I'm sure we've all heard of the recently leaked report by the International Committee of the Red Cross which condemns the United States for its treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. They complain that our actions are "tantamount to torture" because the fact that the prisoners are held indefinitely puts stress upon them and, of course, that they are subjected to psychological stress during interrogation. Nothing of late has so convinced me that the old guard of international organizations is entirely out of touch with reality than this report.

The Geneva Conventions, which the ICRC purports to uphold, are very specific about who is a POW and what may be done with them - and the men we hold in Guantanamo Bay in no way meet the requirements of being a POW; they are men whom, if we so wished, we could put up against a wall without a hearing and shoot them - they are people captured under arms fighting American and allied forces with no recognizable chain of command, nor anything to distinguish them from civilians. Add the fact that they intentionally target civilians, and use them as a shield for their hostile actions, and what you've got is a sort of Stateless scum unprotected by any of the rules of civilized States. That we keep them alive at all is tribute to our extreme generosity.

The Rules of Warfare, so-called, are only rules provided that everyone obeys them - at the closing stages of World War Two, as the Russian armies pounded into eastern Germany, a great number of atrocities were committed; essentially, any female 8 to 80 was raped, and quite often murdered; anything not nailed down was stolen - it was absolutely disgusting - but it wasn't a crime. The Germans had broken the rules of civilized warfare first and the Russians were in no way bound by them when they gained the upper hand. On the flip side, when the Anglo-American armies entered the western part of Germany, no such widespread crimes happened - the Germans had fought a largely civilized war with us and we reciprocated; those Germans who did commit crimes were brought to justice, but there was no blanket removal of the protections of the Geneva Convention for the civil population and captured soldiers.

We are engaged in a sort of war where the other side by definition violates the known rules of warfare - we are, therefore, not bound by them in any way whatsoever. Any mercy we show is entirely out of the generosity of our hearts. We cannot, pace the ICRC, fight barbarians using rules they don't obey - to do so would be essentially to cede victory to them. I believe the elites of the world understand this full well - but they just don't care. Having the United States not win is more important than anything else - groups like the ICRC (and Human Rights Watch, etc) have entirely degenerated; they are now groups which just want to tear down the United States - it doesn't really matter what we do, whatever it is will be deemed unacceptable by the international elite.

The New York Post is reporting that House leaders are seeking to cut America's contribution to the UN:

Congress is likely to move to reduce U.S. funding of the United Nations if leaders at Turtle Bay don't come clean and institute major reforms in the wake of the Iraq oil-for-food scandal, The Post has learned.

Recent interviews with Congress members and staff investigators revealed growing shock and outrage at the scope of history's biggest financial scandal, in which Saddam Hussein is alleged to have ripped off $21.3 billion from a humanitarian program intended to provide food and medicine to the Iraqi people.

The officials said there is increasing sentiment to take drastic action, including cutting U.S funding if the United Nations doesn't make radical changes in its secretive policies and questionable management procedures.

The $1.12 billion annual U.S. contribution to the United Nations represents 22 percent of the world body's budget.

This entry is for all of those who shout "chickenhawk" at supporters of the war - Brought to us via the American Spectator:

"Locked, cocked and ready to rock," said Marine Lance Corporal Dimitri Gavriel, 29, before the start of the Fallujah offensive. "That's about how we feel."

Most Brown University graduates don't speak this way. In fact, if Lance Corporal Gavriel had still been on the Brown campus, his comments might have been censored as hate speech. But then, there aren't many Brown University graduates in Fallujah, where the very concept of hate speech would give any Marine a chuckle. It was in Fallujah, on November 19th, that Dimitri Gavriel was killed by enemy fire.

Gavriel had been building a successful career on Wall Street as a real estate securities analyst, working for firms including Banc of America Securities, Credit Suisse First Boston, and J.P. Morgan. When he was laid off during the market doldrums of 2002, he became determined to join the Marines, inspired in part by the deaths of four friends in the September 11th attacks. The Marines rejected his initial application, concerned about his age and old injuries from his high school and college wrestling career. He was 27 at the time.

"He told them, 'I know I'm a little bruised, I'm a little older than the other guys. But I can do anything they can do,'" said Gavriel's sister, Christina. He trained and lost 40 pounds. The Marines gave in, and took him.

The day before he left for boot camp, he was offered a new job in finance. His friends and family pleaded with him to take it. Christina Gavriel even told him he could live in her Manhattan apartment rent free if he would stay in civilian life. But the next morning, he headed for Parris Island as planned.

If only half of us would show half as much courage as Lance Corporal Gavriel, this world would be a perfect place. I can't properly express my sadness at his loss, I can't possibly express proper sympathy for his family - but I can stand in amazed gratitude that God has seen fit to allow us to call such men our fellow Americans.

Go read the whole thing - and then remember that each and every day our best and bravest are out there, fighting for us.

David Ignatius at the Washington Post argues that we should engage Iran. In Mr. Ignatius' view, the model of Iraq is a failure and we must seek new means of dealing with the similar threat of Iran. He makes the rather bold statement that David Kay, the man who investigated in depth the Iraqi WMD programs, has said that Iraq's WMD programs had been dismantled - apparently in accordance with UN and 1991 cease-fire requirements. I've read the Kay Report, and it doesn't seem to say that to me - rather, it appears that while Saddam may not have kept stockpiles of WMD, he was still keeping the capability to producing WMD on short notice. Be that as it may, is there any hope in actually engaging the Iranians?

First off, let us understand that if we negotiate with those who hold power in Iran we are not in any way engaging the Iranian people. Power in Iran, despite some democratic window-dressing, is held by an unelected group of theorcrats who can, and do, determine what the government may do, and whom may serve in it. To enter into negotiations means to be placing our trust in people who never have to refer to the Iranian people and who have a huge incentive to play us false. Mr. Ignatius doesn't understand this fundamental point - as evidenced by this rather bold, and impossible for him to actually know, statement:

The nuclear issue has become fused with Iranian nationalism to such an extent that a large majority of Iranians, young and old, moderate and hard-line, want their country to join the elite nuclear club.

How Mr. Ignatius arrived at such a conclusion about a closed society with no free press, no genuine elections and thus no way to actually ascertain the wishes of the Iranian people is a bit beyond me - though it sounds suspiciously like statements I read back during the Cold War when people insisting upon American concessions were making statements that populations held captive by undemocratic enemies of the United States were united in their desires for this or that. Perhaps, in the long run, Mr. Ignatius is hoping for another Cold War - opposed to the hot war in Iraq and the larger War on Terrorism, our elite opinion-makers would, it seems, prefer a revived "balance of terror" between nuclear-armed adversaries. I can't come to any other conclusion when I read another part of Mr. Ignatius' views:

such dialogues have steered other nuclear-capable countries away from actually producing weapons, including Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Argentina, Brazil, Switzerland, Sweden and Belgium.

This works out fine if you ignore the fact that Switzerland and Taiwan are pacific, constitutionally-governed States...as opposed to Iran, which is government by theocratic fanatics who think God has instructed them to support a terrorism which butchers children. What I get here is a "so much for elite opinion" vis a vis Iran - they have learnt absolutely nothing over the past 30 years, and it seems they never will learn. There is no "carrot and stick" approach to be taken with Iran because no carrot will offer will be sufficient for the mullahs - only the stick remains. As we wrap of Iraq, we'll allow the Europeans to take a stab at it - who know? Miracles do occur and may the mullahs will see reason. Also, maybe Iran will have a revolution - we've no way to assess the strength of the Iranian opposition, but it is definitely in existence and it could explode into revolution, thus eliminating the problem at a stroke. But make no mistake about it - if EU negotiators and Iranian revolutionairies cannot bring the mullahs to reason or extinction, then we will have to act militarily...and probably within the next year or two.

Hat Tip: Real Clear Politics

This opinion piece, from The Times of London, is both short and incisive enough to warrant a complete citation:

LET'S HEAR IT FOR THE MARINES By Janan Ganesh THE MOTTO of the US Marine Corps is Semper Fidelis, or “always faithful”. And faith is exactly what the Western media eschew in their relentlessly cynical coverage of the American Armed Forces, which plunged to a new nadir last week with the outrage at a Marine who shot dead an injured and unarmed Fallujah terrorist. Their determination to portray the Americans as trigger-happy louts and the Iraqi terrorists as mere “rebels” slanders the former, sanctifies the latter and betrays everybody who trusts journalists to be objective. Each American transgression is covered exhaustively and reproachfully, while triumphs, such as the trouble-free elections in Afghanistan and the reconstruction of Iraqi infrastructure, are treated as background noise. The torture of a few dozen prisoners in Abu Ghraib, for example, received far more attention than the restoration of the Marsh Arabs’ homeland. And this bias predates the Iraq war. If you get your news from Channel 4, you probably believe that the detainees at Guantanamo Bay are wide-eyed young gadflies who were enjoying an innocuous 18-30 holiday in glamorous Tora Bora before being kidnapped by rampaging Navy Seals. The truth is that many are al-Qaeda members who fought coalition forces during the invasion, but whose crimes are too legally vague to guarantee a conviction in court. America is therefore faced with the choice of releasing known enemies or detaining them indefinitely. That they choose the latter is not only sensible but generous — any of history’s previous superpowers, such as Soviet Russia — would have shot them on sight.

Jack Nicholson’s “you can’t handle the truth” routine in A Few Good Men has become an iconic monologue of modern cinema, but the point he was making is rarely grasped. The injustice Nicholson laments is not that we expect a noble minority to pay the blood price for our security — it was ever thus — but that we demand the right to tell them how to do it. Shackled by laws, norms and protocol concocted by legalists, the US Armed Forces — who have done more for freedom of the press than all the world’s journalists combined — are put in an impossible position. It is nauseating enough that they are now casually disparaged as “hicks” and “rednecks” by do-nothing civilians, without the supposedly objective media joining in.

Janan Ganesh is a freelance writer

By now, most Americans seem to have internalized the conventional wisdom from the Election Day exit poll that found "Moral Values" as the deciding factor in President Bush's victory. As always, the construction of a poll can have as much influence on the results as the responses. While "Moral Values" was the top issue for 22% of voters, making it the top issue overall, it was less than the combination of "Economy/Jobs" (20%) and "Taxes" (5%). But even that combination of economic issues fell short of the combination of "Terrorism" (19%) and "Iraq" (15%). So, Lesson #1 is that "Moral Values" at 22% was actually the third-ranked issue, behind economic issues at 25% and national security issues at 34%. Lesson #2, is that the media persists in separating Iraq from terrorism.

For those who still talk about the war in Iraq as distinct from the war on terror, here is a website that clearly describes the connection. It encapsulates a presentation made by National Review's Deroy Murdock. If Saddam Hussein was not complicit in terrorism through his logistical, financial, operational and diplomatic support, then terrorism does not exist. And as the UN Oil-for-Food scandal continues to unfold, despite the UN's attempted cover-up, it becomes clearer that Saddam Hussein was allowed to continue his actions because of the largesse he showered upon Security Council members and the UN itself.

Europeans and Muslims love to spout on and on about how the Israeli-Palestinian Arab conflict is the root cause of terrorism and must be resolved. But Saddam's sponsorship of Hamas suicide bombers was not a problem for them. There's much more at the site, including a tally of casualties by Saddam-supported groups. Anybody who maintains that Iraq was separate from the war on terror is either not paying attention or attempting to hide the facts.

While the Left finds it politically advantageous to claim that we are losing the war on terror, good news from England suggests otherwise:

Britain's security services thwarted a September 11-style attack on targets including Canary Wharf and Heathrow Airport, according to reports.

The plot is said to have involved pilots being trained to fly into target buildings including London's famous financial centre and the world's busiest airport.

It is one of four or five al-Qaeda planned attacks, since 9/11, that have come to nothing, after the authorities intervened, reports claim.

More details on this are sure to come later.

For those who are interested in the subjects of the baleful influence of political correctness, the errosion of liberty by judicial fiat and the true nature of the enemy we face, this article in The Spectator by Anthony Browne is a must read (annoying, but free, registration required).

The horrific butchery of Dutch film maker Theo Van Gogh was a gigantic wake-up call for the people of the Netherlands - by all accounts the most liberal (indeed, overly so) people in the world. After decades of not judging "the other" and welcoming everyone regardless of whether or not they wanted to settle down and become good Dutch people, the Dutch discovered that they had embraced a serpent. What they have re-discovered is that, indeed, there are absolutes - absolute right and absolute wrong.

While we pride ourselves on being a very open and tolerant society, we recognise that there are limits to acceptable behaviour. Worship a rock for all we care, but when you start threatening to kill people in the name of the rock, it starts to become a problem to be addressed.

We are engaged in a fight to the death with this Islamo-fascism which murders people for daring to be different - and no amount of leftwing hand-wringing over our supposed crimes will make the enemy go away and cease to be an enemy. Though, as Mr. Browne points out, the left in Europe is trying very hard make "head in sand" a governing principle of life:

The murder of Pim Fortuyn broke the taboo on talking about immigration, and the murder of Theo van Gogh has broken the taboo about tackling Islamic radicalism. The politically correct Left is now ridiculed in the Netherlands. A sign at the site of his murder says it all: ‘Theo rests his case’. But outside the Netherlands, the Left is drawing a different conclusion. In a sickening essay, Rohan Jayasekera, the associate director of Index on Censorship, a group which supposedly defends freedom of speech, blamed van Gogh for his own murder. He wrote that the film-maker was guilty of ‘an abuse of his right to free speech’, his ritual slaughter was ‘his very own martyrdom operation’ and we should ‘applaud Theo van Gogh’s death as the marvellous piece of theatre it was’.

Unable to make the moral distinction between offending someone and murdering them, Index on Censorship has forsaken liberal democracy in the clash of values that faces us; but it is not alone. In Britain, the government wants to introduce laws supposedly to ban ‘incitement to religious hatred’ but which will inevitably be used by Islamic activists to silence criticism of their religion and culture.

Democracy too is under attack, with Belgium’s largest political party, the Vlaams Blok, banned last week. Attracting a quarter of the vote in the Flemish region, the anti-immigration separatist party was disbanded because it fell foul of anti-racism laws; unable to beat it in public debate or at the polls, its left-wing opponents killed it in the supreme court. In western Europe in the 21st century, the Left is getting courts to ban political parties because they are too popular.

So far, we here in the United States have dodged this bullet - this attempt by the left to enforce a blindess upon us; theory is more important than reality to the left and if adherence to theory means that the odd film maker has to be butchered on the street, then that's just the price of Utopia. Only our eternal vigilence here in the United States will prevent us from being bound over like sheep for the slaughter.

Hat Tip: NRO's The Corner

It is said that an old Chinese curse goes, "may you live in interesting times." We certainly are living in interesting times - and, at times, it may seems that we are cursed (Michael Moore, for instance, is at large {har!} and still making money) but to me these are also the most interesting and hopeful years I've ever lived through. Not even the revival of America in the mid-1980's compares with we're going through right now - back in the 1980's, Reagan's goal was to just get us up off the ground and the slap down the presumptuous tyrants in the Kremlin. Here in 2004, we seek nothing less than the restructuring of the world.

In my view, what has happened under President Bush is that, spurred by the knowledge that our lives are at stake, we have recaptured that American idealism and courage which faded away over the course of the 20th century. Two quotes illustrate what happened to us:

Is America a weakling, to shrink from the work of the great world powers? No! The young giant of the West stands on a continent and clasps the crest of an ocean in either hand. Our nation, glorious in youth and strength, looks into the future with eager eyes and rejoices as a strong man to run a race.

Theodore Roosevelt, Letter to John Hay, American Ambassador to the Court of St. James, London, Written in Washington, DC, June 7, 1897

Confidence has defined our course [as a nation] and has served as the link between generations. We've always believed in something called progress. We've always had a faith that the days of our children would be better than our own. Our people are losing the faith. Not only in government itself but in the ability as citizens to serve as the ultimate rules and shapers of our democracy.

Jimmy Carter, speech, 1979

The second quote is just so illustrative of what we battle against in the United States to this very day - a coviction on the part of our elite, left-wing opinion makers that we have no faith, that we cannot ensure that we are the masters of our own destiny. To them, it's all a very cold world and the best we can hope for is to stave off utter disaster ... and the means to stave off this looming catastrophe is to turn ourselves over, body and soul, to elite leftists who will ensure that we don't hurt ourselves. It just chaps the hide of leftism when we've got a President "too stupid" to see this - and an American people who award him a majority of their votes.

Victor Davis Hanson over at National Review Online gives us a peek at the absurdity of those who battle against us on the domestic front:

After the seven-week defeat of the Taliban, these deer-in-the-headlights critics paused, and then declared the victory hollow. They said the country had descended into rule by warlords, and called the very idea of scheduled voting a laughable notion. We endured them for almost two years. Yet after the recent and mostly smooth elections, Afghanistan has slowly disappeared from the maelstrom of domestic politics, as all those who felt our efforts were not merely impossible but absurd retreated to the shadows to gnash their teeth that Kabul is not yet Carmel. Western feminists, homosexual-rights advocates, and liberal reformists have never in any definitive way expressed appreciation for the Afghan revolution now ongoing in the lives of 26 million formerly captive people. They never will. Instead, Westerners simply now assume that there was never any controversy, but rather a general consensus that Afghanistan is a "good thing" — as if the Taliban went into voluntarily exile due to occasional censure from The New York Review of Books.

In a way we are doing what the old communist regimes tried to do during the 20th century - export our revolution. We are exporting, as it were, the American Revolution. Those of us who are old enough to remember the Cold War recall all that leftwing claptrap - "social justice", "economic justice", yadda, yadda, yadda....tell you what, a Revolution doesn't give a damn about the wealth or poverty of the people: a real revolution is something that ensure that a government derives it's just powers from the consent of the governed. That is a real revolution in human affairs - and that is what the United States has stood for since July 4th, 1776. It's what we fight for today in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere around the world - so that our long-oppressed brothers and sisters in the Arab/Moslem world will also have their July 4th, and their new birth of human freedom.

Keep that in mind - we are the real revolutionaires; think of that picture of Che which we see reproduced at every pinko political rally; change the picture to the picture of a US Marine and you'll have your real Freedom Fighter.

If this is true, it sure would impact those theories that Bush's policy has made the world more unsafe:

BAGHDAD — Insurgents captured in Fallujah have told Iraqi military interrogators that most of those fighting in Fallujah were former security officers for the regime of Saddam Hussein.

The insurgents said Saddam organized special operations units, starting in 2001, to counter any foreign invasion in Iraq. Most of those units, the insurgents said, are still active in the Sunni Triangle. ...

Officials said the Iraqi resistance appears to have changed tactics and no longer seeks a head-on clash with the U.S. military for the control of major cities. Instead, Saddam loyalists and foreign volunteers have launched attacks on police stations and other facilities meant to intimidate security forces and seize weapons and material.

These people weren't friendly to America and have suddenly become hostile to us. The only thing that's changed is their tactic. If you want to claim that means "terrorism" has increased because of our invasion, then you're right to a point. But it's intellectually dishonest to argue that increased terrorism, in Iraq, makes the world less safe. Really, it makes Iraq less safe, but then again, it's a war zone, so anyone entering ought to have the expectation of danger.

But these former Saddam loyalists are fighting to the death in Iraq. They're not hopping on planes bound for Chicago or Los Angeles to wipe out our cities. The terror operations they're conducting are contained within Iraq.

Of course, it's understandable so many would think the world is falling apart. When we see news 24 hours a day depicting increased car bombings and other terrorist attacks, it reminds us of the dangers we're facing. But these "new terrorists" are fighting to regain power for a terror regime, they're not formerly peaceful Iraqis who suddenly hate America for the war. They were part of the regime that was plotting to terrorize us before we launched the assault.

Just go back and connect the dots now.

1. You have these folks willing to conduct terrorism on American citizens.

2. Before we invaded, they controlled the government of a major middle eastern country.

3. They were conspiring with other nations through the U.N. Oil For Food Scandal to erode sanctions that would allow them to rebuild their WMDs programs.

4. Had they succeeded (which the Duelfer Report assesses they were) they would've been terrorists with nukes. Period.

It is the season of giving and as you go about buying the perfect gift for friends and family, don't forget those who are far away and risking their lives for us:

When wounded troops arrive at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center they often are wearing the same clothes they were wearing when they were injured; usually a dirty desert camouflage uniform, sometimes just a pair of boxer shorts.

The troops receive a $250 voucher from the Department of Defense.

But they are often unable to make it to the nearest Army and Air Force Exchange Services store at Ramstein Air Base for clothes or toiletries.

That's where Landstuhl's Pastoral Services Department comes in.

Pastoral services runs the Chaplain's Closet, a tiny building packed full of donated clothes, toiletries, books, movies and other personal items.

Lt. Col. Robert Hicks is a chaplain with the Alabama Air Guard. He works with Army, Marine, Navy and Air Force chaplains on getting the troops what they need.

This weekend, volunteers delivered wheelchairs full of items to hundreds of troops who arrived from Fallujah in the past week.

Senior Airman Karly Vogel, who is in the Minnesota Air Guard and is a chaplain's assistant at Landstuhl said the biggest need right now is large and extra-large sweatpants and shirts for Germany's cold weather.

"We rely on donations." she said. "There's so many troops that come through here, we have to work quick to get them what they need."

Full details are available at the Iraq War Veterans Organization.

HAT TIP: NRO's The Corner

In what seems to be a good sign that the Iraqi government is not allowing militants to find sanctuary within mosques, Iraqi forces have stormed a Baghdad mosque used as a base for anti-American activity. Furthermore, the government is talking tough against religious incitement to violence.

On Thursday, the Iraqi government warned that Islamic clerics who incite violence will be considered as "participating in terrorism." A number of them already have been arrested, including several members of the Sunni clerical Association of Muslim Scholars which spoke out against the U.S.-led offensive against Fallujah.

"The government is determined to pursue those who incite acts of violence. A number of mosques' clerics who have publicly called for taking the path of violence have been arrested and will be legally tried," said Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's spokesman, Thair al-Naqeeb.

The extremist Ansar al-Sunnah Army, in a statement found Thursday on the Internet, threatened to attack polling stations and assassinate candidates because democracy is an "infidel" institution.

This article on how Dutch law enforcement was on the trail of Theo Van Gogh's murderers, but could not act until after they killed him, is a timely reminder of why the PATRIOT Act is needed.

European countries were on the trail of militants linked to the slaying of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh for months before the murder, but lacked evidence to break up the cell until too late, security sources say...

"Unfortunately this happens all the time. People are arrested, and the vast majority of them leave custody without charges being brought, because intelligence is not evidence," the EU security source said.

Jamal Zougam, a suspect in the March 11 bombings in Madrid which killed 191 people, had been under observation for years for connections with radical Islamists. As far back as August 2001, police had searched his home and found militant videos and literature, as well as phone numbers of known al Qaeda members.

How hard is it to understand the issue?

Those who say Iraq wasn't part of the War on Terrorism apparently don't understand the definition of "terrorism."

It has long been established that Saddam paid bounties of $15,000 to $25,000 to the Palestinian families of the murderers. Hyde's committee will reveal at the hearing that some of the reward money was deposited from illegal profits Saddam made by demanding 10 percent kickbacks on all the contracts of companies that did business with the U.N.'s Oil-for-Food program. Those funds were then deposited with other Iraqi money, such as Jordanian Oil-for-Food oil payments, into the Central Bank of Iraq account in the Rafidain Bank in Amman, Jordan. The funds were then transferred to another account in the bank controlled by Iraq's ambassador to Jordan Sabah Yaseen. It was from Yaseen's account that Saddam's officials would cut and hand out checks to the homicide bombers' families...

Watch the instant replay:

1. Oil For Food transaction between conspiring country and Iraq/Saddam.

2. 10% Kickback on each transaction deposited into Central Bank of Iraq account.

3. Funds transferred to Iraq's ambassador to Jordan.

4. Checks cut and given to families of terrorists.

Do you still deny a connection between Saddam/Iraq and terrorism?

Then there are those who continue to say that George W. Bush has alienated our allies through stubborn arrogance or downright ignorance in the Iraqi war. But to say such a thing completely ignores the context behind our "allies" and their selfish and criminal actions:

[The Duelfer Report] shows how Saddam evaded U.N. sanctions from 1997 to 2003 by illicitly selling oil through other countries and bribing world leaders, up-and-coming politicians, journalists, businesses, even the U.N. itself. In the process he cleared $11 billion in illegal profits.

The report names names. Anyone who could help him regain weapons of mass destruction was a target. He settled on Russia, France and China — three of the five U.N. Security Council members that, with the stroke of a veto pen, could stop the U.N. from going to war or end economic sanctions against his country. ...

[The list] includes Charles Pasqua, France's former interior minister; Megawati Sukarnoputri, president of Indonesia; and Benon Sevan, former head of the U.N.'s Iraq sanctions program. Also named are a large number of Russian government officials, including Vladimir Putin's Chief of Staff, Alexander Voloshin and fixers and the governments of Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Egypt and China.

Please explain to me just how these folks can be considered "allies." Aren't allies supposed to be friends? Aren't allies those working WITH you, not AGAINST you? Would "allies" do this:

a member of the French Parliament, according to a memo sent to Saddam in May 2002, "assured Iraq that France would use its veto in the U.N. Security Council against any American decision to attack Iraq." That is, once bribed, France would stay bribed.

Let's go back to the instant replay again:

1. U.N. approves sanctions against Iraq after the 1990 Gulf War.

2. Oil For Food program instituted to help Iraqi citizens live under sanctions.

3. Saddam works with government officials from France, Russia and other countries to steal money from Oil For Food program.

4. Saddam intends to erode sanctions and reconstitute WMD programs using stolen money.

5. Saddam uses stolen money to pay for terrorism (see above).

6. U.S. in a post-9/11 world wants to disrupt Saddam's ties to terrorism and insure he doesn't get WMDs to use or provide to terrorists.

7. France vows to veto any action in U.N. Security Council relating to the use of force against Iraq in exchange for continued business.

With allies like this, who needs enemies? It certainly explains why Jacques Chirac is still criticizing the Iraq War.

Finally, there are some who still think the U.N. as a world body has credibility to do anything. Wrong.

"Witnesses at the Senate Governmental Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (search) told lawmakers Monday that Saddam got away with the scam because the Security Council made the mistake of letting him pick the buyers and sellers of Iraq's oil, which in effect let Saddam nearly completely control the relief program" ...

One official who allegedly received such [an oil] voucher was the Oil-for-Food program's former director, Benon Sevan.

Let's take a look at the final replay:

1. The U.N. imposes sanctions on Iraq.

2. The U.N. institutes a "humanitarian" program to aid innocent Iraqi citizens.

3. The U.N. essentially lets Saddam Hussein nearly completely control the program.

4. The Program's former Director, Benon Sevan, is on saddam's payroll.

It's no wonder Iraq has become such a mess. It has nothing to do with "cowboy stubbornness" or "brash ignorance" by George W. Bush. Despite what the America haters and Bush haters keep spouting, the truth is that Saddam was sanctioned by a world body that would rather illegally deal with him than actually enforce the sanctions. The truth is that Saddam desired to rebuild his WMD programs and was getting close to completely eroding U.N. sanctions so he could accomplish his goal. The truth is our so-called "allies" were conspiring with Saddam and providing money to him which was, in turn, used to finance terrorism. The truth is the Bush administration was not only acting against a terror regime in Iraq, it was acting against conspiring nations like France, Russia and others.

Some say the circumstances surrounding Iraq were based on lies, manipulation and illegal actions by arrogant governments... I agree. Thank God George W. Bush had the fortitude to take a stand against it all.

We've all heard by now of that Marine who shot the wounded terrorist in Fallujah the other day. Some on the left are trying to make political hay out of this - second-guessing a Marine engaged in battle as to whether or not he should have fired. I'm certain that at least a segment of the MSM will try to play this up as "Abu Gharib II" - an attempt to de-legitimize the war. I'd like to take this time to remind everyone that this is war.

I don't give a two-penny damn about that dead terrorist - sure, in a perfect world it would have perhaps been better to take him alive; so that we could patch him up, interrogate him and then turn him over to the Iraqi authorities for trial and execution as a terrorist. But this isn't a perfect world and we don't always get what we want. These terrorists who fight against us have made the decision to die - they have no legitimate reason for resistence, and they commit crimes on a daily basis as they go about their resistence activities. Keep in mind that the beasts we're killing in Fallujah are the same sort (and likely at least in a lot of cases the precise same people) who set bombs to blow up children, behead unarmed civilians, kidnap off-duty Iraqi soldiers and massacre them by the score...

