And the President slipped the blue bracelet with the name of her dead husband on his wrist and then went on TV to address 25 million people.

Those who believe George Bush has no guts, should read this chronicle of his meeting with the families of soldiers who have died in Iraq. How do you console the inconsolable? How do you comfort the totally bereft? How can you look people in the eye who have lost so much, knowing in your heart of hearts that somewhere in those tortured eyes is an accusation?

“I know people are pushing you, but please don’t pull the guys out of Iraq too soon,’ ” said Crystal Owen, whose husband, Staff Sgt. Mike Owen, was killed in Iraq last year.

“Don’t let my husband—and 1,700-plus other deaths—be in vain,” she added during a private meeting with Mr. Bush at the North Carolina base. “They were over there, fighting for a democratic nation, and I hope you’ll keep our service members over there until the mission can be accomplished.”

It’s because of people like Mrs. Owen that the President is able to face those whose loved ones gave that “last full measure of devotion.” Yes, we’ve seen family members who have been understandably bitter toward the President, who lash out in their anger and their pain at the man whose orders sent their beloved into harms way. We’ve even had word that these confrontations take place during the little gatherings at military bases the President has with the relatives of the deceased before he goes ahead and speaks to the troops. What can you say to a loved one who holds you personally responsible for the death of their spouse or their child?

You can stand there and take it. You do it because history has reached out and tapped you on the shoulder and whispered in your ear a song you didn’t want to hear but is now too late to shut out. You’ve committed your country to a path, the first steps of which are being taken in a place where it seems all of the evil and hate that led to nearly 3,000 of your fellow countrymen being incinerated on a beautiful September morning is being concentrated and focused.

So much evil. So much hatred.

And the hatred is not confined to your enemies abroad. Demonstrating an unreasonableness bordering on clinical psychosis, your political foes portray you as an uncaring monster, a war lover, a liar, a schemer of Machiavellian proportions whose associations with shadowy, powerful men are the cause of all the nation’s problems. As their conspiracy theories get wilder and more fanciful and their rage grows at you and your supporters, it seems as if all the political furies in the world have been let loose to torment and afflict you.

And then Mrs. Owen slips the blue bracelet with the name of her husband on your wrist and you remember. You remember the other gatherings like this one, at other military bases across the country whose place names evoke the emotions and virtues of the heartland of America: Fort Stewart, Georgia, Fort Polk, Louisiana, Fort Lewis, Washington, Fort Campbell, Kentucky, Fort Hood, Texas, MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, Camp Pendleton, California.

A river of tears has been cried at these gatherings. And surprisingly, you’ve found yourself awash in an ocean of love. It amazes you that they care deeply about your feelings, about your psyche. They look into your eyes and seek the comfort that only you can give them. And when they connect, their gratitude gives you the strength to go on.

It doesn’t surprise us that you get choked up when talking about these men and their families. The bond between a Commander in Chief and his soldiers is a special one, going back to the earliest civilizations that had armies. The bond is based on trust. You trust them to carry out orders. They trust you to ask them to die only when the cause is worth it. The fact that re-enlistment among Iraq veterans is so high says something about the trust the soldiers hold for you. And that trust extends to the families who, even when they disagree with you and your policies, honor the service of their beloved.

I wonder if you looked at the blue wrist band Mrs. Owen gave to you before you went before the cameras and spoke to 25 million of your fellow citizens. I wonder if you thought of her husbands sacrifice and repeated your vow that he and his fellows will not have died in vain.

For all the Mrs. Owens, I hope you can stay the course until the job is done.

The New York Times is nothing if not consistent. They’re still having trouble with “enemy identification:”

Presidential elections in Iran defy easy categorization. The winner assumes Iran’s highest elective office, but no president to date has been able to defy the wishes of the unelected ayatollahs who rule the country. And while the nomination process is very tightly controlled, the eventual winner often comes as a surprise to many Iranians and most outsiders.

That pattern repeated itself with the landslide victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last week. A radically conservative mayor of Tehran and former member of the thuggish Basij militia, Mr. Ahmadinejad little resembles the departing president, Mohammad Khatami, a reformist intellectual. But like Mr. Khatami in his initial upset victory eight years ago, Mr. Ahmadinejad dethroned a better-known establishment candidate, in this case a former president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Mr. Ahmadinejad’s “landslide victory” is by most neutral accounts (The Times excluded) a sham. Voter turnout, announced at 60% was probably closer to 40%. And even those reduced numbers are the result of the Guardian Council ordering anyone connected with the government to the polls. According to some, the struggle was between the hardliners and the really hard liners:

Please keep two basic facts in mind as this melodrama unfolds: Neither Rafsanjani nor Ahmadinejad has any intention of altering the basic structure of the Islamic Republic, nor of “liberalizing” Iranian society (the Reich was not notably more “moderate” after Hitler crushed the SA, was it?). Both are known murderers; one way of evaluating the outcome of today’s events is that the next Iranian president will be wanted for murder either in two countries (Ahmadinejad — Austria and Germany) or in just one (Rafsanjani — Germany). This is not a fight over the future of the country; it’s a power struggle within the tyrannical elite.

