Right Wing Nut House

Trying desperately to spin the meager bits of good news coming out of Iraq into more proof of failure and defeat, the Democrats and the left have completely left our plane of reality and embarked on a sight seeing trip to La-La Land.

How else can you explain their laughable contention that their immoral, milquetoast resolutions on Iraq have been vindicated by news that the Pentagon plans on drawing down our forces in Iraq 5% by September (conditions on the ground permitting) with another 15% by the end of 2007 being able to come home (again, conditions permitting).

Of course, John Kerry’s resolution would not have had 20% of the troops home by the end of 2007 but rather 100% with nary a word contained in that dubious document about whether or not or boys should stay if they were needed by the Iraqi government. That little detail must have slipped his mind.

And, the so-called Levin alternative resolution was even murkier on the subject, although the floor speeches made by Democrats gave the game away before they even voted. Universally (and this is the mercifully short version) they believe the War is a failure, George Bush is incompetent, and it’s time to leave so that we can blame him for the defeat in time to get enough Democrats elected in November in order to take control of Congress.

An immoral, cynical ploy ’tis true. But then, when it comes to our national security, never let it be said that anyone cut in front of the Democrats when it came time to surrender.

The problem with the Democratic “Plan” is that it has always existed in a vacuum. The primary argument made by Republicans is that basically, you can’t run the war from Washington (Too bad Rummy didn’t take that advice very often). Any draw down of American forces must be tied to some kind of real-world, on the ground progress by Iraqi forces to deal with the violence. Do the Democrats think it a coincidence that 2 weeks and more than 500 operations after the death of the Merry Beheader al-Zarqawi that the military feels that we can reduce our troops strength? We captured or killed more than 1000 al Qaeda in Iraq operatives, sympathizers, and jihadists. We smashed their logistical infrastructure. And this is after the not-so-dearly-departed Zarqawi had written that the situation in Iraq was “bleak” for his terrorist buddies.

Or had we forgotten all that?

Surely there is a political element involved in reducing our troop strength. But to say that would be the only reason is ridiculous and, I might add, disingenuous in the extreme. Do the Democrats wish us to believe that their little dog and pony show last week with the Iraq resolutions was done solely for altruistic reasons? Who are they trying to kid?

Senator McConnell laid out the argument quite well:

Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell said lawmakers discussed the situation in Iraq with Casey before votes taken by Congress last week. But he said the point of the debate was that “Congress ought not to be dictating to the generals what the tactics are.”

“We want the conditions on the ground and the decisions of our commanders, in conjunction with the new Iraqi democratic government, to dictate the process, not the Congress trying to act like armchair generals,” the Kentucky Republican told ABC’s “This Week.”

Senator Boxer, on the other hand, is clueless:

“Here we have a situation where Democrats, 80 percent of us, voted to say we ought to start reducing our troop presence there — and again, we got pummeled,” Sen. Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat, told CBS. “And now, it turns out, we’re in synch with General Casey.”

I would say Babs was more in synch with Zarqawi than General Casey. The fact is, the plan has always been to draw down troops in coordination with the Iraqi’s ability to defend themselves. As Iraqi National Security Adviser Sherwan Alwaeli revealed, there is an unofficial withdrawal plan heavily dependent on not only the numbers of Iraqi troops trained but also their combat capabilities. That kind of judgment cannot be made by Democratic Senators counting fingers and toes in order to come up with a cool sounding number for the voters in November.

It is unbelievable to me that despite the Republicans doing everything possible to lose in November that the Democrats haven’t virtually locked up control of at least the House and perhaps even the Senate. I think it indicative of how much the American people truly distrust the Democrats on national security. And judging by their statements this past weekend about possible withdrawals by American forces from Iraq, they have a long way to go to convince anyone that they are dead serious about protecting the United States from attack.

I refuse to take a back seat to anyone in my support for constitutional principles. No lefty, no privacy advocate, no civil liberties absolutist, and certainly no smarmy, self righteous, sickeningly smug Executive Editor of a newspaper like the New York Times and its cowardly editor Bill Keller can look me in the eye and accuse me of less. Those who question my support for those principles know nothing of me, my past, my passions nor my sincerity.

I have questioned many of this Administration’s anti-terrorist measures and am troubled by the accumulation of power by the executive branch - a process, I might add, that both the President and Vice President have stated on numerous public occasions their intent to justify and continue. They have made no secret of their goal to, in their words, “bring the constitution back in balance,” a state of affairs they attribute to the stripping of executive power by Congress following Watergate. I look at these statements and some of their actions with the jaundiced eye of a conservative who remembers what untrammelled executive power is capable of when used by men whose primary goal is not preservation of the nation but preservation of their own personal, privileged positions in power.

I have wrestled with with these issues on a case by case basis as any thinking American should. This lets out the overwhelming majority of liberals whose knees automatically jerk and whose heads explode with every revelation of government trying to figure out if there is someone out there trying to blow me to smithereens. They are not serious people and should never, ever be trusted with anything more important to national security than running the local YMCA.

This most recent attempt by the New York Times and others to throw a body block against the Administration to spring al-Qaeda for an open field run at the United States is so far beyond the pale that any attempt to justify their actions only reveals them to be as clueless about national security as they are partisan in their political beliefs.

Indeed, this jaw dropping “explanation” by Times Executive Editor Bill Keller reaches heights of hubris and arrogance not seen since the days of Hearst, McCormick, and other press barons who believed they, not the elected representatives of the people, ran the country:

Bill Keller, the newspaper’s executive editor, said: “We have listened closely to the administration’s arguments for withholding this information, and given them the most serious and respectful consideration. We remain convinced that the administration’s extraordinary access to this vast repository of international financial data, however carefully targeted use of it may be, is a matter of public interest.”

There are many, many things “in the public interest” that I would love to see splattered all over the front pages of the Times. For instance, I would find it irresistible to know what was in the President’s Daily Brief (PDB) from the CIA each day, wouldn’t you? I would love a transcript of the private briefing listened to by the President. What questions did he ask? What were the spook’s sources? And while we’re at it, I would find it fascinating to get the CIA’s take on the situation inside Syria or what’s the real scoop on President Ahmadinejad of Iran. Is he really as loony as he sounds? Or is it all an act?

