They enticed the voters with a bunch of sweet nothings:

• A pretty package labeled “Stimulus” (bribe payoffs and other pork barrel)
• One tied with a green bow labeled “Climate Change Legislations” (more payoffs, and the fulfillment of long term leftist Luddite desires)
• A gift card saying “More Stimulus for You” (more vote buying)
• Aa gift bag labeled “Medical Reform” (state control and destruction of another 1/6th of the economy)

They got them drunk on a media fueled euphoria.

Now they are rushing legislation through in order to get their satisfaction – before the victim recovers enough to object!

I wonder when our elite will catch on to what the rest of us already know:

“It ain’t that important!”

To Set The Record Straight

How Swift Boat Veterans, POWs and the
New Media Defeated John Kerry

by Scott Swett and Tim Ziegler

This is the true story of how those vets fought against the vast battalions of the elite media…and against all odds, won. Swett, an insider from the start, and Ziegler nail journalists to the wall time after time. I have never read so many shocking instances of outright bias – or fraud – or stupidity – by the mainstream media.

Early on, the Swift Boat veterans held a historic press conference, where one after another of Kerry’s brothers-in-arms condemned him. You probably didn’t hear about it – it was all but ignored by the media.

“They [Swiftees] assumed that the media would validate their credentials and report their charges to the public. John O’Neill later admitted ‘We were naïve.’ …

“CBS was the only network that did anything, and they did a complete hatchet job…”

“By October, O’Neill no longer had any illusions about what to expect from the old media gatekeepers. The leading liberal networks and newspapers would try to discredit any information harmful to Kerry. Other Swift Vets and POW’s were astonished at the hypocrisy of news organizations they had once admired. While loudly praising the vital role of a free press, the old media imposed a nearly Soviet level of political censorship on the content of news reports.”

When you read the book, you too will be astonished. And you will be amazed at what you never heard, such as the evidence strongly suggesting that John Kerry acted as an agent of the enemy, and that he covered up a less-than-honorable discharge from the Navy.

A CBS report opined “But if you think this is just a concerned group of veterans, think again.” (page 99)

So who were the Swift Boat veterans? This book counters the myths about the vets, who are usually pictured in movies as druggie losers or enraged psychopaths. In particular, it clears up slanders against the Swiftees and their organization, proving they were part of a spontaneous grass roots uprising. The veterans were from all walks of life, Democrat, Republican or just plain ornery.

Expect howls of outrage… expect ad hominem attacks— that the authors are liars and the Swiftees… Bush operatives. Swett and Ziegler give the facts to prove this wrong.

Every practicing journalist in America needs to read this book and then ask and answer some hard questions.

Everyone else in America needs to read it to realize how many times the mainstream media seeks to mislead instead of inform.

You can buy the book directly from the authors here.

History will show Reagan as one of the greatest leaders of the 20th century. He was a great yet humble American who made his way from a radio sports announcer to an actor to a governor to probably the most significant president of the 20th century.

More people achieved freedom as a result of Ronald Reagan’s actions than ever before in history.

Farewell, Gipper

There were people there continuously, and many tributes had been left. I added my military service ribbons to some others there.

I took some pictures but don’t feel like puitting them up yet.

It was very sad, and I am very sad.

What more can be said?

Read it here.

Libya’s leader made the right choice, and other regimes should follow his example. We are working with the international community to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. And with our four partners in East Asia, we are insisting that North Korea completely, verifiably, and irreversibly dismantle its nuclear programs.

Now, the North Koreans should also recognize that, with the unraveling of these proliferation networks, the A.Q. Kahn network, what the Libyans are now freely admitting and talking about, that their admissions and what they say is not the only source of information about what’s going on in North Korea. And it’s probably a good time for the North Koreans to come clean about what’s going on in North Korea.

