Here I said “last word,” and then I read the dishonest AP attempt to back up Kerry’s absurd explanation for his slur against the troops:

Kerry opened his speech at Pasadena City College with several one-liners, saying at one point that Bush had lived in Texas but now "lives in a state of denial."

He then said: "You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."

The AP wants its readers to think that offensive remark immediately followed his joke about President Bush. In actuality, the remark came much later, not in the midst of jest, but smack in the middle of Kerry making serious observations about the importance of education, and the dangers of not taking it seriously enough.

The AP then goes on to regurgitate Kerry’s unapologetic rant about Republican dirty tricks almost in its entirety, while slipping a sentence or two about Press Spokesman Tony Snow or Republicans “sensing opportunity for their side.”

Otherwise? They slander the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and underscore how Kerry’s little tantrum was to show that “he’s not going to be pushed around this time.”

What a whiney, dishonest affair. The AP, Kerry, take your pick.

Kerry, yet again, revealed himself as an idiot.

I reacted with indignation, as did many others.

Michael Ledeen wrote this, which I pass on in its entirety:

It's always interesting to see psychological projection at work. Kerry and his allies—obviously the Dems are defending him, aren't they?—are blaming the troops for the Dems' own ignorance and stupidity. I mean, it's hard to imagine anyone stupider than Kerry. Only a total buffoon would attack the troops at a key moment in the campaign. It makes it possible to say that the Dems really are the party of Kerry, Murtha, and the other appeasers. Must be Rove hypnosis at work.

Secondly, it underlines the near-total alienation of the American intellectual elite. I dare say that the leading news and editorial rooms, like the offices of the major universities, are full of people who quite agree with the notion that our troops are stupid and underprivileged. Each time one of our children ships out to the Middle East, we get condolence calls from friends and relatives. They simply cannot fathom it, it is so totally removed from their own experience and from their own narcissistic lives. They do not know uniformed people, they have only a totally misleading stereotype.

Third, I believe that the percentage of veterans in Congress is under fifteen percent. That makes it difficult for them, as a group, to understand military virtue or war. Obviously military service is not a panacea, as Kerry and Murtha have demonstrated. But I do think that in times of war it would help to have more veterans in the legislatures.

Finally, we know lots of military people, from bestarred generals to lance corporals. We've spent plenty of time with them, especially those who have been shot up and blown up. It would help the elite to spend some time in military hospitals, they'd be quite surprised at the intelligence, thoughtfulness, and good character of most of the men and women in uniform nowadays.

Quite aside from the politics of Kerry's buffoonery, this is a serious matter. The war is almost surely going to get worse, and we need leaders with a grasp of what it's about.

What more can anyone say?

Unless Kerry apologizes abjectly and without condition or excuse – “its that damn Johnson” – this ought to be the final word on this sad affair.

Some of the unexpected benefits of MILBLOGGING are occasional invitations to review books pre-publication, or early in a book’s release.

I just received what look like two great reads in the mail, courtesy of Simon and Schuster:

Sea of Thunder: Four Commanders and the Last Great Naval Campaign, 1941-1945, by Evan Thomas, publication date November 7, 2006.

Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany, by Donald L. Miller, publication date October 10, 2006.

I’m looking forward to both of these, and I know a WWII Pacific Theater Vet (Elder Manly) and a certain young wargamer (Little Manly) who will be very happy to take their turn after me!

Seems like Simon and Schuster is quickly becoming my favorite publishers. Might have something to do with The Blog of War, but I’ll let others be the judge.

Andi of Andi’s World and MILBLOGS made her way back from SpouseBuzz Live, the military spouse blog-event in Killeen, Texas, this past Saturday October 28^th. Killeen is otherwise known as the home for Fort Hood.

Here’s Andi’s initial after action report (AAR):

Since I began blogging, there have been three experiences that were so large, and so important, that it was impossible to capture the sentiment through a keyboard. The first large experience was my first trip to Walter Reed. The second experience was the MilBlog Conference and the third experience took place this past weekend in Killeen, Texas when SpouseBUZZ went live. Click here to read the Killeen Daily Herald story about SpouseBUZZ LIVE.

I’m an Army wife, I know this community. I’ve held the hands of wives at Walter Reed. I’ve let them cry on my shoulder and I’ve watched them face incredibly difficult obstacles with grace and dignity. I’ve received plenty of email from military spouses telling me of their fears and their challenges. SpouseBUZZ has been open long enough for me to know that military spouses are hungry for more avenues that provide support, love and laughter, which is why SpouseBUZZ exists in the first place. I thought I knew what there was to know, but I was wrong. What I didn’t know, until Saturday, was the degree to which military spouses are longing to hear the experiences of other spouses, and to discuss their own lives.

There were about 100 attendees at SpouseBUZZ LIVE, and I have no doubt that each one of them would tell you that what happened in that room on Saturday was one of the best and most important experiences they have had as a military spouse. I know it was for me. The military has support systems, and they are great, and they have their place, but the military doesn’t have anything that can come close to achieving what we achieved with SpouseBUZZ LIVE.

