BEARS WR RASHIED DAVIS CELEBRATES AFTER CATCHING THE WINNING TD WITH LESS THAN 2:00 MINUTES TO GO AGAINST THE VIKES IN THEIR 19-16 VICTORY.

There was a moment in the fourth quarter of the Chicago Bear’s (“My Beloveds”) hard fought 19-16 victory over the Minnesota Vikings that Rex “The Wonder Dog” Grossman looked like a hick rookie, a free agent undrafted reject from some Iowa junior college who accidentally wandered on to the field and lined up behind center.

With the ball spotted perilously on his own 7 yard line (thanks to the brain cramp of rookie punt returner Devin Hester who fielded the ball on the 5), Rex dropped back on first down to pass. He kept going back…and back…and back..until, finding himself in his own end zone and under pressure, threw a wounded duck of a pass in the general direction of running back Thomas Jones who was lying on the ground at the 4 yard line having slipped down.

To say the pass was a wounded duck is being charitable. That baby was one dead bird. It was, in fact stiff. Bereft of life. It rested in peace. Its metabolic processes were history. It was off the twig. It kicked the bucket. It shuffled off its mortal coil, ran down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible. (HT: Monty Python)

This was most certainly an ex-duck of a pass. And cornerback Antoine Winfield, who may have been the most surprised person in the Baggiedome, gratefully gathered in the errant pass and walked the 4 yards into the end zone for a Minnesota touchdown – the first by either team for the game.

If Wonder Dog had been a typical Bears quarterback, the scenario that would have unfolded for the rest of the quarter would have been ugly indeed. A bruising loss of confidence which would probably have led to defeat. But the Spurrier-trained Grossman proved that not only does the Old Ball Coach still know how to turn out NFL quality QB’s, but that young Rex has within himself something that can’t be taught; a winning attitude and indomitable spirit.

Shaking off the blunder like a seasoned vet (rather than a youngster who has started exactly 10 games in his career), Grossman drove My Beloveds for two fourth quarter scores, including a 24 yard touchdown pass to Rashied Davis with less than 2 minutes to go that put his team ahead to stay.

It was Wonder Dog’s first great comeback victory. And while there will probably be disappointments along the way, there is little doubt the kid has what it takes to make the Bears a championship ball club, if not this year then in the very near future.

This is because when all is said and done, Rex doesn’t have to do much of anything in order to bring My Beloveds victory. It’s a dark and menacing thing, this Bear’s defense and before the year is through, it may very well prove that it can take its place alongside the great defensive clubs of all time, including the 1985 version of My Beloveds.

There really is no similarity between the two. This year’s edition is much, much the speedier and their schemes and blitzes are more intelligently designed and called. This is a thinking, living, breathing unit who move to the ball with a frightening agility, surrounding a hapless ballcarrier and devouring him like a single, ravenous beast. The ‘85 crew was a manic collection of caged animals that Defensive Coordinator Buddy Ryan let loose on Sundays. Brutality and intimidation were weapons they used to great psychological effect. This year’s squad is definitely more cerebral albeit with notable exceptions. I would not like to be a running back, for instance, being stood up by a linebacker and watching Mike Brown bearing down on me. At that moment, I believe I very well might rethink that offer from the brother-in-law about helping him run that car dealership outside of Selma.

Pat Forde at ESPN.Com is agog:

Give the Slobberknocker Award for the most tenacious D to the Chicago Bears. Lining up opposite these guys is like lining up opposite a firing squad. Odds of survival are slim.

The Bears don’t simply run to the football. They take the bullet train. Big holes and expectant big plays evaporate. Even on a Sunday when Chicago missed an unusual number of tackles, it still never suffered a serious breakdown.

Understand this: last year people wondered aloud whether the 2005 Bears defense was better than the legendary ‘85 Bears defense. But neither unit began the season like this.

In ‘85, the Bears gave up 59 points in their first three games. In ‘05, the Bears gave up 39 points. This year, after opening with two of three on the road, the result is 23 points—including just one offensive touchdown—and less than 800 total yards.

As an example, Tommie Harris, a 295 pound cat-quick defensive lineman with the wingspan of a Condor and the strength of a Minotaur, took matters into his own hands late in the fourth quarter with the Bears trailing 16-12. Facing third down, if Minnesota converted and got the 1st and ten it would have virtually been over for My Beloveds.

But Tommie saw something in the way the Vikes the left guard was getting into his stance that be believed indicated the guard would “pull” in order to help block the outisde run:

I just had to step up and make a play. I saw the guard was sitting kind of light and I knew I had to get off the ball and get in the pocket. He pulled and I got behind him all I could get was to the ball and I tried to knock the ball out.”

Easy, right? Replays show that the massive Harris was so incredibly quick that he was actually on top of the running back Chester Taylor before he was able to secure the ball. With one swipe of his mighty paw, Harris knocked the ball from Taylor’s hands and defensive end Adewale Ogunleye recovered it on the Minnesota 37 yard line.

Wonder Dog took care of the rest, cooly converting a 3rd and eight situation with a spot pass to Mushin Mohammed before stepping up and firing the winning TD to Davis.

Next week is a nationally televised game against last year’s NFC Super Bowl representatives the Seattle Seahawks. The young Bears will have their hands full trying to stop Shaun Alexander and the powerhouse Seattle offense. But with Grossman gaining ever more confidence as the season wears on, look for the upset as My Beloveds will defeat the ‘Hawks 24-13 at home.

Join me this morning from 7:00 AM - 9:00 AM Central Time for The Rick Moran Show on Wideawakes Radio.

Today we’ll look at Pakistan’s surrender to the Taliban. We’ll also take on the Clinton vs. Fox controversy. And we’ll discuss the leaked NIE report on terrorism.

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As blogswarms go, the Clinton interview on Fox News Sunday rates about a 7 on the 10 point Rathergate Meter, easily the biggest blog brouhaha of the year. There may have been larger stories. But for sheer emotionalism, it’s hard to beat Clinton and his dredging up the old conspiracy theories about the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy out to get him. It cheers the left and riles the right like no other issue in American politics. In many ways, the unhinged opposition to the Bush Presidency is a direct result of the twin earthquakes of Clinton’s impeachment followed almost immediately by the 2000 election debacle, both events seen by the left in the context of evil conservatives attempting power plays at the expense of the Democrats.

