STRAIGHT OUTTA’ DENVER

It’s actually quite strange that the American media had to take several days to analyze the situation but they eventually did. P. muse has been on top of the bombings Israel just committed and sent this article around form electronicintifada.net:

“I will play music and celebrate what the Israeli air force is doing.” Those were the words, spoken on Al Jazeera today by Ofer Shmerling, an Israeli civil defense official in the Sderot area adjacent to Gaza, as images of Israel’s latest massacres were broadcast around the world.

Hey Israel! When Al Jazeera is praising you, that’s not a good thing!

A short time earlier, US-supplied Israeli F-16 warplanes and Apache helicopters dropped over 100 bombs on dozens of locations in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip killing at least 195 persons and injuring hundreds more. Many of these locations were police stations located, like police stations the world over, in the middle of civilian areas. The US government was one of the first to offer its support for Israel’s attacks, and others will follow.

Reports said that many of the dead were Palestinian police officers. Among those Israel labels “terrorists” were more than a dozen traffic police officers undergoing training. An as yet unknown number of civilians were killed and injured; Al Jazeera showed images of several dead children, and the Israeli attacks came at the time thousands of Palestinian children were in the streets on their way home from school.

Shmerling’s joy has been echoed by Israelis and their supporters around the world; their violence is righteous violence. It is “self-defense” against “terrorists” and therefore justified. Israeli bombing — like American and NATO bombing in Iraq and Afghanistan — is bombing for freedom, peace and democracy.

The rationalization for Israel’s massacres, already being faithfully transmitted by the English-language media, is that Israel is acting in “retaliation” for Palestinian rockets fired with increasing intensity ever since the six-month truce expired on 19 December (until today, no Israeli had been killed or injured by these recent rocket attacks).

But today’s horrific attacks mark only a change in Israel’s method of killing Palestinians recently. In recent months they died mostly silent deaths, the elderly and sick especially, deprived of food and necessary medicine by the two year-old Israeli blockade calculated and intended to cause suffering and deprivation to 1.5 million Palestinians, the vast majority refugees and children, caged into the Gaza Strip. In Gaza, Palestinians died silently, for want of basic medications: insulin, cancer treatment, products for dialysis prohibited from reaching them by Israel.

What the media never question is Israel’s idea of a truce. It is very simple. Under an Israeli-style truce, Palestinians have the right to remain silent while Israel starves them, kills them and continues to violently colonize their land. Israel has not only banned food and medicine to sustain Palestinian bodies in Gaza but it is also intent on starving minds: due to the blockade, there is not even ink, paper and glue to print textbooks for schoolchildren.

That article continues on painting an even grimmer picture of Israel’s bombing, and assuming that it’s true, then Israel is guilty of some serous war crimes here. Being a former conservative, I would have most certainly rationalized Israel’s attack as a necessary loss to get as the enemies that they face. And there is still some truth to that statement but with how much that Israel keeps everyone in the dark about what they’re trying to do, you really can’t know all of the truth of the situation. But it does seem that Israel tried to explain themselves here but were cut off. This from commentarymagazine.com:

Yesterday, the IDF did something innovative: it opened a channel on YouTube and posted videos to it that help explain why Israel is fighting Hamas. The site hosted about a dozen videos showing things like Israeli humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza and airstrikes that prevented terrorists from firing rockets at Israeli civilians.

This was apparently too much for YouTube, which moments ago removed several videos from the IDF’s channel, including the most-watched video, which showed a group of Hamas goons being blown up in an air strike as they loaded Katyusha missiles onto a truck. The point of such footage, as if it needed to be said, is not to revel in violence — it is to show the legitimacy of Israeli self-defense.

The rank double-standard that YouTube has applied to Israel is disturbing. YouTube hosts all manner of similar footage — much of it far more gory than the grainy infrared images posted by the IDF — of U.S. air strikes. Why is YouTube capitulating to those who do not wish for Israel to be able to tell its side of the story?

So this does get even more complicated just due to the fact that there are interests in hiding the truth in our media. There are many interest groups in portraying Israel in the worst light possible or in the best light possible. So it’s hard to really know what is accurate here but ironically enough here the New Republic actually does have the best analysis:

It was Israel at its best. In response to random attacks aimed at its civilians, Israel launched precise attacks aimed at terrorists. In place of political schism, Israel suspended election campaigning, and initiated coooperation between government and opposition. Instead of illusions about an imminent peace agreement with Bashar Assad or about half a negotiated peace agreement with half of the Palestinian leadership, we exhibited sobriety and a willingness to defend ourselves. And instead of military confusion and ineptitude, as we displayed in Lebanon two years ago, we showed the most impressive display of our intelligence, air power, and psychological warfare in decades.

But what’s next? Here are some of the possible consequences to watch for in the coming days and weeks.

So for a paper that been praising Obama like crazy, they just move in on supporting Israel. I thought Obama was suppose to keep them under control?

Israel’s Options: There are three possible scenarios for how this operation will evolve. The first is that the government will opt for a limited attack whose goal isn’t the overthrow of the Hamas regime but merely the attainment of better terms in the next round of ceasefire–such as supervision over tunnels linking Gaza with Egypt and through which Hamas has smuggled in missiles. The argument for a limited operation is that Mahmud Abbas’s men aren’t ready to secure the Strip from Hamas–and even if they were, they would bear the mark of collaborators if they took control of Gaza courtesy of Israel.

The second scenario is the overthrow of Hamas and turning the Strip over to a foreign power–ideally Egypt, as the Palestinian Authority’s chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, has suggested. It’s doubtful, though, that Egypt will agree to relieve Israel of its Gaza burden. And NATO is on record as refusing to commit peacekeeping troops in the Palestinian territories.

The third option is to begin with the first option of a limited operation but, as fighting intensifies, find ourselves reluctantly implementing the second option of all-out war against Hamas. That may well be the least desirable option of all, leaving Israel vulnerable to events beyond its control. But given previous Israeli experience, that could be the most likely scenario.

The Iranian Bomb: The countdown to a nuclear Iran is now being measured in months rather than years. Few here in Israel believe that President Obama’s diplomatic efforts will succeed; and if those efforts fail, there won’t be enough time to galvanize the international community to adopt effective sanctions. The danger of the current conflict in Gaza, then, is that Israel will be too preoccupied with fighting Hamas and perhaps Hezbollah to effectively respond to the Iranian threat.

The Gaza conflict, though, could also have the opposite effect, especially if the IDF loses focus and finds itself immersed yet again in a no-win battle. Israeli policymakers may begin asking themselves what the point is of fighting Iran’s proxies every few years rather than confronting Iran itself, especially given the urgency of stopping a nuclear Iran.

The Fate of a Two-State Solution: The future of the West Bank may well be resolved in Gaza. If the international community forces the IDF to end the operation before the missile threat against southern Israel is resolved, Israelis will inevitably conclude that, even when we withdraw to the 1967 borders, as we did on the Gaza front in 2005, the international community will not allow us to protect ourselves. And the likelihood then of convincing a majority of Israelis to withdraw from the West Bank–within easy rocket distance from our major population centers–will be close to non-existent. Ultimately, then, the creation of an independent Palestine depends on neutralizing Hamas.

The Moderate Arab Response: About six months ago, during a meeting with a senior Palestinian official, I was stunned when he asked me matter of factly, “So when are you Israelis going to invade Gaza already?” “You mean you want us to?” I asked. “If you want a peace agreement,” he replied, “you will have no choice.” I never expected that position to be made public. But some Arab leaders–including Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and even the feckless Abbas–have both come as close as any Arab leader can dare go in expressing support for the Israeli attack by condemning Hamas for inviting it.

In the 1990s, there was hope that a “new Middle East” would emerge through peace talks. For Israel, that turned out to be a near-fatal illusion. Now, though, a new Middle East may actually be emerging–not through peace but conflict. And in this new Middle East, moderate Arabs are siding with Israel against Iran and its proxies. That is the reason why several Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, condemned Hezbollah rather than Israel in the initial phase of the Second Lebanon War. And it’s the reason why most of the Arab world failed to condemn Israel’s air strike last year against the Syrian nuclear reactor–intended, according to one intelligence report, as an eventual nuclear bomb factory for Iran.

In the interest of not making this post way too long I’ll cut to the end of the article:

As I am writing this article, a ground operation appears imminent. That may be necessary to prevent Hamas from firing rockets at southern Israel, but it will also result in growing casualties in Gaza. And that will increase international pressure against Israel and undermine the Israeli domestic consensus on which the success of the operation depends. The Israeli Zionist left, which so far supports the government, has resricted its backing to a limited operation. We still don’t know what the government wants to achieve, and what the army believes is achievable. What constitutes victory? Will we know how to translate military success into political gain? Will the government be strong enough to resist world pressure, even in the event of a disastrous accident that results in Palestinian civilian casualties? Most of all, what’s required is patience, and the realization among Israelis and our friends abroad that this battle is part of the larger war against jihadism that shifts from one part of the world to the other, and whose outcome will define our generation.

But I find it really funny that this one comes out supporting Israel. While I do see Iran a major threat to us and the rest of the world, especially as they complete a nuclear bomb and can be a helpful as an ally in that region. However on the other hand, Israel is becoming exactly like the people that they hate! They’re starting to shoot down any aid that comes to Gaza and are starving them out. Is this indiscriminate killing really helping their cause? P. muse is calling for us to contact our congressmen to protest these chain of events. I’ll give you the link here, but I don’t have any faith that it will change anything. The real solution is to have Israel to cease all operations and allow us to take over the situation along with some sort of solution to Iran to get at the heart of the problem. But theirs no will left in the American people. So with Israels excessive force and the Palestinians desire to destroy Israel, were looking at a middle east that is just going to continue to get more and more bloody. I pray that Obama will have the wisdom to do what is right here.

6 comments.

Palin, Clinton, Ahmadinejad, The Financial Collapse and God

Posted on September 27th, 2008 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: Political, Ethics, Party System, War, Terrorism, Philosophy, Media, Republicans, Democrats, Iran, Israel, Religon, Christianity, Economics.

As the title and the number of categories suggest, this is going to be a lengthy post for me pulling a lot of subjects together. But bare with me here I’ll wrap it all together here to one good point and I’ll even slap on a really nice pretty bow on top of it! However I first have to start with the bad news here (and there never seems to be any end to bad news this year!) Our country is going into a state of chaos. It’s becoming more and more apparent as the days go by and there seems to be no way to reverse the irrational thinking that is going all across the board. We’re getting griped with fear here and it’s starting to create a real panic in our country. As I have been on the charge against for two years (more or less) here on this blog this panic and fear is being created by a Victimhood mentality thats sinking it’s teeth deep within our culture even in our very souls. We’ve grown too accustomed to quick dismissals of people and their ideas and hold too tightly to our doomsday scenarios that it’s starting to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we continue on this course then we will deserve the chaos that will follow. We have three primary causes to this downward spiral that we’re entering into: extreme partisanship, foolish finical decision making and lack of trust in God.

Extreme Partisanship
I’m pro partisan! I want people to take their convictions seriously and stand up on them to pronounce them to the best of their ability to as many people as possible. I love debate and intellectualism of any side! But at a certain point too much partisanship turns things sour. That happens when winning the election becomes more important than standing on your convictions. Haaretz has a great piece illustrating this point perfectly:

In the speech which Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin was to have delivered at a Monday rally protesting the UN appearance of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, she was to have said that the Iranian president “dreams of being an agent in a ‘Final Solution’ - the elimination of the Jewish people.”