Talk about “public interest!” The Times would sell a gazillion copies if they printed that stuff. Of course, I’m not saying the Times is quite so irresponsible as all that. But the point needs answering.

Where does one draw the line on “public interest?” Does the Times have the obligation to disclose its internal debates that went into the decision to out this particular program? Do its editors and writers have an obligation to fan out and appear in public forums like the cable nets and talk radio shows to explain their rationale for publicizing a program that even they admit in their 5,000 word article is legal?

Keller is a coward. And his refusal to appear on shows like Hugh Hewitt’s program only leaves the impression that he knows what he did is unjustifiable under any doctrine that includes “the public’s right to know” or that the Times was acting in the even more problematic “public interest.” The reporters on the piece are less responsible but should still demonstrate a little backbone and come out from behind the Time’s firewall and explain themselves.

Patterico wrestles with the legal implications:

As to the separate question of whether these folks can and/or should be criminally prosecuted, I haven’t made up my mind. I lean toward the conclusion that prosecutions are possible and wise. But it’s not as obvious as you might think. In the context of the current situation, the answer may seem obvious. But it is easy to imagine other situations where it is not.

The boys at Powerline are much more certain about what should be done:

It is unfortunately past time for the Bush administration to enforce the laws of the United States against the New York Times. The Times and its likeminded media colleagues will undoubtedly continue to undermine and betray the national security of the United States until they are taught that they are subject to the same laws that govern the conduct of ordinary citizens, or until an enraged citizenry decides, like Bill Keller, to take the law into its own hands and express its disagreement some other way.

From a purely practical point of view, making Keller and the Times reporters do the perp walk would cause a constitutional crisis no matter how “legal” the prosecutions would be or how justifiable they would be under the present circumstances. Nearly every media outlet in the country would condemn it and it would certainly set off a Congressional row. It may actually end up being much more trouble than those gentlemen are worth. In fact, the prosecutions may have the opposite effect that Powerline envisions. Just to prove how brave they are, journalists would take it upon themselves perhaps to publish all sorts of classified information, daring the Department of Justice to prosecute them.

What we can do is being done - flood their inboxes with mail and condemn their actions with all the moral outrage we can muster. It won’t change a thing with regards to this story. But it may make Keller and the Times think a little harder next time about publishing national security secrets.

UPDATE

Patterico has cancelled his subscription to the Los Angeles Times, one of three papers who broke the story yesterday. The other two were the NY Times and the Wall Street Journal.

He pointed out to the subscription specialist who tried to talk him out of cancelling that he wasn’t doing it because he disagreed with the newspaper. And anyone who has read Patterico’s year end summaries of what the LA Times has done knows that he has plenty of ammunition there. Rather, he cancelled because he cannot abide by the paper’s decision to publish details of the top secret program:

I told the man that officials from the Bush Administration had begged the newspaper’s editors not to print this story, but the editors ran the story anyway. I told him that I think publishing the story was completely irresponsible, totally lacking in any justification, and has posed a threat to the safety of our country. And I just can’t continue to subscribe to a newspaper that would do such a thing.

This is another way to make newspapers think twice about publishing such stories. Hopefully, many more will follow his example.

For a party that has made a lot of noise over the last three years about what a mistake we’ve made in Iraq, how immoral it is being there, how Bush lied and misled the country into war, and what a tragedy all our young men dying in a lost cause is, the Democratic party in the Senate rolled over and whimpered today like the whipped curs they truly are.

In an 86-13 vote, the Senate turned back a proposal from some Democrats that would require the administration to withdraw all combat troops from Iraq by July 1, 2007, with redeployments beginning this year.

Minutes later, the Senate rejected by 60-39 the proposal more popular with Democrats, a nonbinding resolution that would call for the administration to begin withdrawing troops, but with no timetable for the war’s end.

As I pointed out here, their position is immoral. Not having the political guts to declare that the war is a total failure, a massive defeat for the US and that we should leave immediately before another American soldier loses his life, they opt instead for the kind tortuous withdrawal that hides their belief that the war is lost while at the same time giving aid and comfort to the enemy and demoralizing our troops.

In short, they are giving us the worst of both worlds; defeatism and cowardice.

If the war is lost, what is the point in staying one minute longer? Iraqi stability? Baloney! If you’re going to set an arbitrary timetable for withdrawal regardless of what the security situation is in Iraq, what in God’s name is the difference between withdrawing immediately and withdrawing one year from now? I’ll tell you the difference. The difference is more dead American soldiers one year from now while you’re slapping yourselves on the back, congratulating yourselves for having put one over on the electorate.

Both resolutions presented by the Democrats were exercises in wishful thinking. Kerry’s resolution calling for withdrawal a year from now is a chimera, a fantasy that seeks only to embarrass Bush and is not grounded in either reality or military strategy. The Levin alternative was even worse. It was such a milquetoast resolution, it was in danger of disintegrating while the clerk was reading it.

Both resolutions failed to note the most important consequence of enacting them; Democratic Senators going on record believing that the war is lost. Funny how that got lost in the shuffle. There is nothing wrong or even unpatriotic in believing the war is lost. It is dishonest not to come out and say so - especially when your rhetoric over the last 3 years has made it absolutely crystal clear that you believe the war has been lost already.

If you believe that the war is not lost and are still supporting this resolution, then one can come to no other conclusion that you wish the US to be defeated. We used to call that treason but today, it guarantees you an appearance on Meet The Press.

War is about victory or defeat. Those are the choices. When history came calling today, the Democrats tried to split the difference between the two and hope at the same time that by November, either the voters will have forgotten or that things will have gotten worse in Iraq as the insurgents, emboldened by the thought of a Democratic takeover, ratchet up the violence there in hopes of swinging the election to their patroni in the Senate.

It would have been politically unpalatable to do so, but if the Democrats had insisted en masse on an immediate pullout of American troops, they at least would have been standing on firm moral ground. But their weasel resolutions only served to make them look like spineless jellyfish, unwilling to stand up for their true beliefs.

The lot of them - those that are running - should be soundly defeated in November.