Of course, the right views any talk of this “conspiracy” with a mixture of laughter and contempt. Unless one wants to accuse the Republican party of being a “conspiracy” or like minded conservative individuals and organizations working together to oust a President they believed to be corrupting the law, then the idea of any kind of secret cabal, plotting in the shadows to overthrow the government kind of loses its potency. It says volumes about both Hillary and Bill Clinton that they viewed the legitimate political activity of their opponents, most of which took place in the open and indeed, publicized to to the max as something dark and evil.

But this hearkening to the past by Clinton in his interview had a more contemporary goal; reminding Democrats and the nutroots of their shared outrage. It not only suits Clinton’s self image of the courageous Democrat standing in the breach beating back the evil Republicans who sought to bring him down (while opposing him at every turn in his anti-terrorism policies), it also rallies the left to a defense of his Presidency which may have taken a bigger hit than any of us realize thanks to the broadcast of ABC’s The Path to 9/11.

Indeed, whether the show has a political impact is beside the point; it certainly angered the ex-President who seemed eager to tee off on the bemused Wallace. The Fox reporter sat in his seat dumbfounded as the former most powerful man in the world wagged a beefy finger in his face and accused him of a “conservative hit job,” a remarkable accusation given that Wallace had only asked one question about Bin Laden. Coupled with the off the wall suggestion that Fox was only doing the interview with him to assuage the supposed anger of their viewership who might be upset by Rupert Murdochs support of his climate initiative, and you have a portrait of someone so self-obsessed that one can only shake their head in disbelief that someone that enthralled with himself could ever have achieved high office.

As for the diatribe itself, righty bloggers are all over Clinton’s charges made in the interview today as are some in the mainstream press. Clinton’s statement that Republicans opposed him when he sought to kill Bin Laden has been totally debunked. Jack Tapper quotes contemporary press reports that give quite a different picture of support for Clinton’s attack on Bin Laden.

I think the president did exactly the right thing,” said House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said. “By doing this we’re sending the signal there are no sanctuaries for terrorists.” Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) called the attacks “appropriate and just,” and House Majority Leader Richard K. Armey (R-Tex.) said “the American people stand united in the face of terrorism.”

The AP says: “Gingrich dismissed any possibility that Clinton may have ordered the attacks to divert attention from the scandal. Instead, he said, there was an urgent need for a reprisal following the Aug. 7 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. ‘Anyone who watched the film of the bombings, anyone who saw the coffins come home knows better than to question this timing,’ Gingrich said. ‘It was done as early as possible to send a message to terrorists across the globe that killing Americans has a cost. It has no relationship with any other activity of any kind.’

Moreover, the story goes on to say that Gingrich adviser Rich Galen e-mailed to conservative radio talk show hosts that: “Speaker Newt Gingrich has made it clear to me” that the attacks were necessary and appropriate, Galen said. “This is a time to put our nation’s interests ahead of our political concerns. I am asking you to help your listeners, your friends, and your associates to look at this situation with the sober eyes it deserves.”

The real problem for Clinton was that the rest of the world didn’t believe him, not Republicans in Congress. And Patterico has a post that knocks down another Clinton/liberal charge; that Fox News never asked Bush Administration officials any of the same questions they asked him:

In 2004, Wallace asked almost the exact same question of Donald Rumsfeld that he asked Clinton today.

Here’s what Wallace asked Clinton today:

[H]indsight is 20 20 . . . but the question is why didn’t you do more, connect the dots and put them out of business?

And here is what Wallace asked Donald Rumsfeld on the March 28, 2004 episode of Fox News Sunday:

I understand this is 20/20 hindsight, it’s more than an individual manhunt. I mean — what you ended up doing in the end was going after al Qaeda where it lived. . . . pre-9/11 should you have been thinking more about that?

. . . .

What do you make of his [Richard Clarke’s] basic charge that pre-9/11 that this government, the Bush administration largely ignored the threat from al Qaeda?

. . . .

Mr. Secretary, it sure sounds like fighting terrorism was not a top priority.

Patterico also debunks another Clinton charge; that the Bushies were so unserious about terrorism that they fired Richard Clark, someone who, in retrospect, did indeed “get it” with regards to terrorism and Bin Laden.

Clarke was not fired; he was, in effect, demoted. When Bush took over, Clarke retained his title as “National Coordinator on Counter-terrorism” but Condi Rice demoted the position. After 9/11, Clarke requested a transfer out of frustration, and later left government and wrote a book, which contained bitter recriminations against Bush — and whose stories were elaborated and dressed up by Clarke as he hit the talk-show circuit.

So I’m left a bit baffled why Clinton thinks Clarke was “fired.” And it’s clear why Fox News Sunday never asked a Bush official why Clarke was “fired” — he wasn’t

No he wasn’t fired. But it is also true that Condi Rice, in an effort to marginalize Clark, downgraded his position. Rice didn’t want Clark with direct access to the President (as he had enjoyed in the Clinton Administration) because access is power in the White House and Rice was not up to sharing any with someone she looked upon with suspicion.

Regardless of whether Clinton’s charges are true or not (and most of them are not), the furor ignited by the confrontation is something the left has been dying for almost since Fox News started broadcasting. Indeed, the left would like nothing better than to use the issue to shine a light on what they perceive as the outrageous conservative bias of the Fox network.

I don’t watch much cable news anymore but when I did, I never felt that Fox’s reporting was slanted any more than CNN’s or any other network’s reporting. Even if this were the case, Fox almost always has representatives from both the right and the left to argue about the stories making news. Because of this, it has always been a mystery to me why the left feels so wronged by Fox. Prior to the practice of inviting representatives from both sides of an issue to debate it on the air, such a thing was never heard of on the nets. If CNN wanted analysis of a story, they either got another mainstream reporter to talk about it or some establishment liberal to comment. The only reason to have a conservative on was to savage him.

To this day, it puzzles me why the left goes ballistic over stories reported on Fox News. Regardless of why this is so, the liberals have been unable to get much traction with their charges – until now. When a popular ex-President says something about the bias of a network and those comments are widely disseminated throughout the country, I daresay that Clinton did more in 10 minutes to advance the left’s critique of Fox News than all their previous efforts combined.

