White Flag Democrats

by Max Boot - November 30, 2005 - Los Angeles Times

And the Democrats wonder why they are considered weak on national security? It's not because anyone doubts their patriotism. It's because a lot of people doubt their judgment and toughness.

As if to prove the skeptics right, Democrats have been stepping forth to renounce their previous support for the liberation of Iraq even as Iraqis prepare to vote in a general election. Bill Clinton, Joe Biden, John Kerry, John Edwards, John Murtha — that's quite a list of heavyweight flip-floppers.

Clinton characteristically wants to have it both ways. He says the invasion was a "big mistake" but that we shouldn't pull out now because "there's a lot of evidence it can still work." (You mean, Mr. President, that we should continue sacrificing soldiers for a mistake?)

Actually, there are a lot of us who are starting to doubt the patriotism of democrats. There is clear evidence that a great number of them are so committed to socialism, that the destruction of our form of government is preferred to the continuation of capitalism which they so abhor.

When are the patriotic democrats going to stop aligning themselves with people who are committed to our destruction?

Win For Eminent Domain Could Leave It As A Loser

By Steve Chapman - November 28, 2005 - Baltimore Sun

Local governments that want to use their power of eminent domain to promote economic development won a huge victory last June when the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with them that seizing private property for such purposes does not violate the Constitution.

But that triumph brings to mind Oscar Wilde's remark: "In this life there are two great tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. The last is much the worst."

With all of this energy and effort aimed at overturning this one case, why can we not get rid of the tyrannical judges who made this decision? Why are all the efforts aimed at getting around the judges instead of getting rid of the judges? Why not impeach all 5 of the obviously corrupt judges who so arrogantly dismissed our Constitutional protections?

Even if their ruling becomes moot through the current efforts to stop the seizure of homes in other ways, in the long run, the supremacists win. Our courts still retain the power to destroy representative democracy, and they are slowly doing it with rulings like Kelo.

Woodward And The Plame Affair

By David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey - November 17, 2005 - The Washington Times

Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald should drop his prosecution of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff. In light of Bob Woodward's recent revelations, suggesting that he could have told Mr. Libby of Valerie Plame's CIA employment, Mr. Libby's conviction seems unlikely.

Everyone who thinks a democrat special prosecutor who has a chance to persecute a Republican will do the decent thing and ackowledge his innocence please hold up your hand. I need a good laugh.

Even before this latest evidence there was no justification for this persecution. It was an unreasonable stretch. Now that we know there are other reporters out there who were talking about this rather public CIA agent before Libby knew (something that General Vallely had already publicly insisted months ago), it is clear that Libby's insistence that he had heard it from journalists is probably true.

Woodward's own notes show that he knew about Plame before he met with Libby, and unless you think that Woodward is an incompetent buffoon, he asked Libby about her. The most important question is simple: "How could the 'special persecutor' not talk with a single one of the people who claimed it was public knowledge?" Some of them were adamant .... people like General Vallely. Unless the "special persecutor" was working to make sure he did not find out anything that would conflict with his desire to persecute Republicans, he would have at least talked with them.

Since he didn't, who can doubt the intentional bias of this "special persecutor"?

The lesson for Republcans is to stop acting like democrats are honestly interested in the truth. They always demand that a democrat be appointed to investigate Republicans "so there is no appearance of bias". They then make sure that anti-Republican bias is a part every decision to move forward. To a democrat, being a Republican is criminal. They will do anything to assure that the court system is used to further this opinion.

Turning On A Dime

By Jay D. Homnick - 11/15/2005 - The American Spectator

There ain't a dime's worth of difference between Democrats and Republicans, complained the late George Wallace back in 1968, when seven cents bought a Snickers bar. Thirty-seven years and 1,000 percent inflation later, you can still utter Wallace's cynical remark and it will buy you plenty of snickers at the local bar.

Here, then, as a public service, is my handy-dandy guide to who is a Democrat and who is a Republican.

These are funny. Definitely worth a read of you want to start your day with a smile.