Her appearance in the rally in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza was cancelled in a flap between protest organizers and Hillary Clinton, who had also been scheduled to speak. Clinton aides were quoted as saying that they had been “blindsided” by the decision to invite Palin, which they called a partisan move. In the ensuing controversy, Clinton withdrew her participation, and Palin’s invitation was rescinded.

How often dose a paper publish a speech that a candidate would have made? Hillary was invited to this rally to stand firm on the principal that women are of equal value to men. Iran is the leading country in violation of that principal because that country has their secret police always out on the patrol and any woman who does not hold to their strict code of dress is wiped. Even more than that, they have every woman who is suspected of any promiscuous activity stoned. Sarah shares Hillary’s principal that we should fight this injustice and deal with the threat posed of Iran. So why did Hillary back out? Because for her, it’s more important to defeat conservatives like Sarah than it is to stand up for women’s rights. Why Would Haaretz publish Sarah’s would be speech at the rally? Because they know that Iran threatens them and while they are a liberal paper in Israel much more in line with Hillary than Sarah, they don’t want to be killed. Sarah made one serious mistake in her speech that she did not give:

Earlier this year, Senator Clinton said that “Iran is seeking nuclear weapons, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is in the forefront of that” effort. Senator Clinton argued that part of our response must include stronger sanctions, including the designation of the IRGC as a terrorist organization. John McCain and I could not agree more.

Senator Clinton understands the nature of this threat and what we must do to confront it. This is an issue that should unite all Americans. Iran should not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons. Period. And in a single voice, we must be loud enough for the whole world to hear: Stop Iran!
Only by working together, across national, religious, and political differences, can we alter this regime’s dangerous behavior. Iran has many vulnerabilities, including a regime weakened by sanctions and a population eager to embrace opportunities with the West. We must increase economic pressure to change Iran’s behavior.

Hillary’s real threat is not Iran but rather Sarah. The left hates conservatism not evil. We’re starting to see much more of this as this year rolls on. The accusations being thrown at Sarah are quite astonishing! A speech Hillary did attend, Alcee Hastings had this to say:

“If Sarah Palin isn’t enough of a reason for you to get over whatever your problem is with Barack Obama, then you damn well had better pay attention,” Rep. Alcee Hastings of Florida said at a panel about the shared agenda of Jewish and African-American Democrats Wednesday. Hastings, who is African-American, was explaining what he intended to tell his Jewish constituents about the presidential race. “Anybody toting guns and stripping moose don’t care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks. So, you just think this through,” Hastings added as the room erupted in laughter and applause.

That was brilliant! So you’re telling me that if you tote guns and go hunting for moose that automatically makes you anti-semitic and racist? And the race card keeps getting played all over the place! Dennis Prager has a great piece up where he chronicled many good examples of this:

Andrew Sullivan of (set ital) The Atlantic: (end ital) “White racism means that Obama needs more than a small but clear lead to win.”

Jack Cafferty of CNN: “The polls remain close. Doesn’t make sense … unless it’s race.”

Jacob Weisberg of (set ital) Newsweek and Slate: (end ital) “The reason Obama isn’t ahead right now is … the color of his skin. … If Obama loses, our children will grow up thinking of equal opportunity as a myth.”

Nicholas D. Kristof of (set ital) New York Times: (end ital) “Religious prejudice (against Obama) is becoming a proxy for racial prejudice.”

Gerald W. McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, in a speech to union workers: “Are you going to give up your house and your job and your children’s futures because he’s black?”

Similar comments have been made by Kansas’s Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, a Democrat, and by writers in (set ital) Time (end ital) magazine. And according to The Associated Press: “A poll conducted by The Associated Press and Yahoo News, in conjunction with Stanford University, revealed that a fairly significant percentage of Democrats and independents may not vote for Sen. Barack Obama because of his race.” If you read the poll, it does not in fact suggest this conclusion. The pollsters assert that any person with any negative view of black life means that the person is racist and means that he would not vote for Obama. Both conclusions are unwarranted. But “Obama will lose because of racism” is how the poll takers and the media spin it.

Can you give me just one example of one mainstream conservitive that has said that he or she will not vote for Obama because he is black. Usually you’re much more loose with your words when you’re talking to someone who shares your politics but yet Prager has stated that he hasn’t received one e-mail saying “I just can’t vote for him because he’s black!” But it doesn’t matter, that charge will keep on getting thrown at us conservatives and it’s not going to stop no matter who gets elected. Funny to think that these people will charge us with racism if Obama looses but would they charge us with sexism if Sarah looses?

Why do liberals believe that if Obama loses it will be due to white racism?

One reason is the liberal elite’s contempt for white Americans with less education — even if they are Democrats.

A second reason is that it is inconceivable to most liberals that an Obama loss — especially a narrow one — will be due to Obama’s liberal views or inexperience or to admiration for John McCain.

The third reason is that the further left you go, the more insular you get. Americans on the left tend to talk only to one another; study only under left-wing teachers; and read only fellow leftists. That is why it is a shock to so many liberals when a Republican wins a national election — where do all these Republican voters come from? And that in turn explains why liberals ascribe Republican presidential victories to unfair election tactics (“Swift-boating” is the liberals’ reason for the 2004 Republican victory). In any fair election, Americans will see the left’s light.

If Obama loses, it will not be deemed plausible that Americans have again rejected a liberal candidate, indeed the one with the most liberal voting record in the U.S. Senate. Liberals will explain an Obama defeat as another nefarious Republican victory. Combining contempt for many rural and middle-class white Americans with a longstanding belief in the inevitability of a Democratic victory in 2008 (after all, everyone they talk to despises the Republicans and believes Republicans have led the country to ruin), there will be only one reason Obama did not win — white racism.

Conservatives keep on having lies thrown at us but the right is not immune to being so petty. Michel Savage is another talk show host on the fringes who regularly produces disgusting and hateful things towards the left. I haven’t listened to him in over 4 years but I bet he’s still out there and probably is worse than ever. Rush Limbaugh, a man I have listened to and respected since I was 5 or 6, is now becoming much more short tempered. He used to regularly have disagreeing calls first and try to work with them taking up a good portion of his hour trying to reason with them. but lately he’s starting to cut them off and shout them down. It’s gotten to the point that I just can’t listen to him anymore and his arrogance is just starting to drive him over the edge. The pig comment for Obama is another example where he said “if you put lipstick on a pig, it’s still a pig.” Hugh Hewitt came on and (paraphrasing) “You know what he meant there America. He’s calling Sarah a pig!” But come on now Hugh! We know the Obama’s not that stupid! You should have been going after the more truthful approach of saying that he’s out of touch with his audience because they started laughing before he finished the comment. But that’s my only complaint to Hugh he’s still doing an amazing doing the great work of political analysis but he’s still flirts with the line here and there. I’ve been impressed that Hugh as been sticking to his commitment that he’s only going to take first time female callers until they’re done talking to him due to Sarah’s nomination. Some of the women that he’s had calling has been very interesting. It seems that only Prager is really trying to keep things straight but just his voice is not enough. How did it ever get to the point that beating the other side is more important than doing what’s right for the country? It’s no wonder why people keep on tuning out of the politics and going to third parties because we’re getting into a real bitter constant nail bitting race where every single little bit of mud and every statement is analyzed to death. And you wonder why politicians seem so fake lately? It’s because everything they say is under the microscope for any little tiny defect. Both sides do it but I hear is far more often from the left then the right. This extreme partisanship has us disabled with all of the politicians on both sides trying not to let the other get the points for anything good or trying to shove down the bad stuff down the others troughs. That brings me to my next point.

Foolish Finical Decision Making
I’m a conservitive. So when a company makes a bad decisions and finds them selfs in over their heads they should go out of business and let others get into the market who will make good decisions. It’s simple stuff but it is all based around trust. The trust that when you take out a loan you’ll pay it back. This is how it’s worked for centuries and it’s worked the best out of any system that’s ever been introduced. However we’ve had a surge of people taking out loans that have no business getting them. Because congress didn’t like the fact that there were all these people who’ve never owned a home they started putting requirements on lenders to get these people in homes (of coure that was all in the name of compassion). That had the unintended consequence of lenders giveing out risky loans. But of course the housing market was in a boom! Prices were going up and while people were buying a lot of houses for much more than they could afford they just assumed that the price will continue to go up and they could just sell it, repay the loan and make a little money. Builders were seeing all of this money getting poured in, so hey, we need to get some houses built! But they built more houses than wee needed and as the law of supply and demand goes, when you have more supply than demand then the price goes down. So all the people who took out loans with the assumption that the price will just keep going up now can’t afford the loan and can’t sell the house (becuse no one wants it) so they end up foreclosing. Now the builders can’t make a buck because theirs already too many houses and banks don’t want to give loans out because they already loosing all their money to all these people who couldn’t pay. Thus we are looking at a depression. The only possibility to prevent this is for a big institution to go and buy the bad deals, get them off of the market and restore the trust to loan making. The only institution that can do that is the US government. Steven Pearlstein in the Washington post has a good piece on this:

You’re angry. I’m angry. House Republicans are angry. We’re all angry at having to put up huge amounts of cash to rescue a financial system because a lot of very rich people rolled the dice with other people’s money and lost.

Now let me tell you something very simple and very important: You can try to prevent a financial meltdown or you can teach Wall Street a lesson, but you can’t do both at the same time.

So which will it be?

You say you want straight talk — no spin, no bull, no sugar-coating. Okay, here goes.

First, stop fixating on Wall Street executives — there will be time to deal with them later. Even if you clawed back every dime they made over the past decade, it would come to several billions of dollars. That’s a rounding error compared with the size of the financial problem we’re facing here.

Second, we need to act quickly. The financial situation is now downright scary. Don’t look at the stock market — that’s not where the problem is. The problem is in the credit markets, which are quickly freezing. I won’t bore you with technical indicators like Libor and Treasury swap spreads, but if you talk to people who work these markets every day, as I have, they report that the money markets are in worse shape than they were last August, or even during the currency crises of 1998.

Banks and big corporations and even money-market funds are hoarding cash, refusing to lend it out for a day or a week or a month. Even the best companies are having trouble floating bonds at reasonable rates. And the shadow banking system — the market in asset-backed securities that ultimately supplies the capital for most home loans, car loans, college loans — is almost completely shut down.

People are so nervous, and there is so much distrust, that all it would take is one more hit to trigger the modern-day equivalent of a nationwide bank run. Financial institutions would fail, part of your savings would be wiped out, jobs would be lost and a lot of economic activity would grind to a halt. Such a debacle would cost us a lot more than $700 billion.

Third, the latest proposal hammered out between the Treasury and Democratic leaders won’t cost anywhere near $700 billion unless we get a 1930s-like Depression, in which case we’ll have much bigger problems to worry about. Depending on how the program is managed, and how things turn out with the economy and the housing market, the best guess is that the government could wind up either losing or making a couple of hundred billion dollars. The final tab is simply unknowable — it depends on how much the government winds up paying for the securities it buys from banks and other financial institutions, and what price it resells them at after the market and the economy recover.

Fourth, this isn’t primarily a bailout for Wall Street — it’s an attempt to jump-start certain credit markets that have broken to the point that nobody is buying, driving down prices to the point where they are well below any reasonable estimate of their long-term economic value.

The basic idea is to use special auctions to recreate a market for these securities with many competing sellers and one buyer (the Treasury), so that a credible “market” price can be established. If that price turns out to be below what those securities are now valued at on the banks’ balance sheets, then banks will have to take the loss. If the price turns out to be higher, then banks may be able to record gains. The point isn’t to bail out institutions that have made bad bets and suffered credit losses, but to provide a buyer of last resort so the market can begin pricing again.