A bit of history on the blindness of the left, and seeing past the surface:

I remember one particular one when I served on a panel discussing the Zero Option — the complete elimination of all U.S. and Soviet intermediate-range ballistic missiles. This was in San Francisco, in the early 1980s, at the height of the nuclear freeze movement. I was a young academic, just starting out. And I’d like to think that they invited because of my rising reputation. But it’s entirely possible that I was the only person in the entire San Francisco Bay area who would actually support the Reagan policy. (Laughter and applause.) I defended that position as best I could, against an older gentleman who strenuously argued that President Reagan and his belligerent rhetoric were the real problems. Aggressive Soviet behavior was understandable, given the threat that Moscow perceived from Reagan. President Reagan’s proposed response — deploying American missiles to counter any increase in Soviet missiles — would only make things worse, so on and so on. I’d like to think that I won the debate. But looking back, I have my doubts because afterwards, several women in the audience — clearly Reagan opponents and Nuclear Freeze supporters — approached me. They thanked me for doing so much for peace, and for standing up to that awful Reagan. (Laughter.) I think they looked at me, a young, black female and they just assumed that I was an opponent of President Reagan. After listening to me for an hour, clearly, they were unable to see past the surface of things.

But in truth, we arms controllers were having trouble seeing past the surface of things. We were fixated on a host of details: megatons, MIRVS, throw weights, and verification measures. We were absolutely determined to get the best possible deal with the Soviet Union and, in retrospect, we missed the big picture. Ronald Reagan the big picture. He challenged the whole premise of arms control and the whole premise of Soviet power. For him, arms control was a means, not an end. The end he sought were nothing less than the end of the Soviet Union, the liberation of Eastern Europe, and the victory of liberty over tyranny. To achieve these ends, he had to challenge most — if not all — the received wisdom of the time. That is what great leaders do — and what only they can do.

Bush’s 3 Pillars of Foreign Policy:

These are principles that great leaders have put into practice during challenging times — and these are challenging times. Thus, the President calls on America to use our unparalleled strength and influence to create a balance of power that favors freedom. His vision stands on three pillars. First, we will defend the peace by opposing and preventing violence by terrorists and outlaw regimes. Second, we will preserve the peace by fostering an era of good relations among the world’s great powers. And third, we will extend the peace by seeking to extend the benefits of freedom and prosperity across the globe.

On 9-11

The attacks of September the 11th, 2001, were the greatest strategic shock that the United States has experienced since Pearl Harbor. These attacks crystallized our vulnerability to plots hatched in different lands, that come without warning, bringing tragedy to our shores. These attacks made clear that sweeping threats under the rug is simply not an option.

President Bush saw the implications of that immediately. The very day of the attacks — as smoke still rose from the Pentagon, and the rubble of the Twin Towers, and that field in Pennsylvania — he told us, his advisors, that the United States faced a new kind of war and that the strategy of our government would be to take the fight to the terrorists…

And of course, we also face every day the possibility of our worst nightmare: the possibility of sudden, secret attack by chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapons, the coming together of the terrorist threat with the world’s most dangerous weapons. September 11th made clear our enemies’ goals and provided painful experience of how far they are willing to go. From the terrorist’s own boasts, we know that they will not hesitate to use the world’s most terrible weapons. In fact, they would welcome the chance to do it.

On the foolishness of past non-proliferation efforts:

For so many years, the world pretended that important treaties like the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty were keeping this problem in check. For many years, the world marked time while the proliferation threat gathered. For many years, the world refused to live up to the resolutions — resolution after resolution — which it had passed.

On Iraq:

The decision to hold the Iraqi regime accountable after twelve years of defiance is another part of an aggressive strategy to deal with the proliferation threat, because it has finally restored the credibility of the international community to do what it said. The former Iraqi regime was not just a state sponsor of terror. It was also for many years one of the world’s premier weapons of mass destruction-producing states. For twelve years, Iraq’s former dictator defied the international community, refusing to disarm or to even account for his illegal weapons and programs. We know he had both because he used chemical weapons against Iran and against his own people — because, long after those attacks, he admitted having to stocks and programs to U.N. inspectors. The world gave Saddam Hussein one last chance to disarm. He did not and now he is out of power.