The military, of course, has to go through it's investigation phase - and there may be political pressure brought to bear to prosecute the Marine in question. If that comes about, I'll be donating to any legal defense fund set up for him - my view is that, at most, the Marine should get a reprimand reminding him that most times it's better to take them alive - but that's it.

As a sort of capstone on our victory in Fallujah, we dropped a a pair of 2,000 pound bombs on a bunker complex in Fallujah - the explosion, apparantly, was spectacular:

FALLUJAH, Iraq -- US forces dropped a pair of 2,000-pound bombs early yesterday morning on a bunker complex believed to be an insurgent training facility on the southern edge of this city, where the most dedicated and best trained rebel fighters are making a last stand.

The bombs shook the ground of the former insurgent stronghold and set off secondary explosions that went on for 45 minutes but could not be seen above ground, persuading officers of the Army's First Infantry Division that there were large stockpiles of weapons underground.

Hopefully it also had large stockpiles of terrorists who are now explaining their misdeeds to Allah.

Hat Tip: NRO's The Corner

The varied thugs and crooks who run the Palestinian Authority are calling for elections:

RAMALLAH, West Bank — Even while mourning the loss of Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leadership ordered preparations for new presidential elections to start immediately and appealed to the United States to take an active role in securing a vote in 60 days.

This is actually a hopeful sign - we cannot, of course, get our hopes up too high; the people running the show are the same people who got kids to strap on bomb belts and who have systematically looted the wealth of the Palestinian people for the past decade - but it is a hopeful sign. Sometimes, the leopard can change his spots - at least a bit. If there is any sense at all in the Palestinian leadership they have long realised that Arafat's anti-human intifada has been an abject failure - this may have lead at least a majority of the Palestinian leadership to realise that making peace and being the legitimate leaders of a real Palestnian State is better than being the illegitimate leaders of a Palestinian mafia.

Keep your fingers crossed, pray for common sense among the Palestinians, and let's see what happens.

According to the AP, the US and it's Iraqi allies have now completely occupied Fallujah - though pockets of resistence still remain:

FALLUJAH, Iraq (AP) - U.S. military officials said Saturday that American troops had now "occupied" the entire city of Fallujah and there were no more major concentrations of insurgents still fighting after nearly a week of intense urban combat.

A U.S. officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Fallujah was "occupied but not subdued." Artillery and airstrikes also were halted after nightfall to prevent mistaken attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces who had taken up positions throughout the city.

Iraqi officials declared the operation to free Fallujah of militants was "accomplished" but acknowledged the two most wanted figures in the city - Jordanian terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Sheik Abdullah al-Janabi - had escaped.

U.S. officers said, however, that resistance had not been entirely subdued and that it still could take several days of fighting to clear the final pockets.

The offensive against Fallujah killed at least 24 American troops and an estimated 1,000 insurgents, and rebel attacks elsewhere - especially in the northern city of Mosul - have forced the Americans to shift troops away from Fallujah.

That last bit will be important over the next few weeks...we have to keep them on the run and keep killing them as fast as we can. Terrorists who are fleeing and wondering how to survive until tomorrow have that much less time to plan terrorist attacks.

Keep in mind that the people of Fallujah probably don't like us all that much - and, think about it, how happy would you be with foreign troops in your town? - but they are also quite tired of the foreign terrorists who have turned Fallujah into a terror-haven:

Fallujah residents, most of them now displaced by the fighting, said there were hundreds of non-Iraqi Arabs in town before the offensive began on Monday. However, they added, the ties of brotherhood had mostly unraveled and the remaining foreign fighters had tried to intimidate residents into staying as human shields.

A rebel-allied cleric who goes by the name Sheik Rafaa told Knight Ridder that Iraqi rebels were so infuriated by the disappearance of their foreign allies that one cell had "executed 20 Arab fighters because they left an area they promised to defend."

Other residents said foreign militants wore out their welcome months ago, when they imposed a Taliban-like interpretation of Islamic law that included public floggings for suspects accused of drinking alcohol or refusing to grow beards. Women who failed to cover their hair or remove their makeup were subjected to public humiliation. Those accused of spying for Americans were executed on the spot, residents said.

The turning point for a young man named Hudaifa came the day he saw a Yemeni fighter whipping an Iraqi in a public square. He recalled his humiliation this week in a conversation with other Fallujah residents now in Baghdad. Still fearful, the men asked that their last names not be published.

"An outsider beating an Iraqi in his own town?" Hudaifa asked, outrage still in his voice. "It's such a shame for us."

Emerging from 30 years of Saddamite tyranny where they were fed a daily diet of anti-western and anti-American propaganda, and being a religious minority which has lost forever its priviledged place in Iraqi society, the Sunni's of Fallujah and elsewhere in Iraq are likely never going to love us - and a percentage of them will always be willing to take up arms against us - but I still hold that they are just people like everyone else; boiled down, what they want is to be left alone to run their own affairs. They don't want US troops patrolling their streets - but they also don't want terrorists thugs ordering them about.

Our long and hard task in Iraq continues - and the hardest part, in a way, comes after we've cleared out Fallujah; then it will become a task of convincing these ignorant, skeptical and xenophobic people that we're really there to help and we'll leave when the job is done.

Just in case anyone was thinking that in 2005 forward the President and Prime Minister were going to go soft or wobbly on the War on Terrorism, their joint press conference today should lay that idea to rest:

WASHINGTON — President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair committed themselves Friday to work toward a two-state solution as a way to create Middle East peace.

But that solution, following the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, can only be achieved if both states vow to pursue democratic paths, the two allies said.

"Israelis and Palestinians living side by side in peace and security" is the goal, Bush said in a White House press conference with Blair. "Our sympathies are with the Palestinian people as they begin a period of mourning," Bush continued, adding that the months ahead offer an opportunity to secure "lasting peace."...

...Blair vowed that "we will do is anything necessary to make this strategy work," but that strategy must include coming to an agreement on what a viable Palestinian state means.

"What we're saying this morning is, that viable state has to be a democratic state," Blair said. "We will do whatever it takes to help build support for that concept."

This is mostly, of course, in reference to the Palestinian element of the War on Terrorism, but the reaffirmation that democracy is the goal underlines that we are sticking with the Bush Doctrine. It is only by the spread of democracy into the Arab/Moslem world that we'll win this war - anything short of democracy only leaves open that prospect that yet another terrorist-sponsoring thug will arise.

It is such a relief to me as an American to know that we will not ever go back to that cynical and cruel desire for "stability" rather than freedom - we, to our shame, did participate in fostering the stability of the grave in the Arab/Moslem world - for too long we looked the other way at horrific human rights violations as long as the thugs kept things quiet. No more - now we fight for what Americans always must fight for: governments which derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.

The Jerusalem Post published a good piece by Alan Dershowitz on how Yasser Arafat, as the godfather of international terrorism, was the inspiration for Osama bin Laden. The key argument is this:

Arafat was the inspiration for Osama bin Laden, because he proved to his eager student that terrorism works and that terrorists can be praised and rewarded by a craven world, as Arafat was by so many for so long.

Despite being a verifiable mass killer over the course of several decades, world leaders encouraged Arafat's terrorism by treating him as a legitimate political figure and attending to the grievances he made popular through murder. And not only do those world leaders sing Arafat's praises in death, but they also repeat their crimes with Son of Arafat (Osama bin Laden). By hamstringing America's strategy of complete victory over jihadist terror, the likes of France and the UN simply perpetuate terrorism.

Only when they genuinely and categorically denounce terrorism and fight it with total dedication will it end. Until then, we see in the mindbogglingly favorable eulogizing over this man who deserves a trial at the Hague rather than hagiographic news coverage not only a reminder of how he was emboldned by Western appeasers in the past, but how the appeasers enable bin Laden today.

Fox News is reporting that we're tightening the noose on the terrorists in Fallujah - we're close to victory, but as the enemy becomes more clearly cornered, he fights harder:

FALLUJAH, Iraq — Insurgents tried to break through the U.S. cordon surrounding Fallujah on Thursday as American forces launched an offensive against concentrations of militants in the south of the city. Some 600 insurgents, 18 U.S. troops and five Iraqi soldiers have been killed in the four-day assault, the U.S. military said.

U.S. troops, meanwhile, went on the offensive Thursday in Mosul, Iraq's third largest city, after guerrilla attacks launched against police stations and bridges across the Tigris river in an apparent bid to relieve pressure on their trapped allies in Fallujah.

A U.S. official acknowledged it might take "some time" to secure the city, 220 miles to the north.

Keep in mind that a lot of the MSM will try to make things out as badly as possible - but we're winning this fight in Iraq; the enemy is not acting out of carefully prepared plans, but out of desperation. What ever you do, don't lose heart - your soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines in Iraq are doing the job they are trained to do and the outcome of the battle is not in doubt. Keep in mind how badly the MSM played up the pause before we took Baghdad back in 2003 - to here the MSM tell it, we were on the verge of defeat about 24 hours before we rolled into Baghdad.

This battle in Fallujah may take some more days, or even some more weeks - remember, we are still proceding with caution because we are trying to minimize civilian casualties and limit damage to property. The upsurge in attacks elsewhere in Iraq may also take some days or weeks to bring under control - but we shall prevail.

Remember what we are fighting for: the spread of liberty; it's worth a high price.

Witht he glowing retrospectives on Yasser Arafat's life, it appears to fall to us to share the truth since the MSM is doing a poor job of it. One notable exception is Jeff Jacoby, in The Boston Globe, who has a good piece titled "Arafat the Monster."

CAMERA also has a good synopsis of arch-terrorist Arafat's life. While the Chiracs and Mandelas of the world praise him, and the likes of BBC and CNN almost completely ignore the blood on his hands, Arafat's legacy is nothing but murder and corruption:

Feb. 21, 1970: SwissAir flight 330, bound for Tel Aviv, is bombed in mid-flight by PFLP, a PLO member group. 47 people are killed.

May 8, 1970: PLO terrorists attack an Israeli schoolbus with bazooka fire, killing nine pupils and three teachers from Moshav Avivim

Sep. 5, 1972: Munich Massacre —11 Israeli athletes are murdered at the Munich Olympics by a group calling themselves “Black September,”said to be an arm of Fatah, operating under Arafat's direct command.

Mar. 1, 1973: Palestinian terrorists take over Saudi embassy in Khartoum. The next day, two Americans –including the United States' ambassador to Sudan, Cleo Noel – and a Belgian were shot and killed. James J. Welsh, an analyst for the National Security Agency from 1969 through 1974, charged Arafat with direct complicity in these murders.

May 15, 1974: PLO terrorists infiltrating from Lebanon hold children hostage in Ma'alot school. 26 people, 21 of them children, are killed

Jun. 9, 1974: Palestinian National Council adopts "Phased Plan," which calls for the establishment of a Palestinian state on any territory evacuated by Israel, to be used as a base of operations for destroying the whole of Israel. The PLO reaffirms its rejection of United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, which calls for a "just and lasting peace" and the "right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force."

Mar. 1978: Coastal Road Massacre —Fatah terrorists take over a bus on the Haifa-Tel Aviv highway and kill 21 Israelis.

Oct. 7, 1985: Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro is hijacked by Palestinian terrorists. Wheelchair-bound elderly man, Leon Klinghoffer, was shot and thrown overboard. Intelligence reports note that instructions originated from Arafat's headquarters in Tunis.

After signing Oslo Agreement...
Oct. 21, 1996: Speaking at a rally near Bethlehem, Arafat said "We know only one word - jihad. jihad, jihad, jihad. Whoever does not like it can drink from the Dead Sea or from the Sea of Gaza." (Yediot Ahronot, October 23, 1996)

Jan. 3, 2002: Israelis intercept the Karine-A, a ship loaded with 50 tons of mortars, rocket launchers, anti-tank mines and other weapons intended for the Palestinian war against the Israelis. The captain admits he was under the command of the Palestinian Authority.

Sep. 2003: IMF report titled "Economic Performance and Reforms under Conflict Conditions," states that Arafat has diverted $900 million of public PA funds into his own accounts from 1995 - 2000.

May 2, 2004: Tali Hatuel, 34, and her daughters - Hila, 11, Hadar, 9, Roni, 7, and Merav, 2 - of Katif in the Gaza Strip were killed when two Palestinian terrorists fired on an Israeli car at the entrance to the Gaza Strip settlement bloc of Gush Katif. Fatah and Islamic Jihad claimed joint responsibility for the attack.

Veterans Day allows us to take a step back and reflect on the enormous sacrifices made by all who have ever served in our armed forces, as well as their unsurpassed professionalism, dedication and courage. Warriors for liberty throughout history, the current battle for Fallujah reminds us once again what they fight for. Yesterday saw reports that hostage slaughterhouses were discovered. And today, Fox reports that a hostage has been found alive.

The amazingly benign coverage of Yasser Arafat's death, which very often altogether ignores the blood on his hands from countless victims of his terrorism, is a stark reminder that there are elements in this world that do not recognize good or evil. The heroic actions of our military have allowed us to see firsthand, once again, that there is no moral equivalence between us and our enemies and that we must defeat them completely.

Fallujah, Amsterdam, Madrid, Jerusalem, Shanksville (PA), Bali, Beslan, Darfur, Manila, Tak Bai, Nairobi, Istanbul. The list goes on around the world and back for decades. The one consistent element is the nature of our enemy. Recent discoveries in Fallujah are new reminders of that nature, and we reiterate our gratitude to our troops for protecting us from our enemies by taking the fight to them.

...with the way the MSM is playing up the death of Arafat?

I mean, the guy was a junior-league Hitler; the only reason Arafat didn't kill six million Jews was lack of resources.

Drag his carcas out of the hospital, tie it up in a bag and dump the corpse in the nearest sewer. And then have done with it.

Cut from the same cloth

***UPDATE***
Hell had the room ready and waiting.

William F. Buckley offers us a look at some "wargaming" recently done about Iran. Iran is rapidly attempting to build up a nuclear force - a force designed primarily to deter us from any attack on Iran, thus allowing the Iranians to export their Islamo-fascism from a secure base, much as the Russians were able to do with their nuclear-armed USSR during the Cold War. The President has stated, repeatedly, that the Iranian mullah's shall not be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons.

So, the war-gamers conclude, a strike would need to be undertaken by the United States. Here three stages are envisioned. The first, a bombing mission targeting Revolutionary Guard concentrations. That, actually, is easy to do, a 24-hour assignment using existing resources.

Next in gravity would be taking on the destruction of known and likely nuclear sites. To do this comprehensively would mean targeting 350 points, and to execute such an operation would take days.

To move on to Stage 3, a regime change, we would have to use U.S. ground troops. And to do either the second or the third stage, you would need air bases far beyond anything now available. “Compared with Iraq, Iran has three times the population, four times the land area, and five times the problems,” one gamesman pointed out.

Pause and think retrogressively. “About Iran’s intentions there is no disagreement. Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons, and unless its policy is changed by the incentives it is offered or the warnings it receives, it will succeed.”

Moreover, if we undertook preliminary military moves — the construction of air fields, the aggregation of troops and aircraft, what makes us certain that the Iranians would sit still for it? “‘We never “red-celled” the enemy in this exercise’ (that is, let him have the first move) [one participant warned]. ‘What if they try to pre-empt us? What if we threaten them and the next day we find mines in Baltimore Harbor and the Golden Gate, with a warning that there will be more?’”

Resolved: 1) Israel can’t handle the challenge. 2) The U.S. can’t abjure military action — there must be the threat that we will act. 3) Gaining time does not necessarily enhance our leverage.

Make no mistake about it, Iran will loom in 2005 forward as a larger problem than Iraq ever did. Outside the so-far unlikely event of an Iranian revolution overthrowing the Mullocracy in Iran, it will fall to the United States to deal with the problem. But Iran is a much tougher problem than Iraq.

Iran is a larger nation (636,000 sq miles against 167,000 for Iraq), with a much larger population (65 million vs 25 million) - and a population which does not have any large, convenient minorities who's dissent we can exploit to our advantage. Iran is also a very mountainous country - meaning it is highly defensible against a putative US invasion; there aren't a lot of flat, open spaces for the operation of our excellent armoured forces. Add to this the fact that a military conflict with Iran would close the Persian Gulf to trade, at least for some weeks or months - with the resultant cut in oil exports to an ever more oil-thirsty world.

What the President will do about this is unknown but as for me, I'm just happy we re-elected the man who will continue to build our "bunker busting" bombs and wont seek appeasment of the tyrants in Tehran. Whatever rough times lie ahead, we can at least we sure we'll meet them head on.

In all the hubbub of our election, a rather important story got rather lost in the crush:

The alleged killer of a leading film-maker was driven by Islamic fanaticism, Dutch police said yesterday.

Theo van Gogh, 47, was shot and stabbed to death by a Dutch-Moroccan as he cycled to work in the centre of Amsterdam on Tuesday.

The authorities said the killer - who was wounded in a gunfight with police - was known to the security services as an Islamic militant, but was not among the 150 hard-core al-Qa'eda suspects under close surveillance.

The Dutch media have described the murder as revenge for van Gogh's latest film, Submission, a taunting critique of Islamic views on women.

This is the sort of mentality that we are up against in this War on Terrorism; this, my friends, is a fight for our civilization. I don't know much about this Dutch film maker. Dollars to donuts he and I didn't share a lot of political beliefs - Holland being one of the most liberal nations in the very liberal European Union, it stands to reason that this man was likely to the left of most Americans. Still, he was one of ours - a free man expressing himself as he saw fit; and he was murdered by an Islamist fanatic precisely because he acted as a free man. Make no mistake about it - the enemy does hate us for what we are.

We have a hard fight against these lunatics - we're engaged in it right now in Fallujah most noticeably, but in places all around the world, all the time, the struggle goes on. Civilization against obscuritanist barbarism. We had a narrow shave back on November 2nd - pleased as we are about our 3.5 million margin of victory, the plain fact of the matter is that this result shows that all too many of our fellow citizens don't really understand what is at stake. This is a war to the death - eithe we die, or Islamo-fascism dies; no compromise is possible - no more than compromise was possible in the past with Nazism or communism.

The infinite patience and tolerance of the Dutch for their large, growing and increasingly radicalised Moslem minority has only resulted in the murder of man for daring to hold his own views on matters. This is not the time for patience and tolerance - this is a time for sharp and vigorous war, and it's our job to continue to educate our fellow citizens about the peril we are in, and the things we'll need to do to prevail.

One of the main results of last week's election was that the United States would continue on with the Bush Administration's strategic plan for the War on Terrorism. In all the clatter and buzz of the election it was hard, at times, to see the continuing war - but it did continue all through the election season and, of course, it continues on right now. As I write, our soldiers and Marines and their Iraqi allies are poised outside the city of Fallujah; ready, when the word is given, to launch a full-scale assault on the terrorists entrenched therein. The Iraqi government's proclamation of a state of emergency indicates that major action may be soon to come.

If the word is given to take Fallujah, then Fallujah will be taken - it is inconceivable that our magnificent men and women would be thwarted by the terrorists - the enemy will fight hard and we will take our losses, but the ultimate outcome is a foregone conclusion. A battle does create a lot of fireworks and intense emotions and we can rely upon our major media to play up this, but the more important part of a battle is what it is intended to accomplish. In this, we are set for a decisive victory in the Iraqi campaign of the larger War on Terrorism. By defeating these terrorists in Fallujah with the full backing of the Iraqi government and the assistance of Iraqi troops we will have put down forever the notion that the terrorists can either drive us out, or that the terrorists have anything like broad support among the Iraqi people.

Once victory is achieved in Fallujah, the way will be clear for a full Iraqi democracy to emerge in the elections coming this January. That these elections will be fraught with difficulty and will be far from perfect is a certainty - but the fact that they will take place nation-wide in Iraq and that a huge majority of Iraqi's will participate will lend complete legitimacy to whatever Iraqi government emerges. We will have won the Iraqi campaign - even if the terrorists continue their forlorn (and quite disgusting) attacks upon innocent Iraqi's. The effect of our victory in Iraq, when added to our victory in Afghanistan cannot be overestimated - the entire political equation in the Middle East will be changed for good.

Time will start to run out rapidly for the varied tyrannies, secular and religious, which currently oppress every single middle eastern country except for Iraq and Afghanistan - their peoples, seeing the courageous and free Iraqi's take charge of their own destinies will start to demand the same for themselves. The charges of the Islamo-fascists - that the United States is a Zionist Crusader out to plunder and oppress the Moslem peoples - will be proven lies, and all of the deaths demanded by them will be seen to be in vain. This is the prize we fight for right now in Fallujah.

God bless the troops.

Update: Fox News is reporting that the battle seems to have commenced. Pray for our men and women and the good people of Iraq.

When it comes to the issues that matter most, President Bush leads Kerry...

Terrorism is a top concern for many of the more than 100 million Americans expected to cast their ballots today, with President Bush leading Sen. John Kerry in most national polls and, most important, in most of the battleground states. Of 11 major national polls completed by Saturday or Sunday, Mr. Bush leads in seven, is tied with Mr. Kerry in two and trails in the remaining two. However, the president is over 50 percent in only one of the latest polls, with the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press survey showing him with 51 percent to Mr. Kerry's 48 percent.

Here's a wake up call to voters... John Kerry is an untested, unproven leader. He has no record to base his rhetoric on. So why trust him? You can't. We need to elect someone we can trust to protect us, and Kerry has not proven he can do that. Bush has. The last thing we need is for some unaccomplished senator from Massachusetts learning on the job about the war on terror.

The New York Post reports:

Osama bin Laden warned in his October Surprise video that he will be closely monitoring the state-by-state election returns in tomorrow's presidential race — and will spare any state that votes against President Bush from being attacked, according to a new analysis of his statement.

The respected Middle East Media Research Institute, which monitors and translates Arabic media and Internet sites, said initial translations of a key portion of bin Laden's video rant to the American people Friday night missed an ostentatious bid by the Saudi-born terror master to divide American voters and tilt the election towards Democratic challenger John Kerry.

MEMRI said radical Islamist commentators monitored over the Internet this past weekend also interpreted the key passage of bin Laden's diatribe to mean that any U.S. state that votes to elect Bush on Tuesday will be considered an "enemy" and any state that votes for Kerry has "chosen to make peace with us."

The statement in question is when bin Laden said on the tape: "Your security is up to you, and any state that does not toy with our security automatically guarantees its own security."

That sentence followed a lengthy passage in the video in which bin Laden launches personal attacks on the president. [emphasis added]

What does tat tell you if bin Laden was issuing a warning to red states? It tells me that President Bush has been so effective in the war on terror, that Osama bin Laden doesn't want Bush in power...

If the terrorists don't want Bush reelected, that's the biggest reason we need Bush to stay in the White House. The terrorists are more worried about Bush finishing the job he started than they are worried about the tough-on-terror front Kerry has been putting up the past month.

Shouldn't the Kerry campaign be a bit concerned that Osama bin Laden is practically campaigning for them?

John Kerry doesn't care about the troops, of course; never has. Anyone who comes home from Vietnam and calls his comrades-in-arms "war criminals" may be a lot of things but he's clearly not somone who cares about the troops. So, it's no surprise that the man of past insults is currently insulting the troops.

Kerry has, of course, claimed that President Bush "outsourced" the capture of bin Laden in 2001...never mind that at the time John Kerry said that the tactics being used were correct; Kerry needed a campaign issue - so truth and what is best for the United States go right out the window. Apparantly, though, Kerry's words are filtering down to the troops and they don't like it:

Several Army special forces soldiers who served in Afghanistan told FOX News that numerous teams were deployed to the Tora Bora area to root out bin Laden and his allies. Plus, they said that Kerry was ignoring their contributions in battle.

“If you want to win a war in someone else’s backyard, you have to use locals who know the area,” one soldier told FOX News.

Another soldier told FOX News that Kerry’s promise to increase the size of the special forces was an empty one.

"He also has no idea on what it takes to double [the number of troops in] special forces. I spent 13 years in special forces and we have been trying to do just that. The only way that special forces can be doubled is to drop the qualification standards. If that happens then we all loose. The quality will be zero,” the soldier said.

On Sunday, Kerry said that if elected, the American people would see a “flurry of activity and leadership with respect to our national security interests that they’ve never seen.”

But when asked in an interview with The Associated Press to explain how he would capture bin Laden and how he would get out of the war in Iraq, the Massachusetts senator declined to go into specifics. All he would say is “I will get other people to the table."

Note that last part - after insulting the incredibly brave men who lead the way in liberating Afghanistan, he then goes on to say that he'll bring other people to the table - what in hell is that other than "outsourcing" our War on Terrorism?

Is there no end to the utter garbage that this man Kerry puts out?

Well, yes, there is: after November 2nd, you'll have to go to the back pages of the NY Times to find Kerry's whine on why he lost...and, of course, you don't have to look it up if you don't want to...

That was the line I expected to hear at the end of the bin Laden video. Was it just me, or did the Osama bin Laden message sound eerily similar to the rhetoric we've been hearing from the Left for months? Makes one wonder who is copying whom. Think you can tell the difference between bin Laden and a Democrat? Test your skill... then click on the link to reveal the source.

"Bush is still practicing distortion and misleading on you" - source

"Bush misled this country" - source

"Bush has misled the country" - source

"Bush lied" is a standard talking point... which is ironic considering their last candidate's knack for truth-aversion.

"So he transferred the oppression of freedom and tyranny to his son and they call it the Patriot Law to fight terrorism" - source

"The Patriot Act broadens terrorism to include "domestic terrorism" which could potentially be used to target activist groups within the country speaking out against Bush's treacherous deeds." - source

"President Bush rammed the "PATRIOT Act" through Congress with virtually no debate. This law poses an unprecedented threat to Americans' individual freedoms and is a violation of our civil liberties." - source

"Patriot Act erodes civil liberties" is a standard talking point... which is ironic considering their current candidate helped draft it and voted for it.

"He didn't forget to transfer his experience from the rulers of our region to Florida to falsify elections to benefit from it in critical times." - source

"This race was stolen from him and from Al Gore and the Democratic Party." - source

"Selected not elected" is a standard talking point... which is ironic considering their never-ending desire to have elections decided by courts.

"Seemed to distract his attention from listening to the girl telling him about her goat butting was more important than paying attention to airplanes butting the towers" - source

"The scene of Bush on the morning of Sept. 11 in Florida reading "My Pet Goat" to second-graders was obtained from the school, which videotaped the president's visit that day. Bush, informed by his chief of staff that a second jetliner has just struck the World Trade Center, remains seated, his eyes widening. Moore superimposes a clock to illustrate how many minutes ticked by." - source

Michael Moore will be glad to see Hamas and Fidel Castro aren't the only peaceful, freedom loving friends of America that enjoy his "documentary".

Apparently the tape in the camera ran out before he could discuss the draft, social security and raising taxes on the wealthiest one percent.

Kevin Aylward of Wizbang brings us an anonymously written run-down on the entire War on Terrorism - it greatly repays reading. Aylward introduces it thusly:

One of the things casual observers of the Presidential debates might remember is that John Kerry said of the war in Iraq, "Wrong War, Wrong Place, Wrong Time."

Senator Kerry and the media are heavily invested in questioning President Bush's handling of the war in Iraq. It's a 'death by a thousand paper cuts' strategy that focuses on a car bombing here and a beheading there, as proof of a situation out of control. The problem with this type of news cycle driven coverage is that it offers no perspective on the challenges faced and the obstacles overcome since 9/11, by way of the implementation of the Bush Doctrine.

The Global War On Terror series was written to recap what has, and has not, been accomplished by the Bush administration since 9/11.

Please note that I served as editor for this series and am not the author. The author isn't interested in publicity and wishes to remain anonymous.

Read the whole thing (and it's quite long) here.

Hat Tip: Dean's World

It's worth noting in all the debate over the missing explosives in Iraq that one of the three kinds of explosives at the center of the debate is HMX.

Why is that important? As former weapons inspector David Kay, who later lead the Iraq Survey Group's hunt for WMD in post-liberation Iraq, explained to CNN's Aaron Brown in a recent televised interview, HMX is a key component of nuclear bombs. Said Kay, "HMX is in powder form because you actually use it to shape a spherical lens that is used to create the triggering device for nuclear weapons."

Therefore, it is now beyond doubt that Saddam's regime was in possession of at least some components of nuclear weapons of mass destruction as late as just weeks before the March 2003 start of the war, in violation of UN Resolution 1441 which required him to disclose and dispose of such materials. His failure to comply with 1441 created the legal justification for war.

President Bush told the truth about Saddam's WMD program. The tons and tons of HMX is more evidence of that.

