George Tenet moves From CIA to CYA...Cont.

This will, I am sure be a developing story as more tidbits from his book comes out and interviews. He has already been caught is more than one fabrication in his new role. Not the first but I'm sure not the last to fisk Mr. Tenet and his tome, Christopher Hitchens unloads both barrels. Priceless.His conclusion is also priceless.

A highly irritating expression in Washington has it that "hindsight is always 20-20." Would that it were so. History is not a matter of hindsight and is not, in fact, always written by the victors. In this case, a bogus history is being offered by a real loser whose hindsight is cockeyed and who had no foresight at all.

And we also have Tenets imaginary meeting with Richard Perle at the White House on the morning of 9/12/2001.

On the day after 9/11, he [Tenet] adds, he ran into Richard Perle, a leading neoconservative and the head of the Defense Policy Board, coming out of the White House. He says Mr. Perle turned to him and said: "Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday. They bear responsibility."

Here's the problem: Richard Perle was in France on that day, unable to fly back after September 11. In fact Perle did not return to the United State until September 15. Did Tenet perhaps merely get the date of this encounter wrong? Well, the quote Tenet ascribes to Perle hinges on the encounter taking place September 12: "Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday." And Perle in any case categorically denies to THE WEEKLY STANDARD ever having said any such thing to Tenet, while coming out of the White House or anywhere else.

It gets better.

SCOTT SHANE REPORTED in Saturday's New York Times that former CIA chief George Tenet's dramatic description in his book, At the Center of the Storm, of an August 2002 presentation at the CIA by defense undersecretary Douglas Feith and his staff, is at the very least misleading. In order to suggest that Feith's staff was utterly out of its depth, Tenet characterized the main briefer, Tina Shelton, as a "naval reservist." In fact, she had been a Defense Intelligence Agency analyst for almost two decades. Tenet also claimed that Shelton said in her presentation of Iraq-al Qaeda contacts, "It is an open-and-shut case." Shelton and Feith both deny she said that. One person who served in government with Shelton told THE WEEKLY STANDARD today he finds it "inconceivable" that Shelton, an experienced analyst, would have made such an unequivocal assertion.

Stay tuned, this book my be a blockbuster for the publisher but it may prove to be a ball buster for Mr. Tenet. Look for updates.
Update:Today's responses to George Tenet's new book include Rick Richman's "What Tenet knew, when he knew it and whom he told," Tom Joscelyn's "More than enough evidence," Rich Lowry's "George Tenet's slam-dunk," and NR's editorial "Imperfect Storm."

Of course Michael Scheuer, the head of the CIA's Bin Laden Unit, worked with Tenet and takes issue with much of what is more and more looking like revisionist history from Tenet in the Washington Post.

Like self-serving earlier leaks seemingly from Tenet's circle to such reporters as Ron Suskind and Bob Woodward, "At the Center of the Storm" is similarly disingenuous about Tenet's record on al-Qaeda. In "State of Denial," Woodward paints a heroic portrait of the CIA chief warning national security adviser Condoleezza Rice of pending al-Qaeda strikes during the summer of 2001, only to have his warnings ignored. Tenet was indeed worried during the so-called summer of threat, but one wonders why he did not summon the political courage earlier to accuse Rice of negligence, most notably during his testimony under oath before the 9/11 commission...

..."I was talking to the national security adviser and the president and the vice president every day," Tenet told the commission during a nationally televised hearing on March 24, 2004. "I certainly didn't get a sense that anybody was not paying attention to what I was doing and what I was briefing and what my concerns were and what we were trying to do." Now a "frustrated" Tenet writes that he held an urgent meeting with Rice on July 10, 2001, to try to get "the full attention of the administration" and "finally get us on track." He can't have it both ways.

But what troubles me most is Tenet's handling of the opportunities that CIA officers gave the Clinton administration to capture or kill bin Laden between May 1998 and May 1999. Each time we had intelligence about bin Laden's whereabouts, Tenet was briefed by senior CIA officers at Langley and by operatives in the field. He would nod and assure his anxious subordinates that he would stress to Clinton and his national security team that the chances of capturing bin Laden were solid and that the intelligence was not going to get better. Later, he would insist that he had kept up his end of the bargain, but that the NSC had decided not to strike.

Since 2001, however, several key Clinton counterterrorism insiders (including NSC staffers Richard A. Clarke, Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon) have reported that Tenet consistently denigrated the targeting data on bin Laden, causing the president and his team to lose confidence in the hard-won intelligence. "We could never get over the critical hurdle of being able to corroborate Bin Ladin's whereabouts," Tenet now writes. That of course is untrue, but it spared him from ever having to explain the awkward fallout if an attempt to get bin Laden failed.

As I am wont to say, read it all as well as the links to other views. I am reminded of a quote by Patrick Moynihan "Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts"

Build May Day demonstrations

NOTICE...This is not from the Onion and is not satire. It should be. This is in regard to the upcoming May Day "Celebrations". and is an indication of what some of the goals are.

The May Day rallies across the United States—from Los Angeles to Chicago and Miami—are an opportunity to join forces with others to demand: Unconditional, immediate permanent residency for all undocumented immigrants! Legalization now!

Such actions are an important part of responding to the U.S. rulers’ stepped-up war on working people. In recent months hardly a week has gone by without raids by immigration cops, who have rounded up workers by the dozens, and sometimes by the hundreds, in workplaces and neighborhoods.

Last year’s unprecedented street mobilizations by immigrant workers—numbering up to 2 million at their peak—and the May Day walkouts, the first nationwide political strike in U.S. history, surprised the capitalist class and its two parties. These working-class actions stopped a move by Congress to pass a reactionary law that would have criminalized some 12 million immigrants without papers.