Non-proliferaiton today:

And as we advance a broad non-proliferation agenda, we also recognize that proliferators cannot always be stopped by diplomacy alone. But they can be stopped.

The two paths to weapons of mass destruction:

We now know, however, that there are actually two paths to weapons of mass destruction — secretive and dangerous states that pursue them and shadowy, private networks and individuals who also traffic in these materials, motivated by greed or fanaticism or, perhaps, both. And often these paths meet. The world recently learned of the network headed by A.Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program. For years, Khan and his associates sold nuclear technology and know-how to some of the world’s most dangerous regimes, including North Korea and Iran.

Terrorism as the heir to communism:

We’ve been busy over the last several years, but as we move forward with this ambitious agenda, day by day, we never lose site of a central truth: Lasting peace and long-term security are only possible through the advance of liberty and justice. Military power alone cannot protect us from the defining threats of our time. The War on Terror, like the Cold War, is as much a conflict of visions as a struggle of armed force. All of the early heroes of the Cold War — Truman, and Churchill, and Adenauer — understood this. Decades later, we seemed poised to forget it, viewing the Soviet Union as just another state with interests, and its continued existence — even its permanence — as inevitable. It was President Reagan who peeled back the layers of complacency surrounding detente and saw that underneath, the Soviet Union had not changed, that the moral element of the early Cold War was still relevant. President Reagan re-infused the Cold War with moral purpose. And that renewed sense of purpose allowed the free world to prevail.

The terrorist ideology is the direct heir to communism, and Nazism, and fascism — the murderous ideologies of the 20th century. The struggle against terror is fundamentally a struggle of vision and values. The terrorists offer suicide, and death, and pseudo-religious tyranny. America and our allies seek to advance the cause of liberty and defend the dignity of every person. We seek, in President Bush’s words, “the advance of freedom, and the peace that freedom brings.”

Why democracy in Iraq and Iran are critical to our national interest:

The world is watching. The failure of democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan would condemn millions to misery and embolden terrorists around the world. The defeat of terror and the success of freedom in those nations will serve the interests of our nation because free nations do not sponsor terror and do not breed the ideologies of murder. And success will serve our ideals, as free and democratic governments in Iraq and Afghanistan inspire hope and encourage reform throughout the world.

Iraq as the central front on terrorism:

Because people like Zarqawi and their Al Qaeda affiliates and their Al Qaeda colleagues know that when Iraq is stable and peaceful and prosperous and democratic, that we will blow a huge hole in their sense of inevitability for this murderous jihad that they’re trying to carry out. That’s why Zarqawi and those people are in Iraq. And if you think for one minute that if we weren’t in Iraq, they were just going to be someplace drinking tea? No. (Laughter.) They were going to be fighting the jihad somewhere. They decide that they’re going to do it in Iraq because they know it’s an extremely important battle in the central front.

I’ve been really kind of amused that when the President said Iraq was on the central front in the war on terrorism, people said, oh, no, no, no, it doesn’t have anything to do with the war on terrorism. What’s Zarqawi doing in Iraq? He seems to know it has something to do with the war on terrorism. So we need to get very clear on what it is we’re doing in Iraq.

On criticism from the left:

Well, Americans just need to step back for a moment and ask themselves several questions about what has happened over the last two-and-a-half years. We were brutally attacked on September 11th on our own territory. We didn’t know it was coming an hour before it happened. We didn’t know it was coming minutes before it happened. How do you know when you have let a gathering threat go too long? You know when somebody attacks. That’s not acceptable. And the President has said, he is going to do everything that he can not to put America in that position again. He tells everybody who comes into the Oval, my solemn duty is to protect the people of the United States of America. So one thing we can all agree on as Americans is we don’t ever want to go through September 11th again if we can humanly avoid it.