Are there other ways to structure this market rescue? Sure. You could try to deal with the underlying problem by taking additional measures to prevent foreclosures. Or you could create a mechanism for the government to invest fresh capital in troubled banks, in exchange for stock. In fact, both approaches are possible and envisioned under the administration proposal now under discussion. But neither, by itself, is likely to quickly restore confidence in the financial system and relieve the current crisis.

My own suggestion would be to structure the rescue around a new government-owned corporation that would be capitalized, initially, with $100 billion in taxpayer funds. The company would use auctions or other mechanisms to buy the troubled securities from banks and other regulated institutions, but instead of paying for them in cash, the government would swap them for an equal number of preferred shares in the new company. (Preferred shares are something of a cross between a bond and common stock.) Those preferred shares would pay a government-guaranteed dividend and could be redeemed by the government at any time. But they could also be used by banks to augment the capital they are required to maintain by regulators.

The beauty of this arrangement is that, rather than protecting taxpayers by having the government take an ownership stake in hundreds of privately owned banks, it would be the banks that would own a stake of the government’s rescue vehicle. The government would suffer the first $100 billion in losses from buying and selling the asset-backed securities, but any further losses would be borne by the other shareholders. And should the rescue effort actually wind up making a profit, then the banks would share in that as well.

I mention this idea to make a final point — namely that it is important to give the Treasury secretary and the people he hires a good deal of flexibility in designing and experimenting with the mechanics of this rescue. The reality is that these guys will be operating in uncharted territory, making things up as they go along. That means there are no assurances that any particular approach will work and no assurances that this will be the final solution. It also means that, just as we entrust generals to fight a war, we are going to have to trust the Treasury to find a way out of this crisis.

We are doing this deal to restore the trust involved in giving out loans. But of course as I said in the prevous part congress doesn’t want to do anything because they want to blame the other side with the failure. Democrats are looking to push this off on the republicans despite the fact that they are at fault here. Want proof? Then check this out from the New York times dated September 11, 2003:

The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.

Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.

The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios.

The plan is an acknowledgment by the administration that oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — which together have issued more than $1.5 trillion in outstanding debt — is broken. A report by outside investigators in July concluded that Freddie Mac manipulated its accounting to mislead investors, and critics have said Fannie Mae does not adequately hedge against rising interest rates.

So the president was trying to stop this sour Fannie and Freddie deal way back in 2003! But would congress let him? NO!

Significant details must still be worked out before Congress can approve a bill. Among the groups denouncing the proposal today were the National Association of Home Builders and Congressional Democrats who fear that tighter regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to financing low-income and affordable housing.

”These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ”The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”

So in the name of compassion the democrats let Fannie and Freddie continue to make bad loan after bad loan thinking that nothing bad could possibly happen. Well now something bad has happened and now their trying to put the blame on Bush as they always do. Compassion is something you must hold dearly to in your personal life but when you let it make policy then you have disaster. Thus we continue to see panic in the markets and stocks continue to fall every day that congress doesn’t act. So now you get depression. Now this brings me to this last point here in my piece, we are now getting griped with fear.

Lack of Trust in God
“Come on now B’Strad! Now you’re really BSing us here!” I know, I know this may seem to be getting ridiculous here but again bare with me here. Think with me here! Are we really afraid of the right things? Have a look at this Psalm:

Psalm 112:1-8
How joyful are those who fear the Lord
and delight in obeying his commands.
Their children will be successful everywhere;
an entire generation of godly people will be blessed.
They themselves will be wealthy,
and their good deeds will last forever.
Light shines in the darkness for the godly.
They are generous, compassionate, and righteous.
Good comes to those who lend money generously
and conduct their business fairly.
Such people will not be overcome by evil.
Those who are righteous will be long remembered.
They do not fear bad news;
they confidently trust the Lord to care for them.
They are confident and fearless
and can face their foes triumphantly.

Dose it really gain you anything to have a state of fear over all of these little things in life? In the end it really doesn’t matter who wins and looses, if the economy booms or fails, or if wars and terrorism starts to take a grip of everything that we hold dear. That’s not to say that their unimportant and that we shouldn’t be engaged in such things. But if we allow it to grip us with fear so that we throw away everything that’s really important to us then what did we gain? What’s really important is how we spend our short time here on this crazy world. Are you going to spend it griped with fear over all the thing that might happen or are we going to say “Well I’ll deal with that when I get their but now I’m going to spend this time with the people I love and try to bring joy to others.” We’re not fearing the right things here! We keep on talking about all of these hard things but how often to we just sit down and just try to find what God wants from us? Have a look at this in Ecclesiastes:

Ecclesiastes 8:6-8
for there is a time and a way for everything, even when a person is in trouble.

Indeed, how can people avoid what they don’t know is going to happen? None of us can hold back our spirit from departing. None of us has the power to prevent the day of our death. There is no escaping that obligation, that dark battle. And in the face of death, wickedness will certainly not rescue the wicked.

Why throw away what we do have over the little things in this life? Even if all the disasters happen, the sun will still shine another day. You can still see all of the beautiful things that God has made on this earth. If the food prices get too expensive then I’ll start getting good at farming and hunting. If my house gets foreclosed then I’ll go build myself a new home. If gas becomes impossible to get then I’ll get a bike. If I die then I rejoice for I get to meet my maker. All of these things try to pull us away from the things that is most important in this life: what you leave behind in the minds of others. Religious or secular, that’s the only thing that you have left here on this planet when you finally do return to the dust that we have all came from. I know that it’s hard because I have to struggle with this all the time. If I didn’t then I wouldn’t be able to talk to you about it here. Several months back I was ready to come up here to this blog and say the nastiest things to the people that I cared about the most. And over what! Gas prices and the fact that congress wouldn’t do a thing about it! What a waste that would have been! And when I finally had my plans straight to tell everyone off then my self hatred started to creep in again. The one who stopped me was God. I prayed for Him to calm me down and He did. He told me while I was stressing at work “it’s alright, my son. I AM still in control.” I had to get a grip over myself to keep me from busting out crying in the middle of work when He said that. But He filled me with peace again and I finally had regained myself. Who I was always meant to be! You can let the things of this world tear you apart or you can fight hard for the ones that you love. There’s plenty of things to tear you apart in this world. The licker that I am enjoying now can kill you, but you can take it as a blessing from God and keep it from controlling you. The Snuff that I am enjoying now is addictive, but you can hold back from it if you trust in God. Everything in this world seeks your destruction if you let it! “For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.” (Ephesians 6:12) It’s within our own mind that the battle must be waged! The temptation to see our selfs as a victim to this world is strong and it’s deeply rooted in our culture but you must fight it if you wish to live a happy life. It’s hard! But we were not promised an easy life on this earth and everyone has a battle to fight. This I know this to be true: one can not bare the cross of another’s. So many times that I talk to others and I realize that if I had been given their circumstances I would be dead. However the vice versa is also true. God tailors our struggles for us and gives us a way out. “Enjoy prosperity while you can, but when hard times strike, realize that both come from God. Remember that nothing is certain in this life.” (Ecclesiastes 7:14)

I know that for you atheists out there I have not given you any good reason to trust in God. In fact it is Irrational of me to say that there is a God. I don’t have a single shred of proof for you that there is a God. However I do have a question for you. Has your fight against the existence of God made you a much happier and kinder person? If it has, then by all means keep on fighting! Make your case to the absolute best of your ability and never hold back! However if it has not, then I think you should ask yourself why that is. I’m am by no means the person that you will be accountable to but rather, yourself. If I am wrong and my faith profits me nothing I can at least say at the end of all things that my faith in God had given me a much more joyous life than I could have possibly have imagined. Will that be true of you my fellow and beloved atheists? We are all born and we all die but what does a life gain if it has no love? What does all the wealth of the earth matter if everyone hates you name for all of eternity? If it is too hard for you to love a God that allows for such a crazy and evil world to exist, then at least love thous around you. You can ether take joy or hate to the grave. I chose Joy!

1 comment.

A Liberal’s Lament-of Obama!

Posted on September 2nd, 2008 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: Political, Party System, War, Terrorism, Philosophy, Democrats, Iran, Economics.

What! A liberal lamenting Obama! Just say it ain’t so! I am vary sorry for you libs out there but it’s true. Sean Wilentz put up this post at Newsweek on the 23rd last month saying “To win, Obama must convince the country that he is a man of substance, not just style. History suggests this won’t be easy.” And this guy is a professor from Princeton University and he’s slamming on Obama! That’s not good when the people who are suppose to be in you back pocket automatically start getting down on you. Here’s what he put up in Newsweek:

Obama’s most ardent admirers, who include much of the political press and practically all of the liberal intelligentsia, will almost certainly report and analyze the event as a mammoth historical occasion, and quite possibly praise the speech as one of the greatest political orations ever. But will Obama, amid the pulsating theatrics, also attempt the less glamorous and more difficult task of explaining specifically where he wants to move the country, and how he proposes to move it, above and beyond reciting his policy positions? History, as well as recent public-opinion polls, suggests that he badly needs to do so. As a lifelong Democrat who supported Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton during the primaries, I would like to see him succeed in fulfilling his promise.

I don’t think he did a good job of that.

Since the end of World War II, every Democrat who has sought the presidency has attempted to update the legacy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal. From Harry Truman to Bill Clinton, those elected president have refreshed the liberal tradition by promising to put their own stamp upon it, and then doing so. After 40 years of mostly Republican control of the White House, it should be clear that mistakes and overreaching have hampered liberalism’s evolution. But by renewing the idea that government has an important role to play in expanding the opportunities and well-being of ordinary Americans, the basic Democratic tradition has survived through thick and thin.

Senator Obama’s efforts to reinterpret the Democratic legacy have thus far amounted chiefly to promising a dramatic break with the status quo. His rhetoric of “hope” and “change” has thrilled millions of Democrats and helped secure the party’s nomination. Yet millions of other Democrats still find his appeals wispy and unconvincing, and the persistent coolness within the ranks worries some party veterans. Democratic governors have already urged him to be more explicit about how he intends to adjust the party’s principles to meet today’s challenges.

But he knows that if he does that people won’t vote for him. Sean Wilentz then goes through prevous Democrat victories and the “blunders” of the Bush administration and then he says this:

Against this backdrop, how has the presumptive Democratic nominee, Barack Obama, proposed to revivify Democratic liberalism? There is a quotation that ought to give Democrats, and not just Democrats, pause: “This year will not be a year of politics as usual. It can be a year of inspiration and hope, and it will be a year of concern, of quiet and sober reassessment of our nation’s character and purpose. It has already been a year when voters have confounded the experts. And I guarantee you that it will be the year when we give the government of this country back to the people of this country. There is a new mood in America. We have been shaken by a tragic war abroad and by scandals and broken promises at home. Our people are searching for new voices and new ideas and new leaders.”

Delivered in Obama’s exhortatory cadences, the words are uplifting. The trouble is, though they seem to fit, the passage is from Carter’s acceptance speech at the Democratic convention in 1976.

You don’t want to be compared to Carter! and this is a liberal doing it!