Today, as the police raids increase, capitalist politicians are again debating various “immigration reform” bills. All varieties would restrict the rights of foreign-born workers and should be opposed. Both the proposal backed by the White House and the bipartisan Gutierrez-Flake bill would beef up the border police, decree thousands of dollars in penalties for applicants, impose numerous restrictions on eligibility for residency, and institute a new federal ID card singling out the undocumented. Both include a “guest worker” plan, under which workers’ legal status would be tied to the whims of their bosses.

The purpose of the Democrats’ and Republicans’ immigration policy—from police raids to restrictive immigration laws—is not to deport all those without papers. It is to maintain a permanent category of workers with fewer rights who are more vulnerable to superexploitation that the U.S. bosses profit from.

Last year’s mass mobilizations showed the increased confidence of foreign-born workers and the consequent strengthening and politicization of the entire working class. This can be seen, for example, in the April 17 protest by workers in Marshalltown, Iowa, against a plan to turn local cops into la migra.

Such actions—relying on the mobilization of working people, not on Congress—are the only effective way to push back these attacks and win expanded rights.

Let's build the May Day actions to demand from the government: Stop the raids and deportations! Legalization now, with no strings attached!

"nuff said. Speaks for itself.

Democtrats Continue to Broaden Base.

(H/T Gateway Pundit ) Go to Gateway Pundit to enlarge. The story above was published in the official Iranian Fars News on Friday.
They must have been impressed with the democratic presidential candidates, especially since only 4 of the 8 democrats think their is a global War on Terror.


MEHR News reported:

Vietnam flashback

TEHRAN, April 27 (MNA) -- The U.S. Senate recently passed a bill according to which U.S. military forces would have to leave Iraq by March 2008. However, President George W. Bush has repeatedly stated that he would veto the bill.
But it appears likely the U.S. will be forced to leave Iraq in a far more humiliating way than the Soviet Union left Afghanistan.

This would be a major defeat for the United States almost as bad as the Vietnam debacle.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have cited the increasing unrest in Iraq as the main reason why U.S. forces should be withdrawn from the country.

The Democrats in Congress believe that stability can only be established in Iraq through a political solution, although such views seem overly optimistic, like the White House’s claim four years ago that U.S. troops would be welcomed as liberators. However, U.S. citizens are worried about the White House’s mismanagement of the war since it has become evident that maintaining stability in Iraq is almost impossible.

Many U.S. officials have even admitted that the implementation of Bush’s ambitious policies in Iraq over the past four years has been a miserable failure. Iraq has become a smoldering ruin while Bush is trying to prevent a total collapse by calling for the deployment of even more troops to the region.

Yet, after a meeting with Bush, Reid told journalists that the United States had lost the war and that a troop surge would not help. He went on to say that success in Iraq would only be possible through political and economic means, not war and bloodshed.

The Iranians have found their party!

John Murtha hits bottom, still digging... Upated

The Abscam scum has reached new lows. Not only does he call the troops "cold blooded killers" with no proof and prior to the investigation, now he come out with this.

From Congress Daily PM [subscription link]:

“Look, these guys have lied to us so much, I've even lost confidence in the military,” said Murtha, a retired Marine colonel with ties to the Pentagon.

Compare this to John Murtha, who in 1974, on the floor of the House said:

As a combat veteran, I want to repeat to the Members who are here that I know I complained on the floor recently that I felt that the criticism at home, in and outside Congress, hurt the war effort. I still believe that very strongly

and then said this:

I too believe the North Vietnamese read the CONGRESSIONAL RECORD. According to Page Robinson, they certainly knew of the antiwar speeches that were made before.

(H/T Gateway Pundit and Redstate. }

UPDATE...The "cold blooded murderers" as it turns out may be innocent after all and Murtha could be in some deep shit because of the investigation. Curt at Flopping Aces has the scoop and an extensive, link filled post about the "Haditha Hoax".

A Potpouri of Opinions from the Media

First of all, if your are a Democratic leader and David Broder, the Dean of the Washington press corps comes out with a scathing editorial, you know you may be in trouble. Not onown for his Conservative ideology, Broder lays in on the line in this Washington Post op-ed.

Here's a Washington political riddle where you fill in the blanks: As Alberto Gonzales is to the Republicans, Blank Blank is to the Democrats -- a continuing embarrassment thanks to his amateurish performance.

If you answered " Harry Reid," give yourself an A. And join the long list of senators of both parties who are ready for these two springtime exhibitions of ineptitude to end....

...consider the mental gyrations performed by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) as he rationalized the recent comment from his majority leader, Harry Reid, the leading light of Searchlight, Nev., that the war in Iraq "is lost."

On "Fox News Sunday," Schumer offered this clarification of Reid's off-the-cuff comment. "What Harry Reid is saying is that this war is lost -- in other words, a war where we mainly spend our time policing a civil war between Shiites and Sunnis. We are not going to solve that problem. . . . The war is not lost. And Harry Reid believes this -- we Democrats believe it. . . . So the bottom line is if the war continues on this path, if we continue to try to police and settle a civil war that's been going on for hundreds of years in Iraq, we can't win. But on the other hand, if we change the mission and have that mission focus on the more narrow goal of counterterrorism, we sure can win."

Everyone got that? This war is lost. But the war can be won. Not since Bill Clinton famously pondered the meaning of the word "is" has a Democratic leader confused things as much as Harry Reid did with his inept discussion of the alternatives in Iraq.

He concluded with this:

Instead of reinforcing the important proposition -- defined by the Iraq Study Group-- that a military strategy for Iraq is necessary but not sufficient to solve the myriad political problems of that country, Reid has mistakenly argued that the military effort is lost but a diplomatic-political strategy can still succeed.

The Democrats deserve better, and the country needs more, than Harry Reid has offered as Senate majority leader.