But it is solidarity that Clinton seeks and, according to Ann Althouse, he apparently got it:

What’s struck me most, in the context of these recent events, is just how extremely protective of Clinton liberals (e.g. blogs & blog commenters) have become. This isn’t surprising, and it’s not a negative thing per se: cf. the protectiveness of Bush on the right, especially when he’s being assailed (unfairly & dishonestly, in their view) by the media. The comparison is illuminating, of course, because Bush does very little public self-defending against his harshest critics (and never complains of being ‘victimized’ by the media)—though of course commenters on the right do that for him. Clinton, with these recent actions, is (I think) trying to tap into a similar dynamic—e.g. trying to tap into the (surprising—and surprisingly mainstream) surge of protectiveness & feeling for him during the impeachment saga. (And lest we forget, that was the origin of moveon.org, wasn’t it.) . . .

I do think it’s likely that his latest public acts are a kind of strategic gamble, specifically directed at the left (rallying it for Hillary, who can then do what she needs to do to convince the center)—(and the left is eating it up aren’t they, he’s playing them like a piano)—- more likely than that this last outburst was an ‘accident’ (esp. when the questioning was so to be expected—he himself practically asked for it, in making such a big deal of the 9/11 movie).

Glenn Reynolds thinks that the Clinton blow-up will affect the elections – negatively for the Democrats. I suppose it’s possible but I think it equally likely that it will once again unite Democrats in their shared outrage at what they see as the deviltry of their political opponents.

It should be interesting to watch both Fox ratings as well as how well Republicans poll over the next few weeks. Both could tell us much about what the American people are thinking as we head down the home stretch to the elections.

One of the more curious manifestations of Bush Derangement Syndrome over the years has come from the Soothsayer Wing of the Democratic party. These are the pundits that purport to be in the know regarding some pretty hair raising plans made by Evil George and the Neocon Cabal who have held the country in thrall for nearly 6 years, casting a spell on the sense and sensibilities of ordinary Americans in order to carry out their nefarious deeds.

Immune to the thought control rays emanating from Karl Rove’s office thanks to their superior tin foil hat design, this Cassandra-like group of Democrats have made it their business to give the country a heads up regarding the latest plans by Bushitler & Co. for turning America into a theocratic dictatorship or a fascist oligarchy.

Pity the friends of any of these crystal ball gazers if they happen to be stupid enough to take their advice on where to put money in the stock market. The track record for accuracy by this unhinged bunch of muckety-mucks is remarkable for not only its lack of success in predicting the future, but also that they expect everyone else to take their idiotic prophecies of doom seriously.

Unfortunately, there is a large segment of the press that seems incapable of applying the minimum amount of critical thinking necessary to see these Tarot Card readers for who they really are; unbalanced Bush haters whose judgment and instincts are shaped by the shadows moving furtively in their subconscious mind rather than anything that approaches reality. Because of that, the lefty Oracles manage to get their ridiculous prognostications disseminated to a large and suitably gullible assemblage of supporters who swallow their nonsense with a kind the kind of avidity with which children gobble up their Frosted Flakes.

The list of laughably wrong predictions and warnings from this crew is replete with examples from the simply stupid to the bizarre; foretellings of the suspension of the Bill of Rights, a military draft, a round up of dissidents, a staged terrorist attack in October, 2004 (the last “October Surprise” that never was), a “nullification” of the 2004 election if Bush lost to name a few. More recently, we were told that the US would assist Israel in invading both Syria and Iran during the recently concluded Israeli-Islamist War. In fact, we’ve been on the verge of bombing or invading Iran for at least two years. This proves the efficacy of the old saw “If at first you don’t succeed, lie, lie again.”

On the subject of Iran, it seems that Democrats, nervously eyeing the polls as they watch their certain landslide in November begin to slip away, now believe that the President will deliver a coup de grace to their electoral hopes by unleashing an “October Surprise” in the form of a military strike on Iran.

Is it possible? Anything is possible. You could win the lottery. I could spontaneously combust (quite the spectacle, that). Republicans could rein in Federal spending. Glen Greenwald could stop being a blithering hysteric.

Gary Hart has not only predicted an attack on Iran but has been kind enough to write the President’s speech to the American people for him:

Then the president will speak on national television. He will say this: Iran is determined to develop nuclear weapons; if this happens, the entire region will go nuclear; our diplomatic efforts to prevent this have failed; Iran is offering a haven to known al Qaeda leaders; the fate of our ally Israel is at stake; Iran persists in supporting terrorism, including in Iraq; and sanctions will have no affect (and besides they are for sissies). He will not say: ...and besides, we need the oil.

Therefore, he will announce, our own national security and the security of the region requires us to act. “Tonight, I have ordered the elimination of all facilities in Iran that are dedicated to the production of weapons of mass destruction…..” In the narrowest terms this includes perhaps two dozen targets.

But the authors of the war on Iraq have “regime change” in mind in Iran. According to Colonel Sam Gardiner (author of “The End of the ‘Summer of Diplomacy’: Assessing U.S. Military Options in Iran,” The Century Foundation, 2006) to have any hope of success, such a policy would require attacking at least 400 targets, including the Revolutionary Guard. But even this presumes the Iranian people will respond to a massive U.S. attack on their country by overthrowing their government. Only an Administration inspired by pre-Enlightenment fantasy could believe a notion such as this.

I would first point out that if Bush gave a speech like that, I would be willing to run naked through the next Democratic National Convention. Secondly, Hart’s snide little aside about the United States “needing the oil” is belied by the fact that any such attack would surely not give the US any control whatsoever over Iranian oil supplies and would probably initiate a supply cutoff by the Iranians (if we didn’t bomb the oil facilities as well). The remark about oil is leftyspeak for “Evil capitalists are behind this attack which has nothing to do with a madman getting his hands on nuclear weapons but has everything to do with oil company profits.” Simple minded sophistry.