That means that you don’t get to go back to the days when we thought of terrorism as just some kind of law enforcement problem. Yes, there were people who were fighting to make us be more aggressive in Afghanistan and wipe out al Qaeda. There certainly were in the last administration and this administration. But we have not really mobilized our country for a war on terrorism. We had not mobilized the international community to recognize that, yes, you have to have broad sharing of intelligence, you have to have broad sharing of law enforcement. But you also have got to use when you must the military instrument to deprive them of sanctuary, which is what we did in Afghanistan, so that they don’t have camps in Afghanistan anymore — that you have to go after terrorist states that are a gathering threat like Saddam Hussein.

Who are we fooling? We went to war against them in 1991. I guess he was a threat; President Clinton bombed him in 1998. I guess he was a threat; he was shooting at our aircraft every day, practically, in the no-fly zones, as we flew military missions to try to keep him from harming his own people or from attacking his neighbors. He was shooting at our airplanes. He was defying the international community’s calls and demands that he disarm. This was one of the most dangerous regimes of all time — of recent times, sitting in the world’s most dangerous region.

Now, are we better off that he’s gone? Is the Middle East better off that he’s gone? Is it worth the sacrifice to rid this region of one of the most dangerous regimes in modern times? Yes.

And so that’s what we need to step back and look at. And if somebody has got a better idea of how to protect America, then I think they ought to put it forward. That’s the debate that I think we will have. That’s fine. That’s what debate is all about. But I hope that as we have the debate, we will also try very hard to send a strong message that America is going to stay after the terrorists, that America is not going to abandon the Iraqi people, that we will be there with them through this struggle, that the United States of America finishes the jobs that it began.

That’s a worthy debate for the United States of America, because the role of the United States is the major one in foreign policy. But at a time of consequence, you don’t have a choice but to take the difficult and tough road sometimes, and that’s what this President has done. (Applause.)

On her most recent flight there, every passenger in first class gave up their seats to the troops! The gratitude of all on the aircraft was enthusiastically expressed.

On an Amtrak trip yesterday, civilians in the Cafe Car competed for the honor of buying beer for the troops there. Too many civilians, not enough soldiers! Lots of thanks and “High Fives” were also given.

You may not see it on the news, but these incidents are happening all over the country every day.

The blogger describes himself:

My name is Zeyad. I’m 24, male. I live in Baghdad, Iraq. Also lived in the UK prior to the first Gulf war. I work as a dentist.

Check it out!

Thanks to Kevin at Smallest Minority who also needs to return to my blog and answer my question on his comments about lions. Oh, and I suspect Kevin is a lawyer too. Scary.

Bravo! I think it’s about time that somebody stood up to the ELF terrorists, and it would certainly be ironic if a few ELF’s were became the food for these natural carnivores.

In unusually blunt language that drew surprised gasps from reporters, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher scoffed at Belgium, France, Germany and Luxembourg for continuing to support the proposal that they first introduced at a mini-summit in April.

He described the April meeting as one between “four countries that got together and had a little bitty summit” and then referred to them collectively as “the chocolate makers.”

Nick summarizes some of the insane consequences of this nice sounding piece of excrement legislation, which also happens to be anti-democratic and obviously unconstitutional, to those who don’t consider the Constitution to be a “living document.”

And Nick’s even doing something about it. You can help!

When I bemoaned the outrageous press bias (and outright lies) about the Bush Iraq-Africa-Uranium statement, my friend commented that the Republicans were handling the incident poorly. And he is right.

Why are Republicans apologizing? Bush didn’t lie. His information was not based on the bad intelligence so often mentioned (forged documents). More on this later.

The whole issue is, of course, trivial to begin with. It was one sentence in a long speech. It was a tiny piece of a substantial argument about Iraq’s WMD capability, a capability fully accepted by the whole world and even the Democrats just months before!