.Amer Taheri in a NYPost op-ed asks a relevant question of Reid and the Democrats. "If we have lost, who has won?"

WITHOUT meaning to do so, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has pushed the debate on Iraq in a new direction.

Reid claims that the war is lost and that the United States has already been defeated.

By advancing the claim, Reid has moved the debate away from the initial antiwar obsession with the legal and diplomatic controversies that preceded it.

At the same time, Reid has parted ways with Democratic leaders such as Sen. Hillary Clinton, who supported the war but who now claims that its conduct has been disastrous. What they mean, by implication, is that a Democratic president would do better than George W. Bush and win the war.

Reid's new position, however, means that even a Democratic president wouldn't be able to ensure a U.S. victory in Iraq. For him, Iraq is irretrievably lost.

Some antiwar analysts have praised Reid for what they term "his clarity of perception." A closer examination, however, would show that Reid might have added to the confusion that has plagued his party over the issue from the start.

Because all wars have winners and losers, Reid, having identified America as the loser, is required to name the winner. This Reid cannot do.

The reason is that, whichever way one looks at the situation, America and its Iraqi allies remain the only objective victors in this war.

It gets better.

It's possible that Reid imagined that his analytical problems are over simply because he has identified the war's loser. The truth is that his troubles are only beginning. He must tell Americans to whom they wish their army to surrender in Iraq.

That Reid is desperately trying to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory isn't surprising. His party requires an American defeat in Iraq in order to win the congressional and presidential elections next year.

And for the coup de grace:

The terrorists, the insurgents, the criminal gangs and the chauvinists of all ilk are still killing many people. But they cannot translate those killings into political gains. Their constituencies are shrinking, and the pockets of territory where they hide are becoming increasingly exposed. They certainly cannot drive the Americans out. No power on earth can. Unless, of course, Harry Reid does it for them.

Will Americans live up to the determination of our "Greatest Generation" or will we succumb to surrender and defeat and truly snatch the defeat from the jaws of victory?

"Language of surrender is inappropriate..."

A "one minute speech" on the floor of the House by Kentucky's Geoff Davis.

Useful Idiots

While doing a search of Lenin's term in face of today's news, I came across an old post at American Thinker that just jumped off the screen at me. It is written by Amil Imani, an Iranian born American citizen and a pro democracy advocate. It is worth anyones time to read and digest it all. A few pull quotes to whet the appetite.

Islam enjoys a large and influential ally among the non—Muslims: A new generation of 'Useful Idiots,' the sort of people Lenin identified living in liberal democracies who furthered the work of communism. This new generation of Useful Idiots also lives in liberal democracies, but serves the cause of Islamofascism—another virulent form of totalitarian ideology.

Useful Idiots are na�ve, foolish, ignorant of facts, unrealistically idealistic, dreamers, willfully in denial or deceptive. They hail from the ranks of the chronically unhappy, the anarchists, the aspiring revolutionaries, the neurotics who are at war with life, the disaffected alienated from government, corporations, and just about any and all institutions of society. The Useful Idiot can be a billionaire, a movie star, an academe of renown, a politician, or from any other segment of the population.

Arguably, the most dangerous variant of the Useful Idiot is the 'Politically Correct.' He is the master practitioner of euphemism, hedging, doubletalk, and outright deception...

Talk about a wake up call from someone who has been there and sees what is happening in our own country. Chilling. I repeat, read the whole thing.

Five Myths (lies) of Harry Reid Exposed

Are we to look to this man as a leader that we can believe? Dare I say it? What a dirtbag. I hold many politicians in low esteem but Reid and Pelosi are breaking new ground.

White Flag Democrats or Fifth Columnists. Or Both.

Unlike the "fifth column" of old, there is nothing clandestine about this movement. Wikipedia defines fifth column thus "A fifth column is a group of people which clandestinely undermines a larger group to which it is expected to be loyal, such as a nation." The leaders of this group, Pelosi, Reid, Murtha, and many more including a few Republicans like Chuck Hagel are not only willing to raise the white flag of surrender but are openly and actively doing everything in their power to guarantee defeat and take us back to a 9/10 status.Are they doing this because they feel that it is best for the country? In a word, no. They are doing it for their own political/personal gain.They are so heavily invested in defeat that rational thought has no place in their agenda.
Harry Reid has gone so far as to declare the war lost, the surge a failure even though it has just started and is showing signs of progress, and then goes on the malign Gen.David Petraeus, whose report he dismisses as valueless. Here is the video at Hot Air. Unlike some Democrats, he’ll hear Petraeus out; he’ll just simply refuse to believe anything he says that doesn’t fit the left’s narrative.
Neville Nancy won't even deign to meet the the field commander.

As the House and Senate prepare to vote this week on the final conference report on the $124 billion troop funding bill — which would also mandate that U.S. combat troops begin withdrawing from Iraq on Oct. 1 at the latest — Gen. David Petraeus is scheduled to come to the Hill tomorrow to brief lawmakers on the progress of the recent troop escalation.

ABC News has learned, however, that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., will not attend the briefing.

"She can't make the briefing tomorrow," a Democratic aide told ABC News Tuesday evening. "But she spoke with the general via phone today at some length."

A Pelosi aide said the speaker on Tuesday requested a one-on-one meeting with Petraeus but that could not be worked out. He said their phone conversation lasted 30 minutes.

So what was so important that Pelosi could not attend a briefing on the progress of the war? Another trip to Syria perhaps? And what does John Murtha say about the Republicans accusing Congress of micromanaging the war? From CNN:

CNN's John Roberts: "Joining me now is one of the most vocal advocates of a pullout from Iraq, Democratic Congressman John Murtha of Pennsylvania. ... You heard what President Bush said, that Congress shouldn't be micromanaging the war. What do you say?" Rep. John Murtha: "That's our job, John." (CNN's "American Morning," 4/24/07)

Click here for that video.

