Thursday, March 30, 2006
Aiding the Enemy
There are responsible ways to constructively critique the Bush Administration's foreign policy, and then there are irresponsible ways that give aid and comfort to our enemy.
I have long believed that Democratic attacks fall into the latter category and are undermining America's war on Islamic extremism, thereby jeopardizing American lives.
Our enemies agree with me:
In recent visits to several regional capitals, this writer was struck by the popularity of this new game from Islamabad to Rabat. The general assumption is that Mr. Bush's plan to help democratize the heartland of Islam is fading under an avalanche of partisan attacks inside the U.S. The effect of this assumption can be witnessed everywhere.With the Right to Free Speech comes the responsibility of its reprecussions.
In Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf has shelved his plan, forged under pressure from Washington, to foster a popular front to fight terrorism by lifting restrictions against the country's major political parties and allowing their exiled leaders to return. There is every indication that next year's elections will be choreographed to prevent the emergence of an effective opposition. In Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, arguably the most pro-American leader in the region, is cautiously shaping his post-Bush strategy by courting Tehran and playing the Pushtun ethnic card against his rivals.
In Turkey, the "moderate" Islamist government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan is slowly but surely putting the democratization process into reverse gear. With the post-Bush era in mind, Mr. Erdogan has started a purge of the judiciary and a transfer of religious endowments to sections of the private sector controlled by his party's supporters. There are fears that next year's general election would not take place on a level playing field.
Even in Iraq the sentiment that the U.S. will not remain as committed as it has been under Mr. Bush is producing strange results. While Shiite politicians are rushing to Tehran to seek a reinsurance policy, some Sunni leaders are having second thoughts about their decision to join the democratization process. "What happens after Bush?" demands Salih al-Mutlak, a rising star of Iraqi Sunni leaders. The Iraqi Kurds have clearly decided to slow down all measures that would bind them closer to the Iraqi state. Again, they claim that they have to "take precautions in case the Americans run away."
There are more signs that the initial excitement created by Mr. Bush's democratization project may be on the wane. Saudi Arabia has put its national dialogue program on hold and has decided to focus on economic rather than political reform. In Bahrain, too, the political reform machine has been put into rear-gear, while in Qatar all talk of a new democratic constitution to set up a constitutional monarchy has subsided. In Jordan the security services are making a spectacular comeback, putting an end to a brief moment of hopes for reform. As for Egypt, Hosni Mubarak has decided to indefinitely postpone local elections, a clear sign that the Bush-inspired scenario is in trouble. Tunisia and Morocco, too, have joined the game by stopping much-advertised reform projects while Islamist radicals are regrouping and testing the waters at all levels.
To be clear, I think Democrats believe that a failure of Bush's policies would be beneficial to America (though of course I believe they are sorely mistaken). So I wouldn't call them traitors. But that's a different argument.
The point is, we are seeing the results of these attacks -- the Left is intentionally undermining the foreign policy of the duly elected American President in a time of war. This necessarily creates more American casualties on the battlefield.
So it must be said: Constructive criticism, by it's nature, would be helpful to the "War on Terror". But Democratic attacks on Bush are emperically aiding the enemy. Therefore, it is a fact that these attacks are emperically traitorous.
In an era of terrorism, this puts all of us at risk.
Remember that when you go to vote this year and in 2008.
Why I don't listen to my wife
Science has finally explained why I can't hear my wife -- I'm disabled!
Men have to work harder deciphering what women are saying because they use the auditory part of the brain that processes music, not human voices. Men's brains are not designed to listen to women's voices.via James Taranto
Saturday, March 18, 2006
Can they handle the truth?
So maybe Saddam had WMD and terrorist plans after all? And why isn't your media telling you about the latest developments? Something tells me if the parties were reversed, e.g. with President Gore leading the fight against Islamic extremist terrorists, the media would be falling all over themselves to present this "startling new evidence" vindicating a Democrat president. But with President Bush, have you even heard of this:
Among the enduring myths of those who oppose the war is that Saddam, though murderous when it came to his own people, had no weapons of mass destruction and no terrorist designs outside his own country. Both claims now lie in tatters.
As we've reported several times, a number of former top military officials in Saddam's regime have come forward to admit that, yes, Saddam had WMD, hid them and shipped them out of the country so they couldn't be detected. And he had plans to make more.
Now come more revelations that leave little doubt about Saddam's terrorist intentions. Most intriguing from a document dump Wednesday night is a manual for Saddam's spy service, innocuously listed as CMPC-2003-006430. It makes for interesting reading.
Here, for instance, are the marching orders for Directorate 8, the Mukhabarat's "Technical Affairs" department: "The Eight Directorate is responsible for development of materials needed for covert offensive operations. It contains advanced laboratories for testing and production of weapons, poisons and explosives."
It goes on. Directorate 9, we discover, "is one of the most important directorates in the Mukhabarat. Most of its work is outside Iraq in coordination with other directorates, focusing on operations of sabotage and assassination."
The document also discusses the Mukhabarat's Office 16, set up to train "agents for clandestine operations abroad." The document helpfully adds that "special six-week courses in the use of of terror techniques are provided at a camp in Radwaniyhah."
Got that? Terror techniques.
Thursday, March 02, 2006
More Media Lies
From Captain Ed,
Most news agencies have reported on the AP's tape of a meeting involving President Bush, Michael Brown, and a number of other FEMA officials and local and state politicians during Hurricane Katrina. In the tape, most of the reports claim, Bush specifically heard warnings about levees being breached. However, that's not what the tape shows...
In fact, the record shows that the White House had been fully engaged in the disaster and had repeatedly asked for updates. Brown himself notes (and NBC did report this) that Bush had personally called him twice that day, and it was still only noon. The White House also followed the media reports closely, demanding to know whether the reported breaches had actually occurred. (The fact that the media could not be trusted to get the story straight was later proven when the hysterical reporting about cannibalism, murders, and toxic flood waters all turned out to be false.) What answer did the White House get? The local and state authorities told them that nothing had happened, and that the flooding so far had come from the storm itself and not the lake.
As usual, the news media misreports the Katrina information to sensationalize it, and the skewed story is the one that makes the morning paper. File this one in the same drawer as the mass murders at the Superdome and the Cannibals of St. Bernard Parish, and marvel at the fact that even six months later, the media doesn't take the time to get its fact straight about Katrina.