I truly wasn’t prepared for the emotion. Not prepared at all. Yes, I realized there would be emotion, but watching the faces of 100 spouses crying at the same time, nodding their heads in agreement at the same time and laughing at the same time, was a memory I will cherish forever.

It’s always bothered me when someone says, “You knew what you signed up for,” but it never bothered me to the extent that it does now. Now, after having a very young wife tell me that her husband is on his second OIF tour and has a baby coming soon. She prays for his safety. Now, after seeing the worry in the young face of one wife who told me that her husband deployed with a cast on his foot, and she is hoping he won't be sent out to the battlefield before he heals properly. Now, after listening to a wife take the microphone and tell us how she felt when she was speaking to her husband from theater while his FOB was being mortared. Now, after talking to a wife who finds herself in a new area, with new people and without a husband because he just deployed. Now, after hugging the necks of spouses who are simultaneously strong and frightened, brave and lonely. So no, we did not know what we “signed up for.” Nobody can prepare you for life as a military spouse during a time of war. If ever there were a “job” where on-the-job training is necessary, this is it. And if ever there were a job where someone deserves a medal for their sacrifices and endurance, this is it.

I often say that I wish every American could spend one hour at Walter Reed because it’s a life-altering experience. Similarly, I wish every military spouse could have attended SpouseBUZZ LIVE. It was that important and we made a difference in the lives of those who attended. Conversely, the audience members made a difference in the lives of the SpouseBUZZ authors. The camaraderie and sisterhood that was formed there will always exist.

It would be foolish to underestimate the impact that gathering military spouses together for a day of sharing can have. I’ve been to many events and briefings and functions and meetings. SpouseBUZZ LIVE was by far the most powerful event I have ever attended, and I’m motivated to do it again and again and again. I thought I was focused before, now I am more focused, with many new ideas and plans. Stay tuned....

How blessed and honored I am to be able to *work* with military spouses. There is no place I would rather be, especially now.

As those who operate SpouseBuzz bless those they serve, they will be blessed in return, and in abundance.

Here are some great summaries of the discussion, sharing, and relationship building that went on:

Conference Start-up, Panel One

Intro to Panel Two

Panel Two

Panel Three

SpouseBUZZ is the latest of Andi’s excellent adventures in the blogosphere, and already proving itself every day as an outstanding resource for military dependents and their families. When she says “stay tuned,” brothers and sisters, we’d better stay tuned. Something greater this way comes!

Many of my regular readers may remember that Mrs. Manly was scheduled to sit on one of the panels, and I was planning on live-blogging the event. Sadly, the Manly’s were hit last week with a family medical emergency. We had to withdraw from the conference, and it greatly pained us to do so. We prayed for the conference, and are very gratified that it was as meaningful as it was to attendees and participants alike.

The vague and uncertain cloud of dread that hung around us all week, has now condensed into our worst fears coming true. We now enter a season with which that Mrs. Manly and I, unfortunately, are well familiar. Those that can, please keep us in your prayers.

The week before critical US midterm elections, and the architects of a couple of high visibility public relations (PR) campaigns must be pretty satisfied.

Yes, Al Qaeda and the Democrats have every reason to be pleased.

Let’s talk declared enemies first. That’s right, Al Qaeda and their Media War.

These guys know what they’re doing, it’s pretty hard to argue with their success. They have an avowed PR Campaign, and captured documents reveal a complex and multi-faceted information operations (IO) effort, aimed at the instruments of Western media and their willing (if unwitting) practitioners.

What a result they’ve achieved.

All the news outlets are trumpeting “highest in a year” US Soldier deaths in Iraq, the very month before midterm elections. They did better than they hoped, no doubt, not just beating the year’s best, but moving ahead of the psychologically significant 100 per month figure. And coverage has been wall-to-wall, almost universal across all major media outlets, print, radio, TV, and cable.

Greyhawk of Mudville Gazette highlights a highly successful “Astroturfing” campaign, in which activist groups with a political agenda simulate a “grassroots” effort by “disillusioned” active duty soldiers against the war. Except, this grassroots effort was orchestrated by others that then “recruited” the military front-men required, as reported by the NY Sun (almost exclusively). Hence the term, “Astroturfing.” As described by Wikipedia:

In politics and advertising, the term astroturfing describes formal public relations (PR) campaigns which seek to create the impression of being a spontaneous, grassroots behavior. Hence the reference to the "AstroTurf" (artificial grass) is a metaphor to indicate "fake grassroots" support.

The goal of such campaign is to disguise the agenda of a political client as an independent public reaction to some political entity —a politician, political group, product, service, event. Astroturfers attempt to orchestrate the actions of apparently diverse and geographically distributed individuals, by both overt ("outreach," "awareness," etc.) and covert (disinformation) means. Astroturfing may be undertaken by anything from an individual pushing their own personal agenda through to highly organized professional groups with financial backing from large corporations.

Furthermore, as reported by Greyhawk and Blackfive, major media and responsive columnists have willingly transmitted Al Qaeda propaganda, without contrast or rebuttal, and without any acknowledgement of sources or evaluation of credibility. One suspects, since the source was not the Pentagon, no reason to suspect press manipulation, right?

Al Qaeda has every reason to be pleased with their PR campaign to turn the US electorate against the war and change the political equation in Washington.