Nevada Soldiers have responded to their Senator here. And Michele Malkin has posted several letters from our troops in Iraq as well. Here, here, here and here.

I guess Reid would call those comments more of Cheney being an "attack dog," when Cheney is really giving a point by point refutation of all of Reid's positions. Will Reid have the intellectually honesty to address Cheney's points or will he just resort back to complaining that Cheney is attacking him?
Somehow, it's being an "attack dog" to go out and defend his administration from the allegations leveled at it daily. Cheney responded with these comments today pointing out all of Senator Reid's twists and turns on Iraq.

I usually avoid press comment when I’m up here, but I felt so strongly about what Senator Reid said in the last couple of days, that I thought it was appropriate that I come out today and make a statement that I think needs to be made.

I thought his speech yesterday was unfortunate, that his comments were uninformed and misleading. Senator Reid has taken many positions on Iraq. He has threatened that if the President vetoes the current pending supplemental legislation, that he will send up Senator Russ Feingold's bill to de-fund Iraq operations altogether.

Yet only last November, Senator Reid said there would be no cutoff of funds for the military in Iraq. So in less than six months' time, Senator Reid has gone from pledging full funding for the military, then full funding but with conditions, and then a cutoff of funding — three positions in five months on the most important foreign policy question facing the nation and our troops.

Yesterday, Senator Reid said the troop surge was against the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group. That is plainly false. The Iraq Study Group report was explicitly favorable toward a troop surge to secure Baghdad. Senator Reid said there should be a regional conference on Iraq. Apparently, he doesn't know that there is going to be one next week. Senator Reid said he doesn't have real substantive meetings with the President. Yet immediately following last week's meeting at the White House, he said, "It was a good exchange; everyone voiced their considered opinion about the war in Iraq."

What's most troubling about Senator Reid's comments yesterday is his defeatism. Indeed, last week, he said the war is already lost. And the timetable legislation that he is now pursuing would guarantee defeat.

Maybe it's a political calculation. Some Democratic leaders seem to believe that blind opposition to the new strategy in Iraq is good politics. Senator Reid himself has said that the war in Iraq will bring his party more seats in the next election. It is cynical to declare that the war is lost because you believe it gives you political advantage. Leaders should make decisions based on the security interests of our country, not on the interests of their political party.

Or will he call him a liar like he just implied in this CNN interview that General Petraeus is?

BASH: You talked several times about General Petraeus. You know that he is here in town. He was at the White House today, sitting with the president in the Oval Office and the president said that he wants to make it clear that Washington should not be telling him, General Petraeus, a commander on the ground in Iraq, what to do, particularly, the president was talking about Democrats in Congress. He also said that General Petraeus is going to come to the Hill and make it clear to you that there is progress going on in Iraq, that the so-called surge is working. Will you believe him when he says that?

REID: No, I don't believe him, because it's not happening.

Yup, because Reid knows so much more than the general on the ground that he doesn't even need to listen to what he has to say. Hat tip Betsy Newmark at Betsy's Page

Victor Davis Hanson "I had a Dream"

VDH in a compelling article at NRO tell us about a dream he had about a civilization that has become just a dream.

I recently had a dream that British marines fought back, like their forefathers of old, against criminals and pirates. When taken captive, they proved defiant in their silence. When released, they talked to the tabloids with restraint and dignity, and accepted no recompense.
I dreamed that a kindred German government, which best knew the wages of appeasement, cut-off all trade credits to the outlaw Iranian mullahs — even as the European Union joined the Americans in refusing commerce with this Holocaust-denying, anti-Semitic, and thuggish regime.

NATO countries would then warn Iran that their next unprovoked attack on a vessel of a member nation would incite the entire alliance against them in a response that truly would be of a “disproportionate” nature.

In this apparition of mine, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, in Syria at the time, would lecture the Assad regime that there would be consequences to its serial murdering of democratic reformers in Lebanon, to fomenting war with Israel by means of its surrogates, and to sending terrorists to destroy the nascent constitutional government in Iraq.

She would add that the United States could never be friends with an illegitimate dictatorship that does its best to destroy the only three democracies in the region. And then our speaker would explain to Iran that a U.S. Congresswoman would never detour to Tehran to dialogue with a renegade government that had utterly ignored U.N. non-proliferation mandates and daily had the blood of Americans on its hands.

Fellow Democrats like John Kerry, Barbara Boxer, and Harry Reid would add that, as defenders of the liberal tradition of the West, they were not about to call a retreat before extremist killers who behead and kidnap, who blow up children and threaten female reformers and religious minorities, and who have begun using poison gas, all in an effort to annihilate voices of tolerance in Iraq.

These Democrats would reiterate that they had not authorized a war to remove the psychopathic Saddam Hussein only to allow the hopeful country to be hijacked by equally vicious killers. And they would warn the world that their differences with the Bush administration, whatever they might be, pale in comparison to the shared American opposition to the efforts of al Qaeda, the Taliban, Syria, and Iran to kill any who would advocate freedom of the individual.

Those in Congress would not deny that Congress itself had voted for a war against Saddam on 23 counts — the vast majority of which had nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction and remain as valid today as when they were approved in 2002.

His dream ends as most dreams do.

Europeans would advise their own Muslim immigrants, from London to Berlin, that the West, founded on principles of the Hellenic and European Enlightenments, and enriched by the Sermon on the Mount, had nothing to apologize for, now or in the future. Newcomers would either accept this revered culture of tolerance, assimilation, and equality of religions and the sexes — or return home to live under its antithesis of seventh-century Sharia law.

