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Ralph Peters reports on
Iraq progress.
TO a military professional, the tactical progress made in
Iraq over the last few months is impressive. To a member of Congress, it’s an annoyance.The herd animals on Capitol Hill – from both parties – just can’t wait to go over the cliff on
Iraq. And even when the media mention one or two of the successes achieved by our troops, the reports are grudging.Yet what’s happening on the ground, right now, in Baghdad and in
Iraq’s most-troubled provinces, contributes directly to your security. In the words of a senior officer known for his careful assessments, al Qaeda’s terrorists in
Iraq are “on their back foot and we’re trying to knock them to their knees.”Do our politicians really want to help al Qaeda regain its balance? …
Victor Davis Hanson with important
Middle East history lesson.
… The point of reviewing prior American naiveté and cynicism is not to excuse the real mistakes in stabilizing
Iraq. Instead, these past blunders remind us that we have had few good choices in dealing with the terrorism, theocracy and authoritarian madness of an oil-rich
Middle East. And we have had none after the murder of 3,000 Americans on September 11.After four years of effort in
Iraq, Americans may well tire of that cost and bring Gen. Petraeus and the troops home. We can then go back to the shorter-term remedies of the past. Well and good.But at least remember what that past policy was: Democratic appeasement of terrorists, interrupted by cynical Republican business with terrorist-sponsoring regimes.
Then came September 11, and we determined to get tougher than the Democrats by taking out the savage Taliban and Saddam Hussein – and more principled than the Republicans by staying on after our victories to foster something better.
The jihadists are now fighting a desperate war against the new stick of American military power and carrot of American-inspired political reform. They want us, in defeat, to go back to turning a blind eye to both terrorism and corrupt dictatorships.
That’s the only way they got power in the first place and now desperately count on keeping it.
Which makes a Corner Post on Cambodia timely as it reminds Pickerhead of a Bernard Lewis quote; ”
America is harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend.”
Mark Steyn continues …..
The Corner also posts on the Giuliani-Nixon comparison.
The Captain takes apart a WaPo poll. It’s kind of a little thing, but important to understand how the main stream media keeps fudging their bias.
… In fact, the Post consistently underrepresents Republicans, and has for the past two years. The last time it came close to reality was in November 2006 — when the Post needed to make sure its election predictions came close to the results.
Not surprisingly, that was also the last time the Post’s polling on George Bush’s approval ratings came close to reality, too. His disapproval then was 57%, which the elections seem to have confirmed. At the time, Rasmussen — which has been historically more accurate than the Post — had it at 56%. They now have it at 59%, actually down from a high of 65% in the first part of July during the immigration debate.
Bush is not popular, by any means. However, by seriously underrepresenting Republicans in its polling samples, the Post exaggerates his unpopularity and renders its polling unreliable. …
Steve Chapman with interesting Hillary column.
During the Democratic debate in South Carolina, I heard something I never expected to hear: Hillary Clinton coming out against
U.S. military intervention.At least I think she was coming out against
U.S. military intervention. Asked if U.S. troops should be sent to Darfur, the
New York senator made a valiant effort to dodge the question by declaiming about sanctions, divestment and UN peacekeepers. But when pressed, “How about American troops on the ground?” she finally said, a bit awkwardly, “American ground troops I don’t think belong in
Darfur at this time.”But don’t bet that she’ll stick to that position if she’s elected. It goes against type. …
Instapundit carries an interesting thought on Spitzer’s mess.
American.com with a story on Norman Borlaug, the most important man you’ve never heard of. Except you have because you read Pickings. If you want to see when, use the search feature on the Pickerhead website.
Good Walter Williams column on government health care.