As for the Democrats, let’s review their PR campaign.

Wait. No. That’s AQ. One minute please. Nope, that’s the Astroturfing we were talking about. Not that, more Media War.

I guess they didn’t need one this year, since AQ pretty much did it for them.

What do you call a political party that wants to take advantage of an avowed enemy and every step they take against the US? What would you say of a party that can take such advantage, because these enemies think the same things, say the same things, and want the same things?

When a political party can so closely align themselves with declared enemies of the US, they really ought to ask themselves how that can be. And we ought to be asking the same thing.

Blackfive kicks of the 2006 Project Valour-IT fund raising campaign:

Want to be part of something big?

Project Valour-IT, in memory of SFC William V. Ziegenfuss (Captain Chuck Ziegenfuss' father), provides voice-controlled software and laptop computers to wounded Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines recovering from hand and arm injuries or amputations at major military medical centers. Operating laptops by speaking into a microphone, our wounded heroes are able to send and receive messages from friends and loved ones, surf the 'Net, and communicate with buddies still in the field without having to press a key or move a mouse.

Valour-IT's online fundraising competition begins today! Let's see who can raise the most money to help reconnect our wounded warriors with the world!

WHAT: Friendly fundraising competition for Valour-IT.
WHEN: October 30th through Veterans Day, November 10th .
WHERE: Based in the blogosphere, spreading everywhere else.
WHY: Because giving wounded warriors with hand and arm injuries access to a computer supports their healing and puts them back in touch with the world.
HOW: Blogger teams will be divided along military branches, with civilians "up for grabs."

The lines are drawn by service rivalry:

Jarheads (Marines) will be led by Villainous Company
Zoomies (Air Force) will be led by Op-For
Squids (Navy) will be led by Chaotic Synaptic Activity.
Doggies (Army) led by Matt and Jim of Blackfive

Non-military bloggers should choose the Army to support. Now, normally, I don't take part in the gentle inter-service rivalry, especially during war. But this is for a very important charity. So, civilian bloggers, choose your branch. Choose wisely...

Sign up for the Army team by enlisting at the Project Valour-IT site and click (under Army) "Join". We'll generate links, buzz, and get these heroes some Commo support!

What Valour-IT Needs From You:

Blog and email regularly about Valour-IT and the competition

Tell your friends, family and neighbors about Valour-IT

Put up these flyers around your community (I put one up at my local Starbucks).

So all you bloggers sign up with your choice of service and get the word out. Donate NOW!!!

It's a tax-deductible donation and eligible for matching funds from companies who do that sort of thing (see: http://soldiersangels.org/valour/irsinfo.html for proof for the cautious).

The snail mail address for those who'd rather donate that way (be sure to put ARMY in big letters on the check):

Soldiers' Angels

1150 N Loop 1604 W, Suite 108-493
San Antonio, TX 78248

Let's be a part of something big.

The Army Team:
From My Position...On the Way!
Badgers Forward
Tammi's World
Armchair Generalist
Patiently Waiting
Andrew Olmsted
Wild Tangents
My Side of the Puddle
ArmyWifeToddlerMom
G.R.I.T.S a/k/a Keep My Soldier Safe
The Thunder Run

…and now, Dadmanly as well.

Andi, the creator of Andi’s World and primary architect of SpouseBUZZ, is about to kick off the SpouseBUZZ Live! Event.

For those who haven't been following, this is a terrific venture, sponsored by the Military.com folks. Here's Andi's explanation of the event:

We've been advertising this event over at SpouseBUZZ, but I wanted to let my readers know that the SpouseBUZZ crew will be live in Killeen, Texas on October 28. Military.com is sponsoring SpouseBUZZ LIVE, a one-day expo aimed at bringing military spouses together to discuss topics unique and important to us.

It's going to be a great event and if you can make it, download your free ticket here.

Panels for SpouseBUZZ LIVE are as follows:

THE MILSPOUSE EXPERIENCE: A warm-up discussion about the joys and challenges facing milspouses. This panel will feature a diverse group of spouses including active-duty, National Guard and a male spouse.

Moderated by Ward Carroll

Panelists: AWTM, Guard Wife, Sarah and Mike

DEPLOYMENT A-Z: A "potluck" discussion on a wide range of issues surrounding deployment.

Moderated by Vince Patton

Panelists: RedLegMeg, Airforcewife, Molly Pitcher, Love My Tanker

OVERCOMING LIFE CHALLENGES: How do you deal with the often-difficult reintegration period? What about PTSD? What happens if your spouse is wounded?

Moderated by Andi Hurley

Panelists: Joan D'Arc, GBear, Ft. Hood Family Advocacy Representative

There may be live web-streaming of SpouseBUZZ LIVE. If so, I'll be sure to pass the link on and, like the MilBlog conference, you'll be able to attend in the "virtual" sense.

I'm really looking forward to getting back to Ft. Hood and bonding with 500 other military spouses.

Mrs. Manly was scheduled to participate, but a family medical emergency will keep us tied to home for a while. We hate to miss this, but know many folks and families will be blessed!

Marc Danziger (aka Armed Liberal) wrote a review of The Blog of War in The Examiner.