Thank God this mountebank was found out to be a lying, arrogant, poppinjay before he was anointed as the Democratic candidate for President in 1980. This is born out in Hart’s small minded parting shot at the President in his article:

For a divinely guided president who imagines himself to be a latter day Winston Churchill (albeit lacking the ability to formulate intelligent sentences), and who professedly does not care about public opinion at home or abroad, anything is possible, and dwindling days in power may be seen as making the most apocalyptic actions necessary.

Bush may be incoherent. But Hart proves who is the adult and who isn’t with that last remark.

Not to be outdone in the “October Surprise” department, “Susan UnPC” writing at Larry Johnson’s blog No Quarter goes Hart one better. After expressing skepticism about an attack on Iran before the election, she evidently can’t resist the pull of pithy prognostication by highlighting a piece in The Nation that solemnly informs us that the President is going to send a “Strike Group” (?) of one aircraft carrier, one cruiser, one destroyer, one frigate, one supply ship, and a submarine escort to the Iranian coast.

I can see where the Iranians would be quaking in their boots. Such a fearsome array of American might could influence the mullahs to throw up their hands and surrender without us having to fire a shot.

One would think that any preparation for a strike on Iran would allow for considerably more seapower than that measly aggregation of naval assets that the armchair admirals at The Nation assure us will be on their way to the Iranian coast on October 1. In fact, given Iran’s vaunted anti-ship capability, it would seem to me suicidal to send only 5 warships into a potential combat area. And since it is unlikely our admirals have completely lost their minds, one would think that either the magazine is talking through its proverbial hat or that they put two and two together and came up with 3 1/2.

Susan UnPC then highlights the considerable downside in attacking Iran, something evidently no one on the left seems to think that the Administration has thought about. Instead, like Gary Hart, they see Bush and his “messianic” quest to rid the world of Iranian nukes before his time in office is over as proof that no one in the White House has told Bush what would happen if we attacked.

In fact, there have been several leaked analyses of the fallout from an attack on Iranian territory. And the Administration’s public pronouncements on the subject have been much more circumspect than they were in the run up to the Iraqi invasion.

That said, it appears the Administration is willing to give diplomacy a little more time – as long as they are convinced that Ahmadinejad isn’t using negotiations as a cover to build up his program as fast as possible.

But does any of this point to an attack on Iran as part of some electoral ploy by Bush to spring an “October Surprise” on the American people and fool them into voting for…who? Bush isn’t running for anything. And given the disgust with Republicans in Congress, it is a stretch to see any gain accruing to the GOP as a result of a very controversial and problematic military action.

For you see, the American people are much smarter than your average liberal. They aren’t as dumb as liberals presume them to be which means that they “get” the idea that attacking in October so close to the election would be more of an electoral gambit than a legitimate response to a national threat. What does it say about the left that they fear an “October Surprise” when any such move by the White House would more than likely boomerang much to the party’s detriment.

What this attitude says about the left illustrates why they can’t win elections. The American people will not trust a party that treats them like they were a bunch of bible thumping, goober chewing, nitwits who can’t think for themselves and need the guidance of the nanny state to help them tie their shoes in the morning.

The only “Surprise” we’re likely to see in October is a further erosion of the gigantic lead built up by Democrats over the summer as the American people realize the party has nothing to offer except deranged Bush hatred. And while they may despise Bush as much as the Democrats, they would prefer to vote for somebody or something rather than mindlessly oppose the President based on the prognostications of people who have yet to be right about predicting anything.

This post has been swirling around on the outskirts of my conscious mind for months. It has to do partly with the politics of the war but even more so with the strategy for fighting global jihadism. As news from Iraq and Afghanistan gets more grim by the week and it is becoming apparent that anti-western and anti-American sentiment has spawned jihadist networks far beyond anything Osama Bin Laden ever imagined for al-Qaeda, we are confronted with the uncomfortable question of whether or not our actions in the Middle East and elsewhere have exacerbated the problem of terrorism.

In short, is there anything we could have done differently that would have made the United States safer while still dealing effectively with the global threat of terrorism?

In one way, the question opens the abyss beneath our feet in that it calls into question everything we’ve been doing for the past five years to fight terrorism. But in another way, the question challenges the assumptions of those who offer much in the way of criticism but little in the way of alternatives.

In what will possibly be seen as one of the seminal documents in the history of the Global War on Terror, a recently compiled National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism lays out in stark and unbending terms, what 5 years of our efforts in the War on Terror have wrought:

The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,’’ it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe.

An opening section of the report, “Indicators of the Spread of the Global Jihadist Movement,” cites the Iraq war as a reason for the diffusion of jihad ideology.

The report “says that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse,” said one American intelligence official.

More than a dozen United States government officials and outside experts were interviewed for this article, and all spoke only on condition of anonymity because they were discussing a classified intelligence document. The officials included employees of several government agencies, and both supporters and critics of the Bush administration. All of those interviewed had either seen the final version of the document or participated in the creation of earlier drafts. These officials discussed some of the document’s general conclusions but not details, which remain highly classified.

That’s the headline; Iraq War creates more terrorists and terrorism. But there’s much more to ponder, including the notion that terrorist groups today are much more diffused across the world and have little or no connection to the “original” al-Qaeda:

The estimate concludes that the radical Islamic movement has expanded from a core of Qaeda operatives and affiliated groups to include a new class of “self-generating” cells inspired by Al Qaeda’s leadership but without any direct connection to Osama bin Laden or his top lieutenants.

It also examines how the Internet has helped spread jihadist ideology, and how cyberspace has become a haven for terrorist operatives who no longer have geographical refuges in countries like Afghanistan.

In the end, the NIE attributes this scattering of terrorists to both our efforts in taking out the Taliban and the fact that hatred of the west has thrown up many more radicals than most of us thought possible 5 years ago.

I am not disputing the conclusions in this leaked report. I am resisting the implications that some would draw from it; that if only we had not confronted the jihadists or worked to solve the root causes of terrorism, none of this would be true today.

I totally reject that notion. In fact, I believe it delusional thinking to say that we’d be any safer if we hadn’t invaded Iraq or if we had just lobbed a few cruise missiles at Osama Bin Laden following 9/11, or even if we had put enormous pressure on Israel to come to an agreement with the Palestinians. All of this ignores the one overarching truth about the nature of our enemies (and their tens of millions of supporters around the world); what they seek, we cannot give them.