And as leftists the world over hailed the Iranian elections as a triumph of democracy and villified Washintong’s dismissal of them, it appears that Mr. Ahmadinejad has some explaining to do to the United States. Apparently, Iranians new President was a hostage taker:

In 1979, he became the representative of Elm-o Sanaat students in the Office for Strengthening of Unity Between Universities and Theological Seminaries, which later became known as the OSU. The OSU was set up by Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti, who was at the time Khomeini’s top confidant and a key figure in the clerical leadership. Beheshti wanted the OSU to organise Islamist students to counter the rapidly rising influence of the opposition Mojahedin-e Khalq (MeK) among university students.

The OSU played a central role in the seizure of the United States embassy in Tehran in November 1979. Members of the OSU central council, who included Ahmadinejad as well as Ibrahim Asgharzadeh, Mohsen (Mahmoud) Mirdamadi, Mohsen Kadivar, Mohsen Aghajari, and Abbas Abdi, were regularly received by Khomeini himself.

According to other OSU officials, when the idea of storming the U.S. embassy in Tehran was raised in the OSU central committee by Mirdamadi and Abdi, Ahmadinejad suggested storming the Soviet embassy at the same time. A decade later, most OSU leaders re-grouped around Khatami but Ahmadinejad remained loyal to the ultra-conservatives.

And what does the Times say about an architects of one of the most humiliating moments in American history?

Mr. Rafsanjani lost because he was too closely associated with the recent economic failures and political inertia. Mr. Ahmadinejad, in contrast, offered a populist economic platform that implicitly challenged the cronyism and corruption of more than a quarter-century of clerical rule. We wish him luck. But it is hard to see how he can deliver on those promises over the objections of the ruling establishment, whose powers greatly exceed his own.

Wish him luck? For what? In his efforts to convert the entire planet to his version of Islam?

“Thanks to the blood of the martyrs, a new Islamic revolution has arisen and the Islamic revolution of 1384 [the current Iranian year] will, if God wills, cut off the roots of injustice in the world,” he said. “The wave of the Islamic revolution will soon reach the entire world.”

Do ya think he might want to use a shiny new nuclear toy to help him achieve that goal? Here the Times gets serious – sort of:

On the issue of greatest current concern to the United States, Iran’s steady progress toward the ability to produce nuclear bomb fuel, Mr. Ahmadinejad’s victory is expected to lead to greater intransigence and less interest in compromise. Any acceptable deal would have to include an Iranian commitment to halt efforts to enrich uranium or separate plutonium, which can produce nuclear bomb fuel.

Mr. Ahmadinejad’s initial statements on this issue have been ambiguous, favoring continued pursuit of nuclear technology and continued diplomacy. Perhaps, a fiery nationalist like Mr. Ahmadinejad may be just the right man to cut a nuclear deal, just as it took Richard Nixon to reach out to Communist China. But we doubt it; the greater trade and investment that a deal would bring may not mean much to a politician whose greatest political appeal has come from promising a return to the austere, self-reliant ideology of Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution.

First of all, what the Times doesn’t mention is that a “return to the austere, self-reliant ideology” of 1979 would be a catastrophe for the Iranian people. The Mullah’s definition of “austere” is probably quite different from the definition used by New York Times editorial writers. To the religious nutcases who rule Iran, “austere” means lining up against a wall and shooting anyone who looks sideways at the government. They’ve had a lot of practice. Some human rights groups estimated that following the revolution in 1979, upwards of 100,000 Iranians were executed for political reasons.

Furthermore, as the Times recommends later in the editorial, taking the radioactive Mullah’s before the United Nations would be a waste of time. China’s oil deals with Iran will guarantee a veto of any punitive actions contemplated by the Security Council. Which means that once again, the community of nations will be able to sit back and criticize any actions the US takes to make sure that these fanatics don’t get their hands on nuclear weaponry.

What the election of this terrorist has assured is that Israel will have to be restrained from taking unilateral action in order to protect itself. By late summer or early fall, we’ll probably reach a point of no return with Iran. They’ll have enough nuclear fuel to threaten the existence of Israel. At that point, all bets will be off on some kind of military action taken by either Israel or the United States.

The President once again confounded his critics and rose to the occasion last night to deliver an informative and at times inspiring speech in defense of his war policies.

It’s nothing less than what we’ve come to expect. Bush masterfully wove the 9/11 thread into the Iraq thread, something that always drives his critics through the roof because they know Bush’s support jumps whenever he brings up that horrible day in relation to the Iraq war. It’s something he’s gotten away from in the months since the election and it was well past time for him to draw the pictures and connect the dots once again.

In short, it was a great speech, one of his best. But now I’d like to see the President give the next speech, the speech that will cover what everyone is talking about and thinking about.

Let’s call it “The Torture Speech.”

I can understand that the speech last night was not the time nor the place to bring up prisoner abuse. But it’s an issue that the President himself must start addressing. Assurances from Rumsfeld and the Pentagon brass just isn’t good enough. Simply saying that the detainees are being treated well isn’t good enough. Ignoring an issue that the rest of the world is concerned about, that the Arab press is skewering us with and undermining our war effort, and that even many of the President’s strongest supporters are talking about isn’t good enough.

The issue demands Presidential leadership. It cries out for Presidential reassurances. And it requires an executive department accounting, something that only the President can give.