UPDATE

Allah has the Senate roll call and points out that Kerry’s resolution gained 6 votes compared to last week for pushing back the deadline for withdrawal six months.

Now that’s what I call a “nuanced” vote.

Also, surprised to see “Dugout” Mark Dayton voting against his own caucus and siding with the Republicans. The other Dem defectors are all predictable including poor Joe Lieberman who is in the primary fight for his life with the Kos Kreature Ned Lamont. Joe has been bleeding lib support (despite a very high ADA rating) thanks to the netnuts who are stinking up the Nutmeg State like they were cartons of rancid egg nog left over from last Christmas, flooding the airwaves and phone lines with anti-Lieberman ads. It seems to be having its intended effect as Lamont - a nobody that Kos has apparently anointed in his “Anybody but Lieberman” campaign - creeps into the high 30’s and low 40’s.

I expect Lieberman to win whether he runs as a Democrat or independent. As a member of the truly loyal opposition, he is an indispensable man. I know that if I lived in Connecticut, I’d vote for him myself.

Senator Rick Santorum is in a race for his political life. This could explain why he is trumpeting a 2 year old report he requested to have declassified that confirms the fact of chemical weapons found in Iraq.

There are several caveats that have to be listed when discussing this report. First, there’s nothing new in it:

The U.S. military announced in 2004 in Iraq that several crates of the old shells had been uncovered and that they contained a blister agent that was no longer active. Neither the military nor the White House nor the CIA considered the shells to be evidence of what was alleged by the Bush administration to be a current Iraqi program to make chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

Last night, intelligence officials reaffirmed that the shells were old and were not the suspected weapons of mass destruction sought in Iraq after the 2003 invasion.

Secondly, I agree with Allah who says simply “WMD is WMD, but finding a shell here and there when Iran’s about to get the bomb next door leaves me somewhat … underwhelmed.”

Third, the WMD argument ended years ago. Despite tantalizing evidence that Saddam moved his stockpiles to Syria and Lebanon prior to our invasion as well as anecdotal evidence of Russian collusion in spiriting WMD out of the country, from the standpoint of making a difference in the minds of the American people, this most recent evidence of Iraqi WMD will hardly be a blip on most people’s radar.

To be sure, the MSM at least gives the appearance that it is taking no chances that this story will change anyone’s mind on the war or on the President. One would think that a Senator reading from a declassified report on the Senate floor that our forces found 500 artillery shells containing deadly chemicals might be considered in some quarters to be news. The New York Times doesn’t even mention it. And even more curiously, the Washington Post buried the story by their national security correspondent Dafna Linzer on Page 10 (I wonder when the last time Linzer had his byline buried that deep in the paper?). And just to feed my conspiratorial nature even further, WaPo no longer links to the story in their on-line edition. I had to retrieve it by going through my “history” this morning.

But even if this was front page news, the political impact would be negligible. The politics of the war have moved beyond WMD and the liberation of Iraq and now center on the ongoing occupation and insurgency. We could find hundreds perhaps even thousands more of these pre-Gulf War chemical munitions and there still would be no impact on the President’s popularity or Republican chances in November. The fact is, the narrative of the war has been appropriated by the President’s political enemies. “Bush lied, people died” still resonates with a sizable portion of the electorate, judging by the numbers we see about support for the war as well as the fact that a majority of Americans see the war as a mistake and not worth the cost. And for that to change, the political and security situations in Iraq will have to improve dramatically. Or, underground bunkers filled with WMD created after the Gulf War would have to be discovered in Iraq or elsewhere.

This is the unfortunate dynamic at work when the politics of the war is assessed by voters. I am heartened to see Republicans standing behind our troops and the President this week as they beat back attempts by the Democrats to cut and run. I think it reflects good instincts about where the American people stand on the war. Even if they think it may have been a mistake to invade in the first place, I think that voters still believe that there is no substitute for victory and that the Democrat’s plan smacks of defeatism. I also think that the debate this week in Congress shows that the tipping point is far from being reached and that Democrats who seek to make their critique of the war an issue in November do so at their own peril.

This may change over the summer and into the fall if the Iraqi government fails to get its act together and the carnage continues. But at the moment, the Democrats, it seems to me, may have miscalculated. It should be interesting to see how many of them support Kerry’s resolution on withdrawal in the Senate. If Reid can’t get half his caucus to support the measure, it would indicate to me that the Democrats also see their harsh critique of the war as a loser of an issue and will back off unless the situation on the ground changes for the worse.

From an historical standpoint, the issue of WMD may be important. But politically, it’s a non-starter. What the American people want is not confirmation of the justification for going into Iraq but rather progress by the Iraqi government that would help get us out.

That spells victory both for our troops and for Republicans in November.

UPDATE

Michelle Malkin links to Powerline who received an interesting email from NRO’s Michael Ledeen:

Please point out to your readers that Negroponte only declassified a few fragments of a much bigger document. Read the press conference and you will see that Santorum and Hoekstra were furious at the meager declassification. They will push for more, and we all must do that. I am told that there is a lot more in the full document, which CIA is desperate to protect, since it shows the miserable job they did looking for WMDs in Iraq.

The CIA may not be very good at intelligence work. But when it comes to protecting their behinds in turf wars, there appears to be no agency better at putting their own narrow interests ahead of the national good.

Lori Byrd has an interesting follow up to her excellent column from last week in Townhall about why the war has proven to be so difficult to explain to the public. She posits the notion that this is due to a lack of a good education in history, specifically the almost total absence of learning any military history.

She identifies correctly the current emphasis on “social history” (stressing the role of various minorities who feel previous texts ignored their accomplishments) rather than a straight narrative of chronological events, highlighting major historical mileposts and the players involved. This has led to ludicrous “history” texts that devote several chapters to the women’s rights movement while including only a couple of paragraphs on Washington’s presidency.

This kind of idiocy is the result of textbook manufacturers needing to sell books to a wide variety of school districts. Wanting to sell textbooks to both Berkley, CA and Houston, TX has made a mish mash of textbook writing and has ended up pleasing no one while giving an extraordinarily skewed picture of our past.

