealing for calm, though from the safety of the government offices in Paris.

The two conflicts reflect very different political and cultural histories, but both stem from a deep sense of disenfranchisement by people of color. When it comes to matters of race, Americans have come quite a distance in 13 years. The French really haven't started the journey yet. Perhaps Americans do have something to teach them.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

Froma Harrop is a columnist for The Providence Journal. Comment by clicking here.

_____________________


Ahhhh, the failures of France and multiculturalism. I find it very interesting that the MSM refuses to identify the rioters as muslim. Instead they resort to using some benign term such as "french immigrants".

Hypocrite

I don't have much to offer today except this little gem. I heard an interesting little tidbit on Sean Hannity's radio program. He was discussing who has profited most from the Iraq War. Of course most people would offer Haliburton as their choice, but since government contracts are limited to a 3.7% profit margin, their pre-tax profit was only $167 million. What was Michael Moore's pre-tax profit from his little propaganda piece, Fahrenheit 9/11? A whopping $193 million! And what did he do with his money? Apparently, from new reports, his foundation has been snapping up Haliburton stock! What a hypocrite!

Not sure if all the figures are correct (I'm assuming that Hannity did his research), but it certainly is food for thought.

Unhinged; Or, How To Be A democrat in the 21st Century!

Unhinged

By David Horowitz and Ben Johnson
FrontPageMagazine.com November 2, 2005

HE SPOKE WITH GREATER AGITATION THAN USUAL. He fumbled nervously with a paper, turning it over and over with his left hand, this way and that, like a little child about to get caught in mischief. Then Harry Reid began swinging his right arm wildly, stating he was closing the Senate doors, forcing Senators to relinquish their cell phones and Blackberrys for the sake of “national security.” Reid squelched the work of the American people for three hours in order to harangue Republicans with insane accusations like this: The [Lewis] Libby indictment provides a window into what this is really about: How the administration manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to sell the war in Iraq and attempted to destroy those who dared to challenge its actions. As a result of its improper conduct, a cloud now hangs over this administration.

Of course, the Libby indictment doesn’t do anything of the kind. Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald specifically stated, “This indictment is not about the war.” It shows that Libby could not remember clearly, or did not want to remember clearly, the details of a number of discussions about Valerie Plame’s CIA job several months before. Plamegate is about a British intelligence report that Saddam was seeking fissionable uranium in Niger, a report that the Brits still stand by and that Joe Wilson’s oral account bolstered. The Libby “window” only opens speculation that the British may have manufactured of manipulated intelligence if, like Harry Reid and his Democratic nutcases, you regularly indulge in fits of acute paranoia.

Reid’s analysis has the other shoe on the wrong foot, too. It’s Democrats who have attempted to destroy to the character, reputation, and credibility of George W. Bush for more than two years and to criminalize their political differences with him over the war. Recall that the removal of Saddam Hussein was demanded by two presidents, one of them – Bill Clinton – a Democrat, and was authorized by a majority of Democrats in multiple Congresses. The last three Democratic presidential candidates have considered Saddam’s WMDs a major national security threat. Recall that the authorization for the use of force to remove Saddam was passed by Democratic majorities in both houses and that John Kerry – a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee with access to all the intelligence information that the Bush administration had – spoke eloquently on behalf of the authorization to remove Saddam by force. Recall that full membership of the Security Council voted on November 8, 2002, to give Saddam a 30 day ultimatum to report on what he had done with the tons – that’s thousands of pounds, Harry – of nerve gas and other WMDs that UN inspectors had already established he had manufactured; and that Saddam failed to do so. That’s why we went to war. Recall that even Russian and Jordanian intelligence said Saddam had WMDs, as did the intelligence agencies of a dozen other nations (and the Russians should know).

The Democrats are liars. They have defected from a war they themselves authorized and they have blackened the reputation of Americans more effectively than al-Jazeera. These leftist partisan hacks have put politics above principle so securely that they give al-Jazeera and the terrorists confirmation of America’s evil intentions “from the mouth of the beast.”

For example, Reid claimed Bush “consistently and repeatedly manipulated the facts” before the war. Dick Durbin seconded, averring, “Intelligence information was distorted, was misused, and we have seen as late as last week the lengths which this administration has gone to try to silence and discredit their critics of the misuse of this intelligence information.” Durbin threatened daily invocations of Rule 21 until the committee complied. “Be prepared for this motion every day until you face the reality,” he said.