There are investigations, reviews, prosecutions, court martials, and allegations from detainees and their lawyers that are all out there, dragging down our image abroad and sapping the will to fight of our people at home. Only the President, using the power and prestige of his office, can sort out the wheat from the chaff, the lies from the truth, in order to assure the world and the American people that everything is being done to correct a situation where the vast majority of the world believes the United States military is systematically and deliberately committing heinous war crimes.

Clearly there has been abuse, perhaps even widespread mistreatment of prisoners. Just as certainly, there have been isolated incidents of torture and even murder. For the President to remain silent and not get out front of this issue and lead may be politically the right thing to do but it is morally wrong. If the President were to acknowledge wrongdoing – with a specificity that’s been lacking up to this point – as well as outline the remedies already in place and reiterate American policy toward detainees, it would go a long way toward reassuring the American people and silencing some of the arguments of his critics.

Yes, his critics will still use the issue as a political club. But some of the power of their arguments will dissipate in the face of the President’s resolve to not only fix the situation as it currently stands but also work to see that such practices do not happen in the future. In short, he could cutoff the legs from underneath his critics arguments and diffuse a lot of unnecessary criticism. And, it would reassure his supporters who have been wavering over these last several weeks.

Finally, some resolution to the legal limbo many of the detainees are held in must occur. The President must first acknowledge this problem, something the Justice Department and the Pentagon have been unwilling to do up to this point. Then, common decency and the rule of law demand that we solve this issue. Many of the terrorists have been held for more than 3 years without a resolution of their status. “Enemy combatants” was an easy label to hang on the terrorists while the fighting was going on but now it’s time to find some designation more permanent. Whether it will be Congress who decides or the Pentagon or even the Department of Justice is of little consequence as long as the determination is made to solve this problem soon. And only the President should be making these kinds of decisions.

I have no doubt this will be the hardest speech the President will ever have to make. But it’s a speech that must be given. Until he does, all the hard work, all the sacrifices by our men and women and their families will be for naught. The fact is, this issue is a monkey wrench that’s mucking up the machinery of war. Only the President can convince the world that the United States really is serious about this issue and is doing its best to solve it.

The reputation of the United States and our armed forces demand no less.

Cross Posted at Blogger News Network

Lots of righty bloggers are posting about this story regarding the potential seizure of Justice David Souter’s house under new eminent domain rules in which he concurred in the Kelo case.

The commercial project envisioned for Souter’s homesite – The “Lost Liberty Hotel” with “Just Desserts Cafe” – is a publicity stunt by Freestar Media owner and political nutcase D. (Logan Darrow) Clements who ran as an “Objectivist” for Governor of California in the 2003 California recall.

This guy is a loon:

I want to make government as small as possible so the economy can be as large as possible. For starters, I would reduce by 50 percent the government spending on education by making all the schools private, from K through Ph.D universities. I would make the government so that it is only dealing with proper functions to protect our rights, like state troopers, courts, prisons, police, plus minor administrative functions. Almost everything else would be eliminated.

In addition to his foray into politics, Clements also has a “Reality TV” program on “Freenation” TV called The Lexington League” that highlights David versus Goliath stories of citizens against government.

This “proposal” to seize Souter’s land stinks to high heaven of a publicity stunt put on by an egotistical political gadfly who must really be enjoying being linked by The Captain, Glenn Reynolds, Michelle Malkin, and several dozen others.

Forget the silliness, let’s stop and think about this for a moment, shall we? Do we really want to practice this kind of intimidation against judges, be they Justices of the Supreme Court or any lesser judge? If we can’t insulate judges from this kind of pressure, what faith will we have in the decisions handed down by judges who are looking over their shoulder to see if there’s any chance they will personally suffer for interpreting the law?

Fruitcakes like Clements abound in this country. The potential for mischief is great. Any hint of intimidation would color the decision of a judge and invalidate it in the eyes of the public. The very idea of it smacks of dictatorship, especially if the intimidation were to be carried out by the cronies of powerful men.

It disturbed me when Judge Greer’s life was threatened in the Schiavo case. Yes he had conflict of interests (Greer was on the board of the hospice where Mrs. Schiavo was placed) and yes there were other legal aspects of the case that troubled many who are much more familiar with the law than I am. But to threaten a man’s life? That kind of thing can never be countenanced in a democracy if our judiciary is to remain free. And this attempt at punitive action against Justice Souter that has so many on the right cheering is no different in its goal – to intimidate a judge to rule in their favor.

It may feel good to envision a “Just Desserts Cafe” on property owned by one of the architects of the execrable Kelo decision. But somehow, I don’t think Justice Souter feels very good about it.

I’ve recently given a lot of thought to the subject of cluelessness.

After consulting various historians, philosophers, artists, and theologians, I’ve come to the conclusion that there are two states of cluesslessness:

1) Cluelessness as an aberration.
2) Cluelessness as a pathology

The first state of cluelessness is familiar to all of us in that each of us from time to time has fallen victim to our own humanity. In other words, everyone makes mistakes. President Bush falls into this category. I myself have been known to be clueless at times, especially when it comes to trying to figure out what makes women tick. Why would Sue get so upset that I’d rather stay inside to watch the Cubs-White Sox showdown than go outside and do yardwork in 95 degree heat? Was this a trick question? And yet, when she gave me the “choice” what I wanted to do, I didn’t realize that the choice was in fact, no choice at all but a test. If I really loved her, I’d give up the biggest game of the year to help her weed, hoe, water, and care for her extensive garden.