There is something to be said for “social history” as both Page Smith and Howard Zinn could tell you. After all, it was people who made the United States. And learning about Carrie Nation and Margaret Sanger is important to teaching our national story. But when other, equally important (or vastly more important) people and events are given short shrift thanks to the limitations of what a student can learn in a semester, serious problems arise in how our national narrative is absorbed by students.

I doubt that too many students today are forced to memorize Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address as I had to when I was in 6th Grade. By the same token, I hope that many of them are forced to learn long passages from Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. The point being, there is little effort on the part of textbook manufacturers or school district authorities to teach history in a coherent manner. In trying to please everyone by including minor or even irrelevant historical events and characters, they have muddied the American narrative and downplayed the significance and accomplishments of other, more worthy historical players.

But I disagree with Lori about the teaching of military history and why this may be a proximate cause for people’s lack of understanding of what’s going on in Iraq. There is no comparison, as Lori points out, between what is happening in Iraq and what occurred in previous American wars.

During World War II, American kids would wake up every morning to a newspaper that invariably had one or more maps on the front page. The kids (and parents who also poured over the maps looking for evidence of where their loved ones were in harms way) would hang on to those maps, listening to the radio and trying to follow the march of our armies through towns and cities with place names that were foreign and unfamiliar. They would use those maps in geography class in school. Mothers and wives would carefully cut the map out of the paper and carry it around so that she could show her friends where her son or husband was in combat. When talking over the back fence, neighbors would drop the names of towns and cities where our men were fighting knowing that the person they were talking to knew exactly what he was referencing.

The war was a truly national obsession where almost every waking moment, one was reminded of the conflict. Rationing, bond drives, scrap drives, tire drives, victory gardens, air raid drills, the USO - all were part of everyday life in America during World War II. And with so many young boys scattered to the four corners of the earth, everyone seemed to have a brother or a husband or a son far, far away. And this on a world that was much, much larger than the one we inhabit today. No jet aircraft and it was 5 days from New York to Liverpool by ocean liner.

As far as military news, the strategic goals of our armies were no secret and widely known; unconditional surrender of the Japanese and Germans. With the American people united and committed to both the goals of the war and to making the material sacrifices necessary to achieve victory, the outcome was truly never in doubt.

Americans back then knew the Generals, knew the battles, knew what taking Caan meant to the invasion, knew that Operation Market Garden could shorten the war - they knew all these things because they had a living, breathing, stake in ultimate success or failure of our troops.

And that’s the huge difference between then and now. Where George Bush has failed miserably as President is in not offering to make the American people full partners in this conflict, sharing the sacrifices and giving all of us a stake in the outcome. It doesn’t matter very much that most Americans know little of military history or how to read a map. What matters is that the burden of sacrifice has fallen on so few of us. Part of this is a consequence of having an all volunteer, highly professional army. But while most Americans “support” the troops, they have no personal stake in the success or failure of our war policy.

I’m not sure how he could have or should have done this. I know that after 9/11 he could have tried. Congress, the press, the people were all with him. If this is truly a war for our survival - and I am absolutely convinced that it is - then our Commander in Chief has done a piss poor job of making the war our number one national priority. He has, in fact, tried to do the exact opposite. He pushed his domestic agenda, hoping that the war would drift off the front pages, forgotten by all but the families of our military who bear the bitterest fruit from this strategy. It is they who wait anxiously for their loved ones to come home.

You can bet they know where Falluja or Ramadi, or Tikrit is even if the rest of us don’t.

I appreciate what Lori is saying. And she has a point of sorts that a good grounding in history would perhaps give a little context to the war and help the American people understand what we’re trying to accomplish in Iraq . But I think it’s time we face the fact that this is a war that suffers from a lack of shared sacrifice and that is why people seem so disconnected from the consequences of failure.

John Murtha’s sad descent from honored Viet Nam war veteran to anti-war shill for the ideological left is now complete. For many of his 32 years in Congress, Murtha was a reliable Democratic vote for vital funding of the military as well as an advocate for veterans rights and benefits. He resisted the trend in the Democratic party toward defeatism and spineless hand wringing, oftentimes breaking with his caucus to support President Reagan’s military buildup in the 1980’s.

But Murtha, a decorated Marine Colonel, was also horribly scarred by his Viet Nam experience (as were many high ranking officers from that war). For many of his generation, the prospect of sending young men into battle without an “exit strategy” became an anathema. One can certainly admire his obvious concern for the troops. But when “exit strategy” is substituted for victory, one has to call into question Mr. Murtha’s judgment.

I will not descend to the level of some of my friends on the right and accuse Murtha of cowardice or anti-Americanism. I think the Congressman has proved on the battlefield as well as in most of his many years of service in the House that this is not the case. Rather, it is entirely appropriate to question his judgement on matters of national security as well as allowing the hard left of his party to hijack his persona and reputation for their own electoral ends.

Certainly with statements like this one, we can question the Congressman’s grasp of military knowledge. In response to a criticism by Presidential adviser Karl Rove regarding Murtha’s “Over the Horizon” plan to withdraw American troops, host Tim Russert wondered just where those troops would be positioned in order to take advantage of the kind of intelligence that led to the Zarqawi raid:

REP. MURTHA: There’s many countries understand the importance of stability in the Middle East. This is an international problem. We, we use 20 million barrels of oil a day. China’s the second largest user. All these countries understand you need stability for the energy supply that’s available in the Middle East. So there’s many, many countries.

MR. RUSSERT: Who?

REP. MURTHA: Kuwait’s one that will take us. Qatar, we already have bases in Qatar. So Bahrain. All those countries are willing to take the United States. Now, Saudi Arabia won’t because they wanted us out of there in the first place. So—and we don’t have to be right there. We can go to Okinawa. We, we don’t have—we can redeploy there almost instantly. So that’s not—that’s, that’s a fallacy. That, that’s just a statement to rial up people to support a failed policy wrapped in illusion.

(HT: Michelle Malkin)

The Milblogs jumped on this instantly:

The straight yellow line extending across the middle of China and Iran is the distance from Okinawa to Baghdad as the crow flies which is approximately 4200 nautical miles. Obviously, the Chinese and the Iranians wouldn’t be cool with that, but let’s just roll with it. The max combat range for the F-16 with external fuel tanks and 2000 lbs of ordnance is 740 nautical miles so that’s like a minimum of SIX midair refuelings in EACH direction.