If Al Jazeera's new Osama bin Laden tape is real, and recent, and if on that tape bin Laden, mastermind of the murder of 3,000 American civilians on a bright September morning three years ago, discusses the possibility of another attack on the U.S. on the scale of September 11, it will remind voters of the most important issue in this election year - defeating Islamist terrorism - and John Kerry will have just lost the election. Especially if Osama espouses policy recommendations for the United States, or criticisms of President Bush's actions post-9/11, that even faintly echo those of Sen. Kerry.

Memo to Osama bin Laden: We are not Spain. We are Americans. We are not cowed by attacks. We do not run from threats. We run toward them to confront them. And then we win.

So what really happened to the "supposed" missing munitions in Iraq?

Um, sounds like they were removed as planned:

A U.S. Army officer came forward Friday to say a team from his 3rd Infantry Division took about 250 tons of munitions and other material from the Al-Qaqaa arms-storage facility soon after Saddam Hussein's regime fell in April 2003.

Explosives were part of the load taken by the team, but Major Austin Pearson was unable to say what percentage they accounted for.

The Pentagon believes the disclosure helps explain what happened to 377 tons of high explosives that the International Atomic Energy Agency said disappeared after the U.S.-led invasion.

Needless to say I'm being sarcastic...I know they will bury this beneath some other fabricated charge in an effort to influence the election against Bush.

Luckily we're here to make sure that doesn't happen. Please do your part in your neighborhood by volunteering today!

So we received a new terror threat tape. Is that going to make a single person change their vote? If you're considering the consequence of your vote, I will simple say: Remember the Spanish.

On March 11, 2004, terrorists killed 191 people in Spain in an attempt to affect the elections. The terorrists succeeded in scaring the voters into electing the challenger over the incumbent, an incumbent who had strongly supported the U.S. in Iraq. Despite a comfortable lead in the opinion polls just days before the election, Jose Maria Aznar, was ousted by the Socialist party government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero who quickly kept a campaign pledge to withdraw Spain's 1,300-troop contingent from Iraq.

The terrorists showed their opposition to Aznar's support in Iraq by bombing trains and killing many people. The Spanish voters returned the favor by electing a man who kept his word to pull his troops out of Iraq.

So the terrorists will be thankful to the Spanish people, right? The terrorists will move along to other countries now that they've succeeded in affecting a major country's foreign policy against terror, right? The terrorists won't harm the nice Spanish people again, right?

Wrong. Two weeks ago, police arrested seven suspected Islamic militants in raids across Spain to foil a planned bomb attack on the High Court, judicial sources said.

What? How could it be? The terrorists promised they'd be nice if we gave them what they asked for.

But the Spanish are now awaking to the realization that terorrists aren't looking for friends, they're looking for victims. The only thing the Spanish voters did in ousting Aznar was give the terrorists the breathing room and opportunity they needed to kill more Spanish people.

Vladimir Putin gets it. "International terrorism has as its goal to prevent the election of President Bush to a second term. If they achieve that goal, then that will give international terrorism a new impulse and extra power."

So when you hear Kerry say that we'd be safer with him in office because he'd bring troops home, because he'd build coalitions with corrupt countries, and respond to terror while reversing the Bush Doctrine of pre-emption, just think of these three words:

Remember The Spanish

They gave in. And the terrorists are still plotting against them. Think you'd be safer by giving the terrorists what they want - a Bush defeat - so you can pretend they're going to leave us alone?

Think again.

I interrupt this election to remind you that our troops are still out there defending freedom - and you can help them out by going to Operation Gratitude and donate for care packages for the troops:

Hundreds of thousands of American troops are stationed or deployed indefinitely in remote parts of the world, including the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, Africa, the Korean Peninsula and on ships throughout international waters. The physical conditions they must endure are difficult and they may be separated from loved ones for long periods of time. OPERATION GRATITUDE, together with the California Army National Guard, 746th QM BN, Van Nuys, seek to lift troops' morale, and bring a smile to their faces by sending Care Packages to service members overseas. OPERATION GRATITUDE Care Packages contain food, toiletries, necessities, entertainment items and personal letters of appreciation, all wrapped with good wishes of love and support.

Through Collection Drives, Letter Writing Campaigns and Donations of requested items or the cost of postage, OPERATION GRATITUDESM provides civilians anywhere in America a way to express their respect and appreciation to the men and women of the U.S. military in an active, hands-on manner.

OPERATION GRATITUDE is a non-government 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation, funded entirely by private donations and staffed exclusively by volunteers. For safety and security, the assembling of packages occurs at the 746th QM BN Armory in Van Nuys, California.

Hat Tip: NRO's The Corner

Drudge has the following headilne:

TERROR TAPE QUOTES WARN OF BUSH, CHENEY CONSEQUENCE

The terrorists clearly don't want Bush reelected... Obviously because Bush has lead worldwide coalition against terror that has devestated them...

If terrorists prefer Kerry, why should Americans?

So THAT'S where they went. In what can only be considered the final nail in the Kerry campaign coffin, the Washington Times is reporting that Russia is tied to the removal of weapons from Iraq shortly before the war.

Russian special forces troops moved many of Saddam Hussein's weapons and related goods out of Iraq and into Syria in the weeks before the March 2003 U.S. military operation, The Washington Times has learned.

John A. Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, said in an interview that he believes the Russian troops, working with Iraqi intelligence, "almost certainly" removed the high-explosive material that went missing from the Al-Qaqaa facility, south of Baghdad.

This story debunks TWO of John Kerry's campaign pillars. First, it destroys any notion that Russia would've been a willing ally in the coalition to disarm Saddam Hussein. They were cooperating with him in the months leading up to the invasion. The article says "Russia was Iraq's largest foreign supplier of weaponry" and it appears they were helping Saddam hide those weapons to cover their own illegal dealings with the ousted dictator.

Second, it casts even more doubt on the attempted coordinated attack on the Bush administration by the New York Times, cBS and the Kerry Campaign. The information contained in this Washington Times article is likely one reason the coordinated attack was supposed to be launched about 24 hours before election day - to prevent time for the truth to reach the voters prior to their casting of ballots. It's a shame that John Kerry would so quickly, without all of the facts, jump on the bandwagon to accuse U.S. soldiers of incompetence and it's incomprehensible he'd do so during a time of war. But then again, there's a reason I agree with Mr. Kerry on the importance of Vietnam in this campaign - he's shown his utter contempt and lack of confidence in the brave men and women who protect this country - just like he did 35 years ago.

The article continues

"Whatever was not buried was put on lorries and sent to the Syrian border," the defense official said. ... The Russian "spetsnaz" or special-operations forces were under the GRU military intelligence service and organized large commercial truck convoys for the weapons removal, the official said.

Middle East Newsline reported the U.S. assessment was based on satellite images of convoys of Iraqi trucks that poured into Syria during February and March. U.S. intelligence officials say the trucks contained missiles and WMD components banned by the U.N.'s Security Council.

Officials believe the Russians also can explain what happened to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs. Talk about your trifectas.

Indians Put Security Forces on Red Alert After Bin Laden Sighting in Laddakh

NEW DELHI, October 25: Fugitive Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has been spotted in the Tibet-Laddakh region, close to the North-Eastern tip of Pakistan, bordering India and China, Indian and US officials believe.

A high-ranking official of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) flew from Islamabad on Sunday to meet top Indian officials here in Delhi after reports of Bin Laden’s presence in the region.

It coincides with the delivery of a terror threat tape ABC just handed over to the CIA. ABC obtained the tape in the same geographical area.

Hat Tip: Captain's Quarters

Unbeknownst to the Kerry camp when they decided to cooperate with cBS/NYT on the missing explosives story, they've effectively argued for the military action in Iraq... and in fact, are now supporting the notion that stalling at the U.N. was a waste of valuable time.

According to John Kerry's spokesman, Joe Lockhart,

"These explosives can be used to blow up airplanes, level buildings, attack our troops and detonate nuclear weapons. The Bush administration knew where this stockpile was, but took no action to secure the site. They were urgently and specifically informed that terrorists could be helping themselves to the most dangerous explosives bonanza in history, but nothing was done to prevent it from happening."

First, if the explosives can used to blow up airplanes and level buildings, they should be considered weapons of mass destruction. Or is there now a qualification on how "mass" the destruction must be before it rises to the definition? Is 100 people dying in an exploding airplane enough? How about 1,000 people dying in an exploding subway? What about 5,000 people dying in a leveled building? Or do we need hundreds of thousands or millions of deaths before considering it a WMD? Afterall, Anthrax is considered a WMD and the Anthrax attacks in 2001 only claimed 5 lives.

Second, the Kerry camp says the Bush administration knew where the stockpile was and was urgently and specifically informed terrorists could be helping themselves to the stockpile. Well, this is the very argument the Kerry camp and the entire Left refused to accept in the runup to the war, as they staged anti-war protests. And to this day, they continue to assert "Bush lied" about the dangers of Saddam, his weapons and the opportunity he had to hand them off to terrorists.

Third, the Kerry camp is now saying we didn't act soon enough to secure these explosives that were removed before the American military arrived. Maybe it was because we were wasting our time at the U.N. trying to placate countries that were conspiring with Saddam to stop our invasion.

At least they're now admitting the dangers and recognizing that we should've acted sooner about the dangers of a Saddam regime with powerful and deadly weapons. I just hope it's not too late for folks like Joe Lockhart, John Kerry and John Edwards to act on their new found support of the Bush administration. Let's cross our fingers they haven't voted early and still have a chance to vote the Commander in Chief they seem to support - George W. Bush.

Here is the killer bit on the bogus NY Times story:

DAVID ASMAN: Well a full week before the 101st airborne visited the weapons facility, members of the third infantry division were there. Bret Baier, live from the Pentagon.

BRET BAIER: The key is the time line. Let's start with the IAEA. They sealed and tagged at least some of the 377 tons of missing explosives at this facility. And now in March 8, 2003, they went back to the site. The IAEA says they checked on some of those explosives at the site but did not see all of explosives. They did not check on all of them. They leave and the war starts, and the next date is April 3, that is when the Third Infantry division arrives at the site. There you see the front gate. This is seven days before Dana Lewis and the 101st Airborne division gets there. They engage Iraqi forces who are firing on U.S. troops from inside the facility. The facility is open, they're getting engaged by Iraqi forces inside the facility. The Third I.D. takes them out and they do a primary search and they are not looking specifically for the IAEA marked materials, but it's not noted in any of the commander's reports. And then the 101st moves in and they do cursory searches and they move on, and nothing is noted. The next date is May 8, 2003, when the 75th [Expedition? Exploration? Transcript unclear] Task Force comes in. They search the bunkers and don't find any of the marked material. U.S. commanders point out if you're to believe that all of this was looted between April 11 and May 8, that's 28 days, when convoys are moving up and down the road on those very roads, moving to Baghdad, the U.S troops are pushing forward. It would be tough to get 28 truckloads they say, out of that facility without being engaged by U.S. troops on those roads during that war, because at the time they point out that they were engaging anybody that was suspicious and didn't stop for a check. Now today on the campaign trail in Florida, vice president Cheney addressed the issue of missing explosives, saying John Kerry is playing arm chair general and is ‘not doing a good job of it.’

That via KerrySpot...

The story, good people, was a fabrication by the NY Times from start to finish - and what this means, given the way Kerry jumped on the false story, is that John Kerry, working with the NY Times and in conjunction with a foreigner (the head of the IAEA El Baradei) who opposes President Bush, has knowingly spread a lie in the hopes of throwing the election to himself.

This is on Drudge:

In the last week before the election, ABCNEWS is holding a videotaped message from a purported al Qaeda terrorist warning of a new attack on America, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

The terrorist claims on tape the next attack will dwarf 9/11. "The streets will run with blood," and "America will mourn in silence" because they will be unable to count the number of the dead. Further claims: America has brought this on itself for electing George Bush who has made war on Islam by destroying the Taliban and making war on Al Qaeda.

ABCNEWS strongly denies holding the tape back from broadcast over political concerns during the last days of the election.

The CIA is analyzing the tape, a top federal source tells the DRUDGE REPORT.

ABCNEWS obtained the tape from a source in Waziristan, Pakistan over the weekend, sources tells DRUDGE.

"We have been working 24 hours a day trying to authenticate [the tape]," a senior ABCNEWS source said Wednesday morning.

The terrorist's face is concealed by a head dress, and he speaks in an American accent, making it difficult to identify the individual.

And is being picked up by Fox News (via NRO's KerrySpot):

Fox's Bret Baier reporting from the Pentagon, said he learned a little before 1 pm EST. He said he heard from a senior administration official that the U.S. government has been looking at the tape for the last day. The speaker on the tape speaks in what the Fox source called, “disturbingly fluent English.”

The tape had been circulating within the government for about a day; the feds don't have certification on authenticity, but expect to have it later today.

Fox sources said ABC's Brian Ross received the tape from a source in Pakistan.

If confirmed, then this is huge - and it means that on November 2nd, we'll have to show genuine courage as we carry our the tasks of our democratic Republic.

The Washington Times Reports that "Terrorists hope to defeat Bush through Iraq violence":

Leaders and supporters of the anti-U.S. insurgency say their attacks in recent weeks have a clear objective: The greater the violence, the greater the chances that President Bush will be defeated on Tuesday and the Americans will go home.

"If the U.S. Army suffered numerous humiliating losses, [Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John] Kerry would emerge as the superman of the American people," said Mohammad Amin Bashar, a leader of the Muslim Scholars Association, a hard-line clerical group that vocally supports the resistance.

Resistance leader Abu Jalal boasted that the mounting violence had already hurt Mr. Bush's chances.

"American elections and Iraq are linked tightly together," he told a Fallujah-based Iraqi reporter. "We've got to work to change the election, and we've done so. With our strikes, we've dragged Bush into the mud."

So what side would you rather be on? Would you rather be on the terrorists, or on the side of freedom? If the terrorists want Bush out, that's as good a reason as any to keep Bush in. They know Bush will seek them out and kill them. They know America is better protected with Bush in the Oval Office...

Blogger the Rev. Donald Sensing advises us that his son just finished Marine recruit training at Parris Island:

...one of the newest US Marines, my son, PFC Stephen Sensing. He graduated yesterday from Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Parris Island. It was a fantastic day!...

...Eight platoons of new Marines graduated, including two platoons of women. Unlike the Army, the Marines segregate initial-entry training of men and women. However, the requirements are the same for both sexes.

Rev. Sensing's son is, of course, just one of hundreds of thousands of Marines - and one of millions who wear our nation's uniform in this time of war. But it's good, from time to time, to take a direct look at one of them - remember this young Marine and his family in your prayers; never, ever forget that while we putter about with politics, young men like Stephen Sensing are doing the really important work of the world. Be worthy of them, and you'll be a better American.

At rare moments, candidates on the campaign trail make statements that defy rational thought, where the only possible reaction one can have is to wonder, slackjawed, what the candidate was thinking when he spoke. John Kerry gave us one of those priceless moments yesterday, when he assured the American people that he would go after the terrorists -- exactly as he went after the Viet Cong!

Democratic presidential nominee and Vietnam War veteran John Kerry tried to burnish his national security credentials on Saturday by vowing to hunt down terrorists with the same energy he used to pursue the Viet Cong. ...

"With the same energy ... I put into going after the Viet Cong and trying to win for our country, I pledge to you I will hunt down and capture or kill the terrorists before they harm us," Kerry said. "And we will wage a war on terror that makes America proud and brings the world to our side."

Okay, let's recap. John Kerry went after the Viet Cong for only one-third of his commitment, bailing out by using a little-known regulation that allowed a reassignment after three in-theater Purple Hearts, which he collected for uncommonly minor wounds (and at least one of them under less-than-honest circumstances). He was the only Swiftboat officer to leave the theater before one year without suffering a disabling injury. After his return, he attacked the United States and its soldiers in Vietnam, publicly siding with the Viet Cong and denouncing our efforts to "go after" them as mass murder. He rejected the fight against the Viet Cong so thoroughly that he organized massive demonstrations against it, even publicly repudiating his own service by tossing his medals/ribbons/whatever over the White House fence.

In fact, this is one campaign promise that Kerry has already kept. After supporting the war on terror and the Iraq phase, he has backpedaled for a year. First he voted to cut off funding to the troops, and since he has called the war in Iraq the "wrong war at the wrong time in the wrong place," a "grand diversion" that nonetheless he'd like to get several countries to commit troops towards to replace American soldiers and Marines.

He's implementing the same playbook he used in the fight against the Viet Cong now. Kerry undermines public support for the war, claims it's unnecessary, fights to cut off funding and demands that the US retreat from the combat theaters. His statement yesterday may be the most ironically truthful position he's taken all year long.

The Bush-Cheney '04 Official Campaign Blog has posted story from Lisa Johnson of Lake Stevens, Washington, who sent them a story about her brother Chris, who is working as a security guard in Baghdad. Go and read her story...

Regarding the so-called "Oil for Food" program - something which would more accurately be called "Oil for Bribes" program - the august head of the UN has spoken:

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said yesterday the world body's reputation had been damaged by a furor over its oil-for-food program in Iraq, as investigators released the fullest accounting to date of the scandal-plagued program.

Yeah, the UN's reputation has been damaged - in much the same way a crack-dealers reputation might be damaged by engaging in prostitution. Here's to the early death of this corrupt, inhuman and worthless organization.

Kerry has accused the President of "outsourcing" the battle in the Tora Bora, thus allowing bin Laden to escape - leaving alone the strong possibility that the only part of bin Laden to escape would be rather small parts blown out of the Tora Bora by a daisy-cutter, General Franks gives us the real story of what happened:

On more than one occasion, Senator Kerry has referred to the fight at Tora Bora in Afghanistan during late 2001 as a missed opportunity for America. He claims that our forces had Osama bin Laden cornered and allowed him to escape. How did it happen? According to Mr. Kerry, we "outsourced" the job to Afghan warlords. As commander of the allied forces in the Middle East, I was responsible for the operation at Tora Bora, and I can tell you that the senator's understanding of events doesn't square with reality.

First, take Mr. Kerry's contention that we "had an opportunity to capture or kill Osama bin Laden" and that "we had him surrounded." We don't know to this day whether Mr. bin Laden was at Tora Bora in December 2001. Some intelligence sources said he was; others indicated he was in Pakistan at the time; still others suggested he was in Kashmir. Tora Bora was teeming with Taliban and Qaeda operatives, many of whom were killed or captured, but Mr. bin Laden was never within our grasp.

Second, we did not "outsource" military action. We did rely heavily on Afghans because they knew Tora Bora, a mountainous, geographically difficult region on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is where Afghan mujahedeen holed up for years, keeping alive their resistance to the Soviet Union. Killing and capturing Taliban and Qaeda fighters was best done by the Afghan fighters who already knew the caves and tunnels.

Third, the Afghans weren't left to do the job alone. Special forces from the United States and several other countries were there, providing tactical leadership and calling in air strikes. Pakistani troops also provided significant help - as many as 100,000 sealed the border and rounded up hundreds of Qaeda and Taliban fighters.

Contrary to Senator Kerry, President Bush never "took his eye off the ball" when it came to Osama bin Laden. The war on terrorism has a global focus. It cannot be divided into separate and unrelated wars, one in Afghanistan and another in Iraq. Both are part of the same effort to capture and kill terrorists before they are able to strike America again, potentially with weapons of mass destruction. Terrorist cells are operating in some 60 countries, and the United States, in coordination with dozens of allies, is waging this war on many fronts.

'Nuff said? The general in charge of the op knows what he's talking about - certainly knows more than a Senator who didn't even bother to show up for work 2/3 of the time over the past two years...

So, who you gonna trust, Americans?

HAT TIP: The Queen of all Evil... and Matt

Retired General Tommy Franks has written an Op-Ed appearing the New York Times. Tommy Frank rips apart John Kerry for his allegations against George W. Bush and his denigration of the war on terror.

On more than one occasion, Senator Kerry has referred to the fight at Tora Bora in Afghanistan during late 2001 as a missed opportunity for America. He claims that our forces had Osama bin Laden cornered and allowed him to escape. How did it happen? According to Mr. Kerry, we "outsourced" the job to Afghan warlords. As commander of the allied forces in the Middle East, I was responsible for the operation at Tora Bora, and I can tell you that the senator's understanding of events doesn't square with reality.

Point by point, Franks explains that we do not know for sure that bin Laden was even at Tora Bora at that time – different sources of intelligence gave different locations of bin Laden. "Tora Bora was teeming with
Taliban and Qaeda operatives, many of whom were killed or captured," Franks wrote, "but Mr. bin Laden was never within our grasp."

Frank then puts to rest Kerry's claim that we "outsourced" military action or left the job the Afghans. "Special forces from the United States and several other countries were there, providing tactical leadership and calling in air strikes. Pakistani troops also provided significant help - as many as 100,000 sealed the border and rounded up hundreds of Qaeda and Taliban fighters."

Next Franks practically gives Kerry a lesson in War on Terror 101:

Contrary to Senator Kerry, President Bush never "took his eye off the ball" when it came to Osama bin Laden. The war on terrorism has a global focus. It cannot be divided into separate and unrelated wars, one in Afghanistan and another in Iraq. Both are part of the same effort to capture and kill terrorists before they are able to strike America again, potentially with weapons of mass destruction. Terrorist cells are operating in some 60 countries, and the United States, in coordination with dozens of allies, is waging this war on many fronts.

Kerry obviously doesn't understand the war on terror. He just doesn't get it. The war on terror is a global effort. We are fighting terrorism around the globe. He thinks it's just about Afghanistan, and Iraq was just mistakenly added to it. Kerry is just dead wrong, and Tommy Frank has nailed him on it.

As we planned for potential military action in Iraq and conducted counterterrorist operations in several other countries in the region, Afghanistan remained a center of focus. Neither attention nor manpower was diverted from Afghanistan to Iraq. When we started Operation Iraqi Freedom we had about 9,500 troops in Afghanistan, and by the time we finished major combat operations in Iraq last May we had more than 10,000 troops in Afghanistan.

These are all inconvenient facts for John Kerry. Can we expect John Kerry to come out and admit he was wrong? Don't hold your breath.

Tommy Franks couldn't have been any clearer in this piece. It is obvious he is frustrated with Kerry lying about the war on terror. Who wouldn’t be? Franks brings it all together at the end:

Many hurdles remain, of course. But the gravest danger would result from the withdrawal of American troops before we finish our work. Today we are asking our servicemen and women to do more, in more places, than we have in decades. They deserve honest, consistent, no-spin leadership that respects them, their families and their sacrifices. The war against terrorism is the right war at the right time for the right reasons. And Iraq is one of the places that war must be fought and won. George W. Bush has his eye on that ball and Senator John Kerry does not.

The World Tribune Reports...

Charles Duelfer told the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this month he could not rule out Saddam's transfer of Iraqi missiles and weapons of mass destruction to Syria.

Duelfer, an adviser to the CIA, said at the Oct. 6 hearing that a large amount of material had been transferred by Iraq to Syria before the March 2003 war.

"A lot of materials left Iraq and went to Syria," Duelfer said. "There was certainly a lot of traffic across the border points. We've got a lot of data to support that, including people discussing it. But whether in fact in any of these trucks there was WMD-related materials, I cannot say."

I don't think you'll hear John Kerry talking about this...

Once again, blogger Arthur Chrenkoff brings us the news the MSM doesn't see fit to print. An excerpt:

more is being done to educate the next generation of Afghan journalists (link in PDF):

USAID grantee Sayara launched its Novice Journalism Training Program at Balkh University in Mazar-i-Sharif, which was modeled after the very successful program in Herat. The program will train print and radio journalism students to produce radio programming. As part of an intensive summer-school curriculum, the students produced the program Saday-e Jawan (Voice of Youth) focusing on issues of concern to young people in Mazar-e Sharif.

Education should be an eye-opening experience; it certainly was for these three Afghan youngsters:

They thought they knew about America. In the United States there are no Muslims, they were taught. America's goal is to destroy Islam, to kill Muslims.

Khushal Rasoli, Abdulahad Barak and Abdulahad Fasil, teenagers in Afghanistan, cowered in fear when they learned that the war between the United States and the Taliban was over, and the nation they feared was now in charge of their homeland.

Their fear lasted about a week. After it was clear that American soldiers were not indiscriminately killing the faithful, and that Muslims--Afghan Muslims--would be in charge of the new government, the America the three young men thought they knew became the America they wanted to know firsthand.

Today, Barak, Fasil and Rasoli are attending South Florida high schools, discovering an America that both confirms and defies the propaganda they were taught in the boys-only schools of Kabul and Kandahar.

The three boys, who together with almost 60 other Afghan kids are the beneficiaries of a State Department program, now have the opportunity to catch up on their education and learn more about the world: "Before, we could not study the modern subjects. . . . Physics, chemistry, biology, computers, English--these were things we were never taught," says Barak. "I have never studied in a coed school," adds Rasoli.

Go read the whole thing, of course - but, people, this is the payoff; this is our reward for the blood and treasure spent. What we're getting are people who may disagree with us and may, indeed, oppose or annoy us by turns as future years unfold - but they will be people who won't turn themselves into human bombs bent on our destruction because they'll know the truth about the United States and the world. This, in a nutshell, is the President's plan - spread liberty which will work to change the world by changing the hearts of people. We can't scare them into liking us, nor can we bribe them - and we can't kill them all, either...all we can do is assist them to be free, and then let the power of God's gift to mankind, liberty, do its thing.

As you continue to hear John Kerry accuse our soldiers of fighting the "wrong war at the wrong time in the wrong place" and as you hear John Kerry proclaiming from every black church he can pander to that there is "great potential" for a new military draft to replace 'overextended' U.S. troops in Iraq if President Bush wins, I want you to think about these folks:

George Perez - Lost his leg to a roadside bomb in Iraq more than a year ago, but despite the phantom pains that haunt him, he says he is determined to prove to the Army that he is no less of a man - and no less of a soldier. When he arrived at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., for his rehabilitation, Perez asked a pair of generals who visited his bedside if it was possible for him to stay in the Army. Perez intends to show a medical board he can run an eight-minute mile, jump out of airplanes and pass all the other paratrooper tests that will allow him to go with his regiment to Afghanistan next year.

Staff Sgt. Daniel Metzdorf - Lost his right leg above the knee in a Jan. 27 blast. He appealed three times before the fitness board allowed him to stay on.

Sgt. Chuck Bartles - A reservist who lost his right arm in a roadside bombing in Iraq re-enlisted in the Army on the same day he received a Bronze Star for his service. Bartles twice appealed to a medical board at Walter Reed. Satisfied that he could perform his duties, they agreed to let him re-enlist.

Army Sgt. Joshua Forbess - Was one of just five soldiers who survived a fiery Black Hawk helicopter collision over Mosul, Iraq, last November. While he continues to recover from his injuries ó a process that, including reconstruction surgery, could take two or three years ó he's back working at Fort Campbell, Ky., and committed to returning to full duty with his unit, the 320th Field Artillery Regiment's 1st Battalion.

U.S. ArmyCapt. David Rozelle - In June, 2003, Capt. David Rozelle's Humvee rolled over a land mine while on patrol in Iraq, and he lost his right foot. Rozelle's whirlwind year also included two meetings with President Bush, who agreed to go jogging with Rozelle next year. "I'm going to hold him to it," he said. After nine difficult months of rehabilitation and the fitting of an artificial leg, Capt. Rozelle was certified as "fit for duty." In June, within days of the first anniversary of losing his foot, he made his return to Iraq to take command of the 3rd Armored Cavalry's headquarters unit. (I take special pride in this story because David and I played high school football together in what now seems like another era, a distant generation)

These are just a few examples of our heroic men and women who are sitting in the battlefield of a war John Kerry calls "wrong". These are the men and women serving at the direction of their Commander-in-Chief, George W. Bush. These are the men and women whose lives have been forever altered by this battle... and these are the men and women fighting like hell to return to service.

Do they feel "misled"? Do they feel part of a "collosal error in judgment"? Do they feel "we need a regime change in the United States"? Do they share the 'value' of playing politics and being "proud to say that John [Edwards] joined me in voting against that $87 billion when we knew the policy had to be changed"?

The recent Annenberg Poll "found that 69 percent had a "favorable" view of Bush, while 29 percent professed a favorable view of Kerry."

It also said that "on Iraq, 64 percent of those surveyed in the military group said going to war there was worth it, although among those who had served in Iraq or Afghanistan, the figure dropped to 55 percent. An even closer split emerged on the question of whether the war had reduced or raised the risk of terrorist attacks on the United States, with 47 percent saying the risk was down and 42 percent saying it had gone up."