After his national temper tantrum, Harry Reid faced a crowd of reporters, where he thundered, “If the administration had all the information that they have now back then, they wouldn't even have brought it to the Congress for a vote.” What would Sen. Reid have us do – reinstate Saddam as president of Iraq? Reopen the rape rooms and fire up the plastic shredders? The United States has toppled a monster, given a captive people their freedom, and sunk the dagger of democracy deep into the heart of the Muslim world. Millions of Iraqis – including members of the Sunni Triangle – voted for a pluralistic, democratic future, a major setback for the terrorists. Libya came to an unexpected arms agreement, thanks to the threat of force in Iraq. Lebanon demanded its right to self-determination. Syria initiated a pullout after 30 years of occupation, and Egypt began democratization of its own. In the face of these developments, the best foreign policy the Democratic Party’s Senate leadership can offer is: Ba’athists forever.

Reid rattled on, indicting the war he and his party supported:

We know that there were no [WMDs] now in Iraq. We didn't know it at the time. We know now that we didn't know at the time that there was no al-Qaeda connection. We know now that we didn't know then that there was no 9/11 connection. We know now that they had no plan for winning the peace. We didn't know that at the time.

We know nothing about the cargo trucked by an ominous-looking Russian-led caravan across the Syrian border before the beginning of the war. Reams of intelligence ties Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda before the war, not least including the fact that its terrorist affiliate Ansar al-Islam conducted training in northern Iraq during his reign of terror. And the White House has consistently stated there was no connection between Iraq and 9/11.

What we know is that the Left’s military alternative would have ended in disaster. There is no way we could have maintained 200,000 troops on the Iraqi border in perpetuity, as Ted Kennedy proposed. The American people’s complacency after one of the most rapidly successful military campaigns in modern history is troubling enough. If terrorists pouring in from Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia had begun sniping at U.S. soldiers stationed on the border – as we know now they would have – it would have made Nick DeGenova’s dream of a million Mogadishus come true. Popular support would have imploded, as it did in Beirut and Somalia, and the Left would have forced us to retreat yet again, emboldening the terrorists, and leaving Saddam Hussein further in their debt. How would he have rewarded their service when he finally acquired WMDs, as the Duefler Report confirms was his long-range plan?

In response to this Harry Reid and Dick Durbin seek a new Nye Commission. Senate leftists seek to scapegoat a war they voted to authorize on their political enemy, who happens to be commander in chief of the armed forces and leader of the free world. Since Karl Rove escaped unscathed by the indictment scandal, they have to force a phony scandal by other means, because they have no alternate plan, except to abandon Iraq and the Middle East to the terrorists, ultimately allowing them to regroup and face down the Great Satan in the United States.

They hunger for this investigation has nothing to do with truth, since the 9/11 Commission and other inquiries have repeatedly cleared the Bush administration of charges it pressured intelligence agents to produce pro-war reports or massaged their estimates. If anything, Bush and Cheney downplayed some the raw information handed them by the CIA, for which the CIA attempted to hang the blame for its own incompetence on Bush.

Yesterday’s stunt was also unnecessary, since Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-KS, said he already told Senate Democrats his committee would wrap up the second phase of the investigation by next week.

That investigation stalled – not because of Roberts or the Republicans – but because the Rockefeller Memo laid bare the left-wingers’ desire to twist the committee’s findings for crass partisan advantage. This after the Democrats, under repudiated Minority Leader Tom Daschle, politicized the Intelligence Committee, breaking up its nonpartisan composition following the 2002 elections.
Not just members of both political parties, but every intelligence agency in every nation in the world, believed Saddam Hussein had WMDs. Harry Reid, John Kerry, John Edwards and others decided they did not want to be on the wrong side of a war in 2002. Now, their actions undermine the troops they placed in harm’s way and the cause for which those troops are fighting and dying: to establish an Iraq that is peaceful, democratic, and no longer a threat to its neighbors or the United States. Instead of supporting their mission, Reid and his followers seek indictments or resignations from everyone who disagree with them and indulge baseless conspiracy theories to smear their enemies. They have become unhinged in their pursuit of political blood – but it is American soliders who will pay with their blood for the Left’s efforts to delegitimize their efforts.
_________________

It's interesting, and amusing at times, watching the downfall of the democratic party. They remind me of a three year old. Whenever they don't get their way, they fall on the floor, kicking and screaming, hoping that they will annoy us to the point that they get their way. The majority of Americans have figured this out, though, and are very tired of their rhetoric and sick of the their lapdog, the mainstream media.

A word of advice to the democratic party, whining, crying, and name-calling does not constitute ideas or vision! The more time that Harry Reid, Dick Durbin, Chuck Shumer, Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Howard Dean, and others of this ilk spend as the voice of your party, the less relevant you become. Good riddance!