Believe It or Not

Are you sure you want to keep saying we were fooled by Ahmad Chalabi and the INC?

By Christopher Hitchens - Nov. 14, 2005 - Slate

What do you have to believe in order to keep alive your conviction that the Bush administration conspired to launch a lie-based war? As with (I admit) the pro-war case, the ground of argument has a tendency to shift. I saw two examples in Washington last week. An exceptionally moth-eaten and shabby picket line outside Ahmad Chalabi's event on Wednesday featured a man with a placard alleging that Bush had prearranged the 9/11 attacks.

...............................

But then there is the really superb pedantry and literal-mindedness on which the remainder of the case depends. This achieved something close to an apotheosis on the front page of the Washington Post on Nov. 12, where Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus brought complete gravity to bear.

Anyone who really wants to try and convince the world that we should not have gone to war against Saddam Hussein needs to remember that only the most gullible and partisan democrats (or even liberals) believes that. Christopher Hitchens is there to remind them that they are wrong, and stupidly so. His summation is classic Hitchens.

We can now certify Iraq as disarmed, even if the materials once declared by the Saddam regime and never accounted for have still not been found. Why does this certified disarmament upset people so much? Would they rather have given Saddam the benefit of the doubt? Much more infuriating about the current anti-Chalabi hysteria is this: He turns up in Washington with a large delegation of Iraqi democrats, including a female Shiite ex-Communist, several Sunni dignitaries from the "hot" provinces, and the legendary Abdul Karim al-Muhammadawi, who led a genuine insurgency among the Marsh Arabs for 18 years. And the American left mounts a gargoyle picket line outside and asks silly and insulting questions inside, about a question that has already been decided. What a travesty this is.

Travesty. That truly is the correct word. Anyone who tries to argue that we should not have invaded Iraq, or that we would be better off if we had not, is simply a traitor. And their argument is a travesty.

Who Is Lying About Iraq?

Norman Podhoretz - December 2005 (Publish date, not actual date) - Commentary Magazine

Among the many distortions, misrepresentations, and outright falsifications that have emerged from the debate over Iraq, one in particular stands out above all others. This is the charge that George W. Bush misled us into an immoral and/or unnecessary war in Iraq by telling a series of lies that have now been definitively exposed.

What makes this charge so special is the amazing success it has enjoyed in getting itself established as a self-evident truth even though it has been refuted and discredited over and over again by evidence and argument alike.

There are two articles that have just been published that attempt to correct the lies of the MSM.

The first article above by Norman Podhoretz has an interesting list of all the consensus of the time which proves Saddam Hussein was continuing his attempt to secure WMD of all 3 types. Saddam had done one thing no one expected, which was temporarily dispose of all his existing supplies. This one side issue is now being used to attempt to re-write history and pretend that he had ended his hopes to get WMD at some time in the future. That is a total fabrication.

The second article is:

Not All Negative
Progress is being made in Iraq.

by Bill Crawford - November 09, 2005 - National Review Online

The mainstream media is failing in its reporting on Iraq. The American people are being fed a steady stream of negative stories about Iraq that in no way represent reality, and even if a positive story is reported it can be hard to spot. The New York Times reported on the ratification of the Iraqi constitution by attempting to calculate how many “yes” votes would have needed to change to “no” in order for the constitution to have failed. The week the ratification of the constitution became official was the same week the number of U.S. fatalities in Iraq reached 2,000. Some papers in the U.S. reported the casualty “milestone” on their front page, and completely ignored the story about the ratification of the constitution. Is it any wonder that more and more Americans are starting to believe that removing Saddam was a mistake? In stark contrast, 71 percent of Iraqis believe that Iraq will achieve long-term stability through the democratic process. The truth is that great things are happening in Iraq every day.

This second article has a compelling list of all the evidence of success in Iraq that is being intentionally ignored by the MSM. One success that I did not see even in this list, an ironic one, is the amazing success in reversing the massive environmental damage that Saddam had inflicted on the Marsh Arabs, and the Iraqi Marshes. These are a major wetlands area of the world, and certainly the major wetlands area in the middle east. The irony? Most of the people who are determined to spread lies about what is happening in Iraq claim to be environmentalists. Yet they are intentionally ignoring the most important environmental story of the year so they can bash America.