Democrats will undoubtedly point to that last figure as well as this: "Respondents also were narrowly divided on whether Bush has a clear solution for Iraq: 47 percent said he does; 48 percent said he lacks a plan" to claim a victory in this survey.

But I would simply say that even in the face of those numbers regarding a plan and risk of terrorist attacks, these folks STILL have a 69% favorable view of Bush and 29% favorable view of Kerry.

So that tells me even when things aren't going there best, our soldiers still prefer the leadership of President George W. Bush. But don't just take my word for it.

In case you missed this story...

Investigators have unearthed a mass grave in northern Iraq containing hundreds of bodies of women and children ... The body of one woman was found still clutching a baby. The infant had been shot in the back of the head and the woman in the face, the BBC reported.

Now I know what my liberal friends (yes, I have a few of them) will say, "Sure Saddam was a bad guy and did all these horrible things, but we have a thousand dead soldiers and haven't found WMDs, so the war was not justified."

I'll simply point them to a good speech my President gave about spreading the hope of America and American values in response to ethnic cleansing and genocide:

From our birth, America has always been more than just a place. America has embodied an idea that has become the ideal for billions of people throughout the world. Our founders said it best: America is about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

In this century especially, America has done more than simply stand for these ideals. We have acted on them and sacrificed for them. Our people fought two world wars so that freedom could triumph over tyranny. After World War I, we pulled back from the world, leaving a vacuum that was filled by the forces of hatred. After World War II, we continued to lead the world. We made the commitments that kept the peace, that helped to spread democracy, that created unparalleled prosperity and that brought victory in the Cold War.

Today, because of our dedication, America's ideals -- liberty, democracy and peace -- are more and more the aspirations of people everywhere in the world. It is the power of our ideas, even more than our size, our wealth and our military might, that makes America a uniquely trusted nation.

With the Cold War over, some people now question the need for our continued active leadership in the world. They believe that, much like after World War I, America can now step back from the responsibilities of leadership. They argue that to be secure, we need only to keep our own borders safe, and that the time has come now to leave to others the hard work of leadership beyond our borders. I strongly disagree. As the Cold War gives way to the global village, our leadership is needed more than ever because problems that start beyond our borders can quickly become problems within them. We're all vulnerable to the organized forces of intolerance and destruction, terrorism, ethnic, religious and regional rivalries, the spread of organized crime and weapons of mass destruction and drug trafficking. Just as surely as fascism and communism, these forces also threaten freedom and democracy, peace and prosperity. And they too demand American leadership.

But nowhere has the argument for our leadership been more clearly justified than in the struggle to stop or prevent war and civil violence. From Iraq to Haiti; from South Africa to Korea; from the Middle East to Northern Ireland, we have stood up for peace and freedom because it's in our interest to do so, and because it is the right thing to do.

Now that doesn't mean that we can solve every problem. My duty as president is to match the demands for American leadership to our strategic interests and to our ability to make a difference. America cannot and must not be the world's policeman. We cannot stop all war for all time but we can stop some wars. We cannot save all women and all children but we can save many of them. We can't do everything but we must do what we can. There are times and places where our leadership can mean the difference between peace and war and where we can defend our fundamental values as a people and serve our most basic strategic interests. My fellow Americans, in this new era there are still times when America and America alone can and should make the difference...

That was the justification President Bill Clinton gave in 1997 for taking military action in Bosnia. If you were thinking they were the words of George W. Bush and you thought that speech was about Iraq in 2004, then it says alot about the justification for the war in Iraq compared to the justification the Left bought for a war in Bosnia. If you agreed with Clinton then and disagree with Bush today, then it says alot more about you!

Kevin McCullough brings this to our attention...

SADDAM'S ITALIAN LAWYER GIOVANNI DE STAFANO TOLD A LONDON-BASED DAILY THAT A MEETING WAS HELD BETWEEN HIMSELF AND OSAMA BIN LADEN AT THE RASHID HOTEL IN BAGHDAD IN 1998. (AL-SHARQ AL-AWSAT, LONDON, 10/15/04)

Also, Kevin is looking for a new producer for his radio show, and is exclusively using the blogosphere in his search...

UPDATE: Jason has uncovered a a 2002 interview from The Guardian with Saddam's attorney where he admitted to meeting with Osama bin Laden:

..he met Osama bin Laden in 1998 during a visit to Baghdad...

di Stefano said, "I found he had a handshake like a priest. Warm. And secondly, he had a wonderful manner of speaking. Very ... soft. A calming effect. Almost like a psychiatrist, in a way. And his intimate knowledge of the fine arts. You felt at ease. And he had a wonderful smile. Aquiline nose that reminded me of Dante. Now, you are going to say I am promoting his image. I am not. But listen: everybody hates Satan, but we never actually heard his side of the story. Nobody knows his case, the Bible never says a word in his defence. We don't know why he did what he did." Smiling. "But I'd like to hear his case."

John Kerry is not a bad or unpatriotic man. He simply is wired to not understand the terrorist threat we face today and has congenital inability to act as firmly as a Commander-in-Chief must. This is the Hamlet-like portrait we get from The New York Times Magazine's lengthy piece on Kerry last weekend. While the comment that he wanted terrorism to be made into a nuisance, like gambling or prostitution got the headlines (maybe he thinks terrorism is just a vice), the article provides a keen insight into Kerry's mindset. And it is a mindset that is 100% wrong for these times. Writer Matt Bai:

When I asked Kerry how Sept. 11 had changed him, either personally or politically, he seemed to freeze for a moment.

"It accelerated -- " He paused. "I mean, it didn't change me much at all. It just sort of accelerated, confirmed in me, the urgency of doing the things I thought we needed to be doing. I mean, to me, it wasn't as transformational as it was a kind of anger, a frustration and an urgency that we weren't doing the kinds of things necessary to prevent it and to deal with it."

On an evening in August, just after a campaign swing through the Southwest, Kerry and I met, for the second of three conversations about terrorism and national security, in a hotel room overlooking the Ferris wheel on the Santa Monica pier. A row of Evian water bottles had been thoughtfully placed on a nearby table. Kerry frowned.

"Can we get any of my water?" he asked Stephanie Cutter, his communications director, who dutifully scurried from the room. I asked Kerry, out of sheer curiosity, what he didn't like about Evian.

"I hate that stuff," Kerry explained to me. "They pack it full of minerals."

"What kind of water do you drink?" I asked, trying to make conversation.

"Plain old American water," he said.

"You mean tap water?"

"No," Kerry replied deliberately. He seemed now to sense some kind of trap. I was left to imagine what was going through his head. If I admit that I drink bottled water, then he might say I'm out of touch with ordinary voters. But doesn't demanding my own brand of water seem even more aristocratic? Then again, Evian is French -- important to stay away from anything even remotely French.

"There are all kinds of waters," he said finally. Pause. "Saratoga Spring." This seemed to have exhausted his list. "Sometimes I drink tap water," he added.

He would begin, if sworn into office, by going immediately to the United Nations to deliver a speech recasting American foreign policy. Whereas Bush has branded North Korea "evil" and refuses to negotiate head on with its authoritarian regime, Kerry would open bilateral talks over its burgeoning nuclear program. Similarly, he has said he would rally other nations behind sanctions against Iran if that country refuses to abandon its nuclear ambitions. Kerry envisions appointing a top-level envoy to restart the Middle East peace process, and he's intent on getting India and Pakistan to adopt key provisions of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. (One place where Kerry vows to take a harder line than Bush is Pakistan, where Bush has embraced the military ruler Pervez Musharraf, and where Kerry sees a haven for chaos in the vast and lawless region on the border with Afghanistan.) In all of this, Kerry intends to use as leverage America's considerable capacity for economic aid; a Kerry adviser told me, only slightly in jest, that Kerry's most tempting fantasy is to attend the G-8 summit.

When Kerry first told me that Sept. 11 had not changed him, I was surprised. I assumed everyone in America -- and certainly in Washington -- had been changed by that day. I assumed he was being overly cautious, afraid of providing his opponents with yet another cheap opportunity to call him a flip-flopper. What I came to understand was that, in fact, the attacks really had not changed the way Kerry viewed or talked about terrorism -- which is exactly why he has come across, to some voters, as less of a leader than he could be. He may well have understood the threat from Al Qaeda long before the rest of us. And he may well be right, despite the ridicule from Cheney and others, when he says that a multinational, law-enforcement-like approach can be more effective in fighting terrorists. But his less lofty vision might have seemed more satisfying -- and would have been easier to talk about in a political campaign -- in a world where the twin towers still stood.

John Kerry considers them beneath his notice, but the United States has picked up some rather valuable allies in Iraq - the Iraqi people:

The enthusiasm of U.S. Marine captains Thomas "Tad" Douglas and David Nevers can hardly be contained. Their voices, alternately crackling over a weak satellite-phone connection, are heartening as they describe the successes they are witnessing in Iraq. The insurgency is losing ground. Iraqi civilians, feeling less afraid than in previous months, are increasingly coming forward with solid information about the bad guys. And a new Iraqi special-operations force is taking the lead in wiping out guerilla strongholds, south of Baghdad.

From their operating base in Kalsu (so-named for Bob Kalsu, a Buffalo Bills lineman and Army lieutenant who was killed during the Vietnam War), Douglas tells National Review Online, "The Iraqis are performing well-above my expectations. Their strengths are their aggressiveness and mobility, and we are enhancing those strengths."

Douglas, commander of a Marine Force reconnaissance platoon and a reconnaissance and surveillance platoon, is referring to a crack Iraqi SWAT (special-weapons and tactics) team, sometimes referred to as the Al Hillah SWAT team.

Last week, the Iraqi SWAT team and other members of the Iraqi security forces (about 800 men combined) backed by U.S. Marines (about 1,300) launched an offensive aimed at retaking guerilla strongholds south of the Sunni Triangle. The strongholds lie within Babil province, home of the ancient city of Babylon, though today a virtual no-man's-land rife with kidnappings, ambushes, and murder.

The Iraqi's are out there, fighting right alongside our best and bravest - they are doing it for their own country, and doing it well:

The success of the new unit has instilled "great confidence" in both SWAT-team members and regular Iraqi soldiers, says Col. Salaam Abdul al Kathom, the commander of the Iraqi SWAT team. It has also increased pride and a greater sense of security for the Iraqi people.

"With the Americans, we're the same team, no difference," Col. Kathom says, through an interpreter. "The training is very good. I am very, very happy with the progress. We will destroy the bad guys."

What are a few rag-tag killers to us and our allies? Sure, they are brutal - they are masters at butchering tied-up, unarmed civilians - but each one of them has the bullet of a well-armed, well-trained Iraqi or American freedom fighter waiting for them.

We're winning - now lets not let someone like Kerry come along to mess it all up.

Hat Tip: National Review Online

In the clash of Election 2004, most of us have let a very important anniversary slip. Fortunately, Citizen Smash has reminded us:

FOUR YEARS AGO TODAY, a Navy destroyer was making a brief port call in Aden for the purpose of taking on fuel. As was common practice during such evolutions, a small barge pulled alongside to collect garbage.

Seconds later, the barge exploded. It ripped a 40-foot hole in the side of the USS Cole, flooding two engine compartments and nearly sending the ship to the bottom of the harbor. Seventeen sailors were killed, and 37 more were wounded.

America was at war, but we didn’t know it yet.

Remember that - we're at war; it started long before 9/11; we didn't start it.

We're going to finish it.

Iraq is a disaster, right? That is what our Kerry and his MSM allies are forever telling us....but what about this story:

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Shiite fighters in tracksuits and sneakers unloaded cars full of machine guns, mortars and land mines Monday as a five-day, weapons-for-cash disarmament program kicked off in Baghdad's Sadr City district — a sign of progress in the center of Shiite resistance in Iraq.

This doesn't make any sense - the war is lost and its all a mistake and only Kerry can save us....how come the enemy is disarming if this is the case? Could it be just possible that President Bush is on to something here? Maybe its just that when you are firm of purpose and unleash deadly force without remorse against bloodthirsty enemies, they get tired of getting killed at a 10 to 1 ratio and decide to give up?

Could be, just could be.

Couldn't it?

BBC on Afghanistan

The fact that an election has taken place in Afghanistan has to be counted as a major success in the new "Great Game" which is being played out in parts of Asia.

Fighters loyal to radical Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr have been handing over their heavy weapons in the Sadr City area of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.

Fortunately, Arthur Chrenkoff's work means we don't have to imagine.

Play some crude fraternity pranks on a handful of Baathist and jihadist terrorists, and its front page news in the elite media for weeks. But when 25,000,000 people are able to participate in their nation's first ever election for a leader, it is a passing blip. The monumental achievement of Afghanistan's elections, held with virtually none of the massive violence that was feared and with only some minor problems, went relatively unnoticed by the traditional networks and newspapers (except, of course, to dwell on the permanance of ink). Missed entirely were stories like this, which even the UN's Humanitarian Affairs press office found worthy of discussion:

Najiba, 22, a female student was also scared of violence during voting, but remained eager to cast her vote and select a leader. "I heard that warlords will not allow people to go to polling stations," she told IRIN in the east of Kabul. "But this is our first real chance to have a say in who rules us, I must do it, whatever the risks."

"This registration process has concluded after a number of problems and what is even more remarkable is the number of Afghans registered in spite of these problems," Manoel de Almeida e Silva, a spokesman for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), told IRIN.

The ever-diligent Aussie blogger Arthur Chrenkoff once again brings us the real news from Iraq - in his latest titled "Must it bleed to lead", Chrenkoff once again gives lie to those like John Kerry who think that Iraq is a bad job. I especially love his opening:

I struggled to find some good news.

The picture painted by the news stories was bleak: another suicide attack, a shootout with armed militants, soldiers dying in an ambush, a man accused of collaborating with the hated occupiers executed by parties unknown, property destruction causing resentment among the locals, hostile noises from the neighbors, another condemnation from international community, and at home political instability and accusations of corruption at the highest level. There was hardly anything about economy and enterprise, nothing about culture and civil society, barely a glimpse of any positive development or an indication that something, somewhere, might be going right.

After about 10 minutes I gave up trying to find some good news from Israel.

Go read the whole thing here.

Read this Washington Post piece on how individual grassroots voices for liberty in the middle east are sprouting up across the region. Of course, spreading democracy in that part of the world, as we are doing in Afghanistan and Iraq, is the surest way to make America safer. The last paragraph summarizes nicely where we stand today:

Such empowering grass-roots rhetoric has never before been heard in the Arab Middle East. If the United States fails in Iraq, it may well be snuffed out. But for now, for those who are listening, it offers reason for hope.

Yesterday, while we were watching a Friday night debate between President Bush and John Kerry, the Australians were holding a Saturday election.

Running for a fourth term as Australia's Prime Minister was John Howard - a man who since 9/11 has been a steadfast ally of the United States. Australia is a large country but with a relatively small population, and a small military to match - but what military power Australia possesses has been bravely provided to assist us; a lot of what the Australian military has accomplished in the War on Terrorism is hidden from view because a lot of it is special forces operations which by nature are not advertised. But make no mistake about it, Australia's military contribution has been an important component in Coalition military victory.

Australia has been America's best ally for nearly a century now; even better than Britain, if that can be believed - we Americans often look out to see in the world nations who have benefitted from our assistance who now turn a cold shoulder to us; but not Australia. Since we first became allied with Australia in World War One, the United States and Australia have always found the other standing shoulder to shoulder in moments of world crisis. The person challenging Prime Minister Howard for his job, Mark Latham, had a different message - of course, both men mostly campaigned on domestic Australian issues, but one of Mr. Latham's central points was an Australian withdrawl from the War on Terrorism - one of his campaign promises was to have Australia's military forces withdrawn from the Iraqi theater of operations by Christmas. So, the choices were clear - and the people of Australia choose John Howard, the man who promised to keep Australia in the war.

John Howard's victory is an important victory for the United States; immediately, it retains Australia as an invaluable partner in our Coalition fighting the war - but psychologically its also very important. Getting Australia out of the coalition was a goal of many - it was the goal of Mr. Latham, it was a goal of al-Queda (which launched a series murderous anti-Australian attacks in recent weeks in a forlorn bid to scare the Australians), and it was the goal of John Kerry. Had Australia turned to Mr. Latham then the Australians would have been out of the coalition, al-Queda would feel that it had knocked another coalition member as they had Spain, and Kerry would have been exultant and adding to his canned speech something along the lines of "even the Australian's now realise that President Bush's war is the wrong war, at the wrong time and in the wrong place."

Let us never forget that John Kerry's sister Diana (Chairwoman of Americans Overseas for Kerry) went to Australia and essentially urged them to dump Prime Minister Howard and get out of the war - and never, ever forget that John Kerry has said that our coalition partners are paying a price for standing by us, a clear signal to Australia's anti-war forces that Kerry wanted Australia out of the coalition - out of the coalition so that Kerry might have more fodder for his campaign rhetoric. There has never been so shameful a spectacle - a man running for a nation's highest office urging his nation's allies to abandon his nation, just to help him out in his quest for personal political power.

I guess that our John Kerry would still consider Australia to be part of the "coalition of the bribed and coerced" - it will sound even more outrageous than usual now that the people of Australia in a clear vote have determined that its good for Australia to be part of our grand coalition. A coalition which Kerry thinks contemptible because it lacks a bunch of back-stabbing, bribe-taking French political hacks. But never let it be said that John Kerry actually learns anything, that he draws upon the lessons of history - after all, he is the man who voted against the weapons which won the Cold War and even after it was proved that his vote was wrong, he continued to vote against defense and intelligence measures even as the terrorist threat gathered. I feel certain that Kerry feels today what he did yesterday - the thumping electoral victory of Howard in Australia wont penetrate into Kerry's brain; it doesn't fit into his absurd worldview, and thus it is to be ignored, unless it can be insulted.

As for me, I say "thank you" to the brave people of Australia for standing with us through good times and bad - I am thankful that in a world full of cruel cynicism there are still people like the Australians, and the British, and the Polish, and the Italians and, also, we Americans who are willing to do the right thing even if difficult and even, most especially, if its unpopular in certain circles. Its a grand day for Australia, and I believe it presages certain coming events - after all, Americans are no less wise, and no less brave than their Australian allies.

The Center for Security Policy has release their sixth edition of the National Security Scorecard for national security votes in the 108th Congress. The scorecard "is designed to illuminate the voting records of members of the United States Senate and House of Representatives on important defense and foreign policy issues. The Scorecard considers 12 House and 18 Senate votes."

High scorers in the Senate (with ratings above 90%) were all Republicans. In the House, there were 22 who achieved a perfect score. All of them Republicans.

But that's not the most interesting of the findings:

Interestingly, in the wake of last night's debate on national security and foreign policy matters, among the lowest scorers were Senator and presidential candidate John Kerry (D-MA) (making incorrect votes on every one of the 4 votes he actually cast) and his running-mate Senator John Edwards (D-NC) (who did not vote on five out of the 18 scored).

Just goes to show you, John Kerry and John Edwards talk the talk, but don't walk the walk.

It is very clear by now that there are 2 very different national security visions opposing each other in this election:

President Bush
View the world with a post-9/11 mentality: Understand that imminence of danger cannot be accurately calibrated or timed and, therefore, strike at our enemies earlier rather than later to nip their threats in the bud before they can fully develop, with as many allies as possible, but without UN cover if necessary.

Senator Kerry
View the world with a pre-9/11 mentality: Await 100% conclusive confirmation that threats have reached full maturity and, only then, act against them within the confines of UN mandates.

Saddam knew the tools he would need to reshape history and establish his glory: weapons of mass destruction. These weapons had what Duelfer and his team called a "totemic" importance to him. With these weapons, Saddam had defeated the evil Persians. With these weapons he had crushed his internal opponents. With these weapons he would deter what he called the "Zionist octopus" in both Israel and America.

But in the 1990's, the world was arrayed against him to deprive him of these weapons. So Saddam, the clever one, The Struggler, undertook a tactical retreat. He would destroy the weapons while preserving his capacities to make them later. He would foil the inspectors and divide the international community. He would induce it to end the sanctions it had imposed to pen him in. Then, when the sanctions were lifted, he would reconstitute his weapons and emerge greater and mightier than before...

Saddam worked patiently to undermine the sanctions. He stored the corpses of babies in great piles, and then unveiled them all at once in great processions to illustrate the great humanitarian horrors of the sanctions.

Saddam personally made up a list of officials at the U.N., in France, in Russia and elsewhere who would be bribed. He sent out his oil ministers to curry favor with China, France, Turkey and Russia. He established illicit trading relations with Ukraine, Syria, North Korea and other nations to rebuild his arsenal.

With sanctions weakening and money flowing, he rebuilt his strength. He contacted W.M.D. scientists in Russia, Belarus, Bulgaria and elsewhere to enhance his technical knowledge base. He increased the funds for his nuclear scientists. He increased his military-industrial-complex's budget 40-fold between 1996 and 2002. He increased the number of technical research projects to 3,200 from 40. As Duelfer reports, "Prohibited goods and weapons were being shipped into Iraq with virtually no problem."...

But we know where things were headed. Sanctions would have been lifted. Saddam, rich, triumphant and unbalanced, would have reconstituted his W.M.D. Perhaps he would have joined a nuclear arms race with Iran. Perhaps he would have left it all to his pathological heir Qusay.

We can argue about what would have been the best way to depose Saddam, but this report makes it crystal clear that this insatiable tyrant needed to be deposed. He was the menace, and, as the world dithered, he was winning his struggle. He was on the verge of greatness. We would all now be living in his nightmare.

Our Partner in the War on Terror Down-Under has WON. He was also able to increase his party’s margin.

Coalition set to win with increased majority.

The Coalition looks set to be re-elected with an increased majority, as counting continues in the federal election.

The Liberals have benefited from a collapse by the Democrats, while Labor has attracted the same support it did in the last election.
After preferences, the ABC computer is predicting the Coalition will get 52.5 per cent of the vote and a 18 seat majority.

That would give the Liberals 62 seats and the Nationals 12, Labor holds 53 seats, with 20 still in doubt.

With more than half of the votes counted, there is a national swing to the Liberals of 3.2 per cent. The Liberals have so far taken 40.7 per cent of the votes counted.

Labor has polled the same percentage of votes as in the 2001 election, taking 37.8 per cent of the vote.

The Nationals have polled 5.9 per cent, an increase of 0.3 per cent.
The Democrats are the big losers with a swing against them of 4.1 per cent, giving them 1.3 per cent of the votes, while the Greens have picked up 2.2 per cent, with 7.2 per cent of the ballots.

Labor needed to win 13 seats to take government from the Coalition, instead it appears to be losing seats.

Mr. Howard stuck to his guns and won, now it's our turn.

A reader of Instapundit sent in a good question to him, in essence asking:

How do you pass the "Global Test" when those grading it have been bribed to flunk you?

Not content with simply aiding terror regimes, the UN has taken to employing terrorists. It is as if the bribery of UN officials and member states by Saddam Hussein to oppose the U.S. and Britain and to dismantle the sanctions program wasn't an egregious enough travesty, so the UN had to do worse. Canada's National Post reports:

The United Nations agency that provides assistance and food aid to Palestinian refugees admits it has hired members of the terrorist group Hamas to help in its efforts.

Peter Hansen, commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for palestinian refugees (UNRWA), told the CBC he believes it likely that Hamas members receive paycheques from his organization.

"Oh I am sure that there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll and I don't see that as a crime. Hamas as a political organization does not mean that every member is a militant and we do not do political vetting and exclude people from one persuasion as against another," Mr. Hansen said.

Senator Kerry, his so-called momentum stopped and the political trends once more swinging strongly towards the President, has taken to increasingly shrill and absurd statements regarding the President and his actions. If you believe Senator Kerry, then Iraq is an utter disaster area, that the Iraq Survey Group report refuted all of the President's reasons for liberating Iraq and that President Bush is the only person on earth who still believes in victory in the War on Terrorism.

It isn't quite like that.

To begin with I'll note that Kerry has been largely silent on matters economic for a while now. Oh, sure, there are scare-tactic ads running (most of them seem funded by the DNC, if I can go by what I've actually seen on TV), but he's certainly not making it the centerpiece of his campaign. This would largely be because the economy isn't "recovering", its recovered. Kerry's statements on the economy a couple months ago were sounding more and more silly as the economy rapidly expanded, and so now he's pretty much dropped the subject.

We also note that Afghanistan doesn't come up much in Democratic conversation these days. They do try to say that we let bin Laden escape - even though outside of CYA'ing CIA analysts, everyone pretty much admits he's dead; as one pundit put it, bin Laden's laying low for three years now begins to be indicative of an inability to get back up again. But, without the body of bin Laden, we can't prove he's a grease-spot in the Tora Bora, so our Democrats get to make a bit of hay on that subject. Still, the Democrats are mostly silent about Afghanistan - and this would probably be due to the fact that Afghanistan’s economy is rapidly improving, the central government is rapidly gaining full control of the whole country and, finally, that Afghanistan on Saturday will have its first ever democratic elections. Heck, my bet is that their voter turn out will be higher than ours on November 2nd.

It’s hard to argue with success, and our Democrats do eventually give up on it. They generally fall silent about it when it becomes starkly clear and they can no longer fool even some of the people some of the time on it. I'd like to point out a couple very salient facts here:

President Bush predicted his economic and fiscal policies would revive an economy wracked by recession, dot-com bubble bursts, corporate malfeasance and the 9/11 attacks. The President's prediction has come true.

President Bush predicted that our economic, political and military policies in Afghanistan would, after a lot of very hard work and a lot of sacrifice, transition Afghanistan from a wasteland ruled over by evil men into a functioning democracy which respects the rights of all its citizens. The President's prediction has come true.

Keep this firmly in mind: As regards both the economy and Afghanistan, the Democrats who today are calling Iraq a failure and the President wrong, called the President's policies vis a vis the economy and Afghanistan wrong and long ago pronounced them as utter failures. The Democrat’s assertions have been proven wrong.

Now we come to Iraq.

Kerry and his Democrats are essentially harping on two subjects:

1. Their accusation that President Bush "misled" us into liberating Iraq.

2. Their accusation that the President didn't realize the magnitude of the job in Iraq and as a result the Iraq mission has become a complete failure.

To take a step back in time, I decided to re-read the October 7, 2002 speech by the President where he outlined our case against Iraq. Sure enough, the President (relying upon the agreed views of all the world's intelligence agencies) accused Saddam of maintaining and seeking to expand stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. Given the evidence at the time, he could make no other assertion. But that was not the only reason for liberating Iraq:

There is no easy or risk-free course of action. Some have argued we should wait -- and that's an option. In my view, it's the riskiest of all options, because the longer we wait, the stronger and bolder Saddam Hussein will become. We could wait and hope that Saddam does not give weapons to terrorists, or develop a nuclear weapon to blackmail the world. But I'm convinced that is a hope against all evidence. As Americans, we want peace -- we work and sacrifice for peace. But there can be no peace if our security depends on the will and whims of a ruthless and aggressive dictator. I'm not willing to stake one American life on trusting Saddam Hussein.

Failure to act would embolden other tyrants, allow terrorists access to new weapons and new resources, and make blackmail a permanent feature of world events. The United Nations would betray the purpose of its founding, and prove irrelevant to the problems of our time. And through its inaction, the United States would resign itself to a future of fear.

In this speech, the central reason for confronting Saddam was not the WMD's in and of itself, but the nature of the Saddamite regime. Supposing Saddam had come clean and really allowed a full and detailed inspection which then proved he had no WMD stocks and no capability of creating WMD (a very, very tall order) it may have prevented us from liberating Iraq - but would anyone out there say that had Saddam done so, sanctions should be lifted and Saddam welcomed back into the community of nations? This would have been, to paraphrase the President, to bet the lives of Americans on the whims of a madman.

The first paragraph of the "Key Findings" of the final report of the Iraq Survey Group goes thusly:

Saddam Husayn [sic] so dominated the Iraqi Regime that its strategic intent was his alone. He wanted to end sanctions while preserving the capability to reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction (WMD) when sanctions were lifted.

Has everyone got that? After an exhaustive study of the issue, the final conclusion leads off with a strong confirmation of the President's overall views - that Saddam was a gathering threat. And our experience tells us that gathering threats are best dealt with right away rather than put on the back burner in hopes that they'll just go away. Given that the ISG report details Saddam's very successful efforts to bribe our "allies" in France and Germany to get sanctions lifted and provide his regime with weapons forbidden by the 1991 cease-fire agreement and varied UN Security Council resolutions, we can see that while Saddam may not have had WMD, his intent was to get them.