Like I said, I can be clueless at times.

The second state of cluelessness is easier to spot. It includes all Hollywood types, some conservatives, most liberals, and both political parties. It is cluelessness as a disease; incurable, virulent, but thankfully not catching.

Most of today’s Carnival of the Clueless entries fall into this category. So let’s get to this week’s mayhem!

“GROW old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made”
(Robert Browning)
“Browning never had to do yardwork in 95 degree heat, I’ll bet.”
Me

The Right Place asks the question of the week: Are you a Moonbat? Please take the test...and no cheating!

Raven of And Rightly So (Welcome back! Where’s the beer?) targets opponents of having balanced PBS programming. Raven’s piece begs the question; why is it okay to have a liberal Democrat as President of PBS but a dangerous precedent when a Republican is named?

Minh-Duc of State of Flux, in a stirring tribute both to the flag and free expression, points out the obvious to the clueless Congressmen who voted to outlaw flag burning.

Josh Cohen of Multiple Mentality , in the first of several diatribes against the execrable Supreme Court Kelo decision sums it up nicely in the title to his post: “The Constitution has Officially been Crapped on.”

You may have heard that the lovely Pamela from Atlas Shrugs is now also blogging at Trey Jackson’s excellent site Jackson’s Junction. She has a lot more on the Iranian elections including some gruesome but eye opening pictures proving again that the religious nutcases in charge of that country are among the most clueless humans on the planet.

Harvey of the excellent blog Bad Example has more on Dick Durbin and throws in a comparison reference to one of the Republicans own Clueless Cohorts, Rick Santorum.

Speaking of Rick Santorum, Elyas of Ablogistan proves that culture warriors like Mr. Santorum can carry some analogies too far and stray into the territory of the despicably clueless.

Giacomo of Joust the Facts has the skinny on Fred Phelps, the baptist preacher who attends funerals of soldiers to make the claim that they “were cast into hell to join many more dishonorable Americans” – ostensibly because 9/11 was punishment from God for our tolerance of homosexuality. Whatever happened to the time honored American tradition of tarring, feathering, and hoisting this lickspittle onto a rail and riding him out of town?

From the “You’re not going to believe this department” Maggie’s Farm tells us about Ethnomathmatics. Gee…I always wanted to learn how to count like the Mayans. Bird Dog adds in an email “I just think of Mayan Math and wonder if that will build a bridge I am willing to drive my Explorer over. Or my tractor.” Good point…

Bill Teach at Pirates Cove brings back an old friend - John Kerry - and asks what Senator Clueless has done for us lately? If you give him a minute, I’m sure he’ll tell us.

Matt Johnston of Going to the Mat shows us that education bureaucrats aren’t only clueless, they’re dishonest to boot. I was never any good at math – but then I’m not in charge of dispensing tens of millions of dollars in federal aid either.

Cao of Cao’s Blog links us to an ad from Moooveon to support Dick Durbin in his fight against the forces of darkness. Too bad the moonbats never saw that other Dick coming – Dick Daley – otherwise, they could have saved themselves a lot of money.

Beth of My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy is back from a short blog hiatus and the moonbats will shortly be begging for mercy. Her reasons for the hiatus are as sound as her reasons for returning.

Was there any event more illustrative of pie-in-the-sky cluelessness than John Conyers’ pseudo hearings on the Downing Street Minutes? Van Helsing of Moonbattery doesn’t think so.

BeeJay of What Would Hollywood Do brings us news of a possible Warren Beatty run for Governor in 2006. Can someone who’s portrayed both Dick Tracy and American communist John Reed actually think he has a chance? As Beejay says…Only in Hollywood!

More Hollywood “Tom” foolery from Northstar at The People’s Republic of Seabrook. Is Tom Cruise nuts? Or just clueless? The title of the post answers the question: “No, I’m not a psychiatrist, but I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night….” (Hee!)

Congratulations to Mark at Decision ‘08 who really works hard to find the truly clueless. This week, he highlights Eric Hobsbawm’s ridiculous article in The Guardian entitled “America’s Neo-Conservative World Supremacists Will Fail” ( I wonder if Wolfowitz beat his wife today?) and points out the truly clueless company Mr. Hobsbawm keeps.

GM Roper at GM’s Corner has solved the mystery of John Conyer’s missing turkeys (the ones intended for the poor that “disappeared” from his office last Christmas). You’ll never guess where he found them!

Blogbud The Maryhunter from TMH Bacon Bits takes the Euro lefties apart with a post about how the moonbats not only sympathize with the beheaders and torturers in Iraq, but actively support them with donations.

Satire from My Blogsite is so good I took the two posts he submitted this week. The first one is called “Wal-Mart To Demolish The Supreme Court For A New Super Supreme Center.” The second one is “Do you Want to be Google’s Pal?”

Finally, my own entry this week is also on the Kelo decision and it’s called “God Bless our (Banana) Republic.”