Here’s just a taste:

While it is an obvious thing to do to honor our dead soldiers, the joy of a book like this — and of the milblogs it gives a snapshot of — is to introduce you to very real words of our living ones. They are a very real manifestation of Whitman:

“I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear. …”

Fewer and fewer Americans know soldiers as the tradition of military service slips into history. Buy the book, meet some, and listen to them.

What a great review. AL, posting at Winds of Change, also encourages buyers of the book to follow up by sending a little note to some interested parties:

And when you buy the book, take a moment to send an email or letter to both the White House and the Secretary of Defense, asking why it is that midlevel Pentagon bureaucrats are choking off the ability of our troops to blog and of our bloggers (see this from Michael Yon) to cover the troops:

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED

Mr. Yon;

I do not recognize your website as a media organization that we will use as a source to credential journalists covering MNF-I operations.

LTC Barry Johnson
Director, CPIC
www.mnf-iraq.com

Some things speak for themselves. The war doesn't, and we need the voices of Blackfive and his band of bloggers, and of Michael Yon, and of all the men and women serving to try and comprehend what's going on over there.

Thanks, Marc. We’re pleased and proud to have you on the team. Wish we had more like you.

Writer and Blogger Cathy Seipp has a wonderfully breezy, near-insider’s reflection up at

National Review Online, discussing the efforts of The Los Angeles Times to remain relevant in a changing media environment.

Seipp claims responsibility for coining Spring Street to describe the LA Times, similar to how Grey Lady describes their New York City counterpart. Seipp demonstrates long familiarity – no doubt breeding considerable contempt – for the Times, and passes along several common criticisms for the LA paper. A couple in particular caught my attention:

Many of the complaints about the Times’ new front-page redesign dwell on how the page looks too similar to USA Today. I stand behind no man when it comes to my distaste for USA Today — when I stay at hotels offering complimentary issues of the traveling salesman’s broadsheet, I always ring up the front desk to demand, “Take it away, take it away, take it away!” — but cynics take a different view.
A TV writer and former magazine editor I know, for instance, once told me he cancelled his L.A. Times subscription to get USA Today instead, which really seems pretty crazy. He added that he just wants the following three questions answered when he reads his morning paper: 1) How are the Dodgers doing? 2) Rain today? 3) What’s on TV?
“Those are the only three answers I want from American journalism,” he noted. “USA Today is perfect.”

In light of all the recent discussion about journalism, embedded or otherwise, and MILBLOGS, I would draw a similar conclusion about mainstream media (MSM) in general.

From opening day till sometime (or late) in August, I want to know how the Red Sox are doing. Sure, I want to know the latest controversies or stupidities, but I get briefed on those (pretty much real time) online.

USA Today? Sure, whatever. Where are the Red Sox these days?

Two quick follow-up from an earlier item.

I want to highlight that the Military Reporters & Editors Convention starts today (10/26) in Evanston, IL. Looks like Blackfive, Michael Yon, and Bill Roggio will attend. Keynote addresses include Rajiv Chandrasekaran of the Washington Post and Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, U.S. Army Combined Arms Center, Fort Leavenworth, KS.

There might be some great insights, observations and even controversies that might come out from the Convention; we’ll have to stay tuned.

In going to my blogroll to get the link for Roggio, I noticed that Bill has some great background (and plenty foreground) reporting on the raid on Al Sadr to which Iraqi Prime Minister claimed to have not approved (but apparently did).

Check out The Fourth Rail for more information.

(A continuation from Soldier Voices Part One, also excerpted at Milblogs.)

In Soldier Voices Part One, I reported that I have been mulling over diverse viewpoints of both supporters and opponents of our efforts in Iraq. I am concerns over feedback from boots really on the ground, lower ranking enlisted soldiers and officers. In the midst of these reflections, I came across another kind of viewpoint, that of an embedded journalist.

Blackfive links, as I did, to Michael Yon’s piece on censorship and Michael Fumento’s piece on embedding. His links prompted journalist and veteran Carl Prine, to dismiss Fumento’s reporting as ill-informed, contrasting Fumento with Yon, who’s inability to get embedded Prine views as a shame (as do we all).

Prine was a Veteran Marine, then an investigative reporter, who after 9/11, re-enlisted as an Infantryman (MOS 11B). Those facts alone must make Prine almost unique within his profession. He’s a prize winner to be sure, no doubt tenacious, and quite skilled as a reporter.

Why do I dwell on these details? Not anything particular to his comments, he’s been previously critical of Yon, dismissing his work as poorly written and edited, in much the same way he criticizes Fumento.

Full disclaimer: I have criticized the work of Yon in the past for similar faults, but I greatly admire his dedication and commitment, and figure we should cut all kinds of slack to anybody who is trying to get Iraq reported honestly, first person. I also give anybody with that much enthusiasm and motivation the benefit of the doubt that they will learn, and improve. According to Prine, that’s how he now feels about Yon, “now cresting as a reporter.”