Whether it’s a desire for the west to disengage from the Middle East – a region that supplies the lifeblood of our civilization – or a demand that we change our laws, our values, and our principles to accommodate them, or to simply submit to the will of Allah as they interpret it, we cannot yield. The jihadists wish us to change, to join them in living in the past where women were chattel, holy men dictated lifestyle, and the Muslim Caliphate was the glory of the known world.

The “root causes” crowd is fond of pointing out what they believe the reasons that terrorism is practiced on the west. They rightly repeat ad nauseum that terrorism is a tactic not an ideology and that given the huge disparity in military might between the west and the jihadists, employing the tactics of terrorism makes a good deal of sense. They also point to the extreme poverty of Muslim countries and that in many ways, Muslims are a “people out of time,” a direct result of a post-colonial residual feeling of inferiority and resentment. Terrorism gives the poor jihadis a means to strike back against their former oppressors (or current ones if you believe some of the more radical western leftists).

First of all, identifying “root causes” is all well and good. But short of massive transfers of wealth, overthrowing the despots who are sitting on top of all that oil, and allowing the State of Israel to be destroyed, just what the devil are we supposed to do to assuage this massive rage against us? That’s why this kind of psychobabble applied to people who desire to murder us all is disturbing to those of us whose thinking isn’t muddled by guilt ridden dreams of western imperialism or a belief that if only we could all sit down and exchange views, the jihadis hearts would soften and the problem would disappear.

An unfair exaggeration of the “root causes” crowd’s positions? Perhaps a little. But “solving” the problem of poverty anywhere is a chimera under any circumstances. And given the obvious tension between addressing the concerns of people being oppressed by despots and those same despots holding life in the balance for the western world with their hands clasped around an oil spigot, one can immediately see where the real world so rudely intrudes on the fantasies of the “root causes” crowd. And this goes to another favorite “root cause” of terrorism; our overall foreign policy and the fact that we are, for better or for worse, the only superpower around.

We are a nation of nearly 300 million people with an economy 3 times the size of the next largest producer. The world may hate our support for Israel but they can’t resist McDonalds. They may despise our support for despots around the world but they line up in droves to see Hollywood movies. They may riot over cartoons of the prophet, but they will work for years in order to save up enough to come to the United States for the opportunity to have a better life for themselves and their children.

Our superpower status is the result of the fact that the United States of America exists. Destroy the large corporations, contract the economy, bring every soldier home, dismantle our armed forces, makes ourselves a vassal of the United Nations and America would still be a superpower, still annoying most of the rest of the world. Of course, if we did all of that there wouldn’t be much left of the rest of the world. The world needs America pretty much the way we are now, despite the fact that it suits the nations to pretend this is not so for their own domestic reasons.

But what about radically altering our foreign policy and abjure our own concerns in the interest of world comity? This is an interesting criticism because it presupposes that we elect Presidents not to formulate policies to protect American interests but rather to bow to the interests of other countries. In effect, this critique posits the notion that we would be better off if we forgot about our own vital interests and used our power to injure ourselves, to shoot ourselves in the foot so to speak.

Again, is this an exaggeration of the “root causes” position? Not if you listen to some of its more articulate advocates like Noam Chomsky. The belief, for instance, that solving the Israeli-Palestinian problem can be approached by the United States reversing 60 years of support for the Jewish state by taking the side of the Palestinians in the dispute. Nothing less will satisfy the Palestinians and most of the Arab world so why pretend otherwise? The only “honest broker” desired by the Arabs is an auctioneer who will take bids on the pieces that remain of Israel once their enemies are through with them.

This doesn’t deal directly with the question of whether or not our tactics and strategy that we’ve employed in the War on Terror so far have made the problem worse than if we had gone a different route. But it does highlight the paucity of options between outright confrontation of the terrorists and a kind of middling, muddled, pre-9/11 approach to terrorism that saw us clearly on the defensive and faced with the prospect of future attacks that would use weapons of mass destruction.

Opinions on alternative paths we could have taken after 9/11 are as many as there are Democratic candidates for President. But one thing they will all agree on is that we never should have invaded Iraq. Indeed, the NIE outlined above would seem to indicate that the war was a blunder in that it has created more terrorists, radicalized young Muslims, and generated hate and revulsion against America throughout the Islamic world.

The counterfactual argument is tempting in this regard. No invasion of Iraq would mean fewer terrorists, less hate of America in the Islamic world, and generally speaking, a quieter world.

Even with Saddam? Some think so. In September of 2001, the world was more than ready to lift sanctions against Iraq and welcome Saddam back into the fold. How that would have played out over the next 5 years I leave to imaginations better suited for nightmares than mine but I think it safe to say that a re-invigorated Iraq would have been unpredictable and, given Saddam’s history, extremely dangerous to the neighborhood.

This is no secret which is why the United States Congress was calling for regime change in Iraq as early as 1998. But it important to point out that there would be no box for Saddam if the sanctions were lifted. And when even the Pope was calling for an end to them, as John Paull II did in 2000, you know that eventually the French and Russians, eager to bring their clandestine dealings with Saddam into the open, would have successfully agitated to have to sanctions lifted.

This is old ground, well travelled here and elsewhere. But given the alternatives between confronting Saddam and, despite the myopic and ass covering reports from Congress and our intelligence agencies, his clear support for terrorists (can critics guarantee that Saddam never would have established operational ties with al-Qaeda?), the range of options regarding Iraq narrows considerably. One can argue that the timing was wrong in confronting Iraq. But as something we eventually would have been forced into doing as a result of a general conflict with terror and terror states, it is very difficult to see how we could have avoided it.

Despite the NIE’s conclusions, it should be noted that it is not saying specifically that we should not have invaded Iraq. What it is saying should make us think long and hard about the disadvantages of confronting the terrorism beast without preparing for the fallout. I think even if we had been able to look into the future 3 years ago and have seen this report, the stark choices facing the Administration would have been exactly the same. It may be triumphalism for some to be able to point to the NIE as proof that things would have been different if we had not invaded Iraq. But that doesn’t change what conditions were like in 2003 and what was on the horizon if we did nothing.