This little display is hardly worth putting together, but I did it to demonstrate that this man is dangerously deluded and not at all serious about an issue of critical national security significance. He is out there in the MSM just winging it and not being called to account whatsoever for statements that are so outlandish and absurd that they defy all attempts at comprehension.

The New York Times and liberal blogs failed to note that fantastical misstatement. Oliver Willis - in this jaw dropping piece of idiocy - actually praised Murtha for articulating a “coherent” policy:

The right again demonstrates their capacity for selective hearing. The current target of their ire is Rep. John Murtha, about the only Democrat around who’s been able to articulate a coherent assessment and policy for Iraq.

Willis then cites conservative criticisms of Clinton for withdrawing from Somalia, a strategy supported by Murtha and a move that the 9/11 Commission said contributed directly to the attacks on 9/11. He also curiously notes Vice President Cheney’s criticism of Reagan’s withdrawal from Lebanon following the bombing of the Marine barracks in 1983 and the wonders why conservatives aren’t criticizing Reagan (?) for getting out of Beirut!

No mention, of course, of the Okinawa redeployment suggested by Murtha. In fact, most lefty blogs concentrated on Murtha’s description of Karl Rove on the same program:

MURTHA: He’s in New Hampshire. He’s making a political speech. He’s sitting in his air-conditioned office on his big, fat backside, saying stay the course. That’s not a plan. … We’ve got to change direction. You can’t sit there in the air-conditioned office and tell troops carrying 70 pounds on their backs, inside these armored vessels hit with IEDs every day, seeing their friends blown up, their buddies blown up — and he says stay the course? Easy to say that from Washington, DC.

Since we can assume Rove is speaking on behalf of the Commander in Chief, I fail to see Murtha’s point except as an attempt at partisan sniping. And given the Congressman’s statement regarding Okinawa, perhaps it best that he keep his mouth shut about any alternative to “staying the course” since his prescriptions have made him a laughingstock to all except the left wingers in the Democratic party who are desperately trying to hide the fact that they support a cut and run strategy in Iraq. Why the Democrats insist on obscuring their defeatist strategy given the level of dissatisfaction with the President’s handling of Iraq in the electorate is beyond me. Why not just come out and say that the war is lost and we should pull the troops out?

This is the crux of Murtha, Kerry, and the Congressional Democrat’s critique of the war. If they honestly believe that keeping troops in Iraq is a futile exercise, why not run on that idea in November and see if the American people agree with it? What are they afraid of? They constantly tell us that the American people agree with them in the polls. Well, let’s put that idea to the test and have them run on their belief that every American who dies in Iraq is a waste and that the troops should hightail it out of there.

They won’t do it, of course. Already, Senator’s Feinstien and Kerry are crafting a resolution that would put Democrats on record calling for “phased withdrawals” over a set period of time. This would be fine except why draw out the agony? If we’re not going to stay as long as it takes to achieve victory, it smacks of immorality to me to keep our troops there one minute longer. Why not admit defeat and bring the boys and girls home now?

Murtha’s “coherent” Iraq policy is a crock. As is the Democrat’s plan for “phased withdrawal.” This is electoral gamesmanship played at with the lives of our troops. Unwilliing to stand on principle (as I pointed out here) and run on their defeatist policy in fear that the American people, tired and dispirited as they are of the war, would reject their fancy strategy of cut and run and opt for achieving our goals in Iraq of sheparding the nascent Iraqi government through its infancy until it is able to defend itself and create a democratic government in the heart of the Middle East. This is victory, any which way you cut it. The “plan” of the Democrats means defeat.

Let’s give the American people a clear cut decision to make in November.

I don’t like it any more than you do.

The prospect of granting a limited amnesty in Iraq - especially to those Iraqis who participated in attacks on Americans - sticks in my craw. I believe that amnesty would cheapen the sacrifice made by the more than 2,500 Americans who have given their lives in Iraq and would be a slap in the face to the families of the fallen.

But all things considered, it may be the price of a full, unqualified victory in Iraq - a stable democratic government that promises full political participation for all Iraqis and that would be an example to follow for the rest of the autocratic Middle East.

This was the goal when we initiated the overthrow of Saddam. And achieving that goal would hearten democrats in the entire Muslim world while striking a huge blow at al Qaeda and their brothers in terror across the Middle East.

Details of what the amnesty program might look like are sketchy:

Reconciliation could include an amnesty for those “who weren’t involved in the shedding of Iraqi blood,” Maliki told reporters at a Baghdad news conference. “Also, it includes talks with the armed men who opposed the political process and now want to turn back to political activity.”

Maliki stressed that he had not yet met with the Sunni resistance and added, “We will talk to those whose hands are not stained with blood, and we hope they would rethink their strategy.” He vowed that they “will not be able to interrupt the political process, either by wanting to bring back the old regime, or imposing an ugly, ethnic new regime upon Iraq.”

As Maliki spoke, Iraqi soldiers and police led the first day of a security crackdown in Baghdad. A force of more than 30,000 uniformed Iraqi security personnel, backed by more than 30,000 U.S.-led foreign troops, enforced the first day of a dusk-to-dawn curfew and stepped up checkpoints throughout the capital. Iraq’s Interior Ministry said Tuesday that no additional troops were brought in for the operation.

This kind of “National Reconciliation” was utilized in South Africa with some success, although many observers believed at the time that granting amnesty to street thugs who murdered for political reasons would lead to continued lawlessness. Judging by the crime rate in Johannesburg and other municipalities in the immediate aftermath of the work done by the reconciliation councils, there may be some justification for that belief.

Prime Minister Maliki has yet to decide exactly who would be eligible and how the program would work:

The Arab League on Wednesday postponed a reconciliation conference for Iraq that had been set for August. Adnan Ali al-Kadhimi, a top adviser to Maliki, said the conference was delayed in part so Iraq could decide who might be eligible for any amnesty. It was not clear how the government would verify which insurgents have been responsible for which types of attacks.