The convergence is revealing. As Republican strategists have begun to notice with delight, Obama’s liberal alternative to the post-Bush GOP to date has much in common with Carter’s post-Watergate liberalism. Rejecting “politics as usual,” attacking “Washington” as the problem, promising to heal the breaches and hurts caused by partisan political polarization, pledging to break the grip that lobbyists and special interests hold over the national government, wearing his Christian faith on his sleeve as a key to his mind, heart and soul—in all of these ways, Obama resembles Jimmy Carter more than he does any other Democratic president in living memory.

In other ways, Obama’s liberal vision appears clouded, uncertain and even contradictory. During his four years in Washington, he has compiled one of the most predictably liberal voting records in the Senate—yet he presents himself as an advocate of bipartisanship and ideological flexibility. He has offered himself as the tribune of sweeping change—yet he also proclaims national unity, as if transformation can come without struggle. He has emerged as the champion of a new, post-racial politics, even though he has only grudgingly separated himself from his pastor of 20 years, who every week preached a gospel of “black liberation theology” that has everything to do with racial politics.

Again, a liberal saying this!

The most obvious change to liberal politics Obama has to offer is the color of his skin. Some of his supporters have, whether wittingly or not, been candid enough to say, as Sen. John Kerry did last March, that Obama’s blackness is the rationale for making him president. But it is difficult to square such claims with Obama’s appeal to a liberalism that transcends race. And when Obama himself subtly and not so subtly draws attention to his color, and charges that the John McCain Republicans will try to scare voters by saying he “doesn’t look like all those presidents on the dollar bills,” he turns voting for him into an intrinsically virtuous act, proof that one has resisted base appeals to racism (which, in fact, the McCain campaign has not made).

You have to give props to the other side when they say something right.

Much of Obama’s appeal to the left stems from what might be called the romance of the community organizer. Although his organizing career on Chicago’s South Side was brief and, by his own admission, unremarkable, it distinguishes him as another first of his kind in presidential politics, a candidate who looks at politics from the bottom up. For the left, community organizing trumps party politics and experience in government. Some even imagine that Obama is a secret radical, and they see his emergence as an unparalleled opportunity for advancing their frustrated agendas about issues ranging from the redistribution of wealth to curtailing U.S. power abroad.

I think P. Muse is going to have a much better “community organizer” carer than Obama, and I still won’t vote for him for president, even though I love him (in a friendship sort of sense, that is). By the why, what exactly does “community organizer” mean anyway?

Obama still has a long way to go to describe the kind of liberalism he stands for, how it meets the enormous challenges of the present—and how it will meet as-yet-unanticipated challenges after the election. Nowhere is this more crucial than in the harsh and volatile realm of foreign policy. Last winter, when his candidacy gained traction, Obama’s foreign-policy credentials consisted almost entirely of a speech he gave before a left-wing rally in Chicago in 2002, denouncing the impending invasion of Iraq as “a dumb war.” That speech, made by a state senator representing a liberal district that included the University of Chicago, and that went unreported in the Chicago Tribune’s lengthy article on the rally, was enough to convince many of his supporters that he is blessed with superior acumen and good instincts about foreign affairs. Later comments, such as his promise, later softened, to meet directly and “without preconditions” with the leaders of Iran and other supporters of terrorism, pleased left-wing Democrats and young antiwar voters as a sign of boldness—even as they left experienced diplomats in wonder at such half-baked formulations.

Then, suddenly this summer, Russia attacked Georgia—and Obama’s immediate reaction was to call for reasonableness and good intentions and urge both sides to show restraint and enter into direct talks. Unfortunately his appeal sounded almost like a caricature of liberal wishful thinking. It was left to his opponent, John McCain—whose own past judgments on foreign policy demand scrutiny—to declare right away the sort of thing that might have come naturally to previous generations of liberal Democrats (let alone to a conservative Republican): that “Russia should immediately and unconditionally cease its military operations and withdraw all forces from sovereign Georgian territory.” Beyond the matter of experience, beyond how thoroughly the two candidates had thought through the situation, the difference highlighted how Obama still lacks a comprehensive vision of international politics.

That’s because he’s a lightweight.

That Obama’s record and statements have created any other impression cannot be ascribed only to his campaign’s political skills and the news media’s favor. Liberal intellectuals have largely abdicated their responsibility to provide unblinking and rigorous analysis instead of paeans to Obama’s image. Hardly any prominent liberal thinkers stepped forward to question Obama’s rationalizations about his relationship with his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. Instead, they hailed his ever-changing self-justifications and sometimes tawdry logic—equating his own white grandmother’s discomfort in the presence of a menacing stranger with Wright’s hateful sermons—as worthy of the monumental addresses of Lincoln. Liberal intellectuals actually could have aided their candidate, while also doing their professional duty, by pressing him on his patently evasive accounts about various matters, such as his connections with the convicted wheeler-dealer Tony Rezko, or his more-than-informal ties to the unrepentant terrorist William Ayers, including their years of association overseeing an expensive, high-profile, but fruitless public-school reform effort in Chicago. Instead, the intellectuals have failed Obama as well as their readers by branding such questioning as irrelevant, malicious or heretical.

Ouch!

Can Obama, who lost the large industrial states in the primaries, deal with a troubled economy and become the standard bearer for the working and middle classes—the historic core of the Democratic Party that the last two Democratic candidates lost? Can the inexperienced candidate persuasively outline a new foreign policy that addresses the quagmires left by the Bush administration and faces the challenges of terrorism and a resurgent Russia? Can the less-than-one-term senator become the master of the Congress and enact goals such as universal health care that have eluded Democratic presidents since Truman? On these fundamental questions may hang the fate of Obama’s candidacy. In the absence of a compelling record, set speeches, even with the most stirring words, will not resolve these matters. And until he resolves them, Obama will remain the most unformed candidate in the modern history of presidential politics.

Man that’s really harsh! This is a liberal professor saying this! Not to mention that we are seeing a real resurgence of the conservitive movement by the nomination of Sarah Palin. I mean top conservatives of our day are saying that she is the rebirth of Reagan here. I been hearing women just calling her Sarah! I think Obama’s in for a big surprise come November and I even think that McCain may even step aside after one term and just let Sarah take over. Wait… now I just did it!

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The President gives another great speech

Posted on May 19th, 2008 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: Political, Crime, War, Law, Terrorism, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Palestine, Economics.

This from The whitehouse.gov:

Laura and I are delighted to be in Egypt, and we bring the warm wishes of the American people. We’re proud of our long friendship with your citizens. We respect your remarkable history. And we’re humbled to walk in the ancient land of pharaohs, where a great civilization took root and wrote some of the first chapters in the epic story of humanity.

America is a much younger nation, but we’ve made our mark by advancing ideals as old as the pyramids. Those ideals of liberty and justice have sparked a revolution across much of the world. This hopeful movement made its way to places where dictators once reigned and peaceful democracies seemed unimaginable: places like Chile and Indonesia and Poland and the Philippines and South Korea. These nations have different histories and different traditions. Yet each made the same democratic transition, and they did it on their own terms. In these countries, millions every year are rising from poverty. Women are realizing overdue opportunities. And people of faith are finding the blessing of worshiping God in peace.

All these changes took place in the second half of the 20th century. I strongly believe that if leaders like those of you in this room act with vision and resolve, the first half of 21st century can be the time when similar advances reach the Middle East. This region is home to energetic people, a powerful spirit of enterprise, and tremendous resources. It is capable of a very bright future — a future in which the Middle East is a place of innovation and discovery, driven by free men and women.

In recent years, we’ve seen hopeful beginnings toward this vision. Turkey, a nation with a majority Muslim population, is a prosperous modern democracy. Afghanistan under the leadership of President Karzai is overcoming the Taliban and building a free society. Iraq under the leadership of Prime Minister Maliki is establishing a multi-ethnic democracy. We have seen the stirrings of reform from Morocco and Algeria to Jordan and the Gulf States. And isolation from the outside world is being overcome by the most democratic of innovations: the cell phone and the Internet. America appreciates the challenges facing the Middle East. Yet the light of liberty is beginning to shine.

There is much to do to build on this momentum. From diversifying your economies, to investing in your people, to extending the reach of freedom, nations across the region have an opportunity to move forward with bold and confident reforms — and lead the Middle East to its rightful place as a center of progress and achievement.

Taking your place as a center of progress and achievement requires economic reform. This is a time of strength for many of your nations’ economies. Since 2004, economic growth in the region has averaged more than 5 percent. Trade has expanded significantly. Technology has advanced rapidly. Foreign investment has increased dramatically. And unemployment rates have decreased in many nations. Egypt, for example, has posted strong economic growth, developed some of the world’s fastest growing telecommunications companies, and made major investments that will boost tourism and trade. In order for this economic progress to result in permanent prosperity and an Egypt that reaches its full potential, however, economic reform must be accompanied by political reform. And I continue to hope that Egypt can lead the region in political reform.

This is also a time to prepare for the economic changes ahead. Rising price of oil has brought great wealth to some in this region, but the supply of oil is limited, and nations like mine are aggressively developing alternatives to oil. Over time, as the world becomes less dependent on oil, nations in the Middle East will have to build more diverse and more dynamic economies.

Your greatest asset in this quest is the entrepreneurial spirit of your people. The best way to take advantage of that spirit is to make reforms that unleash individual creativity and innovation. Your economies will be more vibrant when citizens who dream of starting their own companies can do so quickly, without high regulatory and registration costs. Your economies will be more dynamic when property rights are protected and risk-taking is encouraged — not punished — by law. Your economies will be more resilient when you adopt modern agricultural techniques that make farmers more productive and the food supply more secure. And your economies will have greater long-term prosperity when taxes are low and all your citizens know that their innovation and hard work will be rewarded.

One of the most powerful drivers of economic growth is free trade. So nations in this region would benefit greatly from breaking down barriers to trade with each other. And America will continue working to open up trade at every level. In recent years, the United States has completed free trade agreements with Jordan, Oman, Morocco, and Bahrain. America will continue to negotiate bilateral free trade agreements in the region. We strongly supported Saudi Arabia’s accession to the World Trade Organization, and we will continue to support nations making the reforms necessary to join the institutions of a global economy. To break down trade barriers and ignite economic growth around the world, we will work tirelessly for a successful outcome to the Doha Round this year.

As we seek to open new markets abroad, America will keep our markets open at home. There are voices in my country that urge America to adopt measures that would isolate us from the global economy. I firmly reject these calls for protectionism. We will continue to welcome foreign investment and trade. And the United States of America will stay open for business.

Taking your place as a center of progress and achievement requires investing in your people. Some analysts believe the Middle East and North Africa will need to create up to 100 million new jobs over the next 10 to 15 years just to keep up with population growth. The key to realizing this goal is an educated workforce.

This starts early on, with primary schools that teach basic skills, such as reading and math, rather than indoctrinating children with ideologies of hatred. An educated workforce also requires good high schools and universities, where students are exposed to a variety of ideas, learn to think for themselves, and develop the capacity to innovate. Not long ago the region marked a hopeful milestone in higher education. In our meeting yesterday, President Karzai told me he recently handed out diplomas to university graduates, including 300 degrees in medicine, and a hundred degrees in engineering, and a lot of degrees to lawyers, and many of the recipients were women. (Applause.)

People of the Middle East can count on the United States to be a strong partner in improving your educational systems. We are sponsoring training programs for teachers and administrators in nations like Jordan and Morocco and Lebanon. We sponsored English language programs where students can go for intensive language instruction. We have translated more than 80 children’s books into Arabic. And we have developed new online curricula for students from kindergarten through high school.