More than 1500 posts. More than 14,000 comments.

Exactly two years.

Two years ago today, I started this blog with the intent of rediscovering my writing skills while trying to make a living as a writer. As for the former, writing every day has in fact re-acquainted me with the nuts and bolts of the craft. That process alone was worth starting the blog because I get more enjoyment from writing than almost any other activity in which I engage. There are days it is torture and days when it is enormously satisfying (even if no one reads what I have to say). I am proud of much of what I’ve written – less so of others.

As for making a living as a writer, the sum total in two years of what I’ve made as a writer would be a good monthly salary for many of you out there. Both Sue and I have made a lot of sacrifices in order to give this middle aged dream of mine a decent chance at success. I’ve made a decent start and hope that the coming year will bring more opportunities.

To all of you, my faithful readers, I thank you for your continued support.

I haven’t read a dead tree edition of Time Magazine in many, many years but one of my favorite Departments used to be “Milestones” that was actually run as a separate page of the Magazine. In it, they marked the passage of famous people, reported on births, accomplishments, and sometimes unusual or interesting happenings around the world.

But when I read this lone Associated Press story marking the “milestone” of war casualties equaling in number the victims of the attack on 9/11, my jaw did a little floor scraping:

Now the death toll is 9/11 times two.

U.S. military deaths from Iraq and Afghanistan now surpass those of the most devastating terrorist attack in America’s history, the trigger for what came next.

The latest milestone for a country at war came Friday without commemoration. It came without the precision of knowing who was the 2,974th to die in conflict. The terrorist attacks killed 2,973 victims in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

An Associated Press count of the U.S. death toll in Iraq rose to 2,696. Combined with 278 U.S. deaths in and around Afghanistan, the 9/11 toll was reached, then topped, the same day. The Pentagon reported Friday the latest death from Iraq, an as-yet unidentified soldier killed a day earlier after his vehicle was hit by a roadside bombing in eastern Baghdad.

Not for the first time, war that was started to answer death has resulted in at least as much death for the country that was first attacked, quite apart from the higher numbers of enemy and civilians killed, too.

What makes this piece so unbelievably disingenuous is that the reporter then takes the next 500 words to tell us why this “milestone” doesn’t matter:

Historians note that this grim accounting is not how the success or failure of warfare is measured, and that the reasons for conflict are broader than what served as the spark.

The body count from World War II was far higher for Allied troops than for the crushed Axis. Americans lost more men in each of a succession of Pacific battles than the 2,390 people who died at Pearl Harbor in the attack that made the U.S. declare war on Japan. The U.S. lost 405,399 in the theaters of World War II.

“There’s never a good war but if the war’s going well and the overall mission remains powerful, these numbers are not what people are focusing on,” said Julian Zelizer, a political historian at Boston University. “If this becomes the subject, then something’s gone wrong.”

Beyond the tribulations of the moment and the now-rampant doubts about the justification and course of the Iraq war, Zelizer said Americans have lost firsthand knowledge of the costs of war that existed keenly up to the 1960s, when people remembered two world wars and Korea, and faced Vietnam.

“A kind of numbness comes from that,” he said. “We’re not that country anymore — more bothered, more nervous. This isn’t a country that’s used to ground wars anymore.”

In fact, the milestone itself was not really the reason for highlighting our war dead. It was to point to the fallacious notion that the war is part of the class struggle:

A new study on the war dead and where they come from suggests that the notion of “rich man’s war, poor man’s fight” has become a little truer over time.

Among the Americans killed in the Iraq war, 34 percent have come from communities reporting the lowest levels of family income. Half have come from middle income communities and only 17 percent from the highest income level.

Even if true, what in God’s name does the economic background of our casualties have to do with anything? Does the reporter truly believe that this is a “Rich Man’s War?”

In order to prove that assumption, one must delve into the conspiracy theories involving Haliburton and the oil companies. Because while you could almost certainly prove that there have been increased profits for large corporations doing business with the government as a result of the war, there is not one scintilla of evidence proving that the reason George Bush went to war in the first place was to personally enrich himself or his Evil Corporate Friends. It is a fantasy that has been pushed by the left for nearly 5 years. The theory makes a titanic mistake in logic and reason by positing the notion that there is no other possible explanation for increased profits for Haliburton except the reason that Bush and Cheney wanted to do themselves and their friends a favor.

It insults the intelligence of thinking people to make such charges – which of course lets out the left and most of the press.

The overt bias inherent in this piece is a disgrace. One can be anti-war without allowing that bias to permeate a story about our honored dead in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Associated Press should either amend the story to make it a study of the economic disparities in Iraq War dead or pull the piece entirely. The highlighting of that “milestone” was gratuitous and without precedent in the history of war reporting.

I can certainly understand why former President Bill Clinton lost his temper at Chris Wallace when the Fox News reporter asked him:

WALLACE: When we announced that you were going to be on Fox News Sunday, I got a lot of email from viewers, and I got to say I was surprised most of them wanted me to ask you this question. Why didn’t you do more to put Bin Laden and al Qaeda out of business when you were President? There’s a new book out which I suspect you’ve read called the Looming Tower. And it talks about how the fact that when you pulled troops out of Somalia in 1993, Bin Laden said “I have seen the frailty and the weakness and the cowardice of US troops.” Then there was the bombing of the embassies in Africa and the attack on the USS Cole.

CLINTON: OK..

WALLACE: …may I just finish the question sir. And after the attack, the book says, Bin Laden separated his leaders because he expected an attack and there was no response. I understand that hindsight is 20/20.

CLINTON: No let’s talk about…

WALLACE: …but the question is why didn’t you do more, connect the dots and put them out of business?

CLINTON: OK, let’s talk about it. I will answer all of those things on the merits but I want to talk about the context of which this arises. I’m being asked this on the FOX network…ABC just had a right wing conservative on the Path to 9/11 falsely claim that it was based on the 9/11 Commission report with three things asserted against me that are directly contradicted by the 9/11 Commission report. I think it’s very interesting that all the conservative Republicans who now say that I didn’t do enough, claimed that I was obsessed with Bin Laden. All of President Bush’s neocons claimed that I was too obsessed with finding Bin Laden when they didn’t have a single meeting about Bin Laden for the nine months after I left office. All the right wingers who now say that I didn’t do enough said that I did too much. Same people.