“The government has in mind somehow to do reconciliation, and one way to do it is to offer an amnesty, but not a sort of unconditional amnesty,” Kadhimi said in a telephone interview. “We can see if somehow those who are so-called resistance can be accepted if they have not been involved in any kind of criminal behavior, such as killing innocent people or damaging infrastructure, and even infrastructure if it is minor will be pardoned.”

[snip]

Asked about clemency for those who attacked U.S. troops, he said: “That’s an area where we can see a green line. There’s some sort of preliminary understanding between us and the MNF-I,” the U.S.-led Multi-National Force-Iraq, “that there is a patriotic feeling among the Iraqi youth and the belief that those attacks are legitimate acts of resistance and defending their homeland. These people will be pardoned definitely, I believe.”

In the past, US military authorities were opposed to amnesty. However, at this point in the history of the new Iraqi government, they very well might not have much to say about the matter. While Maliki has shown a willingness to work with both the civilian and military representatives of the United States, he has also shown a stubborn resistance to being rushed into doing something he doesn’t wish to do. One only needs to look at the cabinet crisis that was recently resolved when Maliki named his national security team. American Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad pleaded, cajoled, and wheedled Maliki for weeks, begging him to get off the mark and name a full cabinet only to have Maliki demur until he had negotiated for the people he wanted.

Where the previous prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jafari, sometimes appeared to lean too heavily on the Americans for guidance, Maliki seems to be making an effort to strike out on his own. This is certainly a welcome development and bodes well for the immediate future. In fact, some Iraqis are quite optimistic:

Maliki’s statements come as there is growing openness to dialogue on all sides of Iraq’s ethnic and religious divides. [President] Talabani told reporters at a news conference in the Kurdish north last weekend that he believed 2006 might be the year of peace settlements for Iraq.

Similarly, the top Sunni Arab in Iraq’s new government said this week that he believed a peace deal was “very close.” Salam al-Zobaie, the deputy prime minister, said in an interview in his Baghdad office this week that the difference this time was that the new Shiite-led government was indicating openness to compromise.

Meanwhile, a couple of other steps taken by the new government may go a long way toward helping the grim security situation in the capital. There are now 60,000 armed men - 7,200 Americans - patrolling the streets of Baghdad enforcing a curfew while cracking down on the criminal gangs that are responsible for much of the violence and lawlessness that has rocked the city:

Iraqi troops Wednesday uncovered a kidnapping ring, seized weapons — including three rockets — and defused two roadside bombs after beginning a security clampdown on the often lawless streets of Baghdad.

In the first day of the new government’s push to restore order in the capital, Iraqi troops also enforced a curfew from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. and issued a weapons ban for civilians.

Four insurgents were detained at one checkpoint after three people emerged from a car “screaming for help,” said Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad.

“We found eight people that had been kidnapped now for four days that we were able to return back under control of the Iraqi government,” Caldwell said. “They worked for an electrical company down south of Baghdad.”

Certainly the Iraqi PM seems to be making the right moves. It is now up to his government to gain control of the security situation and begin the long, difficult process of uniting the Iraqis in order to bring peace to that blood soaked land.

There are many who dismiss the suicides of the three detainees at Guantanamo with a kind of “good riddance” wave of the hand, a casual shrug of the shoulders denoting indifference to the fate of those who, if given half a chance, would kill us all.

But it is by no means clear that those detainees and the others being held there pose that kind of threat. And the reason we aren’t sure - sure enough to have a clear conscience as we lock them away for the rest of their lives - is because of the unconscionable foot dragging by the Administration on determining exactly what rights the prisoners will be granted before US courts.

The Justice Department last year passed the buck to Congress, giving them the opportunity to determine how to go about judging the detainees on a case by case basis The Congress demurred, believing the matter to properly belong to the courts. And while lower courts have granted the prisoners some rights like habeas corpus and the right to an attorney, the legal limbo of the detainees won’t be cleared up until the Supreme Court rules on the matter.

On Friday, the President acknowledged that Gitmo has got to be closed and offered his explanation as to why it still functions:

“We would like to end the Guantanamo — we’d like it to be empty,” Bush said. But he added: “There are some that, if put out on the streets, would create grave harm to American citizens and other citizens of the world. And, therefore, I believe they ought to be tried in courts here in the United States.”

Bush said his administration was waiting for the Supreme Court to rule on whether he overstepped his authority in ordering the detainees to be tried by U.S. military tribunals.

Even the President is now convinced Guantanamo needs to be closed and that the prisoners have their cases tried in American courts. The amazing thing about the President’s statement is that if indeed the Supreme Court rules that the President “overstepped his authority” in using military tribunals to detain the prisoners illegally, there’s a chance that there may not be any trials in US courts at all; that most if not all the prisoners will be released outright.

To forestall that possibility, the Supreme Court’s ruling is likely to be hazy enough so that the prisoners will not be released due to any technical violation of their “constitutional rights” - an incendiary term when applied to accused terrorists - but will grant the detainees a habeas corpus hearing that will force the government to reveal in open court some of the evidence compiled against them.

This is also problematic as apparently much of the evidence is of a sensitive nature and revealing it in open court would compromise intelligence methods and assets. This puts the United States government squarely behind the 8-ball; in order to keep the accused terrorists in jail, we may be forced to reveal sources, allowing the detainee to “face their accuser.” And since one study of detainee records shows that a sizable number of them were not captured on any battlefield in Afghanistan but rather handed over by warlords and tribal leaders, having the detainee “face their accuser” may indeed be a monumental problem resulting in the release of people who may very well pose a threat to the United States. As it stands now, only 10 detainees stand accused of any crime at all. The rest are being held as enemy combatants with evidence of a classified nature used to keep them in prison.

This has been the beef against military tribunals all along; evidentiary standards are much more lax than they are in any court in the United States. There have also been questions about the availability of defense counsel to the detainees during their hearings as well as other roadblocks which have made the tribunals seem more like drumhead court martials than legal proceedings in keeping with the honorable traditions of American jurisprudence.