The votes are in and, according to the Discovery Channel, these are the top ten Americans of all time:

1) Ronald Reagan
2) Abraham Lincoln
3) Martin Luther King
4) George Washington
5) Benjamin Franklin
6) George W. Bush
7) Bill Clinton
Elvis Presley
9) Oprah Winfrey
10) Franklin D. Roosevelt

The only problem I have with the top 5 is Ronald Reagan winning the title of “Greatest American.” This is nuts. If Reagan hadn’t lived, I imagine things would have turned out differently with the fall of Communism and domestic policies would be skewed decidedly more to the left, but the fact is the United States would probably still be here and prospering nicely.

The same cannot be said about George Washington. I daresay that without Washington, there quite simply would be no United States – or at least a United States that we’d recognize as such. Therefore, I’d drop Reagan out of the top ten altogether (as I did here in this post) and put Washington in the top spot. Other than that, I have no quarrel with the top 5. Franklin may be a stretch but I’m comfortable with putting someone who’s impact on American life is still being felt today.

What is truly shocking and troubling is the fact that Thomas Jefferson isn’t in the top 5 or the top 10. Jefferson rolls in at #12. Here’s another individual that one can say if he didn’t live, America would be a very different place (if it existed at all). His impact on the formation of our Republic cannot be overstated. It can truly be said that he was not only the author of the Declaration of Independence, but that he is largely responsible for the Constitution, even though he was in Paris during the Summer of 1787. The reason? His disciples George Mason and James Madison more than any others were responsible for both the thinking behind the document and the writing of it. And he was the leader of the oldest political party in history; the Democratic Party. His ideas dominated American politics for the Republic’s first 50 years and his influence is felt down to this day.

Not including him was a travesty.

As for numbers 6 through 10 I’ll only say this: What. A. Crock.

George Bush? Bill Clinton (“Greatest” what? Serial adulterer?) Elvis? Oprah?

What this goes to show is that we Americans are not very interested in our past. There are cultural and traditional reasons for this. It’s part of our schizophrenic relationship with our ancestors. The fact that these ancestors wrote slavery into the Constitution (giving slaves a “value” of 3/5 of a human being) and practiced the deliberate and systematic genocide of Native Americans as well as performing heroic feats of settlement and exploration cannot be reconciled by most Americans.

In addition to this, we’ve embraced a political tradition that ignores the past in favor of looking toward the future. Politicians evoke images, events, and people from the past not to educate us but rather to connect to the future in a way that’s not done in any other democratic society. Reagan was a master of this. Clinton could also turn the trick on occasion. President Bush tries it and falls flat because his allegories inevitably seem to mix in religion. While the President’s piety is a strength both personally and politically, his major speeches that seek to invoke the past do so in order to illustrate a faith in God. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this, it’s just as political theater, it doesn’t go over well.

This ignorance of history is nothing new. It’s been remarked on by observers of America from it’s founding. Here’s Alexis de Tocquville:

“Not only does democracy make every man forget his ancestors, but also clouds their view of their descendants and isolates them from their contemporaries. Each man is for ever thrown back on himself alone, and there is danger that he may be shut up in the solitude of his own heart.”

The oft quoted Santayanna whose “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it” is used by both liberals and conservatives as a political talisman from which American’s are supposed to draw a lesson. The problem is American’s are not only ignorant of the past, they are unconcerned with it.

Is this good or bad? Well, it’s worked so far. As long as Americans never forget really big things like the Bill of Rights or Adolph Hitler, I doubt whether it will affect us one way or another.

UPDATE

I see where John Hawkins and I are thinking along the same lines (mostly). Here’s John’s top 10:

1) George Washington
2) Abe Lincoln
3) Thomas Jefferson
4) Ben Franklin
5) James Madison
6) Ronald Reagan
7) Andrew Jackson
Tom Paine
9) Teddy Roosevelt
10) Alexander Hamilton

I like Tom Paine, but I don’t think he’s anywhere near top 10 material. And Hamilton was a scheming son of a gun who allowed personal ambition to almost ruin the young Republic.

Teddy Roosevelt is an interesting choice and good arguments can be made in his favor. He pretty much invented the modern presidency. And his personna dominated American politics for a long time. Madison is an excellent choice seeing that he was largely responsible for sheperding the Constitution through the convention in 1787. And John has Jefferson right up front where he should be.

All in all, good choices, good rankings.

The New York Times is concerned.

This is usually a good sign. The Times doesn’t get concerned unless conservatives are doing something they don’t much like. In this case, the Times is concerned that the “version” of 9/11 that will be featured at the Ground Zero Memorial won’t remember the fallen and their “rich, complex and politically and culturally divided” lives. Instead, it will be a remembrance of America’s tragedy and the Americans who died there.

This just simply won’t do. Where’s the cultural sensitivity? Where’s the balance? What, no Abu Ghraib?

Gov. George Pataki’s decision to side with increasingly vocal critics of the cultural plans for the World Trade Center site is not surprising, but it is alarming. The governor has been deeply and rightly sensitive to the concerns of the families of the victims of 9/11. Like all of us, he honors their loss and their grief. But by bowing to some of the survivors’ growing hostility to any version of 9/11 except their own, Mr. Pataki is doing a disservice to history and to the very idea of freedom.

The protesters have objected to the proposed International Freedom Center, which they fear might someday sponsor discussions that cast America in a negative light, and to the Drawing Center, one of the cultural institutions invited to move to ground zero, which has displayed art that appears to criticize the Bush administration and the war in Iraq.