Media critics of the ongoing war might deplore our tactics, take issue with the strategy, and lament the failure to articulate our goals and values. But they would not stoop to the lies of “no blood for oil” — not when Iraqi petroleum is now at last under transparent auspices and bid on by non-American companies, even as the price skyrockets and American ships protect the vulnerable sea-lanes, ensuring life-saving commerce for all importing nations.

I also dreamed that no columnist, no talking head, no pundit would level the charge of “We took our eye off bin Laden in Afghanistan” when they themselves had no answer on how to reach al Qaedists inside nuclear Pakistan, a country ruled by a triangulating dictator and just one bullet away from an Islamic theocracy.

…

And then I woke up, remembering that the West of old lives only in dreams. Yes, the new religion of the post-Westerner is neither the Enlightenment nor Christianity, but the gospel of the Path of Least Resistance — one that must lead inevitably to gratification rather than sacrifice.

Once one understands this new creed, then all the surreal present at last makes sense: life in the contemporary West is so good, so free, so undemanding, that we will pay, say, and suffer almost anything to enjoy its uninterrupted continuance — and accordingly avoid almost any principled act that might endanger it.

Needless to say, read it all and ponder what was, what could be and the reality of what is.

Parallels

In an American Thinker post by Andrew Walton, he takes us back to the halcyon days following Viet Nam and that icon of the left, George McGovern:

"Do we sit on the sidelines and watch a population slaughtered, or do we marshal military force and put an end to it?" -- Senator George McGovern, August 21, 1978

The "it" McGovern wanted US troops to put an end to was the killing of millions of Cambodians in the late 1970s by the communist Pol Pot dictatorship. Three and a half years after congressional Democrats made that slaughter possible by cutting off all US aid to anti-communist forces with their so-called December, 1974 "Foreign Assistance Act", their leader McGovern had made a complete reversal and was suddenly calling for a new US war in Southeast Asia.

Why is this little-remembered footnote in history relevant today? Congressional Democrats' March vote for phased withdrawal from Iraq is a replay of McGovern's treacherous thirty-five year old script with McGovern consulting from the sidelines. Last November, the sixty-two members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, led by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) and Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) sat down with McGovern to work out a strategy for withdrawal from Iraq. Those discussions led to the mis-named "Iraq Accountability Act", now heading for a veto from President Bush after passing the House and the Senate in March.

With Congressional Democrats, and a few Republicans, dancing to McGovern's tune, it might behoove them to break out of their December, 1974 mind frame and take a look to August of 1978-forty-four months down McGovern's Southeast Asia timeline.

One more snippet:

What will it take for those opposed to American victory in Iraq to wake up? The jihadis are not a progressive force. Today's anti-war leftists are motivated not to strengthen jihad but to weaken America in order that "progressives" around the world might once again have their day. This key element of the "progressive' value system must be recognized by writers working to defeat them. The examples of McGovern and Browder provide an answer: a reversal will require the jihadi threat to "progressivism" to outweigh the American threat.

This brings me to a post I read at American Future by Marc Schulman and takes us back thru WWII and after. It is a long piece but a few things jumped out at me. He is disecting George Orwell and his thoughts and essays, letters and standing as an avowed socialist but firmly anti-communist and virilent anti-fascist and against totalitarianism. This for one...excerpts from Orwells 1941 essay The Lion and the Unicorn.

In the last twenty years western civilisation has given the intellectual security without responsibility, and in England, in particular, it has educated him in skepticism while anchoring him almost immovably in the privileged class. He has been in the position of a young man living on an allowance from a father he hates. The result is a deep feeling of guilt and resentment, not combined with any genuine desire to escape.

Having disengaged itself from the common culture, the intelligentsia, during a time of war, disparaged patriotism and the worth of venerable English institutions. Its members formed “a sort of island of dissident thought”:

England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution . . . the negative, fainéant outlook which has been fashionable among English left-wingers, the sniggering of the intellectuals at patriotism and physical courage, the persistent effort to chip away English morale and spread a hedonistic, what-do-I-get-out-of-it attitude to life, has done nothing but harm . . .

Marc adds quoting Orwell "English intellectuals, especially the younger ones, “are markedly hostile to their own country.” In some circles, “to express pro-British sentiments needs considerable moral courage.” The people who should be “the guardians of freedom of thought” were anything but.

The intelligentsia’s verbal assaults on patriotism and institutions were not without consequences. During the last years of peace, the English people suffered “a real weakening of morale.” This contributed to the fascists’ judgment that the English were decadent. The “intellectual sabotage from the Left was partly responsible” for the war.

During the war,

. . . the Nazi radio got more material from the British left-wing press than from that of the Right. And it could hardly be otherwise, for it is chiefly in the left-wing press that serious criticism of British institutions is to be found. Every revelation about slums or social inequality, every attack on the leaders of the Tory party, every denunciation of British imperialism, was a gift for Goebbels. And not necessarily a worthless gift, for German propaganda about “British plutocracy” had considerable effect in neutral countries, especially in the earlier part of the war.

The ideological cover for the Left was pacifism. In response to letters he received from D.S. Savage [4] and other pacifists, Orwell took off his gloves:

Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist . . . If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help that of the other . . . pacifist propaganda can only be effective against those countries where a certain amount of freedom of speech is still permitted; in other words it is helpful to totalitarianism.

Elsewhere in his response to Savage, Orwell averred that he was interested in how pacifists who began with an “alleged horror” of violence ended with “a marked tendency to be fascinated by the success and power of Nazism.” He went on to say that some pacifists “are beginning to claim that a Nazi victory is desirable in itself.”

With just a few substituting of nouns in Orwells writing, such as America with England and Nazi with Jihadists.we can certainly draw some striking parallels as we can with the moves to surrender in Iraq and elsewhere with the happenings in the 70s in SE Asia. Need I say, read both articles and see if you can draw the same parallels.