Much as we loathe the men who have sworn to kill us all, we simply must come to grips with the idea that if we aren’t able to kill them on the battlefield, they must be granted some of the rights guaranteed by international law and our own constitution. To do any less cheapens our entire justice system. It isn’t a question of loving the terrorist. It is a question of loving liberty and the blessings granted by a constitution that recognizes value in every individual and equality before the law.

I don’t know if the suicides at Gitmo were the result of despair, as the New York Times says or whether it was a public relations ploy as Colleen Graffy, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy says. I do know that as long as the detention center remains open, it represents, in my opinion, a black stain on American justice and a sad chapter in the history of American jurisprudence that should be closed for good.

This much is clear more than two weeks after the story broke that Marines in Haditha allegedly massacred 24 civilians “in cold blood,” a descriptive used by Representative John Murtha who supposedly has seen excerpts of the military report on the incident.

One side or the other is lying in spectacular fashion.

And not just little inconsistencies in eyewitness testimony that one would expect in a war zone either. There are extremely disturbing indications that press reports detailing eyewitness accounts have failed to reconcile what Iraqis in Haditha were telling them with other known facts that were either conveniently left out or ignored altogether. There are also clear and unambiguous cases where Iraqi eyewitnesses have changed their stories 2, 3, and even more times.

While it is not unusual for small details to be lost or found in different translations, these discrepancies are huge, up to and including one 12 year old girl (or 13 or 15 depending on which report you are reading) being in different houses, being shielded from the wrath of the Americans by 3 different family members, and telling completely different and ever more bloodcurdling details of how the Marines killed her family.

Then there is the weird case of Aws Fahmi. In an AP report, he is reported to have been a victim of the massacre, left to bleed in the street after being shot by the Americans. But the Washington Post story in which several eyewitnesses are interviewed, features Mr. Fahmi’s testimony prominently and in which the “victim” has morphed into an eyewitness, viewing the events from his house with no mention of his being shot and left to bleed to death in the street.

I want to be extremely careful here because there may be other, more mundane explanations for the discrepancies in eyewitness accounts than what appears on the surface to be a coordinated disinformation campaign by the insurgents that has taken in reporters for AP, Reuters, and Time Magazine to name a few.

Nor do the conflicting stories by Iraqis and the press mitigate the facts found by the military investigation into this matter. But the inconsistencies raise troubling questions about this probe. I found it strange that Members of Congress had been briefed on the investigation prior to its conclusion, with massive leaking of some preliminary conclusions by both lawmakers and top brass at the Pentagon. In their haste to “get out in front” of the story, did the Pentagon rush to judgement?

The Washington Post has the Marine’s side of the story this morning some of which seems to confirm parts of the initial reporting on scene by Reuters in the immediate aftermath of what happened in Haditha last November 20.. This is from my friend Clarice Feldman’s meticulously researched piece that appeared in The American Thinker on Friday:

On November 20, 2005, Reuters reported that on the previous day an IED killed a US Marine and 15 civilians in Haditha, a town known to be a center of the insurgency, a town as hostile to our forces as the better known Fallujah was. Reuters reported that “immediately after the blast, gunmen opened fire on the convoy” and US and Iraqi forces returned fire, killing 8 insurgents and wounding another in the fight. The paper further reported that “A cameraman working for Reuters in Haditha says bodies had been left lying in the street for hours after the attack.”

The Marine interviewed in the Post this morning confirms this story in a very general way and also says that they never reported that the civilians had been killed by an IED:

Wuterich’s version contradicts that of the Iraqis, who described a massacre of men, women and children after a bomb killed a Marine. Haditha residents have said that innocent civilians were executed, that some begged for their lives before being shot and that children were killed indiscriminately.

Wuterich told his attorney in initial interviews over nearly 12 hours last week that the shootings were the unfortunate result of a methodical sweep for enemies in a firefight. Two attorneys for other Marines involved in the incident said Wuterich’s account is consistent with those they had heard from their clients.

Kevin B. McDermott, who is representing Capt. Lucas M. McConnell, the Kilo Company commander, said Wuterich and other Marines informed McConnell on the day of the incident that at least 15 civilians were killed by “a mixture of small-arms fire and shrapnel as a result of grenades” after the Marines responded to an attack from a house.

The discrepancy in the number of civilians killed - the Marines say 15 while the Iraqis claim 24 bodies were brought to the morgue - indicates to me that this could very well be at least part of a disinformation campaign by the insurgency in Haditha. I base this conclusion on the facts that were uncovered during the investigation of a similar claim of massacre at Ishaqi.

Is it beyond imagining that at both Ishaqi and Haditha, insurgents “bumped up” the number of civilians killed by dumping additional bodies at the site? Is it also impossible to believe that some of these “eyewitnesses” are in fact deliberately spreading lies as a result of them being in league with or sympathetic to the insurgent’s cause?

In fact, the similarities are eerie. Both Ishaqi and Haditha had eyewitnesses changing their accounts several times. Both incidents had discrepancies in the number of civilians killed as well as how the operation was carried out. Both incidents had a videotape of of the bodies lying at the morgue offered as proof that the civilians were butchered by American soldiers.

At Ishaqi, the military determined that the troops had acted properly and within the rules of engagement. I’m not so sure that a similar finding will emerge from their investigation into what happened at Haditha. By the Marine’s own account, Americans burst into several houses, only one of which they were receiving small arms fire and used indiscriminate tactics that resulted in the deaths of 15 innocents. Of course, once the decision was made to enter the houses, the die was cast - anyone found in those houses were almost sure to die. I’m sure that decision will be examined carefully and a determination made as to whether or not the Marines followed proper procedure.

What is most disturbing to me is that it appears the reporting on this story has been just plain lazy. While every newspaper, magazine, and TV reporter covering this story likes to believe that their own investigation should stand alone as definitive (or at least a representation of what happened reflecting an effort to find out what happened to the best of their ability), it is clear that absolutely no effort has been made by reporters to reconcile the various versions of eyewitness accounts coming from supposedly victimized Iraqis. And their failure to report on the political leanings of some of the Iraqis who have emerged as key witnesses to the massacre is unconscionable.

In addition to Clarice’s piece in The American Thinker, I would also urge you to read Dan Reihl’s excellent work on this issue here as well as his take on the Marine’s story here.