If there was ever a clearer example of bias in news reporting, I have yet to see it.

First of all, Wallace had the temerity to ask a question that seemed to be uppermost in viewer’s minds. Imagine that! PAYING ATTENTION TO THE PEOPLE WHO WATCH YOUR NETWORK!

Ab. So. Lute. Ly. Shameful. You’d never catch a real news network like CNN or MSNBC doing anything so “unjournalistic.”

But that wasn’t the worst of Wallace’s outrageous bias. The Fox reporter actually had the balls to take information from a book penned by a notorious, far left liberal journalist that documents the sorry history of the Clinton Administration’s response to terror to ask the former President a question that those real journalists at CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, and every local reporter from Aberdeen, TX to Zion, IL never got around to asking because they were too busy fawning and groveling at the feet of The Charming One;

WTF WERE YOU THINKING, YOU NITWIT?

It really is quite telling that Clinton blames his inaction on “right wingers.” When the number one enemy of the United States boasts that that US is, in effect, a paper tiger and that he felt he could attack us with impunity all because of the tentative, agonizingly slow and tepid response from the American Administration, it speaks to a curious lack of introspection on the part of the ex-President and his blind, rabid supporters that they refuse to allow that their actions in any way contributed to the disaster that followed.

Ace is sputtering with rage:

The man simply lies. It is a breathtakingly stupid and mendacious claim that rightwingers, as he calls us, actually opposed his weak single effort to get bin Ladin. Throughout the late nineties, I was apopleptic we weren’t doing anything at all about bin Ladin. We wanted more action. Not less.

The pretext for this lie is that rightwingers, myself included, did in fact “question the timing” of his one attempt to kill bin Ladin. It occurred, coincidentally enough, during the Lewinsky furor. On the eve of some testimony; can’t remember which, and it really doesn’t matter.

Conservatives did not object to this attack. We were enraged, however, that the man refused to attack bin Ladin at all until he was motivated to action by a threat to his own political safety. We were not angry he’d attacked bin Ladin; we were angry he hadn’t attacked bin Ladin before (or after, actually; anyone remember a subsequent attack?).

We were angry that the man had let bin Ladin attack us with impunity for years until he saw it as a good move politically to finally launch a poorly-timed cruise missile at bin Ladin. He was animated to action not to save American lives, but to save his own f**king political life.

I’m sure in his own mind, Clinton did not allow the Monica mess to impact his decision to let fly the cruise missiles on Afghanistan and Sudan. But Clinton, certainly one of the most talented politicians of the 20th century, knew full well what the perception would be of his military action taken in the middle of an impeachment inquiry. Wagging the dog speculation was not limited to right wingers. That scenario was on the lips of leaders around the world as well.

Lefty blogs are all agog over Clinton’s outburst. They consider it a “s smackdown.” They’re cheering on “The Big Dog,” actually believing in their delusional mindset that Clinton is “reframing the national security debate” by pointing out that Bush never tried to get Osama in 8 months while he tried exactly once in 8 years.

Oh please, please, pretty please reframe the debate just like that.

In fact, the left wishes to re-establish The Narrative that may have taken a bigger hit with the ABC semi-fictional representation of the events leading up to 9/11 than I originally thought. The Narrative’s power lay in the fact that it erased most history prior to January 20, 2001 except to highlight the brave but doomed efforts of the Clinton Administration to battle the terrorists. While they did indeed take Bin Laden seriously, what is missing from The Narrative has always been the details; the hesitancy, the reluctance to engage, the institutional roadblocks deliberately put up to thwart one agency or another, and finally the suicidal underestimation of Bin Laden’s potential to do us harm.

There were exceptions, of course. Richard Clark (damn his self promoting hide) and John O’Neil of the FBI. I would add to that list Michael Schuer of the CIA who recognized the threat but was marginalized by superiors in the agency. But we know all of this and, like Ed Morrissey points out, it is time to move on:

The time has come—it has long since come—for that history to become just that: history. None of us can pretend that Bill Clinton could ever have declared war on al-Qaeda in the manner Bush did without having a 9/11-type event as a catalyst. Not only would the Left have screamed much as they do now, albeit without the Hugo Chavez-type conspiratorial thinking, Republicans would have never given Clinton the kind of support needed to send American troops into Afghanistan. The political climate had been thoroughly poisoned by the time of the African bombings and Congress would never have put aside its deathmatch with Clinton to unite in a war effort, especially against a band of terrorists most Americans didn’t know existed.

All good points. But I would add one other. The way the left has constructed the 9/11 Narrative, it is still useful to them politically – even after 5 years. For that reason, they relish Clinton’s anger at someone asking a question that implies anything less than a strict adherence to their construct of events. They can even fantasize that The Narrative will change the political dynamics of debate over national security, although that kind of juvenile analysis should be beyond even the shallow thinkers over at Firedog Lake.

Clinton’s reaction is special because no one dared challenge him over his terrorist policies before. There were precious few questions asked about it during his Administration and even fewer since he’s left. And certainly, there were never questions asked that challenges the “approved” version of how the Clinton Administration carried out their obligations to protect the country. The Clintonistas and the left successfully buried most of this information in the 9/11 Commission Report by simply concentrating on the very real and outrageous failings of the Bush Administration in the lead up to 9/11. The rest of the history from that period went down the leftist rabbit hole and, according to Clinton and the rest of his slavering sycophants on the left, it should remain there, unseen and unspoken.

Chris Wallace should be commended for asking a question that was indeed on the minds of many of Fox News viewers. And the fact that Bill Clinton reacted the way he did speaks volumes about his being unaccustomed to ever being challenged on the issue before. His automatic fall back position of blaming “right wingers” reveals a man bereft of the capability of self-examination or shame.

But then, we knew that about him didn’t we…

ESTIMATED CROWD OF 500,000 TURN OUT IN BOMBED OUT SOUTHERN BEIRUT FOR HIZBULLAH “VICTORY” RALLY

Sheik Hassan Nasrallah came out of hiding for the first time since the start of his unprovoked aggression against Israel on July 12 to declare victory to about 500,000 of his followers. The “Victory Rally” took place amidst the worst of Nasrallah’s handiwork; the bombed out buildings and shops in devastated southern Beirut.