Prine didn’t stop with there, but adds that he views Yon’s recent reporting from Afghanistan has been “gloomy”but prescient:

Yon's piece is far more persuasive. He's grown into his job and has become a very impressive critic of both the press and the military. His writing from Afghanistan was some of the best that conflict has produced and let's mark it as prescient because his gloomy forecasts likely will come true.

Other commenters on the threat remark that Prine’s opinion of Yon surely improves to the degree that Yon is critical of the military. The threat degenerates for a time into a sparring session between Prine and host Blackfive.

One gets the impression these two have some prior history. Interestingly, in the course of their back and forth – won on volume perhaps by Prine, but without much response to Blackfive’s rebuttals on Fumento – they reveal that the Military Reporters & Editors Convention starts today (10/26) in Evanston, IL. Looks like Blackfive and Prine will attend, and Prine reports that Yon is speaking on Saturday, October 28^th, along with Bill Roggio. Keynote addresses include Rajiv Chandrasekaran of the Washington Post and Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, U.S. Army Combined Arms Center, Fort Leavenworth, KS.

I tend to do searches on people of controversy these days – call me paranoid, suspicious of people’s motives, or just plain under-self-utilized – and found out Prine has a history of run-ins with other MILBLOGGERS, whom I believe Prine has less respect for than he would formal mainstream media (MSM) journalists.

Apparently, his prior criticisms of Yon raised some objection from fellow MILBLOGGER Chapomatic, who likewise engaged Prine in extended debate (and sparring). I’ve found Prine injecting his criticisms elsewhere in the blogosphere. Prine’s willingness to opine, and his tendency to elevate with praise MSM practitioners over the less than professional MILBLOGGERS, no doubt irritates many MILBLOGGERS.

Prine doesn’t dwell at all on his own perceptions of the situation in Iraq, although his reference to Yon and Yon’s discouragement over Afghanistan yield some clues as to Prine’s opinion.

Chapomatic quoted Prine’s summary objection to Yon’s work:

It’s good for what it is, but he’s not the best writer and his writing suffers from what every junior on the circuit experiences — the “soda straw” effect. That’s no rap on him, just a fact. He’s good for an entertaining look at a slice of life, but not a fuller picture.

Which closely parallels my own reservations about most MSM reporting on Iraq, and even the assessments of many of our own Intel Analysts. (See, again, my previous Patterns of Analysis for more in-depth discussion.)

The soda-straw effect. Of course, I don’t quite see what steps practitioners within the MSM take to avoid or prevent reporting through that soda-straw. Seems to me, that’s exactly the point Fumento was making in his piece, however unskillfully.

Perhaps Prine considers all that “environmental” and subjective commentary the MSM is so good (the Associated Press in particular) one great big gulp and swallow, in contrast. You recognize the standard Template^TM it when you read it:

Amid worsening violence in Iraq and widespread calls for withdrawal from all sides politically, President Bush stubbornly insisted today that we will “stay the course,” regardless of how hopeless the situation grows.

Call it your standard Anti-war lead paragraph. (Or anti-Bush, depending on the context.)

Chapomatic has a more fundamental objection to Prine’s stance on “amateur reporters”:

The most important thing I see Prine misunderstanding is that this is an information war*. Prine talks about “illuminating his (the soldier’s) experience” and “preserving his moment in history”–but also important is “maintaining the national will to win”. The other side is using our open society to attack and kill us. They are using media to get what they want, change minds, recruit. They understand how to manipulate public opinion, and why the VC’s Giap was so successful in attacking our “national will” center of gravity. Our press has guys like Seymour Hersh trolling for any bad story he can find–no matter how untruthful or damaging–and a culture that often despises the military’s belief system and modus operandi. (Strong word? You should hear what I hear at the J-schools, from the midshipmen, from the journalists.) This is a fight to the death against an ideological foe, and the battlefields include public opinion. “Objectivity”, a fake sense of moral superiority, and facile “blood and circuses” misdirection on what matters in the long term most emphatically does not cut it.

I can’t find disagreement here with Chap. This is the heart of the Media War, and I wish we had more brave and aggressive guys like Prine willing “to enlist.” And I’d hope too, that Prine would at times consider, at least more consciously than I think he does, that his ability to report as he does, where he does, in the manner he does, is in large measure because of the freedoms he himself has fought to protect, and that those freedoms are in real jeopardy from enemies who will use every report, and every reporter, in its arsenal against us. They have found the Democratic equivalent to Lenin’s prognosis for Capitalism:

"The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them."

Only in this case, the radical Islamic terrorists use the critical and anti-government voices of the “free press” to implement their aims against the forces of democracy.

Having said all of that, let me conclude, again with Chap:

Prine, however, is putting his money where his mouth is. He took a pay cut and enlisted. I don’t know why he thought it was the best approach, but he is doing the hard thing. I only wish I felt that more of his comrades in the press were as willing to serve alongside us, either reporting, or fighting.

Ahem to that.

I have spent considerable time lately mulling over diverse viewpoints of both supporters and opponents of our efforts in Iraq, and their implications for what I acknowledge as the Global War on Terror (GWOT), whatever terms are used to describe it. I am especially troubled by several, increasingly discordant strains of feedback coming from soldiers.

No, not the feedback packaged by General Officers enticed by fulfilling media, publishing, or partisan expectations, but feedback from boots really on the ground, lower ranking enlisted soldiers and officers.