Sometimes the advocates of socialized medicine claim that health care is too important to be left to the market. That’s why some politicians are calling for us to adopt health care systems such as those in Canada, the
United Kingdom and other European nations. But the suggestion that we’d be better served with more government control doesn’t even pass a simple smell test.Do we want the government employees who run the troubled
Walter
Reed
Army
Medical
Center to be in charge of our entire health care system? Or, would you like the people who deliver our mail to also deliver health care services? How would you like the people who run the motor vehicles department, the government education system, foreign intelligence and other government agencies to also run our health care system? After all, they are not motivated by the quest for profits, and that might mean they’re truly wonderful, selfless, caring people.As for me, I’d choose profit-driven people to provide my health care services, people with motives like those who deliver goods to my supermarket, deliver my overnight mail, produce my computer and software programs, assemble my car and produce a host of other goods and services that I use. …
Rocky Mountain News with good editorial on Ward Churchill.
So what have we learned from the Churchill saga? That it is difficult, but not quite impossible, to fire a tenured professor. That the wheels of due process at a university are ridiculously slow, in this case taking 2 1/2 years. That public pressure on a university is not always a bad thing, since it can produce reform that otherwise would have been spurned. Does anyone suppose that CU would have bothered to revamp the process by which it grants tenure – which it did – without the spur of the Churchill fallout?
Under President Hank Brown’s leadership, the university has put yet another awkward issue behind it. Even if a court reinstates Churchill someday on the improbable, spurious ground that his First Amendment rights were violated when he was fired, at least Coloradans will know that the faculty and leadership at their flagship university expelled his poisonous influence from their midst when they had the chance.
WSJ provides a dispassionate look at hurricane forecasting.
Some scientists, journalists and activists see a direct link between the post-1995 upswing in Atlantic hurricanes and global warming brought on by human-induced greenhouse gas increases. This belief, however, is unsupported by long-term
Atlantic and global observations.Consider, for example, the intensity of
U.S. land-falling hurricanes over time — keeping in mind that the periods must be long enough to reveal long-term trends. During the most recent 50-year period, 1957 to 2006, 83 hurricanes hit the
United States, 34 of them major. In contrast, during the 50-year period from 1900 to 1949, 101 hurricanes (22% more) made
U.S. landfall, including 39 (or 15% more) major hurricanes.The hypothesis that increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases the number of hurricanes fails by an even wider margin when we compare two other multi-decade periods: 1925-1965 and 1966-2006. In the 41 years from 1925-1965, there were 39
U.S. land-falling major hurricanes. In the 1966-2006 period there were 22 such storms — only 56% as many. Even though global mean temperatures have risen by an estimated 0.4 Celsius and CO2 by 20%, the number of major hurricanes hitting the
U.S. declined.
Yesterday Tony Blankley was in the humor section commenting on the dem debate. Today it’s Ann Coulter.
… Hillary raised the Bush-stole-the-2000-election fairy tale, saying: “I think it is a problem that Bush was elected in 2000. I actually thought somebody else was elected in that election, but …” (Applause.)
On Nov. 12, 2001, The New York Times ran a front page article that began: “A comprehensive review of the uncounted Florida ballots from last year’s presidential election reveals that George W. Bush would have won even if the United States Supreme Court had allowed the statewide manual recount of the votes that the Florida Supreme Court had ordered to go forward.”
Another Times article that day by Richard L. Berke said that the “comprehensive review of the uncounted Florida ballots solidifies George W. Bush’s legal claim on the White House because it concludes that he would have won under the ground rules prescribed by the Democrats.”
On Nov. 18, 2001, notorious pro-abortion zealot Linda Greenhouse wrote in the Times that the media consortium’s count of all the disputed
Florida ballots — in which the Times participated — concluded “that George W. Bush would have won the 2000 presidential election even had the court not cut the final recount short.”If three prominent articles in the Treason Times isn’t enough to convince Hillary that Bush won the 2000 election, forget the White House: ABC ought to hire her to replace Rosie O’Donnell on “The View.” I know that’s a big seat to fill, but maybe she can finally convince Elizabeth Hasselbeck that 9/11 was an inside job.
Carpe Diem posts on a blues primer.
… Persons with names like Michelle, Amber, Debbie, and Heather can’t sing the Blues no matter how many men they shoot in
Memphis. …