Answer yourself this question: are you willing to be your life, the life of your spouse, the life of your children that Saddam, left alone, would never have produced WMD and would never have transmitted them to the sort of men so in love with death that they drove planes into buildings? If you are willing to place that bet, then by all means vote for John Kerry - he's your boy, if head-in-sand is your position of choice.

As to the second part of the Democrats critique of Iraq, that the President didn't realize how hard it would be, I go to his "Mission Accomplished" speech, so much derided by our Democratic friends:

We have difficult work to do in Iraq...

...The transition from dictatorship to democracy will take time, but it is worth every effort. Our coalition will stay until our work is done and then we will leave and we will leave behind a free Iraq.

Difficult work that will take time. I think that's a fair description of what we are engaged in. Since that speech we have seen a massive amount of difficult work done in Iraq, and the difficult work continues. It has come at a high cost in blood and treasure - more than a thousand of our best and bravest, and many more thousands of Iraqi's...some innocent civilians butchered by our inhuman enemies, others brave Iraqi's fighting along side us to bring peace and liberty to Iraq.

In return for this high cost, we have seen millions of Iraqi's lives improve remarkably from the days of the Saddamite tyranny. We have seen a transition to a native Iraqi government - a government for the first time in decades responsive to the will of the Iraqi people, and beholden to all of the Iraqi people, not just a corrupt clique. Soon the Iraqi people will do what no Arab people has ever done anywhere on earth - freely choose their own government, which will then proceed to write the laws under which they will live in peace and liberty.

President Bush predicted that our efforts in Iraq would produce a democratic Iraq, which will be a beacon of hope for the whole Arab world - this prediction has not come true. Yet. Its coming true - all but the blind can see that it’s coming. But the Democrats have a tenth of a leg to stand on in their absurd rhetoric - because it has not come true, today. But who are we to trust? Those who predicted doom regarding the President's policies on our economy and Afghanistan? Or shall we, instead, take the word of President Bush who has had three major efforts of his Administration, two of which have come out precisely as predicted?

I think I'll trust the President's proven record of success over Kerry and his Democrats defeatist "vote for me and lose gracefully" plans for American paralysis.

Today, Friday the 8th of October, President Bush will once more get up and debate John Kerry face to face. In this debate, regardless of what else happens, we will be treated to yet another exposition of the two men's views - Kerry's view that a Monday-morning quarterback who will change with the wind should be President contrasted with President Bush's view that perhaps we should stick with a plan which has killed thousands of terrorists, liberated millions of people and provided the basis for a complete victory in the War on Terrorism.

We as citizens will eventually be asked to discharge our duty - to choose between the men and their different worldviews. To me, its as plain as a pikestaff what we must do - we must continue the present policies; we must expand them and intensify them. We must do this because to do otherwise is to loes the war. Make no mistake about it, any change away from a robust determination to spread liberty around the world and use military force pre-emptively as necessary will be viewed by our terrorist enemies as a signal defeat of the United States. If Kerry were to be elected on November 2nd, the terrorists will say to themselves "see, I told you we only had to keep killing and the Americans would quit".

Which choice do you make, America?

Bill Whittle over at Eject! Eject! Eject! has a long piece which you must read in its entirety. It is the best thing I've ever seen clearly laying out exactly what is at stake here in this election. Two samples:

And although we can not run an experiment to look into the alternate futures to glean the best result, to determine the relative benefits of being nice or being mean – for those, ultimately, are the choices, believe it or not – we can at least look back to see which seems to have produced the best results in the laboratory of history.

It all comes down to carrots (liberals) or sticks (conservatives). By the way: if you’re in a rush and need to run, here’s the spoiler: You can offer a carrot. Not everybody likes carrots. Some people may hate your carrot. Your carrot may offend people who worship the rutabaga. But no one likes being poked in the eye with a stick. That’s universal.

I’m a stick man. I wish it were different. But part of growing up – in fact, the essential part of growing up – is realizing that wishing does not make it so.

Folks, it’s time to reach down deep and get in touch with our inner adult.

And then this:

And now, finally, the piece de resistance, the Main Event.

SENATOR KERRY: Well, where do you want me to begin?

First of all, he made the misjudgment of saying to America that he was going to build a true alliance, that he would exhaust the remedies of the United Nations and go through the inspections…

…And we pushed our allies aside.

Yes, after only thirteen brief years of Iraq’s causus belli of repeatedly and energetically violating every clause of the cease-fire agreement that stayed the US hand in 1991 when he was down, out and routed, and after only fourteen barely-have-time-to-pee months of non-stop, back-to-back UN sessions, resolutions, meetings, condemnations, threats, blocked inspections, harsh language, sanctions, embargoes and Saddam’s willful disregard of international protest, the Smirking Chimp ordered the raring-to-go German, French, Russian, Chinese, Japanese and Belgian armored divisions out of theater so that he could have his unilateral war.

Thanks for clarifying that opaque moment in history, Senator.

As I said - Read. It. All. Then do as the author suggests and broadcast it as widely as possible.

From MSNBC:

But Duelfer supported Bush’s argument that Saddam remained a threat. Interviews with the toppled leader and other former Iraqi officials made it clear that Saddam had not lost his ambition to pursue weapons of mass destruction and hoped to revive his weapons program if U.N. sanctions were lifted, his report said.

"What is clear is that Saddam retained his notions of use of force and had experiences that demonstrated the utility of WMD," Duelfer told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

UPDATE: This is London, associated with the Evening Standard newspaper, gets it right.

In this post-9/11 world, when 5 men boarding a passenjer jet in 2001, not nations mobilizing their armies in 1914, means impending danger, we must re-think what it means for a threat to be "imminent."

President Bush, after the 9/11 attack, had many Iraqi dots (to use the popular term) to connect without the benefit of hindsight. He could have waited for more dots, but risked another attack that Monday morning quarterbacks would have said was preventable given the compelling picture painted by the dots in hand at the time:

DOTS CONNECTING IRAQ TO WMD CAPABILITIES

-The UN and IAEA had a history of underestimating the maturity of Iraqi WMD programs. As Brookings fellow Robert Pollock noted, the IAEA believed that Iraq had no nuclear program before the 1991 Gulf War, when in fact they were less than 2 years from a weapon.

-As Gen. Tommy Franks wrote in his book, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Jordanian King Abdullah warned him that Saddam Hussein would unleash chemical or biological weapons against coalition forces. This is why our troops were forced to wear protective gear despite impairing their movement.

-Despite the initial celebratory media hype surrounding Joe Wilson, whose declarations have been proven false, British intelligence reports of Iraqi inquiries into Nigerian yellowcake availability have not been disproved.

-The UN catalogued large stockpiles of known Iraqi WMD and could not confirm their destruction. Confirming their destruction was the job of UN "inspectors," not searching for them, since it is impossible to prove a negative.

-Again in the realm of underestimation, the UN inspectors did not know the full extent of Iraq's WMD programs, even after having full fun of the country for 4 years of inspections after the Gulf War, until Saddam's son-in-law Hussein Kamel defected

DOTS CONNECTING IRAQ TO TERRORIST GROUPS

-Russian President Vladimir Putin warned President Bush of Russian intelligence reports of Iraqi attempts to use terrorist groups to strike the United States

-Czech intelligence reported on Iraq-al Qaeda meetings, including between Iraqi spy Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani and lead 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta in Prague

-The well-known Iraqi terrorist training facility at Salman Pak was not only equipped with an airplane fuselage but also was known for housing WMD-related programs

-Saddam Hussein gave sanctuary to Palestinian Liberation Front leader Abu Abbas, who murdered American Leon Klinghoffer on the hijacked cruiseliner Achille Lauro and dumped him overboard

-Saddam Hussein also gave safe haven to Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal, but had him killed when he refused to train al Qaeda fighters who took refuge in Iraq after being expelled from Afghanistan

-Saddam Hussein exacerbated mideast instability by financing Palestinian terrorists who undertook suicide bombing operations

-The 9/11 Commission report specifically stated that there were Iraq-al Qaeda connections

DOTS INDICATING A BREAKDOWN OF IRAQ SANCTIONS

-UN officials, even the head of the Oil-for-Food program and Kofi Annan's son, appear to have been bribed by Saddam

-Security Council members were in Saddam's pocket, reinforcing his belief that no American threat should be taken seriously because he had UN vetoes in his back pocket

-Even UN officials not on the take pushed for removal of sanctions

-A large number of NGO's were urging the removal of sanctions on Iraq, such as World Socialists, American pressure groups, Muslim groups, and many others

DUELFER REPORT: SADDAM WAITING OUT END OF SANCTIONS

While the elite media headlines trumpet the Duelfer report's conclusion that Iraq had no WMD stockpiles, they ignore the most critical element of the report, given all the "dots" we already had, as MSNBC notes:

But [Charles] Duelfer supported Bush’s argument that Saddam remained a threat. Interviews with the toppled leader and other former Iraqi officials made it clear that Saddam had not lost his ambition to pursue weapons of mass destruction and hoped to revive his weapons program if U.N. sanctions were lifted, his report said.

"What is clear is that Saddam retained his notions of use of force and had experiences that demonstrated the utility of WMD," Duelfer told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

For those who need a simplification of the analysis, consider this analogy:

If a mafioso (Saddam) who had vowed to kill you was in prison (sanctions) with gun parts (WMD designs, precursors and scientists) but not an assembled gun (WMD stockpiles) in his cell, and the warden (UN) was on the take (Oil-for-Food) and about to let him out (sanctions breakdown), would you wait for his release so that he could assemble his gun (ramp up WMD production), give it to his hitmen (terrorists), and have them climb through your window at night (pre-9/11 definition of imminence), or would you take him down when you had the chance (post-9/11 definition of imminence)?

With the inherent murkiness of intelligence, which Senator Kerry knows (despite attending only 24% of his Senate Intelligence Committee hearings) is by its nature imprecise, we must act on what these "dots" tell us because waiting for 100% confirmation of threats means we have waited too long. As a result, President Bush unveiled a new doctrine aimed at pre-empting threats BEFORE they are fully developed and readily apparent. President Bush acted to ENSURE that the threat presented would not fully develop and chose the safe route: to make CERTAIN that the Iraqi threat which the entire world knew about would never materialize. Senator Kerry and most leading Democrats, prior to electioneering, once agreed. The choice for Americans is simple: should our President have a September 10, 2001 posture, or a September 11, 2001 posture?

After John Kerry said that pre-emptive action against terrorism would require a "global test," many were wondering what that meant. John Edwards may have inadvertantly let on what the Democratic philosophy is on this by confirming previous statements by Kerry.

Edwards at debate: "Mr. Vice President, there is no connection between the attacks of September 11th and Saddam Hussein."

John Kerry's convention speech: "Any attack will be met with a swift and certain response."

That must be Kerry's Global Test: action is only allowable in a reactive fashion but not pro-actively to forestall attacks on America. It is certainly legitimate for Kerry and Edwards to hold this viewpoint, but Americans need to know this critical distinction between that opinion and President Bush's belief that we must act to remove threats BEFORE they manifest themselves in an attack on our nation.

While the Democrats always drop in the perfunctory tough sentence or 2 about never giving anyone a veto or wanting to kill terrorists, their records do not match their rhetoric. Look at Kerry's history on defense and intelligence issues and all his speechifying becomes hollow. It's a 20-year history of being genetically predisposed to waiting, talking and waiting some more before taking action. There is one man whom we can trust to take this battle to the enemy, and that man is George W. Bush.

As we go about through the clatter and buzz, gape and gloat of the election campaign, never forget that many thousands of miles away from your safe home are men and women we have sent into battle - daily they deal with the everpresent reality of sudden, horrific death; daily they deal with the worst the world has to offer. From what we can read of their own words, they are a determined bunch of people - boiled down, they only ask that we remember them and support them, especially when things look worst. They remind us every chance they get that they are doing good work and that they are doing this in order that we here at home may have the luxury of concentrating our minds on things other than the ruthless, wicked men our soldiers deal with day in and day out.

This link here will take you to a very different sort of tribute to our men, with a message about what their actions require of us here at home. Some may be offended by it, but I'm with the author, Shawn Yebba, in saying "get over it." With our men and women at risk every day, the last thing anyone should be worried about is who gets offended.

This is a war, after all. A long, hard war - and a war which we can only lose if we lack the will to win. You must turn your minds again and again to this fact - and remember these men and women who serve in our cause. We will all stand condemned forever at the bar of history if we fail in their trust.

When you think of the fallen and sadness comes over you, think then of this poem:

Shot? so quick, so clean an ending?
Oh that was right, lad, that was brave:
Yours was not an ill for mending,
'Twas best to take it to the grave.

Oh you had forethought, you could reason,
And saw your road and where it led,
And early wise and brave in season
Put the pistol to your head.

Oh soon, and better so than later
After long disgrace and scorn,
You shot dead the household traitor,
The soul that should not have been born.

Right you guessed the rising morrow
And scorned to tread the mire you must:
Dust's your wages, son of sorrow,
But men may come to worse than dust.

Souls undone, undoing others,---
Long time since the tale began.
You would not live to wrong your brothers:
Oh lad, you died as fits a man.

Now to your grave shall friend and stranger
With ruth and some with envy come:
Undishonoured, clear of danger,
Clean of guilt, pass hence and home.

Turn safe to rest, no dreams, no waking;
And here, man, here's the wreath I've made:
'Tis not a gift that's worth the taking,
But wear it and it will not fade. - A E Houseman, Shropshire Lad

God bless them all.

Yesterday in Ohio, Bush blasted what will now be known as the Kerry Doctrine:

"In the debate Senator Kerry said something revealing when he laid out the Kerry Doctrine. He said America has to pass a 'global test' before we can use American troops to defend ourselves. … Senator Kerry's approach to foreign policy would give foreign governments veto power over our own national security decisions. I take a different view. When our country is in danger, the President’s job is not to take an international poll. The President’s job is to defend America. I work every day with our friends and allies for the sake of freedom and peace, but our national security decisions must be made in the Oval Office, not foreign capitals."

Who do you want leading the war on terror? Bush with the doctrine of preemption, or Kerry with his permission slip policies?

Click the image to download a large JPG version showing exactly what the Kerry Doctrine means. Or click here for the PDF version.

Way at the bottom of CNN's daily glorification of violence in Iraq is yet another quiet step in the march towards a sovereign nation that can stand up on its own and defend itself:

Iraq's coastal guard, called the Iraqi Coastal Defense Force, began operations. The force assumes responsibility for the protection of Iraq's maritime sovereignty, including patrolling the Khawr Abd Allah, protection of offshore installations and the port of Umm Qasr.

The question was never if Saddam Hussein posed a threat; everyone agreed he did. The question was who was going to do something about it.

"One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line."
- President Clinton, Feb. 4, 1998

"If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear...We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program."
- President Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998

"Iraq is a long way from [the USA], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks 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."
- Madeline Albright, Feb 18, 1998

"He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983."
- Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser, Feb, 18, 1998

"[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."
- Letter to President Clinton, signed by Sens. Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, and others Oct. 9, 1998

"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."
- Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Dec. 16, 1998

"Hussein has ... chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies."
- Madeline Albright, Clinton Secretary of State, Nov. 10, 1999

"There is no doubt that ... Saddam Hussein has invigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status. In adition, Saddam continues to redefine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies."
- Letter to President Bush, Signed by Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL,) and others, December 5, 2001

"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 mandated of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them."
- Sen. Carl Levin (D, MI), Sept. 19, 2002

"We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country."
- Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002

"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."
- Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002

"We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction."
- Sen. Ted Kennedy (D, MA), Sept. 27, 2002

"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..."
- Sen. Robert Byrd (D, WV), Oct. 3, 2002

"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."
- Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Oct. 9, 2002

"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."
- Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D, WV), Oct 10, 2002

"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."
- Rep.Henry Waxman (D, CA), Oct. 10, 2002

"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."
- Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY), Oct 10, 2002

"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."
- Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL), Dec. 8, 2002

"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..."
- Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Jan. 23. 2003

Senator Kerry has boasted of his 4-point plan for Iraq. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, President Bush ought to be mighty flattered.

1. Train Iraqi forces -> Already being done and NATO just last week agreed to increase its commitment

2. Proceed with reconstruction -> Already being done, despite Kerry's protest vote against the funds to enable this part of his own plan. Too bad the Senator feels political grandstanding is more important than the right vote

3. Have elections -> Already being done, with elections planned for January, despite the Kerry campaign's insult of Prime Minister Allawi upon his affirmation of this part of Kerry's own plan

4. Bring in allies -> Already being done, with over 30 nations participating. With Kerry denigrating and belittling our existing allies and calling Iraq the wrong war, it's no wonder other nations have already said they will not sign up with the Kerry plan.

So, this "plan" is not much more than a recitation of what the President is already doing. President Bush ought to welcome Senator Kerry's endorsement of the existing plan.

John Kerry has come out with an explanation for his "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it," line - it was just "one of those inarticulate moments" in the campaign.

I'm glad it took him all these months to finally come out with an excuse... even if it is a bad one...

However, Kerry justifies not supporting our troops because it was a "protest vote" over the funding. Kerry wanted to roll back tax cuts which have helped our economy recover... "I thought that the wealthiest people of America should share in that burden," Kerry said, "It was a protest."

So let's be clear on this... He voted against supporting our troops because of the tax cuts... John Kerry was playing politics with supporting our troops and the war on terror.

I'm sure our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq appreciate John Kerry's "protest".

UPDATE: The Official Bush Campaign Blog has more.. the full Kerry quote is

It was a very inarticulate way of saying something and I had one of those moments late in the evening when I was tired in the primaries and didn't say something clearly. But it reflects the truth of the position, which is, I thought, to have the wealthiest people in America share the burden of paying for that war. It was a protest. Sometimes you have to stand up and be counted.

But.... Kerry made that statement at noon back in March...

UPDATE: Wizbang notes how the Associated Press cherry picked Kerry's quote to omit his lie about when he made his infamous gaffe..

John Kerry's "Christmas in Cambodia" story is a lie about something that happened did not happen nearly 36 years ago. But more recently Kerry claimed, falsely, to have been at the signing of the truce at Safwan, Iraq, at the end of Gulf War I. Ed Morrissey has the details as the blogosphere smokes out the proof that Kerry lied. [Hat tip: Michael Williams].

Short version: Kerry, in a televised interview in 2001, said, "I was in Safwan. I went there when the signing of the armistice took place at the end of the war." But the armistice was signed in a tent at Safwan on March 3. Because Iraq is several hours ahead, it was still March 2 in Boston. Where, various news articles show, Kerry was.

But, to me, that's not the most interesting part of the transcript of the 2001 interview. To me, there are at least two shockers in this excerpt of the interview:

KERRY: Bill, let me tell you, I was all for our following through at the end of the Gulf War with the Kurd uprising. And I thought it was a great betrayal, in a sense, that we encouraged them verbally. We gave them forces. We gave them weapons. We encouraged them and said we were with them. And then we pulled out at the last minute because the Kuwaitis and the Saudis and others were unsure of what might follow.

O'REILLY: Yes, that was a classic mistake. But if you arm the Kurds in the north of Iraq, you're going to alienate one of our most valuable --

KERRY: I didn't say necessarily the Kurds. There are other members of the opposition. There are people who are outside the country prepared to go in. There are others inside the country. And I believe - I mean, I was in Safwan. I went there when the signing of the armistice took place at the end of the war.

And I remember seeing that land, which lent itself in my judgment, considerably to the creation of almost an enclave, which I thought we should have done then. And I think is one way to begin to approach things now, but there are other possibilities. The important thing is that Saddam Hussein and the world knows that we think Saddam Hussein is essentially out of sync with the times. He is and has acted like a terrorist. And he is engaged in activities that are unacceptable.

Forgive me for saying so, but I'm confused. There is no consistency to Kerry's views on Iraq and Saddam. In 2001, he said "[Saddam] is and has acted like a terrorist." But today he says Iraq is not part of the War on Terror.

In 1991, he opposed war with Iraq when war with Iraq was both a real possibility and an urgent national security necessity, but a decade later he looked back and decided he was "all for" extending a war that he opposed starting in the first place.

One of two things is true: Either John Kerry was lying in 2001 about favoring the U.S. backing the Iraqi rebels in a proxy war in 1991, or in 1991 John Kerry watched the U.S. military win a smashing victory in a war he opposed, so he jumped on the bandwagon and became in favor of the U.S. waging a proxy war against Saddam via Iraqi rebels.

But such a proxy war would have violated the narrow U.N. mandate - to oust Saddam's forces from Kuwait - under which the U.S. had gone to war against Saddam in the first place. And we know how Kerry feels about U.N. mandates - they're like American Express traveler's cheques for the U.S. military - don't leave home without them.

My guess is that, had the first President Bush tried to fight a proxy war against Saddam via the Iraqi rebels back in 1991, Sen. Kerry would have loudly opposed it. His whole history argues so. We know Kerry's views on the Vietnam War. And we know that in the 1980s he met with the Communist dictator of Nicaragua and declared himself opposed to the United States backing of the contras, though later events proved the contras represented the true aspirations of the majority of the Nicaraguan people.

Sen. Kerry, I think you were going for easy points in that interview three years ago. It sure is easy to be "for" a hypothetical war to oust a terrorist dictator 10 years earlier - you get to score political points for being anti-Saddam without having to actually do anything to get rid of Saddam. Maybe that's called "nuance."

To anyone who harbors doubt about the necessity of taking out Saddam Hussein, yesterday's New York Times piece by Iraqi nuclear scientist Mahdi Obeidi should clear up any misconceptions.

Iraq's nuclear weapons program was on the threshold of success before the 1991 invasion of Kuwait - there is no doubt in my mind that we could have produced dozens of nuclear weapons within a few years - but was stopped in its tracks by United Nations weapons inspectors after the Persian Gulf war and was never restarted...

By 1998, when Saddam Hussein evicted the weapons inspectors from Iraq, all that was left was the dangerous knowledge of hundreds of scientists and the blueprints and prototype parts for the centrifuge, which I had buried under a tree in my garden...

Was Iraq a potential threat to the United States and the world? Threat is always a matter of perception, but our nuclear program could have been reinstituted at the snap of Saddam Hussein's fingers. The sanctions and the lucrative oil-for-food program had served as powerful deterrents, but world events - like Iran's current efforts to step up its nuclear ambitions - might well have changed the situation.

Iraqi scientists had the knowledge and the designs needed to jumpstart the program if necessary. And there is no question that we could have done so very quickly. In the late 1980's, we put together the most efficient covert nuclear program the world has ever seen. In about three years, we gained the ability to enrich uranium and nearly become a nuclear threat; we built an effective centrifuge from scratch, even though we started with no knowledge of centrifuge technology. Had Saddam Hussein ordered it and the world looked the other way, we might have shaved months if not years off our previous efforts.

Kevin McCullough heard Retired Lt. General Michael "Rifle" DeLong (USMC) (who was the No. 2 man in CentCom under General Tommy Franks) on New York talk radio today. Kevin wrote that DeLong said that "U.S. Military Intelligence had been able to determine that WMDs were smuggled out of the country as U.S. military forces were preparing to liberate Iraq."

Kevin recorded and transcribed DeLong's remarks, which you can check out by clicking here...

October elections? Don't I mean November? No, I mean October - in Afghanistan.

While John Kerry has been out insulting the heroic Prime Minister of Iraq - claiming the Iraqi Prime minister doesn't know what is going on inside his own country - and saying that Iraq was a distraction from the War on Terrorism, our allies in Afghanistan with the help of our magnificent US and allied troops (allied troops in the coalition that Kerry calls "phony") are marching step by step towards Afganistan's first democratic elections.

Oxblog (via Dean's World) gives us the scoop:

The last few months have been a thrilling and astonishing time for Afghanistan. A Karzai victory remains the most likely outcome on October 9, but the implications of that victory look rather different now than they did at the beginning of the year.

First: the clear losers of this election are the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and rebels against the Kabul government. With just over two weeks remaining before the Afghan presidential elections, the malcontents have already lost. For months, they have threatened to create a generalized atmosphere of fear in which no one would dare go to the polls. It is safe to say that they have failed. They failed to prevent mass voter registration; the murders of many brave election workers did not deter millions of Afghans from registering for the vote (some more than once, but that’s another story). The handful of explosions and attacks that the Afghan insurgents have managed in the last few weeks are pitiful in comparison to (say) the daily uproar in Iraq. And they have run out of time. Whatever atrocities they manage to commit in the coming days, it is hard to imagine anything dramatic enough to deter more than a handful of likely voters. Another bomb or two before October 9 is not going to do the trick. The insurgents simply cannot affect enough of the country to manage widespread voter intimidation.

Its been about two years and ten months since we ousted the Taliban from Afghanistan - and every pundit who is today calling our efforts in Iraq a failure, called Afghanistan a failure way back when. Kerry is out there making an issue out of the War on Terrorism - trying to describe our magnificent victories as defeats. Well, lets just say that when the American people see the Afgan people peacefully choose their own government then at that moment all the Kerry lies in the world wont be able to change the facts on the ground.

We're winning this war - in Afghanistan and in Iraq. All we have to do is keep the faith; and, of course, re-elect President Bush.

HAT TIP: Dean's World

Too good and succinct to excerpt:

As regular readers of this blog are aware (and yell at me regularly from both sides), I'm much more "anti-Kerry" than "pro-Bush". But I have to give our President credit where credit is due, and I thought his U.N. address yesterday was one of the best speeches he has ever delivered. I read parts of it earlier today and liked it, but it wasn't until I got to see C-Span's re-airing of it that I realized how much I liked it.

If you can't catch the speech on TV (C-Span has a schedule, or they have the speech in Real format on their main page), at least read the transcript. The part that really sold me, which helped clarify and underscore the differences between our choices this election, was this:

"For too long, many nations, including my own, tolerated, even excused oppression in the Middle East in the name of stability. The oppression became common, but stability never arrived. We must take a different approach."

Kerry and his supporters still seem to live in this bizarre, convenient little fantasy world in which the policies of non-interference and ignoring those who torture and murder their religious enemies was working just peachy, for they'd surely never come after us unless we came after them. Which not only ignores 9/11, but also the dozens of escalating terrorist attacks on our soil and on our foreign embassies during the decade prior.

As Jonah Goldberg put it (brilliantly) yesterday, yes Bush has created "more extremists and terrorists by fighting on their home turf", but the goal is "to rationalize the Middle East so that, while it may still produce enemies, they will be ones we can deal with around a table, not a crater." What Bush and his advisers seem to understand is that there's a larger picture here. Repeatedly whining "but Iraq didn't attack us on 9/11!" makes about as much sense in a global context as "but Germany didn't attack us at Pearl Harbor!"

But it was more than just the content of the address that struck me. There's something about listening to Kerry that's reminiscent of an empty suit -- of someone reading what others told him to say, because it polled better. Kerry has the exact same expression and delivery and speaking style now speaking against the war as he did last year speaking in favor of it. Listen to him give an address on any issue -- it's far too easy to imagine his same words and gestures and cadences saying the opposite.

Luckilly with Kerry, on almost every issue, you can find a video recording of him saying the exact opposite, so maybe that's why.

With Bush, even his detractors sense genuine conviction, which I respect -- even on the issues I think he's flat-out 100% wrong on. When it comes to a leader, I guess I'd rather have someone I disagree with but who means it, over someone I agree with (this week) but only because a poll tells him to.

To be fair, if Kerry's fault is "flip-flopping" to say whatever he thinks the electorate wants to hear, Bush's fault is stubbornly and loyally sticking to a position or person or course of action even after proven inadequate or incorrect. But on issues of foreign policy, I still find Bush's worldview more persuasive. His U.N. address was quite candid, admitting that things will get worse before they get better, but urging all to see forward, the wider angle. "The advance of freedom always carries a cost paid by the bravest among us," Bush acknowledged. "The proper response to difficulty is not to retreat; it is to prevail." I don't know if Bush understood these things when he was elected originally, or if he even understood them when he made the decision to invade Iraq. But he seems to understand it now, and Kerry doesn't.

We just witnessed two major foreign policy addresses this week by two very different men, one of whom will be the President for the next four years. Which speech sounded more "Presidential" to you?

The New York Times published a piece by Peter Bergen, a fellow at the New America Foundation and an adjunct professor at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, on Afghanistan.

This summer I visited Kandahar, the former Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan, for the first time since the winter of 1999. Five years ago, the Taliban and its Al Qaeda allies were at the height of their power. They had turned Afghanistan into a terrorist state, with more than a dozen training camps churning out thousands of jihadist graduates every year.

The scene was very different this time around. The Kandahar airport, where I had once seen Taliban soldiers showing off their antiaircraft missiles, is now a vast American base with thousands of soldiers, as well as a 24-hour coffee shop, a North Face clothing store, a day spa and a PX the size of a Wal-Mart. Next door, what was once a base for Osama bin Laden is now an American shooting range. In downtown Kandahar, the gaudy compound of the Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, now houses United States Special Forces units.