Before I review some of these discordant voices, a disclaimer of sorts, to ground my opinion.

I believe we’re trying to do the right thing in an increasingly dangerous world. I further believe our President to be an honorable and religious man, true to his faith and to the American people, guided by his own discernment and spiritual practice, and supported in his decisions by military leaders who believe in their missions and possess the knowledge, skills, and leadership qualities to implement decisions as effectively as humanly possible. Mistakes have and will be made. However, I conclude that “sins of omission,” in a state of extreme threats to national security, have long been worse in practice than whatever our sins of commission, now that we act.

My regular readers know I am a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) III, mobilized and deployed to Iraq for most of 2005 with the New York Army National Guard’s 42^nd Infantry (Rainbow) Division (ID). I was a Headquarters and Headquarters Company (HHC) First Sergeant (1SG) for the 642 Military Intelligence (MI) Battalion (BN). I have served as an Electronic Warfare (EW) and Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) Analyst (military occupational specialty or MOS 98C) and an All Source Analyst (MOS 96B).

I didn’t work the Intel mission in Iraq, as a 1SG, but I received regular updates on the situation in the local area (we were in Tikrit), as well as periodic reviews of situations elsewhere in Iraq.

My deployment experiences are mine, I deployed along with 200 others, and each of our experiences were different. We were all more or less “Fobbits,” so called from the Army nomenclature for Forward Operating Bases or FOBs. A dozen or so – a special group fp soldiers as I’ve written -- were attached to Scout units at remote locations. Many never left the FOB, except for a pass or R&R home, or when we left for good. A good number went on convoys regularly, with trips lasting anywhere from one to several hours. I went on about a dozen, more when I was filling in for our BN Command Sergeant Major (CSM).

My perceptions of Iraq, my time there and the military situation, is only one particular slice of experience out of the hundreds of thousands of soldiers who have deployed to Iraq. I have greatly augmented my own personal knowledge by talking to many other Vets, soldiers in my unit and others, reading widely among the MILBLOGS, and other media and reporting.

All by way of preface for a reflection on differing viewpoints.

Here’s one viewpoint that gave me pause, reported by James Taranto, in today’s Best of the Web at Opinion Journal (via Instapundit). Taranto passed along a letter from a Sergeant (SGT) involved in Human Intelligence (HUMINT) collection within the 4^th ID, with apparently extensive contacts among other HUMINT analysts within the 4^th ID area of operations, repeated here in its entirety:

There's been a lot of discussion back home about the course of the war, the righteousness of our involvement, the clarity of our execution, and what to do about the predicament in which we currently find ourselves. I just wanted to send you my firsthand account of what's happening here.

First, a little bit about me: I'm stationed slightly northwest of Baghdad in a mixed Sunni/Shia area. I'm a sergeant in the U.S. Army on a human intelligence collection team. I interact with Iraqis on a daily basis and I help put together the intel picture for our area of operations. I have contacts with friends, who are also in my job, in every area of operations in the Fourth Infantry Division footprint, and through our crosstalk I'd say I have a pretty damn good idea of what's going on in and around Baghdad on a micro and intermediary level.

I wrote heavily in favor of this war before I enlisted myself, and I still maintain that going into Iraq was not only the necessary thing to do, but the right thing to do as well.

There have been distinct failures of policy in Iraq. The vast majority of them fall under the category "failure to adapt." Basically U.S. policies have been several steps behind the changing conditions ever since we came into the country. I believe this is (in part) due to our plainly obvious desire to extricate ourselves from Iraq. I know President Bush is preaching "stay the course," but we came over here with a goal of handing over our battlespace to the Iraqis by the end of our tour here.

This breakneck pace with which we're trying to push the responsibility for governing and securing Iraq is irresponsible and suicidal. It's like throwing a brick on a house of cards and hoping it holds up. The Iraqi Security Forces (ISF)--a joint term referring to Iraqi army and Iraqi police--are so rife with corruption, insurgent sympathies and Shia militia members that they have zero effectiveness. Two Iraqi police brigades in Baghdad have been disbanded recently, and the general sentiment in our field is "Why stop there?" I can't tell you how many roadside bombs have been detonated against American forces within sight of ISF checkpoints. Faith in the Iraqi army is only slightly more justified than faith in the police--but even there, the problems of tribal loyalties, desertion, insufficient training, low morale and a failure to properly indoctrinate their soldiers results in a substandard, ineffective military. A lot of the problems are directly related to Arab culture, which traditionally doesn't see nepotism and graft as serious sins. Changing that is going to require a lot more than "benchmarks."

In Shia areas, the militias hold the real control of the city. They have infiltrated, co-opted or intimidated into submission the local police. They are expanding their territories, restricting freedom of movement for Sunnis, forcing mass migrations, spiking ethnic tensions, not to mention the murderous checkpoints, all while U.S. forces do . . . nothing.