The surroundings didn’t seem to dim the enthusiasm of his supporters:

Speaking to a sea of followers at a “divine victory” rally in south Beirut, Nasrallah said the Shi’ite Muslim group had emerged stronger from the conflict and also called for a new government in Lebanon.

“The resistance today, pay attention…has more than 20,000 rockets,” he told hundreds of thousands of cheering supporters in his first public appearance since the war broke out in July.

“(It) has recovered all its organizational and military capabilities…it is stronger than it was before July 12,” Nasrallah told the crowd in the Shi’ite Muslim suburbs which were heavily bombed in the 34-day war.

“There is no army in the world that can (force us) to drop our weapons from our hands, from our grip,” he declared.

That last statement would seem to indicate that neither can the government of Prime Minister Siniora. While the PM has received high marks from Lebanese citizens on his handling of reconstruction ($940 million and counting), his government has come under attack from two sides; Christian opportunist Michel Aoun and the Hizbullah/Amal bloc.

Strange bedfellows indeed, those two. Aoun heads up the Free Patriotic Movement, the largest Christian party, and has joined forces with Hizbullah in Parliament, making them the second largest bloc behind the reformist Future Movement. Aoun seeks the Presidency that will be vacated by Syrian toady Emile Lahoud next year, despite the firm opposition of many in the Future Movement who believe him to be too sectarian in his outlook. This so riled the former anti-Syrian Prime Minister and President that he signed a letter of cooperation with pro-Syrian Nasrallah last February that most observers believe meant that Nasrallah would throw his bloc of votes behind Aoun for President when the time comes.

Aoun has also been calling on Siniora to resign and for a “Government of National Unity” to be formed, savaging Siniora by blaming him for not being able to protect Lebanon from Israeli jets and accusing some of his ministers of corruption.

Haaretz is reporting that al-Manar, the Hizbullah TV station is saying that many Christians joined Nasrallah at the rally today:

Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television said thousands of buses, minivans and cars were streaming toward Beirut from the south and the eastern Bekaa Valley. Members of Christian parties and pro-Syrian groups in northern Lebanon were also traveling to the capital to participate in the rally, the broadcast said.

Al-Manar said late Thursday that Friday’s rally would be “the biggest referendum on the resistance choice.” It said “waves of humans” would pour into the bombed-out southern suburbs of Beirut to support the guerrillas.

Meanwhile, the Israelis point out the obvious:

Israeli Foreign Ministry Spokesman Mark Regev said Hezbollah is spitting in the face of the international community by refusing to disarm.

“Nasrallah is challenging not only the government of Lebanon, but the entire international community,” Regev said. “The international community can’t afford to have this Iranian-funded extremist spit in the face of the organized community of nations.”

Regev noted that according to the UN cease-fire resolution, Hezbollah “shouldn’t have any rockets.”

Nasrallah also boasted at the rally that he still had fighters in southern Lebanon despite the presence of UNIFIL and the Lebanese army. But please don’t tell Kofi Anan about either the fighters or the rockets. Such unpleasant truths would ruin his reputation as a peace maker not to mention the fact that he would actually have to direct criticism at someone besides the United States or Israel.

Ya Libnan spoke for the still majority of Lebanese who see Nasrallah as a threat:

The very same man who needed Lebanon’s government to negotiate an end to the conflict has come out of hiding to beat his chest and discredit the government. In a speech riddled with contradictions, Nasrallah made every attempt to present Lebanon’s Prime Minister and his allies in a weak light.

“The current government cannot protect, unite and reconstruct Lebanon,” Nasrallah said, adding “a strong state is built with the formation of a government of national unity.”

Ironically, it is the government who should be credited for rallying world support for Lebanon. Siniora gathered $940 million at the donors conference. Siniora offered $40,000 in support to each household impacted by the war. Hizbullah initially vowed to rebuild the destroyed areas, then ran into financial issues and had to call on its big brother Iran for financial support.

Nasrallah even admitted there is a real political crisis in Lebanon and urged all Lebanese not to transform such a problem into a sectarian crisis.

However the Hizbullah chief went on to make a comment that goes against any pretense of “national unity” by posing an open threat: “I will not tolerate any insults to my people.”

Nasrallah’s threats should be taken very seriously. Several prominent Future Movement politicians have harshly criticized Hizbullah for a wide variety of transgressions including charges that they seek to overthrow the government and that their refusal to disarm threatens the Lebanese state. The old Druze warlord Walid Jumblatt has been especially critical of both Nasrallah personally and Hizbullah in particular. One wonders if Nasrallah will make good on his threat made at the height of the war that he would “hold some accountable and forgive others,” for their criticisms.

One potential bright spot is the counter-demonstration being planned for Sunday by the Christian parties supporting the Future Movement. Lebanese Forces party headed up by the fiercely independent former Commander of the LF militia Samir Geagea hopes to outdraw Hizbullah with a massive demonstration of support for Siniora’s government. Geagea is a hero to many Lebanese for his refusal to leave solitary confinement where he spent 11 years if he would accept a deal offered by the Syrian backed government that he could be free if only he would curtail his political activity.

The question has to be is the government really in any danger of falling? The Future Movement has an absolute majority in Parliament so unless there were important defections from the coalition, Siniora would seem to be safe at the moment. However, Nasrallah controls the streets with his militia and given the political crisis in Lebanon right now, it would not take much to spark the kind of street violence that could lead to his downfall. This is Nasrallah’s ultimate domestic political weapon and he knows it. At the first sign of any wavering by important members of the March 14th coalition, he could engineer Siniora’s ouster.

For the moment, Nasrallah is basking in the adulation of his supporters. But the majority of Lebanese are still upset with he and his militia for starting the war, something they may very well prove on Sunday when they turn out in massive numbers to support the legitimate Lebanese government.

Join me this morning from 7:00 AM - 9:00 AM Central Time for The Rick Moran Show on Wideawakes Radio.

Today we’ll have another look at fallout from the Pope’s remarks as well as a new plan for Iraq and some comedy from Hugo and Mahmoud.

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