As I toured other parts of the country, the image that I was prepared for - that of a nation wracked by competing warlords and in danger of degenerating into a Colombia-style narcostate - never materialized.

He goes on to describe distinct achievements:

-Disarming of warlords

-High voter registration rates

-Strengthening central government of Hamid Karzai

"What we are seeing in Afghanistan is far from perfect, but it's better than so-so. Disputes that would once have been settled with the barrel of a gun are now increasingly being dealt with politically."

Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi addressed a joint session of Congress today (from CNN.com):

"Elections will occur in Iraq on time in January," Allawi promised.

"There will be no greater blow" to the government's enemies than when the elections take place, he said.

"We are succeeding in Iraq.... Thank you, America," he said.

"We know Americans have made enormous sacrifices.... We promise you your sacrifices are not in vain."

Allawi also expressed gratitude for the recent NATO decision to help train the Iraqi military.

To energetic applause, Allawi said: "We are fighting for freedom and democracy, ours and yours.

"Every day we grow in strength and determination to defeat the terrorists and their barbarism."

He said the overwhelming majority of Iraqis are pleased that the Saddam Hussein regime was toppled, pointing to Saddam's killings and his gassing of Kurdish communities.

"Today we are better off, you are better off, the world is better off without Saddam Hussein," Allawi said.

Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, interviewed by Fox News' Brit Hume, describes how his government is regaining lost ground and how many cities that were once problematic are becoming normalized:

HUME: The attacks, of course, continue elsewhere, as well, including in Baghdad, including even near and around the edges of the Green Zone, which has been the most secure perimeter there. Are you confident, sir, and can you give the American people confidence as they look to see what might be in the future there that this level of violence can be subdued in time for a nationwide election in January?

ALLAWI: Well, you recently had the example of Najaf. And Najaf now is back to normality, the people are going about doing their own business. People are going to the mosques, to the shrines, to restaurants, hotels, so on. The same applies to Samarra, which was even probably more than Fallujah, problems there. Likewise in Basra. There are -- the vast majority of Iraq is really calm, no problems. Samarra, Diwaniya (ph), Hilla, (UNINTELLIGIBLE), Kut, Basra, Najaf, Karbala, Suleimaniya (ph), Erbil, Tahuk (ph), these are all calm places, and the government is in full control.

There are pockets in Fallujah, there are pockets in Ramadi which are shrinking -- in Ramadi. There are problems in an area called North (UNINTELLIGIBLE), and these are really a way to be solved. So really, overall, we definitely have been making progress, definitely are winning. We have been apprehending a lot of terrorists, a lot of insurgents. A lot of them were caught also in the combat zones in Fallujah, many of them were caught in Samarra also and also some are killed.

Score one for the good guys, as AP reports an American airstrike has taken out a top Zarqawi aide:

The spiritual leader of a militant group that claimed to have beheaded two American hostages in Iraq has been killed in a U.S. airstrike...

Sheik Abu Anas al-Shami, 35, was killed when a missile hit the car he was traveling in on Friday...

Al-Shami was a close aide to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of the militant group Tawhid and Jihad

As Newsweek Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas said:

"Let's talk a little media bias here. The media, I think, wants Kerry to win and I think they're going to portray Kerry and Edwards I'm talking about the establishment media, not Fox. They're going to portray Kerry and Edwards as being young and dynamic and optimistic and there's going to be this glow about them, collective glow, the two of them, that's going to be worth maybe 15 points."

Interestingly enough, I missed this story, but during my never-ending quest to finish adding blogs to the Blogroll for Bush (yes, more and more requests are coming in daily) I came across a blog that did find the story, which suggests that Saddam was helping to fund Al Qaeda with UN Oil-for-Food program money.

Did Saddam Hussein use any of his ill-gotten billions filched from the United Nations Oil-for-Food program to help fund Al Qaeda?

Investigations have shown that the former Iraqi dictator grafted and smuggled more than $10 billion from the program that for seven years prior to Saddam's overthrow was meant to bring humanitarian aid to ordinary Iraqis. And the Sept. 11 Commission has shown a tracery of contacts between Saddam and Al Qaeda that continued after billions of Oil-for-Food dollars began pouring into Saddam's coffers and Usama bin Laden declared his infamous war on the U.S.

Now, buried in some of the United Nation's own confidential documents, clues can be seen that underscore the possibility of just such a Saddam-Al Qaeda link — clues leading to a locked door in this Swiss lakeside resort.

Fascinating stuff... I urge you to read the whole story... Why hasn't this story gotten more attention?

This piece, describing Iraqi women touring America to educate Americans about what is truly happening in Iraq, directly relates to the theme of President Bush's UN speech today. It is a refreshing reminder of how to win this war and that, while victory won't come quickly, it will come with steadfastness.

"You (Americans) see (television images of) a lot of violence" in Iraq, and there is violence, she said. "But a lot of good things are happening to us. ... Under Saddam, we had no rights, especially women. Women could not speak openly, even to their children, not even in their own homes."...

Al-Fadhal, a real Iraqi woman speaking to the situation in her homeland, says most Iraqis are overwhelmingly grateful to the United States for freeing their country from tyranny...

"When I come here and watch TV, I think this is the end of Iraq. It's over," al-Suwaij said. In Iraq, however, she sees a country "taking baby steps" toward democracy. She says the economy is booming. Schools are improving. Women fill 25 percent of elected positions, a milestone not seen even in the United States...

"A lot of (Iraqi) mothers come to me and say to tell the mothers in America thank you for sending us your sons and daughters, the soldiers, to help us," she said. "We pray for them, the soldiers."

By now, anyone who has followed the 2004 campaign should be familiar with the clear differences between the two candidates on the most pressing issue of our time, the war against terror. The choice is clear:

President Bush realizes that our enemies, radical Islamists, seek to overturn the world order by sowing chaos and destruction. The solution is to replace the poverty-creating and corruption-ridden despotisms of the Muslim world with free-market democracies. And with the catastrophically destructive capabilities of WMD proliferating rapidly, time is not on our side so we must accelerate the process by which the Muslim world is integrated into the international system.

John Kerry, on the other hand, takes a more hands-off and fatalistic approach, binding America to the will of the glacially ineffective UN in the hope that, somehow, global diplomatic gridlock and inaction will enhance our security. Despite Kerry's famed flip-flopping, his vacillation actually helps to pinpoint his true inclinations.

The recent election results in the world's largest Muslim nation, Indonesia, show that democracy can work and that the people choose liberty and peace over theocracy and violence.

A U.S.-trained former general who led the fight against al-Qaida-linked extremists in Indonesia appeared headed for a landslide victory Monday in a presidential runoff heralded as a key step for democracy in the world's most populous Muslim nation...

Yudhoyono appealed to Washington because of his hard line against terrorists. The 55-year-old retired soldier promised to crack down harder on Jemaah Islamiyah, a group with links to al-Qaida that has been blamed for three bloody terror attacks.

Meanwhile, Kerry continues to attack this vision of democracy as the solution to the war on terror, and places his bet on the UN and our European "allies." As George Melloan notes in today's Wall Street Journal (subscription required) and as its editorial page noted yesterday, the UN is not suited for this job. If the $10 billion Oil-for-Food scam and genocidal Sudan's appointment to the UN Commission on Human Rights do not demonstrate that, nothing will. And the Europeans, having freeloaded under U.S. protection for 6 decadent decades, are little better and unable to help in Iraq even if Kerry's fantasy of their sudden willingness came true. Furthermore, they are throwing up roadblocks against Turkish accession to the EU, which is probably the most powerfully positive contribution Europe is capable of bringing to this war.

So, the 2 competing strategies are very distinct. It seems clear that Kerry's Status Quo Strategy is what led us into this war in the first place and that President Bush's Democratization Strategy (which has proven itself in Indonesia and Turkey, and is bearing fruit in even some Arab nations such as Bahrain, Morocco and Qatar) is the preferable solution. As Amir Taheri wrote several months ago:

The same people who laughed at Ronald Reagan for believing that communism could be defeated now dismiss Bush's call for democratization in the Middle East as another sign of American naiveté. Professional anti-Americans shudder at the thought that "someone like George W. Bush" might actually not only win the war on terror but also help the Muslim nations join the mainstream of global human development. President Bush should trust his instinct and remain committed to helping the Middle East take the path of democratic change.

Senator John Kerry is honing his Iraq message, and America hopes it's not only his latest position but his final one. Doubtless, the Carville/Begala/Lockhart/Sasso/McCurry team is behind the new attack line, which seeks to affix their candidate's position. Their only problem is that it comlpetely contradicts his prior statements. It is impossible, at this point, to have a credible Kerry Iraq policy, simply because he has been all over the map.

Today's quote (September 20):

Kerry said Monday, "The president's insistence that he would do the same thing all over again in Iraq is a clear warning for the future. And it makes the choice in this election clear: more of the same with President Bush or a new direction that makes our troops and America safer."

Speaking in Arizona on Monday, Kerry declared that "even knowing what we now know," he would still have cast his vote in the Senate to authorize the Bush administration to invade Iraq. "I would have voted for the authority," said Kerry. "I believe it was the right authority for the president to have."

Kerry's prescription for Iraq is not very different from the President's:

-Get more help from other nations
-Provide better training for Iraqi security forces
-Provide benefits to the Iraqi people
-Ensure that democratic elections can be held next year as promised:

And, as today's Wall Street Journal pointedly notes, the UN, which is what Kerry means by "other nations," is not structured to make tough decisions or lead a moral battle. Functioning as a global petri dish, the UN is a lowest common denominator and, as we have seen from Rwanda to Srebrenica to the Oil-for-Food Scandal, that denominator is quite low indeed.

Aside from the total lack of realism in Kerry's proposal, his vacillation and undercutting of American resolve is insidious and dangerous, as the Bush campaign has pointed out:

"John Kerry's latest position on Iraq is to advocate retreat and defeat in the face of terror. This sends the wrong signal to our troops, our allies and our enemies. The American people understand the stakes and Prime Minister Allawi understands the need to defeat the terrorists trying to destroy the approach of freedom in the Middle East. President Bush has made it clear that we will complete this mission and has made it clear that the status quo is unacceptable in a region that can produce killers capable of flying planes into buildings."

Amidst all the intense scrutiny of and bloggage about those CBS forged memos, let's not lose sight of the real issues in the presidential campaign - and it isn't who did what in a war 35 years ago, but who will do what in the war we are in now. And there is a two-page memo of known authenticity that sheds real light on John Kerry's approach national security and defense issues during a time of war.

Here is that memo:

Click each image to enlarge a page of the 2-page memo.

And here is more information about that memo. (And don't let the Kerry campaign distort the senator's record on this issue by claiming he only supported defense cuts proposed by then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney. Cheney proposed cuts after we had won the Cold War, but Kerry proposed wholesale disarming of the U.S. military at the height of the Cold War.)

Read a 2-year old Alistair Cooke Letter to America to understand how a European, a refugee of the Holocaust, laments Europe's decadent and infantile pacifism. It's not too long, but here are some excerpts:

But now over the telephone he told me about the viciousness of some friends, British friends, complaining about the arrogance, the war mongering, the bullying of the United States and the president's unnecessary obsession with Saddam Hussein.

My friend cried to me: "I took up your point that we've been softened by 50 years of peace and come to accept it as normal but I asked them who kept the peace? 'Their power, their bomb is our umbrella,' Churchill said at a time of the ban the bomb crusade."

The piece goes on to describe the career of George Marshall, which was an astonishing display of selflessness. His prestige carried the day for the Marshall Plan, where America sacrificed so much for the stability of Europe. A recent "global poll" overwhelmingly favors John Kerry, but doesn't America also have the right to some gratitude for its sacrifices made for Europe and expect that, when we need allies by our side, they would reciprocate? Apparently not. No good deed goes unpunished.

Our Democratic friends and their anti-American allies have been marking the recently suffered 1,000th American death in Iraq this past few days. To a lot of the critics, the implication is that 1,000 lives is too many to pay - that we've suffered more than we can bear; the additional implication being that Kerry's proposals to cut and run in Iraq (and that is what they boil down to) are the best course of action.

I'd like to point out a fact that the critics don't want anyone to remember. This isn't the 1,000th death - its the 4,000th. Or have they forgotten the 3,000 who were murdered? Murdered, it must be remembered, not over the course of 18 months of killing the enemy, but over a couple hour period, right here in the United States.

This is what the anti-war critics want to do - have everyone forget our murdered citizens; to somehow pretend that Iraq is happening in a vacuum. Well, lets just say that I don't forget and I wont forget; I remember all our dead and what I want in return for our loss is absolute and complete American victory - our enemies dead or begging for mercy.

Roger Abramson thinks the Tennessee wing of John Kerry's campaign is out-of-touch with voters on what's important:

A campaign flyer published by the Kerry-Edwards 2004 Tennessee campaign office headquarters lists nine things that John Kerry and John Edwards will focus on if they are elected: 1) education, 2) Social Security and Medicare, 3) job growth, 4) health care, 5) safe communities, 6) civil rights, 7) rural issues, 8) veterans' issues and 9) environmental issues.

All of these things are swell, and certainly domestic issues are the Democratic Party's strong suit, but did it ever occur to anyone that mentioning "terrorism" and "Iraq" somewhere - you know, the two issues that according to last weekend's Gallup Poll are the most salient of this election for a majority of Americans - might be a good idea?

It ain't 1992 anymore, guys.

When Kerry focuses on those other issues instead of terrorism, he communicates to the undecided voters and moderate Democrats that he is focused on the wrong thing and that he takes the threat of terrorism less seriously than he does those other issues - less seriously, indeed, than does George W. Bush.

In many ways, it remains Sept. 14, 2001, the day President Bush stood a top "The Pile" and vowed that the terrorists would hear from all of us soon. America stood with him that day, and I suspect most Americans will stand with George W. again on Nov. 2.

Sometimes you come across something someone wrote and it clarifies in your mind the views which you hold. David Gelernter over at The Weekl Standard has done this for us:

In moral terms: If you are the biggest boy on the playground and there are no adults around, the playground is your responsibility. It is your duty to prevent outrages--because your moral code demands that outrages be prevented, and (for now) you are the only one who can prevent them.

If you are one of the two biggest boys, and the other one orders you not to protect the weak lest he bash you and everyone else he can grab--then your position is more complicated. Your duty depends on the nature of the outrage that ought to be stopped, and on other circumstances. This was America's position during the Cold War: Our moral obligation to overthrow tyrants was limited by the Soviet threat of hot war, maybe nuclear war.

But things are different today. We are the one and only biggest boy. We can run from our moral duty but we can't hide. If there is to be justice in the world, we must create it. No one else will act if the biggest boy won't. Some of us turn to the United Nations the way we wish we could turn to our parents. It's not easy to say, "The responsibility is mine and I must wield it." But that's what the United States has to say. No U.N. agency or fairy godmother will bail us out.

Emphasis added. John Kerry, with his "wrong war" rhetoric lifted directly from the overly anti-war Howard Dean, prefers that the American people buy into a siren song - a Kerry message that he'll make the whole mess go away and we wont have to think about difficult issues, or carry out hard tasks. John Kerry's ultimate message is "let us run from our moral duty".

There is no entity single or collective who can fight for justice and liberty around the world except for the United States. If we do not fight for liberty and justice then liberty and justice will not be fought for. The field would be yielded to the people fighting for tyranny and injustice. We cannot fight with half-measures - we can't say "this injustice I'll fight against, but this other I'll leave alone because it would be hard to fight it". We either fight for what is right all the time and everywhere, or we're not actually fighting at all.

There are a score of reasons for us to be in Iraq - from Saddam's clear sponsorship of the Islamo-fascist terrorism which most directly threatens us, to the plain fact that he was a brute who needed to be removed and reason after reason in between - and make no mistake about it: We are in Iraq. We can't get out, we can't turn it over to anyone else - we can only win, or lose. Winning means that liberty and justice triumph, losing means that tyranny and injustice win. Victories feed victories and defeats feed defeats - do we wish for tyranny to feed on an Iraq victory, or liberty?

These are the stakes in the 2004 election; fight for justice, or run away and hide and hope that the fairy godmother will make it all better for us. President Bush has not lead us into an easy situation; he has lead us into a situation of immense difficulty where we have to fight and fight and fight for what is right - Kerry would lead us into a dreamworld...a dream which we'd eventually be shaken out of by the enemy who has come for us right here at home.

In this morning's New York Post Ralph Peters says what I have been feeling since 911. This is personal, as my son and I were in the air at 35,000 feet when we found out about the attacks on America.

Those Muslims who preach Jihad against the West decided years ago that killing Jewish or Christian children is not only acceptable, but pleasing to their god when done by "martyrs."

John Kerry has already told us that he will treat the war on terror "primarily" as law-enforcement action while President Bush and his staff has told us that terrorism is war. I totally agree with President Bush.

This picture of a seriously injured child could of easily been your child or one of the kids next door. When will the world finally learn that calling on law enforcement is not the answer to stop the killing by terrorist of innocent people? Destroying them is the only acceptable answer.

I have for the most part; have not been very political before 9/11, at least in my adult years. I didn't even have as much as a political bumper sticker on my cars. Only yard sign in my yard was my young son selling Lemonade. Give money to a campaign? Yeah, like that was going to happen. Go knock on doors? Well I admit, that I did, but only to see if the neighbor wanted to watch a football or a baseball game. Never once was it to talk about how important it is to elect a man President.

This year it is different, so very very different due to the 9/11 attacks. Now all of our cars have George Bush 2004 bumper stickers. I have not one but two George Bush yard signs. We donate money to Republican Campaign's. I knock on doors, but now it is never to discuss football or baseball, it to talk to people about how important it is to elect a man President.

This year it is indeed personal.

Hat tip Powerline.

In a very politically incorrect column (it's about time someone says it out loud) Ralph Peters closes with a devastating line:

A final thought: Did any of those protesters who came to Manhattan to denounce our liberation of 50 million Muslims stay an extra day to protest the massacre in Russia? Of course not.

The protesters no more care for dead Russian children than they care for dead Kurds or for the hundreds of thousands of Arabs that Saddam Hussein executed. Or for the ongoing Arab-Muslim slaughter of blacks in Sudan. Nothing's a crime to those protesters unless the deed was committed by America.

The butchery in Russia was a crime against humanity. In every respect. Was any war ever more necessary or just than the War on Terror?

And what will terror's apologists say when the killers come for their own children?

Something struck me as I watched President Bush deliver his acceptance speech last night. Actually, several things struck me. His domestic agenda, driven by a conservative viewpoint that government policies should help people rise out of government dependence stands in stark contrast to the liberal's vision of creating more government dependency. George Bush wants government to empower people to take ownership of such things as their retirement planning, healthcare, education and more - while John Kerry wants to empower government to take ownership of those aspects of people's lives.

And on foreign policy and the issue of terrorism, the contrast could not be more stark. John Kerry, as he promised in his acceptance speech last month, will position America to respond to future attacks. George Bush, on the other hand, has been responding since 9/11, understanding that we are not in a niche war with a few al Qaeda cells, but in an ideological struggle with the tyranny that, in various forms, has made the Middle East dysfunctional and a breeding ground for Islamist terror. Bush understands that democracy and freedom lead to peace and prosperity - and peace and prosperity in the Middle East is the only long-term hope for reducing the threat of terrorism against the United States.

While John Kerry promises to retreat from Iraq within six months and hand the Middle East's future over to others, Bush promises to continue taking the fight to the terrorists and to the regimes that support them, encourage them, fund them, harbor them, or create dysfunctional societies from which they emerge.

Bush's weapon of choice: freedom.

It is interesting to compare how many times Bush used the word in his acceptance speech to how few times the word appears in Kerry's acceptance speech. Kerry uttered the word just five times - and all five in generalized references to the freedom of America and of Americans. President Bush, by contrast, used the word 16 times last night, including 11 times in specific references to the spread of freedom in the Middle East as a tool to enhance American national security.

Bush also used the word "liberty" 11 times, including four specific references to spreading liberty in the Middle East as a tool to enhance American national security.

By contrast, Kerry used the word liberty only once, in reference to the founding of America.

I noted earlier what Rudy Giuliani said in his convention speech on Monday night, "Have faith in the power of freedom. People who live in freedom always prevail over people who live in oppression."

George W. Bush clearly believes in - as he himself phrased it last night - "the transformational power of liberty." He laid out his anti-terror strategy very plainly last night:

We are working to advance liberty in the broader Middle East, because freedom will bring a future of hope and the peace we all want. ...

Americans, of all people, should never be surprised by the power of liberty to transform lives and nations. That power brought settlers on perilous journeys, inspired colonies to rebellion, ended the sin of slavery, and set our nation against the tyrannies of the 20th century.

We were honored to aid the rise of democracy in Germany and Japan, Nicaragua and Central Europe and the Baltics, and that noble story goes on. I believe that America is called to lead the cause of freedom in a new century. I believe that millions in the Middle East plead in silence for their liberty. I believe that given the chance, they will embrace the most honorable form of government ever devised by man. I believe all these things because freedom is not America's gift to the world; it is the almighty God's gift to every man and woman in this world.

And how very dangerous.

...and let us thank God that we have such magnificent men and women ready at our nation's call.

The indispensible Donald Sensing of One Hand Clapping links us to this brief encapsulation of our mission in Iraq as stated by a Marine:

I speak to every Marine of the arriving Bns. Their intelligence, sense of duty, and perspective are remarkable. They ask questions ranging from small tactical issues to large and significant strategic issues. They fully understand the complexities of U.S. policy and their own role in the future of Iraq. We are striving to establish the rule of law in a country where terror, intimidation, and fear once ruled. A daunting task. But day-by-day, we see progress. How far that progress extends will rightly depend on the will of American people. I was asked by a young Marine yesterday to encapsulate our tasks in a few words. My response: Provide a bulwark against the instruments of terror to allow the rule of law to take root; train the Iraqi Security Forces to do what we are doing now and kill anyone who has a problem with that; accomplish all three of those tasks without harming a single innocent Iraqi and without a single Marine in this RCT losing his moral compass. We continue to march forward on those tasks. Given time that success will be complete.

RCT-7 remembers the sacrifices of Cpl T.J Godwin, 1st Bn 8th Marines, killed in action on July 20, 2004 vic Fallujah, Iraq; GySgt E.P. Fontecchio, 3d Bn 7th Marines, killed in action August 4, 2004 vic Husaybah, Iraq; LCpl J.L. Nice, 3d Bn 7th Marines, killed in action August 4, 2004 vic Husaybah Iraq; LCpl K.M. Funke, 2d Bn 7th Marines, killed in action August 13, 2004 vic Hit, Iraq; and Sgt R.M. Lord, 1st Bn 8th Marines killed in action August 18, 2004 vic Haditha, Iraq.

Please remember their family and friends in your thoughts and prayers.

Share your Courage.

C.A. Tucker
Colonel, U.S. Marine Corps
CO, RCT-7.

Emphasis in the original. Rev. Sensing advises us that the son of Deb at Marine Corps Moms headed out to RCT-7 in Iraq yesterday. Remember her, him and all of the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines and their families in your prayers.

Hat Tip: Marine Corps Moms via One Hand Clapping

BlogsofWar.com notes that former US Attorney General Secretary Ramsey Clark (brief bio) is poised to join the legal team seeking to defend former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein before a special Iraqi tribunal. The panel's chairman, Mohammad Rashdan, told Arab News yesterday that, "Negotiations are under way for Clark's joining of the team."

Who is Ramsey Clark? Salon.com, a left-wing online magazine, once called him "the war criminal's best friend,", adding "The former U.S. attorney general has become the tool of left-wing cultists who defend Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein and Rwandan torturers as anti-imperialist heroes."

When he flew to Belgrade to support Slobodan Milosevic during NATO's campaign, there was no word about the siege of Sarajevo, the massacre at Srebrenica or the million homeless refugees from Kosovo - and even less of those olfactorily eloquent mass graves that NATO is now uncovering. But then, urging Belgrade to resist NATO, while he was there picking up an honorary degree, he told his hosts, "It will be a great struggle, but a glorious victory. You can be victorious."

In Grenada he went to advise Bernard Coard, the murderer of Prime Minister Maurice Bishop. Other clients include Radovan Karadzic, the indicted Bosnian Serbian war criminal whom he defended in a New York civil suit brought by Bosnian rape victims, and the Rwandan pastor who is accused of telling Tutsis to hide in his church and then summoning Hutus to massacre them, and then leading killing squads.

As this article notes, Kerry and Clark have longstanding ties:

Clark served as LBJ's Attorney General in the 1960s and then participated in the anti-Vietnam War movement in the early 1970s with Kerry, just back from the war, who accused his fellow soldiers of war crimes and genocide. Clark was a lawyer for Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and Kerry was a major leader of the group. A photograph at the time shows Clark on the same stage with Kerry.

He also represented PLO leaders in a lawsuit brought by the family of Leon Klinghoffer, the wheelchair bound elderly tourist who was shot and tossed overboard from the hijacked Achille Lauro cruise ship by Palestinian terrorists in 1986. Prior to the start of the second Gulf War, Clark was retained by the state of Iraq, serving as legal counsel for the Hussein regime.

The big story out of the speech, of course, was the decision to begin a major (and very, very long overdue) restructuring of US forces; to bring home a large number of them so that we'd have a larger force available in the United States for swift deployment to emerging threats.

The military historian Victor Davis Hanson pointed out to us a while ago that the main problem with large US forces permanently based in foreign lands is two-fold; it engenders an infantile dependency on the part of the foreign land while at the same time building up a reservoir of resentment as the foreign people realise that they cannot get along without the protection of the United States. It took the clear eye of a President unfettered by political calculation to understand that its time, after 60 years, to re-think our military strategy.

Lost in the hoopla of this major announcement, however, was this excellent quote:

One of the lessons of September the 11th, a lesson this nation must never forget, is that we must deal with threats before they fully materialize. I remembered what Saddam Hussein was like; I looked at the intelligence. I called upon Congress to remember his history and look at the intelligence. I thought it was important to bring Congress, get their opinion on the subject of Saddam Hussein. So members of both political parties, including my opponent, looked at the same intelligence and came to the same conclusion that I came to: Saddam Hussein was a threat. I went to the United Nations; the U.N. Security Council looked at the intelligence and came to the same conclusion, Saddam Hussein was a threat. As a matter of fact, they passed a resolution, 15 to nothing, which said to Saddam: disclose, disarm, or face serious consequences. As he had for the past 12 years, he refused to comply. He ignored the demands of the free world. He systematically deceived the weapons inspectors.

So I had a choice to make: either forget the lessons of September the 11th and trust a madman, or take action to defend America. Given that choice, I will defend our country every time.

Even though we did not find the stockpiles that we thought we would find, Saddam Hussein had the capability to make weapons of mass destruction, and he could have passed that capability on to our enemy, to the terrorists. It is not a risk, after September the 11th, that we could afford to take. Knowing what I know today, I would have taken the same action. America and the world are safer because Saddam Hussein sits in a prison cell.

There is no way to more clearly lay it out - the President stated it exactly as it is, and his argument is irrefutable. Essentially, our Democratic friends are saying that we should have continued to rely upon the UN, the French, the Russians and, at bottom, Saddam - rely upon everyone and everything except ourselves and our own sharp sword. President Bush isn't having any of this - we were attacked in a most cruel and ruthless manner by people who only wish for the day when they can kill even more of us even more horribly.

There are a whole host of problems remaining for us to deal with - from the nuclear-armed lunatics of North Korea, to the theocratic scoundrels of Iran, to the corrupt terror-sponsors of Syria. Saddam in the cage does not win the war for us, but it does make us safer, and more able to win the war. Over the next four years, America will face challenge after challenge as our enemies seek by any means possible to deflect us from our path - we need over these next four years a proven leader who will not flinch in the face of adversity, who will not consult the polls to decide the course of action.

Its immaterial, in the end, whether or not John Kerry served in Vietnam, or what sort of service he rendered during his time there. Its also quite unimportant what he's done since he got home from Vietnam - the crux of the matter is that even if John Kerry were everything the Democrats claim he is, he's not the proven leader capable of leading us in wartime. We've got our war President, lets give him another four years to finish the magnificent job already started.

John Kerry's promise that, if he is elected, he'll bring large numbers of American troops home from Iraq within six months, is cause for concern. Much as he did more than three decades ago, Kerry's political statements are helping the enemy, and President Bush was right to call him on it during a campaign event in New Mexico last week.