But suddenly, all has changed. All of this prior history has been forgotten. Because Saddam’s devastated, shocked and demoralized army didn’t “slime” our troops, Bush must have been lying about WMD’s. Because the Iraqi’s chose to not be caught with their WMD’s after an inevitably successful invasion, Bush was lying.

The way the press and the Democrats are jumping on this is very telling: it shows both how desperate the left is and how biased the media coverage will be during next year’s election, when it really counts.

Somehow the Democrats and their syncophants in the major networks and New York Times imagine that, with this issue, they can convince the American people that the whole Weapons of Mass Destruction issue was a neo-conservative plot to justify Bush stealing Iraqi oil for Enron, or some such nonsense. Sadly, the primary effect will be to further damage the image of the nation overseas. Americans have too much common sense to be taken in by this silliness.

I suspect the main reason this issue has been handled so badly by the White House is because it is so trivial that they had no plan to deal with it. And it hit during the summer news doldrums, while staffers are on vacation and the President is out of the country. But still, they should have been ready. They should know that the most trivial will be blown out of proportion by today’s hostile media.

They should recognize that the media elite is not merely biased… they HATE George Bush they same way they hated Ronald Reagan. He has driven the left wing elite crazy, first by getting elected (illegitimately in their minds), with his successes, and with his attitude.

So the White House and Republicans in general need to be on the alert. They need to recognize that the enemy has a tremendous “force multiplier” in ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, AKA The Great Left Wing Media Conspiracy™. The playing field is far from level. The right must be ready for asymmetrical political warfare!

Anyway… The Facts of this Issue

…just in case the media has confused anyone out there…

If you followed any of the major networks, you would think that George Bush said that Iraq bought uranium from Niger. But that is not what he said. The exact quote is: ” The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

And the British government today stands by that statement. To confuse things a bit more, it turns out that shortly after Bush said this, forged papers were publicized purporting to show that Iraq was trying to get Uranium from Niger. Much was made of how the US was fooled by this “faulty intelligence,” and indeed the CIA and the Brits may have been confused by this. But the British say that this was *not* the only source of their intelligence, and it was the British intelligence to whom Bush referred. Furthermore, Niger had a history of selling uanium to Iraq.

The information about these forgeries was public well before the war started, and yet the President’s statements now in dispute were not questioned by those making so much noise today! This is probably because they, like the rest of the world, expected that the US would indeed find a nuclear weapons WMD program (and keep in mind that we *did* find lots of uranium at Tuwaitha).

More FUD turned up when Joseph C. Wilson, a former diplomat, wrote an editorial for the leader of The Great Left Wing Media Conspiracy™, the New York Times. He proclaimed that, while on an 8 day mission to Niger in February 2002, he determined there was no plan to trade Uranium between Niger and Iraq. Wilson accused Bush of making the uranium statement based on false information about Niger, and he accused the White House of twisting the evidence. But how did Wilson know that the Niger information was the basis for Bush’s statement? Bush didn’t mention Niger, but rather Africa. Britain and the US had intelligence that Iraq appeared to be seeking uranium from other African countries. Did Wilson know this? How? The British claim that the intelligence they used was more recent than Wilson’s visit to Niger. One also has to question why Wilson waited until now – after the war which he claims was started based on false information – to make his accusations.

Finally, just before this controversy took off, an Iraqi nuclear scientist led American investigators to uranium enrichment technology (centrifuge parts) which had been buried in his rose garden at the order of the Saddam regime. This material was exactly the sort of banned nuclear WMD technology that Hans Blix was searching for! It’s careful burial (along with many document buried with it) clearly establishes that Iraq was planning on restarting its nuclear weapons program in the future, and was planning to enrich uranium.

So why are the Republicans apologizing for this non-error?

Beats me!

To show their solidarity, many Canadians are planning a “Rally for America” for Toronto on Friday, April 4th.

Thus this blog may be updated infrequently.