Global Swarming

George Will has an interesting article on the Fuzzy Climate Math of the Global Warming evangelicals at RCP.

In a campaign without peacetime precedent, the media-entertainment-environmental complex is warning about global warming. Never, other than during the two world wars, has there been such a concerted effort by opinion-forming institutions to indoctrinate Americans, 83 percent of whom now call global warming a "serious problem.'' Indoctrination is supposed to be a predicate for action commensurate with professions of seriousness.

He gives us a look at what could ensue if we did all that the GW crowd is extolling us to do.

Do they also disagree with Bjorn Lomborg, author of "The Skeptical Environmentalist''? He says: Compliance with Kyoto would reduce global warming by an amount too small to measure. But the cost of compliance just to the United States would be higher than the cost of providing the entire world with clean drinking water and sanitation, which would prevent 2 million deaths (from diseases like infant diarrhea) a year and prevent half a billion people from becoming seriously ill each year...

Nature designed us as carnivores, but what does nature know about nature? Meat has been designated a menace. Among the 51 exhortations in Time magazine's "global warming survival guide'' (April 9), No. 22 says a BMW is less responsible than a Big Mac for "climate change,'' that conveniently imprecise name for our peril. This is because the world meat industry produces 18 percent of the world's greenhouse-gas emissions, more than transportation produces. Nitrous oxide in manure (warming effect: 296 times greater than that of carbon) and methane from animal flatulence (23 times greater) mean that "a 16 ounce T-bone is like a Hummer on a plate.''

Ben & Jerry's ice cream might be even more sinister: A gallon of it requires electricity guzzling refrigeration, and four gallons of milk produced by cows that simultaneously produce eight gallons of manure and flatulence with eight gallons of methane. The cows do this while consuming lots of grain and hay, which are cultivated by using tractor fuel, chemical fertilizers, herbicides and insecticides, and transported by fuel-consuming trains and trucks.

Newsweek says most food travels at least 1,200 miles to get to Americans' plates, so buying local food will save fuel. Do not order halibut in Omaha.

Speaking of Hummers, perhaps it is environmentally responsible to buy one and squash a Prius with it. The Prius hybrid is, of course, fuel-efficient. There are, however, environmental costs to mining and smelting (in Canada) 1,000 tons a year of zinc for the battery-powered second motor, and the shipping of the zinc 10,000 miles -- trailing a cloud of carbon -- to Wales for refining and then to China for turning it into the component that is then sent to a battery factory in Japan.

All I can say is heh, read it all. Another of my favorite columnists, Thomas Sowell also weighs in on the GW question here, here and here in a three part series titled Global Hot Air. In his first part he ends with this bit of non trivial information.

What about all those scientists mentioned, cited or quoted by global warming crusaders?

There are all kinds of scientists, from chemists to nuclear physicists to people who study insects, volcanoes, and endocrine glands -- none of whom is an expert on weather or climate, but all of whom can be listed as scientists, to impress people who don't scrutinize the list any further. That ploy has already been used.

Then there are genuine scientific experts on weather and climate. The National Academy of Sciences came out with a report on global warming back in 2001 with a very distinguished list of such experts listed. The problem is that not one of those very distinguished scientists actually wrote the report -- or even saw it before it was published.

One of those very distinguished climate scientists -- Richard S. Lindzen of MIT -- publicly repudiated the conclusions of that report, even though his name had been among those used as window dressing on the report. But the media may not have told you that.

In short, there has been a full court press to convince the public that "everybody knows" that a catastrophic global warming looms over us, that human beings are the cause of it, and that the only solution is to turn more money and power over to the government to stop us from our dangerous ways of living.

Among the climate experts who are not part of that "everybody" are not only Professor Lindzen but also Fred Singer and Dennis Avery, whose book "Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years," punctures the hot air balloon of the global warming crusaders. So does the book "Shattered Consensus," edited by Patrick J. Michaels, professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, which contains essays by others who are not part of "everybody."

In the second of his series he addresses the effort of Global Warming proponents to silence the scientists who question the veracity and "facts" being perpetrated on the public. And in his latest piece of the series, he blows the lid off of the media hype surrounding this latest crusade. I say latest because I have seen the same hysteria hyped before with not facts but lots of emotion. Carsons "Silent Spring" and the hysteria that caused resulting in millions of deaths due to the total banning of DDT in the third world and then there was Paul Ehrlich and his Population Bomb. The book predicted that "in the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death", that nothing can be done to avoid mass famin greater than any in the history, and radical action is needed to limit the overpopulation. And then we went through the Global Cooling scare and so on ad nauseum. Be sure to read all threee of Sowells articles.

Update: Chuck S pointed me to this article by Steven Malloy of JunkScience.com in a Fox story. His first paragraphs sets the stage for an eye-opening look at the real science.

If you need further evidence that hysteria is outpacing science in the global warming debate, consider the study published this week about Northern Hemisphere forests actually causing significant global warming.

Researchers from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory reported in the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" (April 17) that while tropical forests exert a cooling influence on global climate, forests in northern regions exert a warming influence — and it’s not just a trivial climatic effect.

He ends with this:

Finally, let’s not overlook the scam factor.

For years, global warming opportunists (aka “climateers”) urged consumers to compensate for their so-called “carbon footprints” by paying to plant trees. But as the facts slowly emerged about reforestation, the carbon-offset industry quietly backed off planting trees and moved on to other offset schemes.

One carbon-offset vendor, The Carbon Neutral Co., says on its Web site, “In those early days, the icon of a tree and its emotional appeal were critical to attract audiences. But, thankfully, the market has grown in sophistication — markedly over the last 4 years, and such obvious symbols are less necessary.”

Translation? Perhaps, “the facts have caught up with us and so we’ve changed shell games”?