For the first six months I was in country, sectarian violence was classified as an "Iraqi on Iraqi" crime. Division didn't want to hear about it. And, in a sense I can understand why. Because division realized that which the Iraqi people have come to realize: The American forces cannot protect them. We are too few in number and our mission is "stability and support." The problem is that there's nothing to give stability and support to. We hollowed out the Baathist regime, and we hastily set up this provisional government, thrusting political responsibility on a host of unknowns, each with his own political agenda, most funded by Iran, and we're seeing the results.

In Germany after World War II, we controlled our sector with approximately 500,000 troops, directly administering the area for 10 years while we rebuilt the country and rebuilt the social and political infrastructure needed to run it. In Iraq, we've got one-third that number of troops dealing with three times the population on a much faster timetable, and we're attempting to unify three distinct ethnic groups with no national interest and at least three outside influences (Saudi Arabian Wahhabists, Iranian mullahs and Syrian Baathists) each eagerly funding various groups in an attempt to see us fail. And we are.

If we continue on as is in Iraq, we will leave here (sooner or later) with a fractured state, a Rwanda-waiting-to-happen. "Stay the course" and refusing to admit that we're screwing things up is already killing a lot of people needlessly. Following through with such inane nonstrategy is going to be the death knell for hundreds of thousands of Sunnis.

We need to backtrack. We need to publicly admit we're backtracking. This is the opening battle of the ideological struggle of the 21st century. We cannot afford to lose it because of political inconveniences. Reassert direct administration, put 400,000 to 500,000 American troops on the ground, disband most of the current Iraqi police and retrain and reindoctrinate the Iraqi army until it becomes a military that's fighting for a nation, not simply some sect or faction. Reassure the Iraqi people that we're going to provide them security and then follow through. Disarm the nation: Sunnis, Shias, militia groups, everyone. Issue national ID cards to everyone and control the movement of the population.

If these three things are done, you can actually start the Iraqi economy again. Once people have a sense of security, they'll be able to leave their houses to go to work. Tell your American commanders that it's OK to pass up bad news--because part of the problem is that these issues are not reaching above the battalion or brigade level due to the can-do, make-it-happen culture indoctrinated into our U.S. officers. While the attitude is admirable, it also creates barriers to recognizing and dealing with on-the-ground realities.

James, there's a lot more to this than I've written here. The short of it is, the situation is salvageable, but not with "stay the course" and certainly not with cut and run. However, the commitment required to save it is something I doubt the American public is willing to swallow. I just don't see the current administration with the political capital remaining in order to properly motivate and convince the American public (or the West in general) of the necessity of these actions.

At the same time, failure in Iraq would be worse than a dozen Somalias, and would render us as impotent and emasculated as we were in the days after Vietnam. There is a global cultural-ideological struggle being waged, and abdication from Iraq is tantamount to concession.

This SGT sounds a lot like many of the young SGTs who worked the Intel mission for us. Their experiences are real, “ground truth,” and their perspective is important. It’s a slice, and an important one.

I wouldn’t even try to argue the good SGTs point about adapting late, or being a few steps behind our enemies in Iraq. Based on past experience, if we adapt at all while we’re in country and engaged, that’s a step ahead of where we usually are in any series of engagements, when we fight the last war with the tactics of the one before that. The Army is a big, cumbersome bureaucracy. If you were to ask me, I’d say that the kind of changes we need are far more in line with the dramatic changes attempted by Rumsfeld, rather than the old school thinking that drives many of the armchair Generals. Amazing that their answers are always more troops, more money, more certainty, and greater caution. And I think our good SGT is influenced by that kind of thinking.

Others have commented better than I can about the necessity of breaking Iraqi dependence upon US forces. More US troops offer more targets, especially if US forces were to take back on security duties already turned over or in the process of transition to Iraqi Security Forces. In many ways, viewing Iraqi security as inadequate, and requiring the resumption of US responsibilities defeats the purpose and maintains a dependency. The Iraqi Army and Iraqi police continue to learn “on the job,” they improve and strengthen.

As T. E. Lawrence is often quoted:

"Do not try to do too much with your own hands. Better the Arabs do it tolerably than that you do it perfectly. It is their war, and you are to help them, not to win it for them." (Full text of Lawrence’s Seven Pillars can be found online.)

I think there are fundamental differences between the challenge of reconstructing a savagely war torn and battered Germany and the debris of Nazism and the challenge of creating a democracy in the aftermath of the brutal Baathist regime. Germans had a history of democracy that could be reawakened. There were war criminals to prosecute and Nazi institutions to dissolve and rearchitect, but the people themselves were largely exhausted by their defeat and the destruction of the Nazi war machine.

Iraq has no such history, not with democracy nor with widespread societal destruction. Possibly ambivalent to their liberators, the Iraqi people would nevertheless more likely to resent and misinterpret a larger and more widespread US presence in Iraq. That was the logic as we implemented our plans. Some argue in hindsight that a greater presence would have prevented violence or defeated entirely the insurgency, but this is hindsight analysis impossible to verify. There are good reasons to predict that neither the Iraqi nor American publics would tolerate a greatly enhanced US presence at this later date.