President Bush on Wednesday attacked John Kerry's pledge to bring large numbers of troops home from Iraq within a year, saying it would embolden the Iraqi insurgency and jeopardize the mission. For a second day in a row, Bush sought to undercut Kerry's war-leadership credentials, accusing the Democratic presidential candidate of sending mixed signals over Iraq.

"We all want the mission to be completed as quickly as possible, but we want the mission to be complete," Bush told an "Ask President Bush" event in Albuquerque.

"The mission is not going to be completed as quickly as possible if the enemy thinks we're going to be removing a substantial number of troops in six months," he said.

Kerry said on Monday that reducing U.S. troops in Iraq by next August was an "appropriate goal," and that if he wins, he would seek to pull out a large number of troops within six months of taking office next January.

President Bush is expected to announce today a reallignment of U.S. forces in the world to be better able to fight the war on terror over the long term. By contrast, Kerry is promising his political base - and the enemies of freedom in Iraq - that, if he's elected, America will substantially reduce its fighting force in Iraq in mid-2005.

It is a mistake that will get Americans killed.

Announcing - and campaigning on the promise of - an arbitrary deadline for reducing troop strength in a war zone gives the enemy reason to believe it can win by not losing just by hanging on long enough and continue killing Americans in sufficient numbers that Kerry's political base, the anti-war Left, becomes ever more insistent that the troops come home. It is a colossally incompetent move, especially by a man who thinks himself competent to be commander-in-chief. It is a mistake that will get Americans killed. Who will be the last American soldier, the last civilian contractor, the last aid worker, and the last innocent Iraqi man, woman and child to die for Kerry's mistake?

Kerry's staffers say the senator's goal of reducing the number of American troops in Iraq is based on his (secret) plan to enlist greater numbers of troops from other nations.

But what happens if President Kerry fails to convince France and Germany to send large numbers of troops to Iraq? What happens if they send only a token force as a PR move, and then, six months into the Kerry presidency, the Left is clamoring for the troops to come home? Will he cut and run, to protect his political base?

America was not defeated militarily in Vietnam. America lost in Vietnam because people like John Kerry undermined America's political will to fight. The question is: Does Kerry realize yet that Iraq is not Vietnam - but that, if he talks long enough and says the wrong things, he could yet turn it into another one?

With its usual incisiveness and succinctness, the Wall Street Journal editorial page on Friday encapsulated best exactly why the “nuance” boasted by John Kerry is unsuited to the times in which we find ourselves. Our enemy, as Vice President Cheney has forcefully explained, is neither swayed by nuance nor impressed by sensitivity. The Journal sums it up nicely in the penultimate paragraph:

There's a deadly serious issue here. Mr. Kerry seems to be saying that he disagrees with the post-9/11 U.S. policy to go on the offensive against terrorists by taking the battle to them on their turf, far from American shores. U.S. troops, he says, "belong" at home. But if terrorists conclude they have successfully pushed U.S. troops out of Iraq, they will only escalate their attacks on Americans elsewhere, including here at home. The Kerry strategy is one of perpetual and vulnerable defense.

Indeed, whether the issue is Al Qaeda and other radical Islamic terrorist groups and their state sponsors, the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea, or the increasingly aggressive tendencies of China towards Taiwan with Zhang Zemin at the helm of the military, it is not fuzzy nuance or hazy pronouncements that will keep our adversaries in check. Despite their reputations to the contrary, it is President Bush who speaks with clarity and decisiveness while John Kerry flounders in a miasma of meaningless pabulum.

While Vice President Dick Cheney was in Ohio yesterday, he mocked John Kerry's pledge to wage a more "sensitive" war against terrorism:

"America has been in too many wars for any of our wishes, but not a one of them was won by being sensitive," Cheney said.

"Those that threaten us and kill innocents around the world do not need to be treated more sensitively, they need to be destroyed," he said.

Cheney accented some form of the word "sensitive" a half-dozen times and drew laughter from the partisan crowd. He said Kerry had a "fundamental misunderstanding" of the world.

Dick Cheney gets it. George W. Bush gets it. We at Blogs For Bush get it. Why doesn't John Kerry? He might not want to hurt the feelings of our enemies, but the rest of us want to destroy them before they kill us.

Support the candidate that wants to win the war on terror.

I'm rooting for these guys in the Olympic soccer tournament. American sports champions are traditionally invited to the White House for a photo op with the president. No matter what medal the Iraqi soccer team wins or doesn't win, President Bush ought to have them flown straight from Athens to Washington when their games are over.

And give them the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Even give one to the coach, who hasn't realized yet that the reason he can voice his opinion, and the reason his players play without fear, because of what the Americans did.

From the San Jose Mercury News:

PATRAS, Greece -- This was a real opening ceremony, one without light shows or music. In this seaside town three hours northwest of Athens, the full power of the Olympics was on display.

Think the Games are meaningless? An obsolete exercise? Their meaning was clear to the 18 men who marched out behind the Iraq flag to play in the nation's first Olympic soccer game in 16 years.

The significance pulsated through the crowd of about 2,500 Iraqi supporters, who danced and chanted and waved Iraqi flags, many with tears in their eyes as they watched their country upset talented Portugal, 4-2, in the opening round.

The relevance drives Adnan Hamad, the coach of the Iraqi team. "I think football is very important for the people in Iraq," Hamad said. "It helps the people to forget the problems. It is important for peace."

This was an astonishing victory. During the war, the team's stadium was used as a staging area for American tanks. The original coach, a German named Bernd Stange, resigned after being told he would be murdered if he entered the country. It only practiced twice in recent weeks because of the danger involved traveling in Iraq.

This soccer team is, to many Iraqis, a miracle, rising from the ruins of Saddam Hussein's reign. Hussein's son Uday was a corrupt and sadistic minister of sports, torturing athletes who did not meet his expectations.

So when Haidar Jabar scored an own goal to give Portugal an early 1-0 lead, one could only wince, imagining what punishment he would have earned from Uday: Perhaps his feet would have been caned, or he would have been dragged on the pavement. The Iraqi players once lived in mortal fear of making such a mistake.

But Thursday, they played with a grace and freedom. They played to heal their country. "This is our present to the Iraqi people," said team captain Wahab Abu Al Hail.

From the NYT:

"The main reason for our good performance now is that they are playing without fear," said Tiras Odisho Anwaya, the director general of the National Olympic Committee of Iraq.

In case any of you were wondering just how tough and hard-fighting our Marines are (and in case anyone was wondering what real war heros are like), I've linked this article for you to read. Here's just one small excerpt:

The hardest hit Marines were on a rooftop where they were swarmed from three directions by insurgents throwing scores of grenades and firing at least 30 RPGs within the first 15 minutes of fighting. Thousands of bullets peppered the area.

Nine of the Marines were wounded almost immediately.

Aaron C. Austin and Carlos Gomez-Perez, both lance corporals, were on that rooftop and have been nominated for high honors, Austin posthumously.

After the initial barrage, Austin, a machine gunner, evacuated the wounded and then rallied the Marines to counter-attack.

"We've got to get back on the roof and get on that gun," Austin, from Sunray, Tex., is reported to have said, referring to a Marine machine gun.

The Marines returned fire, but as Austin started to throw a grenade, he was hit several times in the chest by machine gun fire.

Although mortally wounded, Austin threw his grenade, which hit the enemy and halted their attack.

While we argue politics, our Marines, soldiers, sailors and airmen are out there doing it for us. Remember them; every day.

James Rubin, former Assistant Secretary of State under Madeline Albright in the Clinton administration explains John Kerry's strategy for preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons in an article at Newsweek.

NEWSWEEK: One of the findings of the 9/11 Commission concerns Iran and its alleged support for Al Qaeda. U.S.-Iranian policy has been in the deep freeze for 25 years. How is that going to change with Kerry?

RUBIN: John Kerry regards an Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism armed with nuclear weapons as unacceptable. He has a multiple-part strategy that is much more realistic than the Bush administration's.

Who wouldn't regard Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism? The Bush administration has identified them that way, calling them part of the "axis of evil." So on that point at least Kerry agrees with the president. But Rubin thinks Kerry's "multiple-part strategy" is more realistic. Really? How so?

RUBIN:One is to rejoin and work through the international legal framework on arms control. That will give greater force to the major powers if they have to deal with violators.

This is clearly doublespeak for turning the matter over to the UN and the ICC. By eliciting the UN's support the so-called major powers will somehow magically have "greater force" to deal with Iran's hell-bent-for-leather mullahs and their race to acquire nuclear weapons. I guess the UN, like Luke Skywalker has the force. Iran is likely already trembling in its boots over the fear that the UN "force" may be brought to bear and result in one or more of the dreaded UN resolutions.

RUBIN:Secondly, he has laid out, I think in the most comprehensive way in modern memory, a program to secure nuclear materials around the world—particularly in the former Soviet Union but also in the places where research reactors have existed that could be susceptible to proliferation. The point is to try to prevent Iran from ever getting this material surreptitiously.

The Kerry strategy is to buy all of the nuclear materials from something called "the former Soviet Union," by which he must mean setting up nuclear materials markets all over the former Soviet Union. Those unscrupulous traders in nuclear materials will, out of some sense of justice, sell the materials to the US over other potential buyers. Their new-found self-righteousness will of course prevent them from selling their materials to the Iranians - even if they bid higher.

RUBIN:Thirdly, he has proposed that rather than letting the British, the French and the Germans do this themselves, that we together call the bluff of the Iranian government, which claims that its only need is energy. And we say to them: "Fine, we will provide you the fuel that you need if Russia fails to provide it." Participating in such a diplomatic initiative makes it more likely to succeed.

Back to the UN. Now with the new-found cooperation of the French and Germans along with our current friends the British, we will offer the nuclear materials to Iran who will then promise to return the spent fuel cells so that they cannot be used for weapons. Iran, unique in the middle east, would of course keep its word explicitly.

Now I see the strategy. But if you look at all three parts of it, none of them will amount to anything but endless discussions at the UN with no real progress. Since France and Germany are already supplying nuclear equipment to Iran, they will not likely sign on to this program and will do little to jeopardize their current and profitable business arrangements with the Iranians. How would we ever know that we had purchased all the nuclear material from the former Soviet Union? Would we have to take their word for it? How does one determine the price for these things? And how do we know they aren't selling to the US and to Iran? All of these issues bring up serious questions and I have only raised a few.

But the scariest part of all this brilliance from the Kerry "strategy" is the fact that he actually plans to hand out nuclear materials to the Iranian government who is bent on developing nuclear weapons to use against Israel, the US, and any other "enemy of Islam" who dares to oppose their jihadist ways. This is no plan to keep Iran from going nuclear - it is a guaranteed plan to give them the time and materials necessary to go nuclear.

You can read about this "strategy" here.

Following Bill Clinton's speech Monday night, many Democrats would like to forget the truth about the false sense of security American's felt as Clinton left office. The Taliban ruled Afghanistan with a murderous iron fist and harbored the most nototorious terroriust in the world in Osama bin Laden. Well, a lot has changed since reality shook the world on 9/11 and it seems Afghanistan and millions of others are a lot better off for it:

The first-ever public opinion poll in Afghanistan shows that people there are optimistic about the future and excited about upcoming elections. . . .

Afghanistan has a constitution, is registering voters and is moving toward holding a presidential election in October. And the survey of 804 randomly selected male and female Afghan citizens, commissioned by the Asia Foundation notes that:

* 64 percent say the country is heading in the right direction.

* 81 percent say that they plan to vote in the October election.

* 77 percent say they believe the elections will "make a difference."

* 64 percent say they rarely or never worry about their personal safety, while under the Taliban only 36 percent felt that way.

* 62 percent rate President Hamid Karzai's performance as either good or excellent.

This was no pro-Bush put-up job. The polling firm, Charney Research, is a partisan Democratic polling firm. And superstar Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, who's read the study — and who has worked on similar polling in developing countries — calls it "very reliable."

Instapundit is pointing his readers to Virginia Postrel's interesting explanation for the Bush hatred so prevelant in today's society:

When I was in New York a few weeks ago, a friend in the magazine business told me he thinks the ferocious Bush hating that he sees in New York is a way of calming the haters' fears of terrorism. It's not rational, but it's psychologically plausible--blame the cause you can control, at least indirectly through elections, rather than the threats you have no control over.
I thought of that insight today when I glanced at Maureen Dowd's column and read this sentence, "Maybe it's because George Bush is relaxing at his ranch down there (again) while Osama is planning a big attack up here (again)."

That is the voice of a petulant child, angry that she has a tummy ache while Daddy is at work or Mommy is visiting a friend, or the voice of a grouchy wife angry that she has a migraine while her husband is out coaching the kids' baseball team. You're upset that you're in pain (we've all been there), so you get mad at someone whose presence wouldn't make the pain any better.

No mature student of politics believes the president of the United States goofs off on vacation. It's not the kind of job you escape. George Bush may be completely insane to voluntarily spend July in Texas--as opposed to Bill Clinton's favored coastal retreats--but Osama bin Laden is no more or less a threat than in Bush were in Washington. But if blaming Bush makes people feel better, safer, or at least able to focus their anger on someone they can hurt, they'll blame Bush.

All I can tell you is the terrorism strengthens my resolve. But then again, I am voting for Bush (surprise).

Rasmussen Reports has a fascinating poll showing the divergent views about Iraq between Republicans and Democrats. Here's what it looks like:

* Eighty-one percent (81%) of Republicans say the President is doing a good or excellent job handling the situation in Iraq. Only 15% of Democrats agree.

* Sixty-five percent (65%) of Democrats say the President is doing a poor job in Iraq. Only 11% of Republicans agree.

* By a 79% to 14% margin, Republicans say that the War with Iraq is part of the War on Terror.

* By a 50% to 36% margin, Democrats say that the War with Iraq is a distraction from the War on Terror.

* Republicans, by a 71% to 23% margin, say it is more important to finish the mission in Iraq than to bring home American troops as soon as possible.

* Democrats, by a 54% to 37% margin say it is more important to bring troops home quickly than to finish the mission in Iraq.

* Republicans, by a 56% to 28% margin, would be willing to send more troops to Iraq on a temporary basis if needed.

* Democrats, by a 63% to 27% margin, oppose sending more troops to Iraq, even on a temporary basis.

Night and day difference, boys and girls. As far as Democrats and Republicans go, we're not talking about the same war. What strikes me as most important is that Republicans are massively in favor of sticking it out in Iraq to total victory, while majorities of Democrats its time to get out and we've already reached the point where any benefit of winning in Iraq has been outweighed by the cost.

Part of the poll result may be explained as "heat of the political battle"; ie, as the election nears and partisan differences strengthen, its a natural that the Party faithful will adhere ever more strongly to their Party's main position on the issue. Still, such large divergence it also token of an essentially different worldview between core Democratic and Republican voters.

Depending on who you listen to, Democrats make up from 30 to 35% of the American population - if 54% of them want us to pull out in the immediate future, it translates into 16-18% of the American population de-facto advocating American defeat. Defeat? Yes, defeat. There's no way around the fact that regardless of the reasons for going into Iraq, once in anything less that achievement of our stated goals (a free and prosperous Iraq generally alligned with us in the War on Terrorism) is a defeat for the United States. Furthermore, its a defeat which will be seen as a defeat by our enemies and, additionally, a defeat which would be the signal for a major escalation of attacks against ourselves and our allies as the enemy perceives us on the run.

If John Kerry wishes to have any chance to win the election, he dare not alienate this 54% of the Democratic Party which is essentially advocating a US defeat - No matter how many times Kerry will allude to a desire to see Iraq through to victory, the plain fact of the matter is that his base doesn't want to see it through to victory. They're done, these 54% of the Democrats - the blood and monetary cost has been too high for them to bear and they want us out.

We had all hoped that after 9/11 the partisan divisions would be muted as it related to the War on Terrorism - unfortunately, you don't always get what you wish for. For good or ill, for the United States to win this war will require (at least in the short, 3 to 5 year term) a Republican government - because only such government will have the political base united behind the sacrifice and effort that victory will require.

Something to consider as we work forward to November 2nd; and something for everyone, especially those moderate Democrats who are on the side of victory, to consider at they pull the lever on election day.

John Kerry, a bit behind the curve (as usual) has this still on his website:

An international High Commissioner should be authorized by the UN Security Council to organize the political transition to Iraqi sovereignty and the reconstruction of Iraq in conjunction with the new Iraqi government.

Given that we've transferred sovereignty back to an interim Iraqi government, Kerry's little plan is a bit out of date - but its immensely educational for us to see where Kerry stands on the issue of the UN and its usefullness and ability. What John Kerry was essentially advocating was that the UN should take over control of Iraq (it goes without saying that the United States would still be footing the monetary and blood bill for the task) because, apparantly, the UN would do a much better job of reconstruction and getting other, non-coalition nations involved in the job.

This UN that Kerry wanted to bring front and center is the same UN which presided over genocide in Africa and Bosnia and has stood by for years war, rapine and slavery have devastated one part of the globe after another. Not exactly a good track record. Let us, however, consider John Kerry's plan by itself - perhaps in a modern miracle, the miserably failed UN of everywhere else would have pulled itself together and made a success of running Iraq. Leaving aside the fact that the UN was in Iraq after the liberation and ran like girlie men as soon as the terrorists attacked them, we should keep in mind that the UN was in charge of the "Oil for Food" program; a program which is daily revealed to be more and more corrupt, including corruption involving Kofi Annan's own son. This horrendous program - a program which kept a few privileged EU and UN bureaucrats on the gravey-train, kept Saddam in palaces and kept the Iraqi people in grinding poverty - now appears to have developed a new wrinkle: it seems that some of the money (which may have been literal billions of dollars) skimmed from the program is now being used to fund the terrorists in Iraq...ie, the money ripped off from the Iraqi people in order to fund Saddam, EU bureaucrats and Annan's son is now being used to build bombs which kill Iraqi's.

American officials believe that millions of dollars Saddam Hussein skimmed from the scandal-plagued U.N. oil-for-food program are now being used to help fund the bloody rebel campaign against U.S. forces and the new Iraqi government, The Post has learned.

U.S. intelligence officials and congressional investigators said last night that the "oil-for-insurgency link" has been recently unearthed in the numerous probes now under way into the giant U.N. humanitarian program, in which Saddam is believed to have pocketed $10.1 billion through oil smuggling and kickbacks from suppliers.

There is no end to the corruption of government entities which are not responsible on a regular basis to non-government entities. What this means is that the less a government person is depedent upon the good will of people outside of government, the more likely it is that said person is going to be corrupt. The UN (and the EU) are entities which by design insulate their memberships from people outside of their organizations. It takes dynamite to remove a UN bureaucrat (as the terrorists swiftly learned - and acted upon); and as they sit in their little UN offices with vast amounts of money flowing through, its a natural that some of it sticks to their fingers...and its also a natural that the same UN bureaucrats who assisted in the robbing of Iraq may also now be involved in funding murder of Iraqi's - after all, there are more bribes to be taken and if any bureaucrat gets an attack of conscience, there's always the threat of exposure to bring him in line.

President Bush is using the UN to the maximum of its exceptionally limited abilities - to assist in setting up voting plans in Iraq and other such "dot the i's, cross the t's" work; the UN, however, cannot for a moment be trusted with anything resembling responsibility for people or their fate. To turn anyone's fate over to the UN is to commit a crime against humanity - because that person's fate is now in the hands of an institution run by tyrants and staffed by bribe-takers. The Iraqi people shall not have their fate decided by whomever can bribe Annan's son the most - but Kerry wanted just this circumstance to emerge.

Keep that in mind on November 2nd.

America is safer under the Bush administration because Clinton's Department of Justice had "a wall of separation" between the intelligence division and the criminal division. The divisions were not allowed to communicate with each other (the memo with these instructions to DOJ divisions was issued by the lovely Jamie Gorelick, who pretended to be a disinterested Commissioner on the 9/11 Commission). Remember everyone complaining we didn’t connect the dots? Well that's why. One of the first things Ashcroft did when the Bush administration got into office, was to go to court to bring down that wall. Subsequent to succeeding in this endeavor, the left complained that this violates civil rights (they claim to fear the FBI and the CIA will pursue common criminals if communication is allowed.)

Under Bush, we treat terrorism as an act of war. We have more options in terms of interrogation, detaining, aggression, pre-emption, etc. Under Clinton, we treated terrorist acts as crimes. When someone is a criminal, the government cannot prosecute them until after the crime is completed. We cannot take preventative measures. Kerry has stated that if elected President, he will return to treating terrorist acts as crimes.

The Patriot Act exists to protect our country from terrorism. The left complains about "potential civil rights violations" mostly because they cannot point to any actual civil rights violations. If you read the whole act, there are several safeguards, requiring court approval for wiretaps with a standard of requirements, etc. Every tactic in the Patriot Act is already allowable for racketeering activities: ought we not to be able to extend the same techniques to terrorist activities? There is no new authority in the Act. Rather, the old authority is just applied to a different breed of "criminal," that is, terrorists.

Under Bush, three of the eight countries on the terrorism list have had their governments overthrown or have voluntarily given up various weapons programs (Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya). All this was accomplished in less than four years.

Under Clinton, we underwent the WTC bombing of '93 with no consequences to the actors. We underwent the bombing of the USS Cole with no consequences to the actors. We underwent the bombing of the African Embassies with no consequences to the actors. After awhile, don't you wake up and realize, that allowing terrorist acts to go without consequences to the terrorists emboldens them? It sends a message that they can get away with it. It results in consequences to us. That's just what happened on 9/11.

Then, some of us woke up and realized that patience and tolerance are nice qualities, but not at the expense of innocent American lives. We must open our eyes and acknowledge that there is a threat to the freedom of America and to the west. There is a threat to our lifestyle. That threat is fundamentalist Islam, although many don't like to call it by name. Whether it represents the true Islamic theology or not, I can't say. I can only say that there is a pattern throughout the world of who is committing terrorist acts, against whom and in whose name are they doing it. They say they want to obliterate Israel. I believe them. They say they want to kill millions of innocent Americans including children. I believe them. They say they will not stop their ploys of mass murder until they stop the infidels. I believe them.

George Bush and John Ashcroft are working hard to make sure these terrorists do not succeed in their goals. Kerry on the other hand, was too busy the last few weeks to attend a briefing on terrorist chatter that surrounds the upcoming conventions. Some on the left do not believe the terrorist threat is real, even in the face of the numerous terrorist acts already carried out. Others believe it is real, but have an attitude that we will have to tolerate its continuance in the future, as Europe does. This is not acceptable to me. I hope it is not acceptable to you.

Ms. Theresa Heinz-Kerry spoke to the Arab-American Conference, and assured them that she and her husband do not believe in racial profiling for Arabs from terrorist states (I heard the clip; I couldn't make this up.) She thinks this is bigotry. Instead, she and her husband would like to put us all in danger for the sake of making a politically correct statement. Bush on the other hand, has already intercepted numerous attempts at terrorism. Thanks to Bush and Ashcroft, these attempts have been thwarted. In NYC alone, at least five major attempts to blow up bridges, tunnels, etc., were rendered unsuccessful. Dick Morris explains that the biggest reason Bush might be down in the polls is because he has done too good of a job. He has sought to prevent additional attacks after 9/11 and so far he has succeeded. As a result, Americans have become complacent. They think we are back to normal. They are living in a 9/10 world, but thank G-d, we have a President who is not. His name is George Bush, and we are all safer today because he and his administration are in office.

Just in case you were watching too much C BS, here's a website dedicated to helping Iraq achieve its dream of democratic freedom. The purpose of the Iraq-America Freedom Alliance is:

a coalition of American and Iraqi organizations and individuals committed to fostering goodwill between our nations' citizens and winning the war on terror. We support a free, democratic and pluralistic Iraq that is at peace with the world. IAFA will provide Americans with a fuller picture of Iraq by giving voice to Iraqis who are grateful for their newfound freedom and working to secure democracy in their country.

It kicked off its existence on June 28th, the date that we handed over soveriegnty to the interim Iraqi government. As both the United States and Iraq are now free peoples in the world, its a necessity that we have equal organizations to assist each other and learn about each other.

Among the good work this fledgling organization is doing, it bringing to our attention the sort of news reports that get buried on the back pages of the newspapers. Stories like this:

A couple of Americans back from Iraq offered upbeat views here Wednesday about the outlook for that nation.

They are journalist Don North of Fairfax, Va., and engineer-consultant Susan M. Dakak, a Baghdad native who lives in Knoxville, Tenn. The two came here to speak at the annual dinner of the World Affairs Council of St. Louis...

...Asked in an interview about Iraq's prospects, Dakak said, "I'm very optimistic. They have some messes to clean up. But the fact that the interim government was so eager to take control this week means they have some momentum."

North stopped short of a rosy scenario but still offered a cautiously optimistic view. He said, "It's not going to be a Jeffersonian democracy. It's going to be a democracy with an Iraqi face - and we'd better accept it."

Bookmark the site and check it out from time to time.

There was a large demonstration by Iraqi's today in Baghdad - the main thrust of the demonstration was that Saddam must die for his crimes:

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Thousands of Iraqis marched through central Baghdad on Thursday demanding the execution of former dictator Saddam Hussein and denouncing Islamist militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Noisy protesters waved Iraqi flags, chanted anti-Saddam slogans and held up posters depicting mass graves.

"Let every fool listen, Saddam has to be executed," "No, No to Tikrit" shouted the crowd in reference to Saddam's hometown north of Baghdad.

I bring this up for several reasons.

1. It shows that absurd stories that the Iraqi's have a hankering for the old regime are precisely that; absurd.

2. Its important that they are also denouncing the prime mover behind the attacks on Iraqis and coalition forces - so much for a growing resistence to the interim Iraqi government.

3. Waaaay back in early 2003, I opined in a different forum that I was waiting for the first genuine anti-American demonstration by free Iraqi's, and there was a bit of that as well:

Protesters also shouted slogans denouncing the United States

Why is this a good thing? Because this is not the stage-managed demonstration of a tyrannical regime, nor is it the paid-for "Arab Street" crowd we see often venting outrage against the United States - this is free Iraqi people all on their own voicing their opinions. What do they want? Saddam dead, the terrorists dead, and the United States out of Iraq - all things I'm in ultimate agreement with. This is what we fought for, Americans - free Iraqi's.

They're going to get their wish - they speak it and in their security forces they fight and die for it. Saddam will pay for his crimes, the terrorists will all be dead by and by and we'll leave - exiting an Iraq which is free, at peace and growing in prosperity - and a lesson for the entire Arab/Moslem world about what they really need to do if they want peace, freedom and prosperity.

I salute the free people of Iraq and welcome them to the club.

Thats the result of a new Washington Post poll:

President Bush has reclaimed the advantage over his Democratic challenger John F. Kerry as the candidate best able to deal with the international terrorist threat...

...The survey found that 55 percent of Americans approve of the way Bush is handling the campaign against terrorism, up five points in the past three weeks. Slightly more than half -- 51 percent -- also said they trust Bush more than Kerry to deal with terrorism, while 42 percent prefer the Democrat. Three weeks ago, the two were tied on this crucial voting issue.

Polls, of course, are fickle - but the plain fact of the matter is that Iraq has been a signal success in the War on Terrorism, and has been since the moment we launched the liberation. In war, there are always nasty surprises and disheartening set-backs, but its the basic trend of events which tells the story and the essential story of Iraq has been the crushing of Islamo-fascism and the emergence of Iraqi's committed to a liberated, pluralistic Iraq. Our Democratic friends have been playing up each surprise and set-back as the proof-positive that the whole enterprise has been a failure, and such a play has come 'round to bite them right in the rear. The latest polling is just the American people realising what is going on - and with the additional benefit that we're inured now to nasty surprises and set-backs; ie, if there is such to come then the American people will not react as negatively as they initially did to the dismaying news of this past April and May.

This is why the Johns can't get any traction and will, in my view, be the ultimate cause of their defeat: Rather than join into the good work of liberating Iraq and fighting terrorism (while at the same time fighting vigorously for the Democratic domestic policies, such as they are), they have instead taken the tack which has made them appear to be beneficiaries of bad news for America.

Americans don't look too kindly on people who aren't clearly rooting for the home team, even if they don't like the coach.

From Pravda.RU is this bit of news about the Philippines.

Philippine Deputy Foreign Minister Rafael Seguis said that the Philippines are to withdraw their forces from Iraq "as soon as possible," in a statement he read out on al Jazeera television.

This statement is very much contrasting to Sunday's President Gloria Arroyo's blunt statement in which she rejected terrorists' demand.

Commenting on the decision, President Bush's spokesman weighed in.