It is also in America’s interest to continue welcoming aspiring young adults from this region for higher education to the United States. There were understandable concerns about student visas after 9/11. My administration has worked hard to improve the visa process. And I’m pleased to report that we are issuing a growing numbers of student visas to young people from the Middle East. And that’s the way it should be. And we’ll continue to work to expand educational exchanges, because we benefit from the contribution of foreign students who study in America because we’re proud to train the world’s leaders of tomorrow and because we know there is no better antidote to the propaganda of our enemies than firsthand experience with life in the United States of America.

Building powerful economies also requires expanding the role of women in society. This is a matter of morality and of basic math. No nation that cuts off half its population from opportunities will be as productive or prosperous as it could be. Women are a formidable force, as I have seen in my own family — (laughter and applause) — and my own administration. (Applause.) As the nations of the Middle East open up their laws and their societies to women, they are learning the same thing.

I applaud Egypt. Egypt is a model for the development of professional women. In Afghanistan, girls who were once denied even a basic education are now going to school, and a whole generation of Afghans will grow up with the intellectual tools to lead their nation toward prosperity. In Iraq and Kuwait, women are joining political parties and running campaigns and serving in public office. In some Gulf States, women entrepreneurs are making a living and a name for themselves in the business world.

This shows good economic understanding on the part of the president. Why do people keep on saying he’s stupid?

Taking your place as a center of progress and achievement requires extending the reach of freedom. Expanding freedom is vital to turning temporary wealth into lasting prosperity. Free societies stimulate competition in the marketplace. Free societies give people access to information they need to make informed and responsible decisions. And free societies give citizens the rule of law, which exposes corruption and builds confidence in the future.

Freedom is also the basis for a democratic system of government, which is the only fair and just ordering of society and the only way to guarantee the God-given rights of all people. Democracies do not take the same shape; they develop at different speeds and in different ways, and they reflect the unique cultures and traditions of their people. There are skeptics about democracy in this part of the world, I understand that. But as more people in the Middle East gain firsthand experience from freedom, many of the arguments against democracy are being discredited.

For example, some say that democracy is a Western value that America seeks to impose on unwilling citizens. This is a condescending form of moral relativism. The truth is that freedom is a universal right — the Almighty’s gift to every man, woman, and child on the face of Earth. And as we’ve seen time and time again, when people are allowed to make a choice between freedom and the alternative, they choose freedom. In Afghanistan, 8 million people defied the terrorist threats to vote for a democratic President. In Iraq, 12 million people waved ink-stained fingers to celebrate the first democratic election in decades. And in a recent survey of the Muslim world, there was overwhelming support for one of the central tenets of democracy, freedom of speech: 99 percent in Lebanon, 94 percent here in Egypt, and 92 percent in Iran.

There are people who claim that democracy is incompatible with Islam. But the truth is that democracies, by definition, make a place for people of religious belief. America is one of the most — is one of the world’s leading democracies, and we’re also one of the most religious nations in the world. More than three-quarters of our citizens believe in a higher power. Millions worship every week and pray every day. And they do so without fear of reprisal from the state. In our democracy, we would never punish a person for owning a Koran. We would never issue a death sentence to someone for converting to Islam. Democracy does not threaten Islam or any religion. Democracy is the only system of government that guarantees their protection.

Some say any state that holds an election is a democracy. But true democracy requires vigorous political parties allowed to engage in free and lively debate. True democracy requires the establishment of civic institutions that ensure an election’s legitimacy and hold leaders accountable. And true democracy requires competitive elections in which opposition candidates are allowed to campaign without fear or intimidation.

Too often in the Middle East, politics has consisted of one leader in power and the opposition in jail. America is deeply concerned about the plight of political prisoners in this region, as well as democratic activists who are intimidated or repressed, newspapers and civil society organizations that are shut down, and dissidents whose voices are stifled. The time has come for nations across the Middle East to abandon these practices, and treat their people with dignity and the respect they deserve. I call on all nations to release their prisoners of conscience, open up their political debate, and trust their people to chart their future. (Applause.)

The vision I have outlined today is shared by many in this region — but unfortunately, there are some spoilers who stand in the way. Terrorist organizations and their state sponsors know they cannot survive in a free society, so they create chaos and take innocent lives in an effort to stop democracy from taking root. They are on the wrong side in a great ideological struggle — and every nation committed to freedom and progress in the Middle East must stand together to defeat them.

We must stand with the Palestinian people, who have suffered for decades and earned the right to be a homeland of their own — have a homeland of their own. I strongly support a two-state solution — a democratic Palestine based on law and justice that will live with peace and security alongside a democrat Israel. I believe that the Palestinian people will build a thriving democracy in which entrepreneurs pursue their dreams, and families own their homes in lively communities, and young people grow up with hope in the future.

Last year at Annapolis, we made a hopeful beginning toward a peace negotiation that will outline what this nation of Palestine will look like — a contiguous state where Palestinians live in prosperity and dignity. A peace agreement is in the Palestinians’ interests, it is in Israel’s interests, it is in Arab states’ interests, and it is in the world’s interests. And I firmly believe that with leadership and courage, we can reach that peace agreement this year. (Applause.)

This is a demanding task. It requires action on all sides. Palestinians must fight terror and continue to build the institutions of a free and peaceful society. Israel must make tough sacrifices for peace and ease the restrictions on the Palestinians. Arab states, especially oil-rich nations, must seize this opportunity to invest aggressively in the Palestinian people and to move past their old resentments against Israel. And all nations in the region must stand together in confronting Hamas, which is attempting to undermine efforts at peace with acts of terror and violence.

We must stand with the people of Lebanon in their struggle to build a sovereign and independent democracy. This means opposing Hezbollah terrorists, funded by Iran, who recently revealed their true intentions by taking up arms against the Lebanese people. It is now clearer than ever that Hezbollah militias are the enemy of a free Lebanon — and all nations, especially neighbors in the region, have an interest to help the Lebanese people prevail. (Applause.)

We must stand with the people of Iraq and Afghanistan and other nations in the region fighting against al Qaeda and other extremists. Bin Laden and his followers have made clear that anyone who does not share their extremist ideology is fit for murder. That means every government in the Middle East is a target of al Qaeda. And America is a target too. And together, we will confront and we will defeat this threat to civilization.

We must stand with the good and decent people of Iran and Syria, who deserve so much better than the life they have today. Every peaceful nation in the region has an interest in stopping these nations from supporting terrorism. And every peaceful nation in the region has an interest in opposing Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions. To allow the world’s leading sponsor of terror to gain the world’s deadliest weapon would be an unforgivable betrayal of future generations. For the sake of peace, the world must not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon. (Applause.)

The changes I have discussed today will not come easily — change never does. But the reform movement in the Middle East has a powerful engine: demographics. Sixty percent of the population is under 30 years old. Many of these young people surf the web, own cell phones, have satellite televisions. They have access to unprecedented amounts of information. They see what freedom has brought to millions of others and contrast that to what they have at home.

Today, I have a message for these young people: Some tell — some will tell you change is impossible, but history has a way of surprising us, and change can happen more quickly than we expect. In the past century, one concept has transcended borders, cultures, and languages. In Arabic, “hurriyya” — in English, “freedom.” Across the world, the call for freedom lives in our hearts, endures in our prayers, and joins humanity as one.

I know these are trying times, but the future is in your hands — and freedom and peace are within your grasp. Just imagine what this region could look like in 60 years. The Palestinian people will have the homeland they have long dreamed of and deserve — a democratic state that is governed by law, respects human rights, and rejects terror. Israel will be celebrating its 120 anniversary as one of the world’s great democracies — a secure and flourishing homeland for the Jewish people.

Again he outlines that freedom is the way to defeat the Jihadist.

From Cairo, Riyadh, Baghdad to Beirut, people will live in free and independent societies, where a desire for peace is reinforced by ties of diplomacy and tourism and trade. Iran and Syria will be peaceful nations, where today’s oppression is a distant memory and people are free to speak their minds and develop their talents. Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Hamas will be defeated, as Muslims across the region recognize the emptiness of the terrorists’ vision and the injustice of their cause.

This vision is the same one I outlined in my address to the Israeli Knesset. Yet it’s not a Jewish vision or a Muslim vision, not an American vision or an Arab vision. It is a universal vision, based on the timeless principles of dignity and tolerance and justice — and it unites all who yearn for freedom and peace in this ancient land.

Realizing this vision will not be easy. It will take time, and sacrifice, and resolve. Yet there is no doubt in my mind that you are up to the challenge — and with your ingenuity and your enterprise and your courage, this historic vision for the Middle East will be realized. May God be with you on the journey, and the United States of America always will be at your side.

Despite the fact that many people hate him, I still believe that President Gorge W. Bush will later be regarded as one of the best presidents we have had in some time. He has made some massively bad decisions in his presidency but he has made the right decisions that have keep us safe for the last 7 years. This speech shows that he is a visionary president who see a time that there will be peace in the middle east but it is a peace that will take time to come to pass. Now that a new generation is starting to take hold of this county, it’s time that we start to work hard and fight hard to keep this great nation intact. Given enough time and had work we can make the Jihadist movement in this world a thing of the past. It will be hard but for the sake of our children, we must do it.

2 comments.

Intelligence community is one again proving it’s worthlessness

Posted on December 12th, 2007 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: Political, War, Terrorism, Iran.

This time over Iran. 16 of our Intelligence agencies have now flopped back and said that Iran stopped making nuclear bombs in 2003. This from the Washingtonpost.com:

THE NEW National Intelligence Estimate on Iran contains some unambiguously good news: that Tehran halted a covert nuclear weapons program in 2003, and that it is responsive to the sort of international pressure applied by the United States and other Western governments. Iran’s “decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic and military costs,” says the public summary released Monday. That sounds like an endorsement of the diplomatic strategy pursued by the Bush administration since 2005, which has been aimed at forcing Iran to choose between the nuclear program and normal economic and security relations with the outside world. It strengthens the view, which we have previously endorsed, that this administration should not have to resort to military action to destroy Iranian nuclear facilities.

But there is bad news, too, which seems likely to be overlooked by those who have been resisting sanctions and other pressure on the mullahs all along, such as Russia, China and some members of the European Union. While U.S. intelligence agencies have “high confidence” that covert work on a bomb was suspended “for at least several years” after 2003, there is only “moderate confidence” that Tehran has not restarted the military program. Iran’s massive overt investment in uranium enrichment meanwhile proceeds in defiance of binding U.N. resolutions, even though Tehran has no legitimate use for enriched uranium. The U.S. estimate of when Iran might produce enough enriched uranium for a bomb — sometime between late 2009 and the middle of the next decade — hasn’t changed.

Oh we’ll stop makeing the bombs but we’ll keep making what we need to make them. That will make me sleep good tomrrow morning.

“Tehran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons,” says the summary’s second sentence. Yet within hours of the report’s release, European diplomats and some U.S officials were saying that it could kill an arduous American effort to win support for a third U.N. Security Council resolution sanctioning Iran for failing to suspend uranium enrichment. It could also hinder separate U.S.-French efforts to create a new sanctions coalition outside the United Nations. In other words, the new report may have the effect of neutering the very strategy of pressure that it says might be effective if “intensified.”