I Spy With My Little Eye . . .

. . . something beginning with the letter S. (Answer: Sloppy spooks.)

by Reuel Marc Gerecht - November 9, 2005 - The Wall Street Journal (Opinion Journal)

Know the truth about cover--that it is the Achilles' heel of the clandestine service--and you will begin to appreciate how deeply dysfunctional the operations directorate has been for years. Only a profoundly unserious Counter-Proliferation Division would have sent Mr. Wilson on an eight-day walkabout in Niger to uncover the truth about uranium sales to Saddam Hussein and then allowed him to give an oral report.

It is becoming more and more apparent to anyone who cares about truth that the entire purpose of Joe Wilson's attack on the Bush Administration during a campaign was an attempt by the CIA to change the outcome of an election. Plame was not an agent they seriously attempted to protect. Wilson had been cavalier about her being in the CIA for years. No serious report was ever given to the CIA .... it was oral and vague and not protected by the CIA's normal non-disclosure agreement. No attempt was made to keep Wilson from lying about what he had said, and lying on a public stage. This was a political hatchet job from the beginning, and it is seriously damaging to our representative democracy for the MSM to continue to pretend that CIA involvement in politics can be covered up by this farcial pretense that Wilson and his wife's motivations cannot be discussed because she is a covert agent.

Joe Wilson's Earlier Mission To Niger

by Clarice Feldman - November 17th, 2005 - The American Thinker

Not much commented on is the fact that in 1999, according to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Joseph A. Wilson IV made another trip to Niger, a trip also paid for by the CIA and for which he was chosen upon the recommendation of his wife, Valerie Plame.

This story is starting to get interesting. We now know that Joe Wilson twice was chosen by the CIA to go to Niger, once before the rumor about "yellowcake" started. This article links to a blogger who has uncovered links between Joe Wilson and Al Qeada, Joe Wilson and the U.N. WMD commission and Joe Wilson and earlier efforts by the CIA. There have long been suspicious things about this entire bizarre attack.

Why is it that Joe Wilson never had to sign the non-disclosure agreement that every other person investigating for the CIA has to sign?

Why did he not have to clear his story with the CIA, an act that is unrelated to signing the waiver?

Why is it that the numerous proven acts of Joe Wilson discussing his wifes CIA position never make it into any of the articles by the MSM?

Why is it that George Tenet's assurance to everyone that the WMD issue was a "slam dunk" never get coverage in the MSM?

Now there are suspicions that Joe Wilson may have seen the fraudulent documents that he referenced having seen, before he could have seen them in American hands. Is this because he is a French double agent and was thus part of the set up by France to embarrass George Bush?

Are he and his wife agents of a foreign power? Double agents in effect? He and his wife certainly live a life of money and privilege that cannot be supported by their known income.

The democratic party clearly knows what is going on. Why else are so many democrats working so hard to make sure that Joe Wilson is never allowed to testify to congress?

Fitzgerald's Eight Pages

Let's unseal the reason he put Miss Run Amok in jail.

Editorial - November 4, 2005 - The Wall Street Journal (Opinion Journal)

Thanks to the disastrous New York Times legal strategy, the D.C. Circuit of Appeals dealt a major blow to a reporter's ability to protect his sources. Prosecutors everywhere will now be more inclined to call reporters to testify, under threat of prison time. And if Mr. Libby's case goes to trial, at least three reporters will be called as witnesses for the prosecution. Just wait until defense counsel starts examining their memories and reporting habits, not to mention the dominant political leanings in the newsrooms of NBC, Time magazine and the New York Times. "Meet the Press," indeed.

There is a strong argument that Patrick Fitzgerald is abusing his power, just as most special prosecutors have done. Whenever a special prosecutor finds out the original crime was not committed, there is an urge to go find some crime to justify his existence. This article gives some of the background to why so many feel this is true in this case as well.