Science is slowly, but similarly catching up with global warming alarmism. The only question is how the race will be won — with facts or fear?

Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and CSRWatch.com. He is a junk science expert, and advocate of free enterprise and an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Needles to say, read the whole thing...if you dare.

Wow, This is Striking

I swore I was not going to get into the Imus dust-ip even though I do have some strong feelings about the matter. But a good liberal friend of mine pointed me to this piece from Jason Whitlock, a sportswriter for the Kansas City Star.
Fair use being what it is, I will not print the whole thing, just a couple of excerpts but is is well worth the reading of it all. It says volumes.

Thank you, Don Imus. You’ve given us (black people) an excuse to avoid our real problem.

You’ve given Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson another opportunity to pretend that the old fight, which is now the safe and lucrative fight, is still the most important fight in our push for true economic and social equality.

You’ve given Vivian Stringer and Rutgers the chance to hold a nationally televised recruiting celebration expertly disguised as a news conference to respond to your poor attempt at humor.

Thank you, Don Imus. You extended Black History Month to April, and we can once again wallow in victimhood, protest like it’s 1965 and delude ourselves into believing that fixing your hatred is more necessary than eradicating our self-hatred.

The bigots win again.

While we’re fixated on a bad joke cracked by an irrelevant, bad shock jock, I’m sure at least one of the marvelous young women on the Rutgers basketball team is somewhere snapping her fingers to the beat of 50 Cent’s or Snoop Dogg’s or Young Jeezy’s latest ode glorifying nappy-headed pimps and hos...

There is much more but just one more taste.
.

...In the grand scheme, Don Imus is no threat to us in general and no threat to black women in particular. If his words are so powerful and so destructive and must be rebuked so forcefully, then what should we do about the idiot rappers on BET, MTV and every black-owned radio station in the country who use words much more powerful and much more destructive?

I don’t listen or watch Imus’ show regularly. Has he at any point glorified selling crack cocaine to black women? Has he celebrated black men shooting each other randomly? Has he suggested in any way that it’s cool to be a baby-daddy rather than a husband and a parent? Does he tell his listeners that they’re suckers for pursuing education and that they’re selling out their race if they do?...

I repeat, wow. Says volumes in a short space. I hope he has a job come Monday.

New Sidebar Feature

Just to dtaw some attention to the news feature in the sidebar. Just click in the links, UN,Pelosi, etc. at the top to find news of the day about that subject. More will be added according to what is the news du jour. Notice there is not a link to news about Anna Nichol, Imus, or other things I am not into at the moment.

The newest Comedy From the UN

This from Anne Bayefsky at NRO

On April 9, 2007 there was a United Nations believe-it-or-not moment extraordinaire. At the same time that Iran’s President Ahmadinejad declared his country was now capable of industrial-scale uranium enrichment, the U.N. reelected Iran as a vice chairman of the U.N. Disarmament Commission.

Yes Ripley, the very U.N. body charged with promoting nuclear nonproliferation installed in a senior position the state that the Security Council recently declared violated its nonproliferation resolutions.

So in Iran at the Natanz nuclear facility Ahmadinejad gloated: “With great pride, I announce as of today our dear country is among the countries of the world that produces nuclear fuel on an industrial scale.” And in New York, courtesy of his U.N. platform, Iranian Disarmament Vice-Chairman Seyed Mohammad Ali Robatjazi railed against “noncompliance with the NPT [nuclear nonproliferation treaty] by the United States” and “the Zionist lobby.”

It took the U.N. a mere five days to rehabilitate Iran after the British kidnap victims made it home alive. Just the night before on April 8, Faye Turney, the only female victim, revealed her Iranian abductors stripped her to her underwear, caged her in a tiny, freezing cell, and subjected her to mental torture such as leading her to believe that her death was imminent.

But while this was actually happening to Faye Turney, Ambassador Luis Alfonso de Alba of Mexico, the president of the U.N.’s lead human-rights body — the U.N. Human Rights Council — was making this announcement, March 26, 2006:

I would like to make the following statement adopted by the Council. One,…the Human Rights Council has in closed meetings examined the human rights situation in…the Islamic Republic of Iran…Two, the Human Rights Council has decided to discontinue the consideration of the human rights situation in the Islamic Republic of Iran…Three,…members of the Human Rights Council should make no reference in the public debate to the confidential decisions and material concerning [the Islamic Republic of Iran]…

And it just keeps getting better.

This is not simply a very bad joke. The U.N. is feted by many as the go-to address for international progress in the world today. Congressman Tom Lantos, chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, declared at a hearing on U.N. reform in February that “the U.N. provides vital support to core U.S. foreign-policy initiatives” including on Iran and the way forward is to “ratchet up our level of diplomacy there.”

“Ratchet up” suffers from some elementary numerical challenges — not to mention the netherworld where that ratcheting is headed. Congressman Lantos and his close friend former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan have long been drinking from the same well. The “reformed” Human Rights Council was Annan’s creation. Lantos is the leading advocate of the United States joining the Human Rights Council — where presumably we could jump up and down while exercising one vote out of 47. Annan, of his own volition, went to Tehran last September and urged the world not to isolate Iran immediately after the Iranian president had ignored a Security Council deadline to suspend its nuclear activities. Lantos confessed to the House Committee at the end of February that he has been begging for a visa to go to Iran for the past ten years and “will be among the first ones to do so once this visa is granted.”

Lantos was pleased with his recent trip, along with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, to Syria. The U.N. shares his view that one of the world’s leading state sponsors of terrorism ought to be a welcome player on the world stage. Following the election on Monday of Iran as vice chairman, the U.N. Disarmament Commission elected Syria as its rapporteur.