It’s looking like the CIA is just trying to make damn sure that there will not be another fiasco like the Iraq WMD one. Problem is that 3 million dead will look a whole hell of a lot worse for them than bad intelligence for an invasion. But now Christopher Hitchens is going straight for the juggler of the CIA and is saying that we should completely disband the CIA. This from Slate.com:

it seems flabbergastingly improbable that President George W. Bush learned of the National Intelligence Estimate concerning Iranian nuclear ambitions only a few days before the rest of us did, but the haplessness of his demeanor suggested that he might, in fact, have been telling the truth. After all, had the administration known for any appreciable length of time that the mullahs had hit the pause button on their program in late 2003, it would have been in a position to make a claim that is quite probably true, namely, that our overthrow of Saddam Hussein had impressed the Iranians in much the same way as it impressed the Libyans and made them at least reconsider their willingness to continue flouting the Non-Proliferation Treaty. (Given that the examination of the immense Libyan stockpile also disclosed the fingerprints that led back to the exposure of the A.Q. Khan nuke-mart in Pakistan, the removal of Saddam from the chessboard has had more effect in curbing the outlaw WMD business than it is normally given credit for.)

Naw, it couldn’t have been the invasion of Iraq that made the Iranians think twice on making nukes.

Nobody seems entirely sure what caused our intelligence agencies to reverse their opinion, but it seems rather likely that the defection and/or abduction of Brig. Gen. Ali Reza Asgari, Iran’s former deputy minister of defense, in February of this year, has something to do with it. Asgari’s ostensibly principal job had been that of liaison with Hezbollah in Lebanon, but his debriefing could also have helped confirm pre-existing surmises about Iran’s reining-in of its nuclear ambitions.

He may have given us some good information but could it also be that he lied to cover for good ol’ Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Which is the most that can be said about those ambitions. It is completely false for anybody to claim, on the basis of this admitted “estimate,” that Iran has ceased to be a candidate member of the fatuously named nuclear “club.” It has the desire to acquire the weaponry, it retains the means to do so, and it has been caught lying and cheating about the process. If it suspended some overtly military elements of the project out of a justifiable apprehension in 2003, it has energetically persisted in the implicit aspects—most notably the installation of gas centrifuges at the plant in Natanz and the building of a heavy water reactor at Arak. All that the estimate has done is to define weaponry down and to suggest a distinction without much difference between a “civilian” and a “military” dimension of the same program. The acquisition of enriched uranium and of plutonium, for any purpose, is identical with the acquisition of a thermonuclear weapons capacity. Iran continues to strive to produce both, neither of which, as it happens, are required for its ostensible civilian energy needs.

Oh, all those enriched uranium plants are for civilian use!

The briefing that I was given by the British Embassy in Tehran in 2005, showing the howlingly glaring discrepancy between what Iran claims and what Iran does, is not in the least challenged by the most recent conclusions. To say that Iran has “stopped” rather than paused its program is to offer an opinion, not to present a finding. (For more on this, see the excellent article by Valerie Lincy and Gary Milhollin in the Dec. 6 New York Times, and also Jonathan Schell’s Dec. 9 piece on the Guardian’s Web site.) The mullahs are steadily amassing the uranium and plutonium ingredients of a weapon and will indeed soon be able to pause, along with other countries, like Japan, at the point where only a brief interlude and a swift spurt of effort would put them in full possession of the bomb.

And a deadly one at that.

Why, then, have our intelligence agencies helped to give the lying Iranian theocracy the appearance of a clean bill, while simultaneously and publicly (and with barely concealed relish) embarrassing the president and crippling his policy? It is not just a hypothetical strike on Iran that is rendered near-impossible by this estimate, but also the likelihood of any concerted diplomatic or economic pressure, as well. The policy of getting the United Nations to adopt sanctions on the regime, which was about to garner the crucial votes, can now be regarded as clinically dead. A fine day’s work by those who claim to guard us while we sleep.

While the rest of you seelp, I’m still awake.

One explanation is that, like Mark Twain’s cat, which having sat on a hot stove would never afterward sit on a cold one, the CIA has adopted a policy of caution to make up for its “slam-dunk” embarrassment over Iraq. This is a superficially plausible hypothesis, which ignores the fact that for most of the duration of the Iraq debate, the CIA was all but openly hostile to any argument for regime-change in Baghdad. This hostility extended all the way from a frenzied attempt to discredit Ahmad Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress, to the Plame/Wilson imbroglio, and the agency’s “referral” of Robert Novak’s disclosure to the Department of Justice. Interagency hostility in Washington, D.C., between the CIA and the Department of Defense has never been so damaging to any administration, let alone to any administration in time of war, as it has been to this one.

And now we have further confirmation of the astonishing culture of lawlessness and insubordination that continues to prevail at the highest levels in Langley. At a time when Congress and the courts are conducting important hearings on the critical question of extreme interrogation, and at a time when accusations of outright torture are helping to besmirch and discredit the United States all around the world, a senior official of the CIA takes the unilateral decision to destroy the crucial evidence. This deserves to be described as what it is: mutiny and treason. Despite a string of exposures going back all the way to the Church Commission, the CIA cannot rid itself of the impression that it has the right to subvert the democratic process both abroad and at home. Its criminality and arrogance could perhaps have been partially excused if it had ever got anything right, but, from predicting the indefinite survival of the Soviet Union to denying that Saddam Hussein was going to invade Kuwait, our spymasters have a Clouseau-like record, one that they have earned yet again with their exculpation of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It was after the grotesque estimate of continued Soviet health and prosperity that the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan argued that the CIA should be abolished. It is high time for his proposal to be revived. The system is worse than useless—it’s a positive menace. We need to shut the whole thing down and start again.

Hitchens has a point! Now I don’t know if trashing the whole thing and starting over is the most cost effective approach but it is certainly tempting. One thing is for sure, we need to clean out CIA from thous life long bureaucrats that see a peachy colored world and try to go around the world and sing Ku By Ya. That’s has been Bush’s most massive failure: the inability or more likely the inaction to actually get in the messy muck of the CIA and clean it up. A word for Rudy or Romney; if you get elected you better solve this or we will continue to make massively bad decisions.

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Columbia invites a terrorist to their campus

Posted on September 25th, 2007 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: War, Terrorism, Iran, education.

Yep that’s right they invited good ole Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak at Columbia. This was an absolutely stupid idea! Now the Iranian press has another propaganda piece like this from the Islamic Republic News Agency:

Despite entire US media objections, negative propagation and hue and cry in recent days over IRI President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s scheduled address at Colombia University, he gave his lecture and answered students questions here on Monday afternoon.

On second day of his entry in New York, and amid standing ovation of the audience that had attended the hall where the Iranian President was to give his lecture as of early hours of the day, Ahmadinejad said that Iran is not going to attack any country in the world.

Before President Ahamadinejad’s address, Colombia University Chancellor in a brief address told the audience that they would have the chance to hear Iran’s stands as the Iranian President would put them forth.

He said that the Iranians are a peace loving nation, they hate war, and all types of aggression.

Referring to the technological achievements of the Iranian nation in the course of recent years, the president considered them as a sign for the Iranians’ resolute will for achieving sustainable development and rapid advancement.

The audience on repeated occasion applauded Ahmadinejad when he touched on international crises.

At the end of his address President Ahmadinejad answered the students’ questions on such issues as Israel, Palestine, Iran’s nuclear program, the status of women in Iran and a number of other matters.

Just what we need in Iran: more propaganda! However I do have to give credit were credit is do and the Dean, Lee Bollinger, really did blast Ahmadinejad as being the leader to a terrorist state before Ahmadinejad got his turn to speak. But even more depressing than that was how the students were cheering when started to tell lies on his nuclear program and Israel. It wasn’t until he started to speak on homosexuality saying “We don’t have homosexuals in Iran” that the audience started to laugh at him followed up by boos. Also it’s interesting to note that they changed up the background to black from blue and set up a black podium for him (I wonder why?) Despite Bollinger’s superb augments and looking evil straight in the eye and calling it out, this really was a fiasco and only really instigated more propaganda for the Iranians. But still I can’t help but wonder were was this before? That is a speech that any conservative would make about Ahmadinejad at any function but he has to wait until he is face to face with evil in order to condemn it. But I am glad that he said what he did but still do we have to give our enemy help in making propaganda? I would have said what Bollinger said and then say that is why we are not letting you here to tarnish our image. But that’s just me.
here is the video.

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We’re still at war

Posted on April 25th, 2007 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: Political, War, Terrorism, Democrats, Iraq, Iran.

Here is an under reported piece from the TimesOnline.com:

AL-QAEDA leaders in Iraq are planning the first “large-scale” terrorist attacks on Britain and other western targets with the help of supporters in Iran, according to a leaked intelligence report.

Spy chiefs warn that one operative had said he was planning an attack on “a par with Hiroshima and Nagasaki” in an attempt to “shake the Roman throne”, a reference to the West.

Another plot could be timed to coincide with Tony Blair stepping down as prime minister, an event described by Al-Qaeda planners as a “change in the head of the company”.

The report, produced earlier this month and seen by The Sunday Times, appears to provide evidence that Al-Qaeda is active in Iran and has ambitions far beyond the improvised attacks it has been waging against British and American soldiers in Iraq.

There is no evidence of a formal relationship between Al-Qaeda, a Sunni group, and the Shi’ite regime of President Mah-moud Ahmadinejad, but experts suggest that ’s leaders may be turning a blind eye to the terrorist organisation’s activities.

Man I though those Sunnis and Shi’ites were suppose to hate each other.

The report was compiled by the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC) - based at MI5’s London headquarters - and provides a quarterly review of the international terror threat to Britain. It draws a distinction between Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda’s core leadership, who are thought to be hiding on the Afghan-Pakistan border, and affiliated organisations elsewhere.

The document states: “While networks linked to AQ [Al-Qaeda] Core pose the greatest threat to the, the intelligence during this quarter has highlighted the potential threat from other areas, particularly AQI [Al-Qaeda in].”

The report continues: “Recent reporting has described AQI’s Kurdish network in planning what we believe may be a large-scale attack against a western target.

“A member of this network is reportedly involved in an operation which he believes requires AQ Core authorisation. He claims the operation will be on ‘a par with Hiroshima and Naga-saki’ and will ‘shake the Roman throne’. We assess that this operation is most likely to be a large-scale, mass casualty attack against the West.”

The report says there is “no indication” this attack would specifically target Britain, “although we are aware that AQI . . . networks are active in the ”.

I’ve been telling you guys that if Iran gets a nuke they will use it and now it sounds like they may have one ready for the UK. But of course this is just another one of those little stories that nobody wants to talk about. All except Hugh Hewitt and Gerard Baker of the Times of London who had this to say:

HH: Your paper had a huge story yesterday which I cannot believe is not getting more press. It begins, “Al Qaeda leaders in Iraq are planning their first large-scale terrorist attacks on Britain and other Western targets with the help of supporters in Iran, according to a leaked intelligence report.” Gerard Baker, first of all, are you surprised that the story is not generating more interest?

GB: Yeah, a little bit surprised. I mean, one of the problems is there is, a lot of this information does tend to come out especially in Britain, and there’s…I have to be perfectly frank with you here and say that the standards, sometimes, of some British newspapers are not necessarily always as high as others. I’m not in any way suggesting that my colleague who wrote this article was in any way, his integrity is in any way to be impugned, but part of the problem is that there is so much stuff that comes out, and it’s so, some of it is not particularly well-sourced or well backed up, that people tend to kind of just say well, I’m not sure what to believe. So I read this article, and it seems to me a pretty serious article, and there’s a lot of stuff there. But I think there’s a slight tendency people have to discount some of the things that appear in some of the British papers, quite frankly because there’s too much of it.

HH: After the controversy surrounding intelligence related to WMD, I’m also wondering whether reports by papers of…for example, this leaked report from British intelligence comes from the Joint Terrorism Analysis Center…

GB: Yeah.