Is there an “alternate version” of 9/11 of which I’m unaware? Isn’t that the day when 19 Islamic terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon and murdered nearly 3000 Americans? In the universe inhabited by the New York Times, the answer is no:

What those lives stand for now is American freedom, in its full implication and all its contradictions. That is what has gone missing in the governor’s remarks, in which he demanded that the cultural organizations promise never to display art that might “denigrate” the victims of 9/11 or America in general. Mr. Pataki has accepted at face value the tenor of the protests at ground zero, which are, frankly, a call for censorship, indeed for censorship in advance – for political oversight of an artistic process that has only begun to evolve.

It is no contradiction to hope that ground zero will become a place that commemorates death and reaffirms life at the same time. But it will be the worst of bad beginnings to turn it into a place where only grief is acceptable, where the vital impulses represented by the arts are handcuffed in the name of freedom.

Asking that people respect the memories of the dead by not turning the Memorial into a political statement that would denigrate America would, just about anywhere else in this country, be a no brainer. Evidently, it’s too much to ask of the New York Times. And by raising the usual leftist canards regarding “censorship” (how about common decency?) whenever someone objects to anything a liberal does, is par for the course.

By supporting the idea that highlighting America’s sins at a memorial to honor the butchering of innocents, the New York Times proves that it isn’t an “alternate version” of events that’s at stake here – it’s the “alternate universe” the Times inhabits when it comes to anything that smacks of honoring America.

The United States military is the most technologically advanced, most lethal, and most mobile armed force in the history of human civilization. The world, quite simply, has never seen anything like it. Able to deploy tens of thousands of troops and their mountains of equipment and support personnel by sea and air to the most distant parts of the globe in a matter of weeks, the US Armed Forces have no equal anywhere on earth.

Then why, more than two years after the War in Iraq broke out, don’t our men and women have properly armed humvees to protect them from the Improvised Explosive Devices (IED’s) that have taken so many of their lives and caused many, many more to suffer horrible, disfiguring wounds?

If I were the parent of a child in Iraq I would be absolutely livid. And if I were the parent of a child killed because of this unconscionable and negligent set of circumstances, I would be homicidal.

The fact is, the Pentagon is lying through its teeth if this report in the New York Times is to be believed. And given the fact that back in the 1980’s I became generally familiar with the Pentagon procurement bureaucracy and recognize the snafus and delays described in the article, I can tell you that there’s about a 100% chance that the New York Times has hit the nail on the head.

Pentagon procurement is where the best and worst of American democracy, American capitalism, American PR, and American bureaucracy come together in a perfect storm of greed, nobility, pettiness, and inertia, the result of which is blundering chaos and crony capitalism at its worst. The procurement process is not specifically set up to protect taxpayer money, promote competitive bidding for contracts, or even make the United States safer. The number one goal of the process is to keep both procurement officials and companies that deal with the military from getting rich through graft and corruption, the opportunities for both being great.

In fact, looking at procurement policies of Third World nations, one can see why the Pentagon works so hard to prevent corruption. It’s estimated that nearly one quarter of all monies spent on weapons and weapons systems in Africa is the result of kickbacks to government officials or some other kind of corruption.

While the concern over corruption is admirable, the result is often ludicrous. Cost overruns, delays, unnecessary expenditures, and equipment that doesn’t perform as advertised are just a few of the problems associated with our current procurement system.

But that doesn’t begin to explain this:

Yet more than two years into the war, efforts by United States military units to obtain large numbers of these stronger vehicles for soldiers have faltered – even as the Pentagon’s program to armor Humvees continues to be plagued by delays, an examination by The New York Times has found.

Many of the problems stem from a 40-year-old procurement system that stymies the acquisition of new equipment quickly enough to adapt to the changing demands of a modern insurgency, interviews and records show.

The Pentagon has repeatedly said no vehicle leaves camp without armor. But according to military records and interviews with officials, about half of the Army’s 20,000 Humvees have improvised shielding that typically leaves the underside unprotected, while only one in six Humvees used by the Marines is armored at the highest level of protection.

The Defense Department continues to rely on just one small company in Ohio to armor Humvees. And the company, O’Gara-Hess & Eisenhardt, has waged an aggressive campaign to hold onto its exclusive deal even as soaring rush orders from Iraq have been plagued by delays. The Marine Corps, for example, is still awaiting the 498 armored Humvees it sought last fall, officials told The Times.

O’Gara-Hess & Eisenhardt doesn’t want to lose its “current and future competitive position.” In other words, at the expense of the safety of our men and women, they want to maintain their monopolistic hold on armoring humvees so that they can make more money. In essence, they are profiting from the deaths of our young people in Iraq.

Are you mad yet?

How about this. Suppose you wanted to build an armored vehicle. You’d probably want to incorporate the armor into the design for the vehicle and then add the armor to the chassis as you used old Henry Ford’s assembly method to move the vehicle down the line, right?

Nope:

The Humvee chassis is rapidly made on a vast assembly line near South Bend, Ind., by AM General. But before its vehicles can be rushed to Iraq, they are trucked four and a half hours to O’Gara’s shop in Fairfield, in southern Ohio – which had 94 people armoring one Humvee a day when the war began. There, the Humvees are partly dismantled so the armor can be added.