We still don’t know what happened at Haditha. And it is very clear that the truth of the matter is proving more elusive than the anti-war left will admit. To do so would ruin their campaign to delegitimize our troop’s efforts in Iraq as well as build support for withdrawing our military before the job is done.

But for those of us who do want to get to the bottom of what happened there and let the chips fall where they may, much more work is needed by both the military and the press in discovering the facts in such a manner that is fair to both the Iraqis and the Marines.

UPDATE

Check out Allah at Hot Air this morning for more on the Marine’s side of the story. I’m sure he will be linking throughout the day to other reactions.

Bruce Kesler has further thoughts on the media coverage of this story.

Someone close to the top tier of al Qaeda in Iraq leadership has started to blab.

This much is clear after US and Iraqi forces carried out raids against 56 al Qaeda targets in the 48 hours after the death of the organization’s putative leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi:

U.S. forces conducted at least 56 raids on targets connected with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s al-Qaida in Iraq organization in the 48 hours after his death.

Citing military officials, The Los Angeles Times reported the raids were intended to capitalize on the killing of al-Zarqawi by disrupting his network of fighters.

After bombing a dwelling where al-Zarqawi and five others were killed Wednesday, U.S. forces carried out 17 raids across Baghdad. Forces hit 39 more sites on Friday, said Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad.

Military officials displayed pictures of items seized in the raids — including weapons, uniforms and ammunition — and said at least 25 people were captured and one killed, the newspaper said. Hover, officials did not provide an assessment of the extent of damage from the raids on insurgent operations.

Given that our intel regarding AQI has been spotty in the past, this many raids in a time span of 48 hours indicates that one or more prisoners have given us priceless information that we have obviously put to good use.

And we can expect more of the same:

A U.S. military search of the destroyed safehouse where the al-Qaida in Iraq leader was killed Wednesday yielded documents and information storage devices that are being assessed for potential use against his followers, a military officer said.

An M-16 rifle, grenades and AK-47 rifles also were found, according to the officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because results from the search have not been announced. The U.S.-made M-16 was fitted with special optics.

They also found documents and unspecified “media,” which the officer indicated normally means information storage devices such as computer hard drives and digital cameras or other data storage devices.

U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said 39 raids were conducted across Iraq late Thursday and early Friday, including some directly related to the information they obtained from the strike against al-Zarqawi. Those were in addition to 17 raids carried out immediately after the terror leader was killed.

Can all of this mean that we have AQI on the run?

One has to conclude that while the terrorist group remains very dangerous and capable of mounting devastating attacks against Iraqi civilians, a shift in momentum may be in the offing for coalition forces and this one, bloody element of the insurgency may have been dealt a truly lethal blow.

It will be interesting to see how we exploit this wealth of information gleaned from the al-Zarqawi raid. The more cells we can roll up or, just as important, keep so busy running for their lives that they are unable to mount any attacks, the fewer Iraqi civilians will suffer from AQI’s relentless campaign to foment sectarian conflict.

Meanwhile, in one of the most grotesque displays of nauseating bias I have seen in a while, the press is trying to portray Zarqawi’s last moments in the most “heroic” way possible. They have picked up on the theme that even though he was dying, the terrorist mastermind was trying to get away and, in a dramatic account of his final moments, struggled against capture:

Iraqi police reached the scene first, and found the 39-year-old al-Zarqawi alive.

“He mumbled something, but it was indistinguishable and it was very short,” Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, spokesman for U.S.-led forces in Iraq, said Friday of the Jordanian-born terrorist’s last words.

Iraqi police pulled him from the flattened home and placed him on a makeshift stretcher. U.S. troops arrived, saw that al-Zarqawi was conscious, and tried to provide medical treatment, the spokesman said.

“He obviously had some kind of visual recognition of who they were because he attempted to roll off the stretcher, as I am told, and get away, realizing it was the U.S. military,” Caldwell told Pentagon reporters via videoconference from Baghdad.

Al-Zarqawi “attempted to, sort of, turn away off the stretcher,” he said. “Everybody re-secured him back onto the stretcher, but he died almost immediately thereafter from the wounds he’d received from this airstrike.”

I like John Hinderaker’s take on this:

But the journalists who participated in the press conference, apparently by satellite, seemed to think they were on the trail of a Cover-Up. I saw most of the press conference early this morning. News of Zarqawi’s brief survival immediately led to questions about whether he had been finished off by the troops, and whether our soldiers had tried to render first aid. At one point, a reporter asked whether the published photos of Zarqawi’s face had been Photoshopped to make them look more like Zarqawi. I don’t think Caldwell had any idea what the guy was talking about; he said Yes, we decided to clean up Zarqawi’s face before photographing him. This led to a follow-up question about whether the photos had been digitally enhanced.

At this and other points in the press conference, Gen. Caldwell had the look, I thought, of a normal person who wonders whether he has been transported into a world of lunatics. It seemed that some of the reporters, at least, thought they were on to another “scandal”–Zarqawi murdered by U.S. troops! In cold blood, as Jack Murtha likes to say.

I am almost beside myself with disgust over this display. Words fail me when I contemplate the concern shown over this piece of human excrement compared to our own troops or even the Iraqi people who were butchered at his hands.

It is no longer a question of asking “Whose side are they on?” We know. We know.

UPDATE

Allah has some interesting updates over at Hot Air. Apparently, Zarqawi’s wife and infant son were also killed in the attack (via Times of London). And there is a question about whether or not Zarqawi’s long time spiritual advisor was also killed in the attack.

I’m sure we’ll hear more about both stories in the hours ahead as the press is still trying furiously to find an angle that will deligitimize the killing of Zarqawi and once again, make the Iraq storyline about the heartless American occupiers.

UPDATE II

Leave it to the two funniest people in the blogosphere to take the Zarqawi killing and make it into pure, comic gold.

Jeff Goldstein has an interview with the now dead terrorist that had me laughing so hard I almost emptied my bladder.

And the inimitable Scott Ott has the best political satire I’ve seen in a while: “Democrats Vow to Fight On After Zarqawi Loss.”

(HT: Doc Sanity)