The line between U.N. diplomacy and farce has been crossed. The real tragedy is that the defensible border between our freedom-loving rights-respecting world and the cave of our enemies is fading along with it

And we get this from The Canada Free Press;

Pelosi and the Peter Principle

By Alan Caruba

Thursday, April 12, 2007

"Everyone rises to their level of incompetence," wrote Laurence J. Peter, the author of 'The Peter Principle', a book that enshrined that wonderful insight in American culture ever since its publication in 1969. Watching Nancy Pelosi since she ascended Constitutionally as Speaker of the House within Dick Cheney's heartbeat of the Presidency, I was reminded of that.

When the Washington Post takes you to task, as it did on April 5 in an editorial, "Pratfall in Damascus", you have to know that Nancy is in way over her head. Her trip to the Holy Land of Israel and the unholy one of Syria was a complete debacle. "We come in friendship, hope, and determined that the road to Damascus is a road to peace," said Speaker Pelosi. The Post editorial dismissed that as "ludicrous."...

Presumably, one does not achieve such success by being stupid. Yet, as Speaker, everyone has witnessed her saying and doing some astonishingly stupid things. The Washington Post admonished her, saying that, "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) offered an excellent demonstration yesterday of why members of Congress should not attempt to supplant the secretary of state when traveling abroad."

While being villified by the GOP and the Post and USA Today at home however, she is being praised and even given the title of Alternate President in other parts of the world. In an editorial in the Saudi Gazette dated April 6 we find this kudos from the Kingdom.

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reminds us of the ambitious office worker who is surrounded by dunderheads who can't or won't get the job done. So she rolls up her sleeves and says for all the world to hear: "Well, it looks like I'll have to do it myself."

Pelosi, the rabble-rousing Democratic leader - or better yet the Alternate President - has apparently decided that President George Bush's refusal to sit down and negotiate with Syria and Iran is just plain silly. If we are going to inch closer toward peace in Iraq, slow down Iran's nuclear ambitions and create a stable region, perhaps folding our arms across our chests and frowning is not the right approach.

Bold added.

I have a plethora of praises from our "friends" in the ME for our Alternate President.Iran is looking forward to her possible visit.

Palestine, Pelosi and Perfidy

As expected, the Pelosi and Company trip to Syria and Israel has been met with a blogospheric firestorm. I have my own thought to add to this kerfuffle but that will have to be postponed a bit. It has been well covered by the blog world and I can't add much. I would like to draw your attention to this article written in The American Thinker. It is an eyeopening piece to anyone who has not been following the Palestinian problems. An Excerpt:

According to UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) tens of billions of dollars (one-third from US taxpayers, the rest mostly from Canada and European countries) have been spent over the last 50 years providing "Palestinian refugees" and their descendents. An estimated half million people 60 years ago, that number is now over four million and increasing daily.

UNRWA's purpose: to insure the "Palestinian Right of Return" - the destruction of Israel.

No Arab country except Jordan -- where they constitute more than two-thirds of the population - accepts them as citizens. Saudi Arabia, for example, recently passed a law allowing all foreigner workers in the country to apply for Saudi citizenship next year - except Palestinians.

More than 400,000 "Palestinian refugees" living in UNWRA-supported "camps" in Lebanon cannot work or even go to school outside their designated areas. Ditto for Syria.

Most "Palestinian refugees" listed by UNRWA (which includes Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, West Bank and Gaza) in 2002, don't even live in the camps, but in nearby villages and towns. All receive free assistance and services for the rest of their life, including their children, their grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, ad infinitum.

According to UNRWA's rules, anyone who applied for relief, claiming they lived in Palestine for at least two years prior to 1948 (when Israel was attacked) and claimed to have lost property and livelihood was entitled to assistance, regardless of where they came from, or where they live today. Once a "Palestinian refugee," always a "Palestinian refugee."

That is not all the writer has to say:

UNRWA openly admits that they don't monitor programs that support terrorism, or payments to families of terrorists by the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, Hezb'allah and (until recently) Iraq's Saddam Hussein.

In fact, nearly all teachers employed by UNRWA are members of terrorist-controlled unions. Funding these teachers and the curriculum of hatred and bigotry, supports terrorism and terrorist organizations. This may explain why so many children are willing to blow themselves up, carry weapons and explosives and place themselves as shields for terrorists.

Although responsible for what goes on in the areas it administers, UNRWA ignores the fact that terrorists are being trained there, including the next generation of homicide bombers, that bomb-making factories flourish inside the camps, and that arms and ammunition are stockpiled there.

UNRWA ignores the launching of thousands of rocket attacks against Israel from within territory under its responsibility.

And most outrageous, UNRWA is accountable only to the UN General Assembly, dominated by the 56-member Organization of Islamic Conference which is also part of the 115-member Non-Aligned Movement -- an automatic majority in the 191-member U.N.

UNRWA violates its own UN mandate (Resolution 302), which states (Paragraph 5): "constructive measures should be undertaken at an early date with a view to the termination of international assistance for relief."

UNRWA (Paragraph 7) indicates only two responsibilities: to work with Arab governments to provide jobs for the refugees and to help Arab governments end (not perpetuate) international assistance. UNRWA has been doing the exact opposite.

The "Palestinian Right of Return" (to Israel) -- their basic, non-negotiable demand - encourages the refusal to accept Israel's existence and fuels Palestinian terrorism. It reinforces Palestinians' belief in their victimization, promotes a culture of denial and self-destruction, and sabotages any hope for change. UNRWA facilitates this mess.

And we pay for it. Had enough? Stop the funding, now.

As always, read the whole thing.

Hiatus is over

After taking a long time out from the blog, I am back. There is so much to talk about and so much venting to do, that I could not stay away. Hopefully I will get back to my former status (such as it was) in the ecosystem and get back in the game.Stay tuned. Thanks...Tom