“Clearly, if you could have started from scratch you wouldn’t be doing it that way,” Mr. Brownlee [Les Brownlee, former Army Secretary] said in a recent interview.

That’s right. They build the vehicle first and then add the armor.

Are you getting madder?

But that’s not all. This is what happened when the Pentagon tried to get more contractors involved in armoring the humvees:

In February 2004, Mr. Brownlee visited the O’Gara plant and asked the company to increase production, gradually pushing its monthly output to 450 from 220 vehicles. The Defense Department also wanted to contract with other companies to make armor.

Determined to hold onto its exclusive contract, O’Gara began lobbying Capitol Hill. Among those it drew to its side was Brian T. Hart, an outspoken father of a soldier who was killed in October 2003 while riding in a Humvee. Early last year, as a guest on a national radio show, Mr. Hart urged the Pentagon to involve more armor makers. Two weeks later a lobbyist for O’Gara approached him.

“He informed me that the company had more than enough capacity,” Mr. Hart says. “There was no need to second-source.”

Mr. Hart then redirected his efforts to help the company push Congress into forcing the Pentagon to buy more armored Humvees. With support from both parties, the company has received more than $1 billion in the past 18 months in military armoring contracts.

First of all, please note the date of February, 2004. This is when the army first approached the contractor to start armoring more humvees. That’s more than 6 months after it became clear that the massive amount of ordinance in Iraq was going to result in the terrorists reliance on IED’s as their weapon of choice.

Why so long? Poor planning is the simple answer:

The Defense Department had assumed that armored Humvees wouldn’t be needed once the invasion of Iraq was over. Original plans called for the Pentagon to pull back most tanks and other armored vehicles to reduce the U.S. military profile as soon as Baghdad fell, because strategists had projected that Iraq would quickly become peaceful. But violent attacks by insurgents, never anticipated by the Pentagon, meant that troops traveling in unarmored Humvees faced grave risks.

How mad are you now?

Something’s got to be done to light a fire under these procurement bureaucrats so that our men and women can get the protection they deserve. Only the Secretary of Defense Mr. Rumsfeld can do that. And given that he’s been part of this “Don’t Panic. All is well” cabal that’s continually said everything possible is being done to armor up the humvees, perhaps its time once again for Rummy to offer his resignation. His credibility, already on shaky ground because of the abuse and torture scandals, has just taken another hit in my mind. And as I’ve done several times, I’d urge him to resign immediately.

This won’t fix the problem. Only a crash program involving both contractors and government will even begin to address the issue. And it’s also time for a little truth telling on the matter. The parents and loved ones of our men and women who are over in Iraq in vehicles that either aren’t armored or have makeshift protection gleaned from scrap metal piles and garbage dumps deserve it.

It’s time to get behind our troops and support them to the fullest. And the best way we can do that at this moment is skewer the Pentagon for their outrageous conduct during this entire affair.

One note: Hats off to our friends on the left who’ve been screaming about this for months. Although I suspect their motives were not so pure in that they were using the issue to embarass the Bush Administration, they were out front and on the side of the angels when it came to this issue.

A STYLIZED AND UNREALISTIC PORTRAYAL OF CUSTERS LAST STAND

George Armstrong Custer surveyed the low, rolling Montana countryside before him on that brutally hot Sunday afternoon of June 25, 1876 and must have felt a twinge of anticipation. He was a warrior. And prior to every battle he was ever involved in, from his glory days in the Civil War to this, the last battle of his life, Custer felt the tingling of impending combat. He considered himself invulnerable. His confidence – some would say arrogance – inspired both intense loyalty and profound disdain from the men and officers under his command. This, more than anything else, led to his destruction.

The Battle of Little Bighorn (the Lakota call it “The Battle of Greasy Grass Creek”) is the most written about battle in American history. Custer’s every known move has been examined, debated, dissected, re-examined and criticized by historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, and scientists. It’s also been one of the most popular subjects for artists as every generation since the battle has had both ridiculous and stylized portrayals as well as historically accurate reproductions. And thanks to Hollywood, just about everyone has heard of both the battle and its two major players – Custer and Tashunca-uitco AKA “Crazy Horse.”

The evolution of attitudes toward the battle is one of the most fascinating aspects of its history. Originally seen as a massacre of white soldiers by merciless Indians, the loss of of 267 American soldiers outraged and humiliated a country that was in the process of celebrating it’s Centennial. The resulting outcry sealed the doom of the Lakota, Cheyenne and other plains Indians tribes who had united for one last great war against white encroachment. Custer was portrayed as a great hero, thanks in no small part to his wife Libby’s hagiographic biography of their lives together called Boots and Saddles.

Then in the 1960’s, a welcome re-examination of America’s mythic heroes, including Custer, was initiated by historians eager to take advantage of the American people’s desire for the “truth” about our past. The pendulum swung in the opposite direction and Custer emerged as a vainglorious martinet of an officer, so eager for glory that he sacrificed his men on the altar of personal ambition.