HH: …based at MI5’s London headquarters, that there’s a tendency to dismiss intelligence leaks. Is that part of the indifference being displayed today?

GB: Yeah, I think there is. I mean, there’s a question mark, obviously, about the credibility of some of the intelligence. We’ve had some problems, famously with Iraq, but to be really honest, with lots of other issues, too. I mean, Britain has had some of its own intelligence problems, although the British, we like to think that our intelligence has been very good over the years. We’ve had some big problems with it, whether actually it was in the Cold War, or to do with the IRA. So then, there’s also the sense that people with an agenda may be putting this material out. So for all of these reasons, there is a kind of, you know, people treat this stuff with caution when it comes out, although again, as I say, I know you’ve read it, and you look at it, and it seems pretty compelling stuff.

HH: Two parts of the report that was viewed by your reporter at the paper, one, spy chiefs warn that one operative, al Qaeda operative, said he was planning an attack on “a par with Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” in an attempt to, “shake the Roman throne,” a reference to the West. Another plot could be times to coincide with Tony Blair stepping down as prime minister, an event described by al Qaeda planners as a change in the head of the company. First of all, what’s your best understanding of when Blair will retire?

GB: We think that’ll be some time…well, it will certainly be sometime in the summer. The likely betting is he wants to stay on, the G8 Summit in Germany, I think, is in early July, and the expectation is that he’ll stay on beyond that, but not much beyond that. So most people are thinking he’ll be gone…he’ll probably announce it in the next month or so when he’s going to go, but then will actually depart sometime in July, or possibly August.

HH: Okay, so that gives about six months for MI5 and the rest to catch up with whoever is doing this plotting. What is the confidence level of most British in their intelligence agencies?

GB: It’s…again, it’s been damaged, as obviously has been the case in the United States by the intelligence failures over Iraq. I mean, that’s been, that clearly has been damaging, and remember, Britain was, you know, sometimes the British like to think and like to give the impression that they were sort of somehow kind of led down the garden path by the Americans, by the CIA and the other U.S. intelligence agencies on Iraq, and that actually, the good old British actually were just misled. Actually, the British intelligence was as firmly convinced that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and indeed was the source of some of the more contentious, of course, some of the more contentious claims about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, most notoriously, the famous, the ill-fated 16 words that President Bush used in his state of the union address in 2003. So that has been, so there is a credibility problem with British intelligence. There’s no question about that. Against all of that, however, it really must be said, I don’t think anybody seriously thinks that al Qaeda is not planning some serious attack on Britain. Britain has already suffered one very serious attack, the July, 2005 subway and bus bombings in London. The British authorities have done a very good job, the law enforcement authorities, of thwarting at least one other very serious attack, and several other minor, smaller attacks. So everybody knows that al Qaeda is targeting Britain, that Islamist terrorists are targeting Britain. Britain’s a pretty soft target. I hate to say it, but it’s true. Britain is a very open country, it has kind of open borders. I mean, even though it’s an island, it’s pretty easy to get into Britain. And much more importantly, of course, we have sort or harboring in our own bosom, as it were, extremist, the most extremist, radical Islamist groups who are sworn to carrying out terrorist attacks, and to destroying of what they can of British society. So nobody can be in any doubt at all, really, that attacks are being planned, and that as one, frankly, as one British senior official put it to me quite recently, that it’s just a matter of time when Britain is eventually hit.

Unfortunately I think he is exactly right and not only in Britain but here too. However like Gerard Baker said people are not going to pay attention because of all the politics that are being played here. Like the good ole’ Harry Reid saying this at Breitbart.com:

“I believe … that this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything, as is shown by the extreme violence in Iraq this week,” Reid said, on the same day US President George W. Bush was giving a speech at an Ohio town hall meeting defending the war on terror.

That’s the Senate Majority leader proclaiming defeat, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks for helping to embolden the enemy senator. But just don’t take my word for it read up on what Sergeant Major
J.D. Pendry, CSM, U.S.Army (retired) has to say about it:

Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Carl Levine, Barbara Boxer, Diane Feinstein, Russ Feingold, Hillary Clinton, Pat Leahy, Chuck Schumer et al ad nauseam. Every time you stand in front of television cameras and broadcast to the Islamic Nazis that we went to war because our President lied. That the war is wrong and our Soldiers are torturers. That we should leave Iraq, you give the Islamic butchers - the same ones that tortured and mutilated American Soldiers - cause to think that we will run away again and all they have to do is hang on a little longer.

American news media, the New YorkTimes particularly. Each time you publish stories about national defense secrets and our intelligence gathering methods, you become one with the sub-human pieces of camel dung that torture and mutilate the bodies of American Soldiers. You can’t strike up the courage to publish cartoons, but you can help Al Qaeda destroy my country. Actually, you are more dangerous to us than Al Qaeda is. Think about that each time you face Mecca to admire your Pulitzer.

You are America’s axis of idiots. Your collective stupidity will destroy us. Self-serving politics and terrorist abetting news scoops are more important to you than our national security or the lives of innocent civilians and Soldiers. It bothers you that defending ourselves gets in the way of your elitist sport of politics and your ignorant editorializing. There is as much blood on your hands as is on the hands of murdering terrorists. Don’t ever doubt that. Your frolics will only serve to extend this war as they extended Vietnam. If you want our Soldiers home, as you claim, knock off the crap and try supporting your country ahead of supporting your silly political aims and aiding our enemies. Yes, I’m questioning your patriotism. Your loyalty ends with -self. I’m also questioning why you’re stealing air that decent Americans could be breathing. You don’t deserve the protection of our men and women in uniform. You need to run away from this war and this country. Leave the war to the people who have the will to see it through and the country to people who are willing to defend it.

No Commander in Chief, you don’t get off the hook either. Our country has two enemies. Those who want to destroy us from the outside and those who attempt it from within. Your Soldiers are dealing with the outside force. It’s your obligation to support them by confronting the axis of idiots. America must hear it from you that these people are harming our country, abetting the enemy and endangering our safety. Well up a little anger please, and channel it toward the appropriate target. You must prosecute those who leak national security secrets to the media. You must prosecute those in the media who knowingly publish those secrets. Our Soldiers need you to confront the enemy that they cannot. They need you to do it now.

This is long but this retired CSM lets it all hang out! This should be sent to every person in the USA and that includes the President and the rest of our country’s leaders…It’s time we as Americans stood together!

Harsh words for everyone from the Sergeant Major but words that people need to hear. He is also right on the President as well, he has not been running this war very effectively and he dose need to find the leaks and prosecute them and even more than that he needs to be up there every month if not every week telling us how the war is going and telling us why we are there because Americans forget too quickly. Seeing that these evil people want to get their hands on a nuclear weapon to use we can not afford to overlook big stories like this one I reported. I Know that this war it hard. We just had another attack that killed nine of our soldiers. War is terrible but it is important that we fight it or we will lose our freedoms. Max Boot has just came back from Iraq and had this to say about his time there in the weekly standard:

The news from Iraq is, as usual, grim. Bombings, more bombings, and yet more bombings–that’s all the world notices. It’s easy to conclude that all is chaos. That’s not true. Some parts of Iraq are in bad shape, but others are improving. I spent the first two weeks of April in Baghdad, with side trips to Baqubah, Ramadi, and Falluja. Along the way I talked to everyone from privates to generals, both American and Iraqi. I found that, while we may not yet be winning the war, our prospects are at least not deteriorating precipitously, as they were last year. When General David Petraeus took command in February, he called the situation “hard” but not “hopeless.” Today there are some glimmers of hope in the unlikeliest of places.

Until recently Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, was the most dangerous city in Iraq if not the world. It was run by al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), which had declared it the capital of its Islamic State of Iraq. The Iraqi police presence was limited to one police station, which the police were afraid to leave. Soldiers and Marines engaged in heavy combat every day, losing hundreds of men since 2003, simply to avoid having insurgents overrun the government center and close down Route Michigan, the main street.

That began to change last year when the 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 1st Armored Division expanded the U.S. troop presence on the west side of town, losing almost 90 soldiers in the process.

The 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 3rd Infantry Division, which took over the city arlier this year, expanded the offensive toward the al Qaeda strongholds on the west side of town. From mid-February to the end of March, some 2,000 soldiers and Marines, along with their Iraqi allies, fought to gain control of the city. The principal operations were codenamed Murfreesboro (February 10-March 10), Okinawa (March 9-20), and Call to Freedom (March 17-30). Collectively, they deserve to take their place in the annals of this long war alongside such notable clashes as the taking of Tal Afar in 2005, the two battles of Falluja in 2004, and the thunder runs through Baghdad in 2003.

Each of the Ramadi offensives began with troops staging raids into the targeted area to eliminate “high value individuals”–local al Qaeda leaders. Then the troops would place three-foot-high concrete blocks known as Jersey barriers around the targeted neighborhood to prevent insurgents from “squirting out.” This would be followed by a clearing operation, with U.S. and Iraqi troops advancing from multiple directions to root out the enemy. Combat was intense. Insurgents fought back with everything from homemade bombs to AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenades, and heavy machine guns. Ten American soldiers were killed and another 40 wounded.

“The price was heavy but worth it,” says Colonel John W. Charlton, the burly commander of the 1st Brigade who directed the operations. “The enemy lost massively.”

We are going to win this war. If we do not win then that mens that we will lose our freedom and way of life. The Democrats are trying to make us lose this war. They will get us killed. It is that simple. However I believe that the American people are smart and your not going to be able to fool them all of the time. The Democrats are paving the way to their own landslide defeat. It may not be in ‘08 but when the American people realize that the Democrats are going to get them killed then the Democrats will have their landslide defeat. And when we do get another attack on our country the Democrats will just blame the President for it but we know better. We know that if it were not for them alway trying to undermined this war so that they can archive a political advantage then we may have already won this war. Bush should have done more but it is their fault for making our national security a political issue. The Democrats own defeat

7 comments.

Iran Blinks

Posted on April 6th, 2007 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: War, Terrorism, Iran.

The Biggest story that I missed out on last week was this Iranian Hostage crisis. This is from the defense News in the UK that is being briefed by Vice Admiral Charles Style, Deputy Chief of the defense Staff:

On 23 March a boarding team consisting of seven Royal Marines and eight sailors - who were embarked in two of HMS CORNWALL’s boats - conducted a routine boarding of an Indian flagged Merchant Vessel which was cooperative throughout. They investigated this vessel after witnessing her unloading cars into two barges secured alongside. Since early March the force has conducted 66 routine boardings. So the one that I’m talking about was entirely routine business, and conducted in a particular area where four other boardings have been completed recently.

As shown on the chart, the merchant vessel was 7.5 nautical miles south east of the Al Faw Peninsula and clearly in Iraqi territorial waters. Her master has confirmed that his vessel was anchored within Iraqi waters at the time of the arrest. The position was 29 degrees 50.36 minutes North 048 degrees 43.08 minutes East. This places her 1.7 nautical miles inside Iraqi territorial waters. This fact has been confirmed by the Iraqi Foreign Ministry.

The Iranian government has provided us with two different positions for the incident. The first we received on Saturday and the second on Monday. As this map shows, the first of these points still lies within Iraqi territorial waters. We pointed this out to them on Sunday in diplomatic contacts.

After we did this, they then provided a second set of coordinates that places the incident in Iranian waters over two nautical miles from the position given by HMS CORNWALL and confirmed by the merchant vessel. The two Iranian positions are just under a nautical mile apart – 1800 yards or so. It is hard to understand a reason for this change of coordinates. We unambiguously contest both the positions provided by the Iranians.