"A decision by the Filipino government to withdraw their 51 troops ahead of schedule would send the wrong signal to terrorists,'' White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters traveling with President George W. Bush in Michigan.

The U.S. State Department called for "clarification'' of Philippine intentions after Foreign Secretary Delia Albert said his government will pull its forces from Iraq "as soon as possible'' to spare the truck driver, Angelo de la Cruz, from beheading.

On CNN last night, Larry King interviewed John Kerry on the status of his campaign for president. On literally the first substantial question of the interview, Kerry demonstrated why he is unfit for the presidency during a time of war:

[KING:]Let's get to, first thing's first, news of the day. Tom Ridge warned today about al Qaeda plans of a large-scale attack on the United States, didn't increase the -- do you see any politics in this? What's your reaction?

KERRY: Well, I haven't been briefed yet, Larry. They have offered to brief me; I just haven't had time [emph mine -- CE]. But all Americans are united in our efforts to defeat terrorism.

I believe that John Edwards and I can wage a far more effective war on terror than George Bush has. I think we can do a better job of making America safe. But in these days ahead, we all join together no matter what.

I'd say it's hard for Kerry to know what he can do in waging war on terrorists if he doesn't even have time to be briefed on our progress and the threats arrayed against us. Is he kidding? What could possibly be more important to a nation at war, and to its leadership, than to maintain a constant pulse on intelligence and military operations? The Bush administration even offered to get him in for a briefing, and apparently he refused.

Expect to see this on a Bush campaign ad really soon. It demonstrates that the Democratic nominee does not take this issue seriously, especially when you see where he happened to go after his interview with King ended. Here's the briefing that Kerry and Edwards felt was more important than a national-security briefing:

Whoopi Goldberg delivered an X-rated rant full of sexual innuendoes against President Bush last night at a Radio City gala that raised $7.5 million for the newly minted Democratic ticket of John Kerry and John Edwards.

Waving a bottle of wine, she fired off a stream of vulgar sexual wordplays on Bush's name in a riff about female genitalia, and boasted that she'd refused to let Team Kerry clear her material. ...

Singer John Mellencamp sang a specially written song that called the president "just another cheap thug" and ridiculed him as the "Texas bambino." ...

Also on the Bush-bashing team was comedian Chevy Chase, who claimed the president is dumb as "an egg-timer" and said Edwards will make Vice President Dick Cheney look "as bright as a bundt cake" when they debate next fall. Latin comedian John Leguizamo said he refuses to believe there are any Hispanic Republicans, claiming that's "an oxymoron," because "Latins for Republicans - it's like roaches for Raid." ...

Kerry could be seen laughing uproariously during part of Goldberg's tirade - and neither he nor Edwards voiced a single objection to its tone when they spoke to the crowd. They hailed the fund-raiser as a great event. Edwards said it was "a great honor" to be there and insisted, "This campaign will be a celebration of real American values."

So this is the Democratic ticket -- they feel that vulgar "comedy" and stuffing money into their pockets from Hollywood elite take a higher priority than determining the safety and security of our country. If you agree with Edwards that this celebrates "real American values," you have your dream ticket right here. For the rest of us with functioning cerebral cortexes, this shows without a doubt that the Kerry/Edwards ticket is a fiasco for America.

Victor Davis Hanson has an insightful understanding of why we wound up with a so-called "anti-war" movement in the United States:

We underestimated homegrown opposition to the war. Thus we saw little reason to confront it intellectually or morally. Assuming few here could identify with fascism, gender apartheid, terrorism, and intolerance, we forgot that forty years of postcolonial studies, multiculturalism, cultural relativism, and aristocratic pacifism in our schools and public discourse had imbued a real mistrust of the United States that was far stronger than any ideological revulsion to Islamic fascism. Shrill Deanism morphed into conspiratorial Moorism and finally ended up as the canonical outrage of the Democratic Party.

I plead guilty - when faced with the Taliban, Saddam, Al Queda and people who murdered 3,000 of us one morning, I was completely of the opinion that only a very few completely marginalised idiots would ever dare oppose the steps we'd take to win the War on Terrorism. There isn't a shred of human decency on the side of the enemy - they are nearly a caricature of an evil enemy; if you were a Hollywood producer looking for a simplistic enemy for a simplistic story about a fight between good and evil, Saddam or bin Laden would have been sent over from Central Casting. Meanwhile, the United States would easily have been cast as the good (albeit flawed) hero out to right a wrong. Didn't quite work out that way.

Somehow, the people opposed to the war overlooked such things as dropping food supplies, losing lives to bring medical care to obscure villages, allowing the enemy to shoot at us from places we wouldn't blow to pieces and such stark facts like Saddam being a psychopathic mass-murderer who gassed people who opposed him....all of that was overlooked as the so-called "anti-war" people rushed to pick out a few mistakes made and make them the central issue of the war.

The are only so-called anti-war people because I don't believe they are actually opposed to war - after all, such stalwarts of the movement as ANSWER never had a problem with Chinese communists butchering thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators; nor do any of these people have much apparant problem with Palestinian terrorists blowing up Israeli children...so, it can't be from pacifism that they oppose the war, and thus it must be something else.

Hanson points out where it comes from - the relentless anti-American/Christian/Western propaganda for 40 years among the elite has bred in a segment of our population an automatic opposition to American policy; especially if its policy carried out by anyone remotely related to conservatism. Its am amazing thing worthy of a doctoral thesis (college kids, take note); how such propaganda which did not make whole populations under the heel of totalitarian oppression believe the United States an evil entity was able to make a large proportion of a free population believe such implicitly.

The anti-American, etc propaganda which has been bought hook, line, and sinker by the so-called "anti-war" people is cartoonish idiocy which a child can see right through - notions of evil capitalist oppressors out to keep people poor so they can make money by destroying the environment and keep down everyone who isn't a straight, white male...this is the sort of easily penetrable nonsense that people like Chomsky, Gore, Moore and Dean believe - and the worst part of it is that it seems a large segment of the Democratic Party has also subscribed to it.

What this means to us in the center and right is that we have to adjust ourselves to this reality - we will not be a united nation facing a ruthless enemy. It saddens me greatly to realise this; but facts must be faced forthrightly. Throughout the totality of this war we will have a fifth collumn of morons who are de-facto on the side of the enemy - people apparantly too stupid to understand that after the enemy kills all the conservatives/centrists they will then come to butcher the leftists who assisted the enemy by default. The good news is that the large majority of the American people have nothing to do with the so-called "anti-war" movement - we will still triumph, but we must resign ourselves to having to fight on two fronts.

Coalition forces discovered a car-bomb manufacturing center and captured a number of people connected to the operation during two raids in south Baghdad, the BBC reports:

A large cache of weapons and cash was also found at the unidentified site, a US military statement said. Bomb-making equipment, weapons and ammunition were found in raids at other locations - and 51 people have been taken in for questioning. ...

The US said the Baghdad raid uncovered vehicles loaded with explosives for use as car bombs. ... On another raid, US soldiers found "partially assembled improvised explosive devices, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, eight RPG [rocket propelled grenade] rounds, approximately 50 pounds of C-4 explosives, TNT, five blasting caps, one detonator and other various munitions".

Coalition forces think they captured most of the key people involved in this ring, including the financier, the bombmaker, and the triggerman. No one thinks that this is the only gang building and setting off carbombs in Baghdad, of course, but capturing one is good progress. It also comes coincidentally close to the handover of sovereignty to the interim Iraqi government, which suggests that Coalition forces may be getting better intelligence from Iraqi civilians now that they feel in charge of their own nation again.

The good news keeps rolling in ...

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, appearing on the Roger Hedgecock radio program yesterday, made the following statement:

Right now you have the Iraqi Survey Group, which is a multinational group that’s out there reviewing documentation and looking at suspect WMD sites. I was with the Polish minister of defense this weekend in Istanbul, Turkey at the NATO Summit. And in the course of that, he pointed out that his troops in Iraq had recently come across – I’ve forgotten the number, but something like 16 or 17 – warheads that contained sarin and mustard gas.

This has not exactly gotten huge headlines in the media - but, then again, with Saddam's arraignment hearing today, its understandable that they are leading with something else. The Administration, of course, isn't pushing it hard right now because until they have absolute proof of WMD, they just wont make the official announcement - they are not about to set themselves in a way which will give the anti-war zealots more ammunition. Still, I think we may rely upon it that long before the vote is taken on November 2nd, sufficient proof of WMD in Iraq will be widely broadcast, thereby undercutting a prime complaint of the anti-war people and, by extension, the Kerry Campaign.

Of course, the doubters will still remain - but for those of you who doubt, I dare you to click here and see a run-down of pre-9/11 reports (both intelligence and regular news) about Saddam's WMD programs and manifold violations of UN Security Council resolutions regarding same. Especially remember to scroll down to the footnotes. I know you've spent the past year re-writing history, but we don't have Memory Holes as they had in Orwell's 1984 - the past is discoverable by anyone who cares to look.

The media recently hyped a report from the staff of the 9/11 Commission that said there were no links between Iraq and the 9/11 attack, and the media wrongly claimed the Commission staff had said there were no links between Saddam's regime and al Qaeda, period. Perhaps they should have more carefully read Staff Statement #15, Overview of the Enemy, especially this brief section from page 3:

With al Qaeda as its foundation, Bin Ladin sought to build a broader Islamic army that also included terrorist groups from Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Saudi Arabia and Oman, Tunisia, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Morocco, Somalia and Eritrea. Not all groups from these states agreed to join, but at least one from each did. With a multinational council intended to promote common goals, coordinate targeting and authorize asset sharing for terrorist operations, this Islamic force represented a new level of collaboration among diverse terrorist groups.

He was right. And 9/11 Commission Staff Statement #15 makes that very clear.

Yeah, I know; I thought it was a joke when I first heard that, too. You know; it seemed like something that Letterman would put in his Top Ten list. But, here's the story:

Gianluca Chacra, the managing director of Front Row Entertainment, the movie's distributor in the United Arab Emirates, confirms that Lebanese student members of Hezbollah "have asked us if there's any way they could support the film." While Hezbollah is considered a legitimate political party in many parts of the world, the U.S. State Department classifies the group as a terrorist organization. Chacra was unfazed, even excited, about their offer. "Having the support of such an entity in Lebanon is quite significant for that market and not at all controversial. I think it's quite natural."

You might recall that Hezbollah was the group that killed more than 200 of our Marines in Lebanon back in 1983. Did Moore go out and solicit support from Hezbollah? No. But the fact that Hezbollah would find the movie worthy of their support shows that the movie is in fact an anti-American polemic designed to undermine America's ability to win the war.

No matter how much you might try to avoid it, you are at least partially who hangs around with you - as of now, in addition to left-wing conspiracy-theorists, Moore is hung around with by Hezbollah terrorists.

...you remember it: it was the first part of the BUSH LIED!!!! meme of the anti-Bush zealots. Joseph Wilson (ie, "Mr. Plame"), has gone about for ages now saying the whole story of Iraq trying to get uranium from Niger was silly - of course, as this report notes, even Mr. Wilson acknowleged that Iraqi officials were in Niger to discuss trade - given that Niger's two main exports are goats and uranium, we can leave it to individual surmise about which export item Saddam might have been interested in.

The report contains this rather illuminating passage:

According to the IAEA, there are 2,600 tonnes of refined uranium ore - "yellow cake" - in Libya. However, less than 1,500 tonnes of it is accounted for in Niger records, even though Niger was Libya's main supplier.

Ok, so Niger was Libya's main supplier - but Libya has 1,100 tonnes more uranium than is accounted for by Niger; could be, of course, that all of the 1,100 addtional tonnes that Libya has came from somewhere other than Niger...could be; wanna bet your life on that? Essentially, this is what the anti-war people's argument really boils down to - we here in the United States betting our lives that they are right, and President Bush is wrong. Anyways, back to the report...

The FT has now learnt that three European intelligence services were aware of possible illicit trade in uranium from Niger between 1999 and 2001. Human intelligence gathered in Italy and Africa more than three years before the Iraq war had shown Niger officials referring to possible illicit uranium deals with at least five countries, including Iraq.

This intelligence provided clues about plans by Libya and Iran to develop their undeclared nuclear programmes. Niger officials were also discussing sales to North Korea and China of uranium ore or the "yellow cake" refined from it: the raw materials that can be progressively enriched to make nuclear bomb.

Emphasis added. Three years before the liberation of Iraq - in other words, long before ex-Ambassadors and their ex-CIA agent wives had any political axe whatsoever to grind, it was known in international intelligence that Niger, a prime world supplier of uranium, was a nexus of illegal uranium smuggling. The report notes that even if a Niger uranium mine was closed down because legitimate demand was down, "Mines can be abandoned by Cogema when they become unproductive. This doesn't mean that people near the mines can't keep on extracting".

Boiled down: no, we don't have proof that any Saddamite agents attempted to obtain illegal uranium from Niger - but we have ample proof that Niger is a source for illegal uranium, including uranium for nations like Libya (which has since abandoned its illicit nuke program) and North Korea (which hasn't abandoned it at all). Once again; do you wish to bet your life that Saddam hadn't attempted (or would not attempt) to avail himself of this source?

What this all shows is, once again, the justifications for liberating Iraq were abundant and varied - once again, President Bush is right in his assertion that we must act pre-emptively because if we wait for an imminent threat, its too late. In the end it doesn't matter if Saddam was ten days from building a nuke or ten years - by liberating Iraq from Saddam, we have forever ended the possibility that Saddam would acquire nuclear weapons, and other WMD.

A U.S. Marine has been captured and will be decapitated unless certain prisoners held in occupation prisons are released.

John Kerry wants to make situations like this a police action while President George Bush wants to destroy them. My guess is that the decapitators will be hoping that the cops are called instead of a surprise GBU-32 bomb showing up in the middle of the night in their bedroom, but that is just a guess. They should pray that John Kerry is elected while the rest of us pray that George Bush wins 4 more years.

Al Gore says we of the right are a bunch of "digital brownshirts" out to stop people from disagreeing with the President - this absurd assertion made even though each and every one of us on the right will assert, and stoutly defend, the right of anyone to say anything they want - even, and especially, when we think them wrong. On the left, things are a bit different.

Seems that a man can't even mildly disagree with Moore's film without getting assaulted by leftist goons:

The highly anticipated film, Fahrenheit 9/11, came with more than just controversy at one Las Vegas movie theatre. Moviegoer, Richard Streeter, was one of the many who made his way to a theatre to see what the hype was about. After viewing the film, he was greeted outside the theatre by members of the Las Vegas MoveOn.org.

The group was handing out leaflets on the importance of the film. Streeter voiced his view on the movie, "I made the comment, apples and oranges -- Kerry, Bush -- one's no better than the other. You really ain't got much of a choice. This guy comes up to me and says, 'Oh yeah?' " Streeter was then spat on by the same man.

He attempted to call police to report the incident when he was told not to, "A guy standing next to him said why don't you drop it. I said, 'No, I'm calling the police. I'm exercising my right as a citizen, I've been assaulted.' "

But the horror kept on growing for Streeter as he walked to his car on the phone with police, "This guy turns, and totally by surprise takes his hand and bam! It was a big guy. Shoved me onto the ground, I hit my head." A police report has been filed.

Keep in mind that Mr. Streeter is obviously not a supporter of President Bush...but he had the utter gall to dare to not be a lock-step leftist! Well, of course a beating is justified in such cases!

Hat Tip: D C Thornton via Baldilocks and reader Vero.

One of the key claims of the Kerry campaign is that President Bush has so alienated our allies that we cannot get sufficient help in the War on Terrorism to win it; the argument further goes that where President Bush has failed in diplomacy, the upper-class, well-connected and French-speaking Senator Kerry can succeed.

Well, consider another rationale behind Kerry to be in the dumpster. If unanimous UN resolutions in favor of our plans in Iraq and G-8 agreement on assistence in Iraq aren't enough to blow Kerry out of the water on this issue, then perhaps the fact that NATO, France and Germany agreeing, is about to assist us in training Iraq's security forces will do the trick:

ENNIS, Ireland — The Bush administration expects to get a commitment from NATO to help train Iraqi security forces at the alliance's summit next week in Istanbul, an important diplomatic victory that President Bush was merely hoping for just two weeks ago.

France and Germany, which expressed tepid support for a NATO role in troops training at the Group of Eight summit in Georgia earlier this month, yesterday dropped their opposition to the wording of such an agreement as NATO nations' ambassadors struck a tentative deal in Brussels.

Of course, for the French and Germans what this is all about is realisation that President Bush is (a) going to stick it out in Iraq no matter what and (b) is likely to be re-elected; thus its time for Chirac and Schroeder to come to agreement with President Bush if they want to have any influence in Washington, DC; and any hand at all in the future of Iraq.

What this shows is that a determination to do the right thing regardless of difficulty eventually brings anyone of reasonably decent instincts along with you - the man in charge has to lead the way, knowing that eventually everyone will follow no matter how much they resisted and carped at the beginning. Kerrry's plan is to ask that everyone else lead the way and then the United States will back up what they do - of course, this is a sure-fire formula for inaction - And this, in the end, is really what Kerry and his supporters want - inaction leading to a general end to the War on Terrorism so that they can all get back to what are, to them, more important issues....like classroom-size reduction and CAFE standards for automobiles...this'd work fine, 'cept that there is still that next, nasty terrorist attack which is bound to happen unless we kill them first.

Victor Davis Hanson tells how it is really going in the War on Terror:

But if the pulse of the strategic, tactical, and ideological theaters suggests we can win this war, the home front is not so bright. The few hundred American lunatics who tried to explain away 9/11 (or apologize for it) turned into thousands a few weeks later who swore we either would or should lose in Afghanistan. Now they are millions who see our ongoing struggle in Iraq as either immoral or inept. George Bush did not create this cascading antiwar movement. It was rather fueled by the blood and treasure spent to eliminate the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, together with a has-been '60s generation that felt there was still one more creaky return to the barricades left in them.

Right after 9/11, some of us thought it was impossible for leftist critics to undermine a war against fascists who were sexist, fundamentalist, homophobic, racist, ethnocentric, intolerant of diversity, mass murderers of Kurds and Arabs, and who had the blood of 3,000 Americans on their hands. We were dead wrong. In fact, they did just that. Abu Ghraib is on the front pages daily. Stories of thousands of American soldiers in combat against terrorist killers from the Hindu Kush to Fallujah do not merit the D section. Senator Kennedy's two years of insane outbursts should have earned him formal censure rather than a commemoration from the Democratic establishment.

Adam Michnik, a leading Polish dissident against communism and now editor of the largest Polish daily newspaper, gave a wonderful interview to Dissent Magazine. Michnik is a liberal, and almost always has been, but he supports the Battle in Iraq and the War on Terror in the whole. Indeed, any thinking person should. But he offers these words of wisdom:

I look at the war in Iraq from three points of view. Saddam Hussein's Iraq was a totalitarian state. It was a country where people were murdered and tortured. So I'm looking at this through the eyes of the political prisoner in Baghdad, and from this point of view I'm very grateful to those who opened the gates of the prison and who stopped the killing and the torture. Second, Iraq was a country that supported terrorist attacks in the Middle East and all over the world. I consider that 9/11 was the day when war was started against my own work and against myself. Even though we are not sure of the links, Iraq was one of the countries that did not lower its flags in mourning on 9/11. There are those who think this war could have been avoided by democratic and peaceful means. But I think that no negotiations with Saddam Hussein made sense, just as I believe that negotiations with Hitler did not make sense. And there is a third reason. Poland is an ally of the United States of America. It was our duty to show that we are a reliable, loyal, and predictable ally. America needed our help, and we had to give it. This was not only my position. It was also the position of Havel, Konrad, and others.

And in the conflict between totalitarian regimes and democracy you must not hesitate to declare which side you are on. Even if a dictatorship is not an ideal typical one, and even if the democratic countries are ruled by people whom you do not like. I think you can be an enemy of Saddam Hussein even if Donald Rumsfield is also an enemy of Saddam Hussein.

Read the whole thing. It's actually pretty good (even though he isn't a fan of the Bush administration).

Reminiscent of Kerry's stand on Iran is this bit of news reported on a British site by Henry Samuel.

France has been accused of agreeing to a crackdown on exiled opponents of Iran in return for lucrative commercial contracts.

In March last year, the regime signed a large contract with the French telecommunications group Alcatel for a telephone network.

In April last year Teheran offered the petrol giant TotalFina a £660 million gas fields contract. At the same time, a contract was signed with Renault to produce 500,000 cars over four years, the lawyers said.

Then, in June, police arrested 164 members of the Iranian opposition and placed 17 under investigation for having links with or funding terrorism. The authorities said they were looking for a link with a mortar attack on the office of the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, in Teheran in 2000.

One year on, not a shred of evidence incriminating the 17 had been found, said Mr Baudoin, who will file for the case to be closed next Tuesday. The French state had "flouted the rule of law to gain from petro-dollars", he said.

Many of the 9/11 panel members made the rounds on today’s talk shows. I found this quote interesting.

Chairman Thomas Kean said,

"These staff reports have come along every now and then in connection with our public hearings. These staff reports are interim documents. The commission, for instance, does not get involved, the members, in the staff reports. When we do the report itself, that will be a product of the entire commission."

He then adds this,

"Our investigation is continuing. We're not finished yet."

So why are we being subjected to this piecemeal reporting. It seems that anyone can put out a “report” at anytime? This is irresponsible and unprofessional to say the least.

The Islamofascists did it again - they beheaded American hostage Paul Johnson.

Three chilling photographs on an Islamist Web site appear to show the beheaded body of American hostage Paul Johnson, who was kidnapped a week ago by Islamic militants connected with al Qaeda.

Abdel Aziz Al-Muqrin, the self-proclaimed military leader of al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia, claimed responsibility for Johnson's kidnapping and the death of another American on the same day on behalf of a group called the Al Falluja Squadron.

On Tuesday, he threatened to kill Johnson in 72 hours unless the Saudi government released al Qaeda prisoners and all Westerners left the Arabian Peninsula.

"We gave you the deadline but you did not respect it," a statement on the Web site said. "This is what we promised to do."

Stay tuned for lots of yelling and screaming from liberals that this is Bush's fault, for "allowing" the abuses at Abu Ghraib.

You have, no doubt, heard by now that the 9/11 Commission has found no link between the al Qaeda terrorist organization and the new-deposed Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. You've heard it because that's what the mainstream media is reporting. It screams from the headlines. Here's a screen grab of one on MSNBC.com.

A front-page headline in the New York Times read: "Panel finds no Qaeda-Iraq Tie." The Washington Post headline said: "Al Qaeda-Hussein Link is Dismissed." The CBS Evening News reported that the 9/11 Commission's report "directly contradicted one of President Bush's justifications for going to war against Iraq." ABC News said the report "unequivocally" disputed the administration's claims of links between Saddam and al Qaeda, while NBC said the Commission's report was "sharply at odds with what leading members of the administration continue to claim."

Lies. All lies.

There were connections, and the 9/11 Commission's vice chairman, Democrat Lee Hamilton, said so yesterday and blasted the press for distorting the Commission's report. Hamilton says the Commission's findings support Bush administration contentions of links between Saddam and al Qaeda .

Hamilton told the Associated Press: "The sharp differences that the press has drawn [between the White House and the Commission] are not that apparent to me."

He told PBS's The News Hour: There are all kinds of connections. And it may very well have been that Osama bin Laden or some of his lieutenants met at some time with Saddam Hussein's lieutenants."

Hamilton said that the probe failed to uncover any direct operational link between Baghdad and Osama bin Laden's terror network involving attacks on the U.S., but there is no question that "they had contacts."

Hamilton is one of a few Democrats who seems to get that we're actually in a real war, and what matters is truth and victory, more than partisan politics and beating up on President Bush. Read his commentary published Sunday, May 23, in the Toronto Globe & Mail.

Meanwhile, 9/11 Commission Chairman Thomas Kean, a Republican former governor of New Jersey, told MSNBC:

It doesn't mean there weren't al Qaeda connections with Iraq over the years. They're somewhat shadowy, but I think they were there. But with 9/11, no, our staff has found no evidence of that.

No wonder public trust in the media is plummeting.

A beat-Bush agenda is driving the mainstream media to spread distortions and outright lies via its headlines, stories and broadcasts. In times past, that kind of thing might have worked. But not any more. Today, you don't have to be a passive consumer of the "news" served up by a few big networks and newspapers that have a stranglehold on the news. Because they no longer have that stranglehold. They are the gatekeepers to a garden whose fences have all fallen down.

For example, you don't have to believe what CBSCNNABCNBCMSNBC and the big papers like the NYT, WaPo and LA Times tall you about the 9/11 Commission's report. You can go on the Internet to the Commission's website and read the report for yourself. People who did know the major media lied. One more reason to trust the major media less, and your own eyes more.

Meanwhile, it's worth noting that the government of Russia has revealed that it provided the U.S. government with intelligence reports of planning by Saddam's regime for terrorist attacks inside the U.S. after the September 11 attack and before the U.S. invasion in early 2003. Did those plans involve al Qaeda? The answer matters not. Al Qaeda is just the most visible manifestation of an ideology of Islamofacism that uses terror as its main weapon against the west.

It's an ideology that must be fought - and is, in the mountains of Afghanistan and the heat of Iraq.

Russian President Vladimir Putin told reporters this morning that Russia had learned of terrorist attacks planned by Saddam Hussein and had passed the warnings on to the Bush administration following 9/11:

Russia warned the United States on several occasions that Iraq's Saddam Hussein planned "terrorist attacks" on its soil, President Vladimir Putin said Friday.

"After the events of September 11, 2001, and before the start of the military operation in Iraq, Russian special services several times received such information and passed it on to their American colleagues," he told reporters.

The Kremlin leader, who was speaking in the Kazakh capital, said Russian intelligence services had many times received information that Saddam's special forces were preparing terrorist attacks in the United States "and beyond its borders on American military and civilian targets."

"This information was conveyed to our American colleagues," he said. He added that Russian intelligence had no proof that Saddam agents had been involved in any particular attack.

Russia had diplomatic relations with Saddam's Iraq and opposed the U.S.-led military offensive that toppled him.

Well, this puts a different shine on the 9/11 Commission's report, doesn't it? Putin bitterly opposed the Anglo-American effort to unseat Saddam Hussein, so Putin has no particular axe to grind on this issue. In fact, one would expect that any report that damages Bush's credibility on this issue logically bolsters his own. It appears from this AP report that not only did Putin make this announcement, it sounds as though he called the press conference to specifically deliver this news. Note also that Russia maintained diplomatic relations with Hussein, almost until the moment the bombs began to fall in Baghdad in March 2003.

Perhaps this comprises part of the "sensitive" reporting that the Bush administration had on its desk in the fall of 2002, when it had to decide from where the next attacks on American soil might come. Since Hussein had managed to get around the arms embargo, thanks to UN Security Council members such as Syria and to an extent France and Germany, and since the UN oil-for-food program had given Saddam billions of dollars in resources within easy reach, it isn't hard to conclude that Saddam had been a clear and present danger -- one could even say imminent danger -- given Putin's warnings. Nor could the Bush administration easily reveal their source, given Putin's stature and his relationship with Saddam, which now appears to have been very convenient for Bush and Blair.

Maybe, as Hugh Hewitt suggested on his radio show last night, we need a commission to look into the 9/11 Commission.

"The Truths of War are absolute, but the principles governing their application have to be deduced on each occasion from the circumstances, which are always different; and in consequence no rules are any guide to action. Study of the past is invaluable as a means of training and sorting the mind, but it is no help without selective discernment of the particular facts and their emphasis, relation and proportion." Winston Churchill, The World Crisis, Volume II, page 975

I think I just might send that quote to every editor in the United States - be better if I could send the whole two-volume set.

The blog Iraq Now has an excellent report on just why we've got so many problems with the reporting coming out of Iraq - our newsies, for the most part, just don't know how war is conducted. Most of them never having served in the military, they simply do not have a grasp even of the basics - this leads them, again and again, into very silly reporting errors. This article in the New York Times shows the problem:

WASHINGTON, June 12 — The United States launched many more failed airstrikes on a far broader array of senior Iraqi leaders during the early days of the war last year than has previously been acknowledged, and some caused significant civilian casualties, according to senior military and intelligence officials.

And here is the expert analysis of it - a quote from same:

In maneuver warfare theory, it is not neccessary to kill the HVTs in order to have the desired effect on the battlefield. It's nice, sure, but it's not neccessary in order for the strikes to be successful. We target key individuals and headquarters facilities NOT so much to kill, but to disrupt the enemy's decision-making process. We go after them aggressively, we hit them hard, and we hit them again and again, and we