By the late 1970’s, Custer’s image had been slightly rehabilitated thanks to a re-examination of his outstanding career as a Civil War cavalry leader. And along with authors like Jeffrey Wert and Evan McConnel, a new, more personal side of Custer emerged. The arrogant martinet became the loving and devoted husband whose letters to his young wife reveal a playful, likable man with a penchant for teasing.

But on that fateful Sunday, Custer allowed the darker side of his personality to take over. This was a Custer that was unconcerned with the lives of his men. This was the Custer who had been court martialed and suspended for a year for disobeying orders. And this was the Custer whose overweening confidence in his own abilities and suicidal disdain for the fighting skills of his adversary sealed his fate and the fate of so many in his command.

He was not technically in violation of his orders. General Terry who was making his way to the Little Big Horn with 2,500 infantry was due the next day but had not specifically ordered Custer to wait. So despite the warnings of his faithful Crow scouts (“Many Sioux” they had told him, a warning he didn’t heed because he thought the Indians couldn’t give an accurate count of warriors), Custer rode to his death.

His survey of the Indian encampment before him was superficial. All he could see from his vantage point was the north end of the village. This was due to a quirk in the topography of the battlefield. If you ever visit the Little Big Horn Battlefield National Monument, you’ll be struck by the gently, rolling hills that give the impression of a single valley stretching out in the distance. What Custer couldn’t see were intervening copses and indentations that hid not the 5,000 or so Indians he believed he was facing, but fully 15,000 men, women and children in a gigantic encampment that stretched for more than 5 miles across the plain.

At the sight of Custer’s men, the Indian warriors rushed to their families and helped to get them out of harms way. Custer interpreted this as a sign that the Indians were preparing to flee and divided his command into 3 sections. He sent Major Reno around to where he thought the south end of the camp was, ordering him to ride through the village and sow confusion while he attacked from the north and the other column commanded by Major Benteen attacked from the east.

It was stupid, rash, and doomed to failure. Reno, an inexperienced (some would say cowardly) officer took one look at the immense village before him and retreated. Some historians believe that if Reno had attacked while the warriors were busy looking after the safety of their families he could have in fact caused the kind of confusion that Custer was looking for. What this would have meant to the outcome of the battle is uncertain. It may have given Custer time to find better defensive ground as his subordinate Major Benteen was able to do by linking up with the incompetent Reno who had taken up a position on a steep bluff overlooking the Little Big Horn river. Given Custer’s impetuous nature, this probably wasn’t in the cards.

Custer’s 267 men rode along a bluff that he thought hid him from sight of the village. He was tragically mistaken. The Indians, alerted to his presence by the incompetent Reno were now swarming between the copses and in the shallow depressions that marked the north end of the battlefield. Too late, Custer realized his predicament and ordered his men up to the top of a gently sloping hill northwest of the village. Known as “Last Stand Hill,” approximately 900 Lakota and Cheyenne warriors were able to surround Custer’s command and wipe them out to almost the last man. (One of Custer’s Crow scouts escaped by wrapping a Lakota blanket around himself and simply wandering away).

In the aftermath of the battle, General Terry arrived and after hastily burying the dead, started after Sitting Bull and his people. Evading capture for two years by going to Canada, the starving Lakotans finally surrendered on their own and were forced onto reservations.

The spectacular victory of the Indians over the United States army was the last major engagement of the Indian wars of the 19th century. There would be other skirmishes and campaigns – most notably against Goyathlay AKA “Geronimo, the great Chiricahua Apache warrior – but Little Big Horn would be the last time so many warriors on both sides were involved.

As for history’s judgment, Custer’s legacy will be a mixed one. Perhaps it’s unfortunate that Little Big Horn will overshadow his real accomplishments as a cavalry commander during the Civil War. He remains one of the most fascinating characters in American history, reason enough for the continued fascination with the battle that claimed his life.

Our excellent group blog, “The Wide Awakes” has taken on several new members recently with more coming in all the time. If you haven’t already, check out TWA for some of the best writing on the right side of the sphere. And make sure you blogroll TWA and its members!

TMH Bacon Bits is an “old” new member who the House has linked to on several occasions. “Why the Left Doesn’t Understand Bush” is an eye opener.

The Discerning Texan is another blog you should be reading regularly. Here’s a post on why Rove’s comments distress the Democrats.

Mustang’s blog (Sheesh!...Another Texan!)Social Sense has a self explanatory post entitled “We Like to be Lied to.” Mustang’s got a tart, witty style. I think you’ll like him.

Duncan Avatar of Parrot Check can fisk the moonbats with the best of them. He’s posted a response to a letter to his alma mater about Morgan Reynolds, the tin foil hatter with the wacky 9/11 conspiracy theories.

You may have seen Kit Jarrell’s work at either Blogger News or Blogcritics. His Euphoric Reality blog is not to be passed by – especially this post, an interview with a Marine who served in Fallujah.

Daisy Cutter is a great site with a military bent. Check out his post on “Darth Rove” – it’s a stitch!

Clarity and Resolve is another TWA newbie you should have on your blogroll. “California Jihadin’ ” is just one reason why.

As always, check out TJ’s “News – Interesting – Funny” (NIF) for the best media and Shadow Media links around.

While we’re looking at some newer sites on the blog roll, you’ve probably already heard of “The New Editor”. Their links and analysis of news stories and editorials is always interesting. Check them out if you haven’t already.