You have just got to love the British talent for understatements; they lied to you! But here is a picture of that chart.

Ladies and Gentlemen, my primary message is clear. HMS CORNWALL with her boarding party was going about her legal business – in Iraqi Territorial waters, under a United Nations Security Council Resolution, with the explicit approval of the Iraqi government.

The action by Iranian forces in arresting and detaining our people is unjustified and wrong. As such it is a matter of deep concern to us and the families of the people who have been taken. We continue not only to call for their safe, but for their safe and speedy, return, and we continue to seek immediate consular access to them as a prelude to their release.

Exactly right, the Iranians are the ones that violated Iraqi territorial waters and kidnapped 15 British sailors. but the Iranians did not stop there. They decided to parade the sailors around. This from the New York Times:

The dispute with Iran over Britain’s captured sailors and marines escalated sharply on Wednesday when Britain froze all “bilateral business” with Iran and the Iranians displayed some British prisoners on state television — an act condemned by the Foreign Office here as “completely unacceptable.”[…]

One of the captured sailors, Faye Turney, 26 — the only woman among the 15 Britons — was shown on Iranian television wearing a black head scarf and saying, “Obviously we trespassed into their waters” and praising her captors as “very friendly, very hospitable and very thoughtful, nice people.”

“They explained to us why we had been arrested,” she added.

Iran’s foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, attending a meeting in Saudi Arabia, indicated earlier that Ms. Turney could be released within days. “There was no hurt or harm,” Ms. Turney, whose rank is leading seaman, said in the television report. “They were very, very compassionate.”

Iranian authorities also made public what they said was a letter written by Ms. Turney to her family in which she expressed remorse for having strayed into Iranian waters and said she and the others were being treated well.

“We were out in the boats when we were arrested by Iranian forces as we had apparently gone into Iranian waters,” the letter said. “I wish we hadn’t because then I would be home with you all right now. I’m so sorry we did because I know we wouldn’t be here now if we hadn’t. I want you all to know that I am well and safe.

“I am being well looked after, I am fed three meals a day and I’m in constant supply of fluids,” the letter said. Her words were addressed in part to her husband, Adam, and her 3-year-old daughter, Molly.

Ok, I don’t know if she had Stockholm syndrome or she was forced into saying those things but putting that up on national television is a violation of the Geneva convention here. Not that Iran cares about the Geneva convention. But all of you libels out there that think “if you only play nice then they will be nice,” come on now they kidnapped 15 sailors and stated priding them on TV. While Iran was busy doing this Americans were getting angry. In an interview with Newt Gingrich, Hugh Hewett asked him about this situation and here is what he had to say:

NG: I think there are two very simple steps that should be taken. The first is to use a covert operation, or a special forces operation to knock out the only gasoline producing refinery in Iran. There’s only one. And the second is to simply intercede by Naval force, and block any tankers from bringing gasoline to Iran…

HH: Would you do, would you urge them…

NG: And say to the Iranians, you know, you can keep the sailors as long as you want, but in about 30 days, everybody in your country will be walking.

HH: So how long would you give them, to give them that ultimatum, the Iranians?

NG: I would literally do that. I would say to them, I would right now say to them privately, within the next week, your refinery will no longer work. And within the following week, there will be no tankers arriving. Now if you would like to avoid being humiliated publicly, we recommend you calmly and quietly give them back now. But frankly, if you’d prefer to show the planet that you’re tiny and we’re not, we’re prepared to simply cut off your economy, and allow you to go back to walking and using oxen to pull carts, because you will have no gasoline left.

HH: I agree with that 100%. Would your recommendation to the United States President be the same if Iran seized our forces?

NG: Absolutely. I mean, the reason I say that, it is the least violent, least direct thing you can do. It uses our greatest strength…you know, the mismatch in Naval power is absolute. And so you don’t have to send troops into Iran. Everybody on the left is waiting for conservatives to say things that allow them to run amok and parade in San Francisco, and claim that we’re warmongers. I want to avoid war by intelligently using our power to eliminate the option of sustaining an economy, so that the Iranian dictatorship will be shown to be the hollow dictatorship it is, so the people of Iran decide they’d like to have a decent government with real electricity and real gasoline, so they overthrow it. And I want to do that without risking a single American life, or being engaged in a single direct confrontation. And Naval power lets you do that.

However at the same time we get lefty blogs saying that it is “just payback” from ones like the Daily Kos. Always blaming America first from these people. However it is not us just crossing into Iran to try to blow up innocent civilians. But I think that most people do not care because their British sailors. What do they have to do with us? well I think Dean Barnett of HughHewitt.com does a good job of explaining it:

How is America involved?

The Iranians have been systematically testing the resolve of America’ s allies over the past several months. In response to Hezbollah’s provocations last summer, Israel fought back, although not as well or as capably as we’ve become accustomed to. Other than England, the rest of Europe has long been known as the lumbering ghosts of once great nations who made a pact with mediocrity decades ago. England, with its degraded Navy and equally degraded national will, has now officially joined their company.

Why didn’t Iran just kidnap 15 American soldiers?

That’s the question that no one seems to ask, especially those who consider Iran’s actions some sort of response to American wrong-doing. I’ve long argued in these virtual pages that George W. Bush scares the holy shinola out of the world’s bad men. If Iran tried this stunt on American troops, it’s hard to imagine President Bush being mindful of pleas to give diplomacy time to work.

This is where Bush is most effective as a wartime leader. For all his faults in communicating and building consensuses and crafting a coherent post-occupation strategy in Iraq, we’re fortunate to have him on that wall when the world’s bad men come calling.

That is exactly right and I would not be surprised to hear that part of the reason the Iran let them go was because our ambassador told them that we’re going to start bombing if they don’t release them soon. Ooops, I just skipped to the end there but yes they let them go. This from the Times Again:

Iran announced Wednesday that it would release 15 British sailors and marines it had seized at sea nearly two weeks ago, resolving a diplomatic impasse with what Iran’s president called a “gift” to the British people.

The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, declared that although Iran had every right to try the Britons on charges of trespassing in Iranian territorial waters, it would forgive and release them.

How and when the captives would be turned over to British officials has yet to be worked out, British officials said Wednesday night, but the group is expected to be on its way home by Thursday.

Iranian state television showed Mr. Ahmadinejad smiling and shaking the hands of some of the captives. Dressed in clothes apparently issued by their captors, the Britons waited in line to meet the president, looking almost as if they were a visiting sports team. “We are grateful for your forgiveness,” one said to Mr. Ahmadinejad, seemingly off the cuff.

News of the release, after days of behind-the-scenes diplomatic maneuvering, brought a peaceful, almost anticlimactic end to a crisis that began on March 23 when the Britons were seized in the disputed waters of the Shatt al-Arab waterway, just north of the Persian Gulf.

Awhhhhhhhh! Such a great guy that Mahmoud is! Give me a brake! We know that you guys took them from Iraqi waters! But it seem that there are plenty of people that are much more willing to believe the Iranian government that supports terror and is trying to kill our troops in Iraq than their own government. Such fool that they are. But it is good news that Iran did back down. Now they know that even when it is one of our allies that they are screwing with. Iran will get some good press here but I don’t think that many Americans will buy it. However I think that this is a loss for Mahmoud because now he looks weak to his more fanatic population but at least he bought himself some time before bombing begins.

4 comments.

Clark Warning Iran of attack

Posted on March 25th, 2007 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: Political, Iran.

Retired General Wesley Clark that is

This from the gulf times:

Elaborating on the role of the United States in the region, Clark said Iran could not underestimate America’s capability to launch strikes against the country in the event of a military option.
“If a military option is necessary, we could penetrate Iran’s air space in no time,” said the ex-general.
However, Clark said America favoured calm and peace to prevail in the Middle East region, and Iran had the duty to ensure peace for the region’s population. […] “We are for talks with Iran by Qatar, Saudi Arabia or any of America’s numerous friends in the region, but Iran should not consider dialogues as a sign of weakness of the US or its friends,” Clark said.
Talking later, Dr Sadegh Zibakalam from Iran said his country did not understand what exactly was in the mind of the US on the issue of Iran’s nuclear plans. “I strongly believe that the US is in a state of confusion and is worsening the scenario with the kind of bullying tactics that Americans had been employing for quite long,” he said.

Well I have an idea of how those negotiations should go:
“Good day Mr. Iranian Ambassador how are you?”
“I’m good how are you.”
“I’m great, now my government has instructed me to tell you that if you do not get rid of all of your uranium enrichment then we will bomb the crap out of you, ok.”

Not even the Iranian ambassador thinks that this is a good idea.

Before winding up his speech, the Iranian delegate appealed to the US to come out clear on the whole issue and asked the Americans not to go ahead with plans that he said could only strengthen the radicals in his country.

Maybe you should just give it up Clark, we don’t want you for president.

0 comments.

Russia withholding nuclear fuel to Iran

Posted on March 21st, 2007 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: Political, War, Iran.

Finally a little bit of good news in the world.

This from the New York Times:

Russia has informed Iran that it will withhold nuclear fuel for Iran’s nearly completed Bushehr power plant unless Iran suspends its uranium enrichment as demanded by the United Nations Security Council, European, American and Iranian officials said.

That just goes to show that there’s a line that not even the Russians will cross.

“We’re not sure what mix of commercial and political motives are at play here,” one senior Bush administration official said in Washington. “But clearly the Russians and the Iranians are getting on each other’s nerves — and that’s not all bad.”

“We consider this a very important decision by the Russians,” a senior European official said. “It shows that our disagreements with the Russians about the dangers of Iran’s nuclear program are tactical. Fundamentally, the Russians don’t want a nuclear Iran.”

At a time of growing tensions between Washington and Moscow, American officials are welcoming Russian aid on Iran as a sign that there are still areas in which the two powers can cooperate.

Russia has been deeply reluctant to ratchet up sanctions against Iran in the Security Council, which is expected to vote on a new set of sanctions against the country within the next week.

But American officials have also been trying to create a commercial incentive for Russia to put pressure on Iran. One proposal the Bush administration has endorsed since late 2005 envisions having the Russians enrich Iran’s uranium in Russia. That creates the prospect of tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in business for Russia and a way to ensure that Iran receives only uranium enriched for use in power reactors, instead of weapons.

Iran has rejected those proposals, saying it has the right to enrich uranium on its own territory.

So in other words Iran is still saying “screw you guys we’re still going to build nuclear weapons.” However at least Russia is not crazy enough to give them a nuclear bomb. But for all of you out there that say that their only trying to make peaceful nuclear power then why reject only making the enriched uranium used in power plants. I’ll tell you a little secret: It’s because they want to build a nuclear bomb to blow up Jerusalem. Well actually that is not a big secret because Mahmoud Ahmadinejad keeps on saying over and over again that he wants to blow up Israel. We are dealing with a bunch of crazy people who run that country that want nuclear weapons and have a very long track record of suicide attacks and they constantly say that we’re the target of their hate! Do you want them to have a nuclear Bomb?

2 comments.

Iran

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Index for posts concerning Iran

Things are blowing up in Israel, Again!

Palin, Clinton, Ahmadinejad, The Financial Collapse and God

A Liberal’s Lament-of Obama!

The President gives another great speech

Intelligence community is one again proving it’s worthlessness

Columbia invites a terrorist to their campus

We’re still at war

Iran Blinks

Clark Warning Iran of attack

Russia withholding nuclear fuel to Iran