As to 4^th ID officers feeling pressured by superiors, or applying pressure to their subordinates, I can’t assess, other than to suggest that officers need to look to their own consciences. I don’t doubt such impulses exist, but I wonder how widespread, Priority Intelligence Requirements (PIR) are PIR, defined by Commanders. In our AO, I saw every confirmation that violence and hostilities or any kind, Iraqi on Coalition or Iraqi on Iraqi, got reported. These predominated in our Significant Acts (SIGACTS) reporting.

I’ve had conversations with many of our Intel SGTs who felt as this soldier does, and they can be troubling. I’ve written in the past about patterns of analysis, and how analysts sometimes lose perspective in broader patterns, trends and implications, given their almost exclusive focus on the pinprick data points of violence. If anything, the Intel picture focused on such data points, and could not offer any real insight or information about what wasn’t happening where it wasn’t happening – the “white space” between data points.

I also remind myself is what I remind myself: as an Intel soldier, I’ve been immersed in thinking Red. It took me a long time to learn even the rudiments of thinking Blue.

For the uninitiated, what I’m explaining is that Intel soldiers are taught extensively about threats: their doctrine, operations, and tactics, as well as warnings and indicators that reveal patterns that can explain enemy situation. That’s referred to as thinking Red, like the enemy. Not Red as in Communist, but the color of enemy symbology when depicted on overlays or maps.

I served as an Analyst for three years in Germany during the Cold War, and reported on hundreds of events and activities involving our former Cold War opponents, and never got a very good handle on US military doctrine or operations. That would have meant learning how to think Blue – the color of US and friendly forces. If I had been a Commissioned Officer, I might have learned more, as I did much later in my career as I filled staff positions and as a 1SG.

More voices and commentary to follow in Part Two.

Michael Fumento has got himself back into Iraq, and posts this report about reportage.

If you aren’t familiar with the man, here’s a blurb and link from his website:

Michael Fumento is a veteran of the 27th Engineer Brigade (Combat) (Airborne) and has been embedded three times in the western Iraqi region of Al Anbar. Read Michael Fumento's additional writing on the military, on Iraq, and on the media, and view his Spring 2006 Iraq photos from both the Fallujah area and Ramadi. View his 2005 Iraq photos.

So he’s an experienced embed, a veteran, and intimately familiar with the situation in Iraq generally, what goes on with our military, and how an embedded journalist can get the difficult job of reporting from Iraq.

Another independent journalist, Michael Yon, as well as leading MILBLOGGERS Greyhawk and Blackfive have recently strongly criticized the US Department of Defense (DoD) officials and military officers, for worrisome signs that key leaders in our war against Global terrorism and its practitioners, just don’t get the Media War or new media operations. All valid concerns, all rightful criticisms.

And yet, the journalists, their editors and publishers, and even the reading and viewing public share some responsibility in the poor state of journalism dealing with and in Iraq. Fumento offers some revealing insights, about the reporters “Hiding Out in Baghdad”:

It’s not fair to say the hotel-dwellers never leave their safe and comfy confines. “Despite the danger, Nancy [Youssef, Knight Ridder bureau chief] and her colleagues do venture out and do find inventive ways to talk with ordinary Iraqis,” then–Knight Ridder D.C. bureau chief Clark Hoyt wrote in a column. He explained that Nancy says, “When I go grocery shopping, I listen to people’s conversations. What are they talking about?” So this is what passes for “war correspondence” of the Baghdad Brigade.

Even journalists sympathetic to the Baghdad press corps admit they essentially just hide out. Here’s how The New York Review of Books put it last April: “The bitter truth is that doing any kind of work outside these American fortified zones has become so dangerous for foreigners as to be virtually suicidal. More and more journalists find themselves hunkered down inside whatever bubbles of refuge they have managed to create in order to insulate themselves from the lawlessness outside.” Unless you accept “insulation” as a synonym for “reporting,” this doesn’t speak well of the hotel denizens.

Other reporters have been less generous. The London Independent’s Robert Fisk has written of “hotel journalism,” while former Washington Post Bureau Chief Rajiv Chandrasekaran has called it “journalism by remote control.” More damningly, Maggie O’Kane of the British newspaper The Guardian said: “We no longer know what is going on, but we are pretending we do.” Ultimately, they can’t even cover Baghdad yet they pretend they can cover Ramadi.

Perhaps somewhat less so than in America, but I seriously question the value of any tidbits of information one picks up at the local farmers mart or bazaar in Baghdad.

Fumento contrasts the hiding out of some, with the risk-taking and arguably more dedicated and serious reporting done by others:

What leads the embeds into the most dangerous parts of Iraq is the glaring gap between the reality of the war and the virtuality emanating from the hotels of the IZ. One of them made this point quite forcefully in a recent column. Jerry Newberry, communications director for the Veterans of Foreign Wars and a Vietnam Army vet, wrote in a September column just before heading off for Afghanistan and then Iraq: “For the most part, the wars being fought by our people in Afghanistan and Iraq — their successes, heroism, and valor — [are] reported by some overpaid, makeup-wearing talking heads, sitting on their fat rear-ends in an air-conditioned hotel. They rely on Iraqi stringers to bring the stuff to them and then call it reporting.”

Newberry’s bravery and dedication are to be saluted, but as a combat vet he has advantages. So did I, as a veteran paratrooper (on my first trip) and a combat veteran (by the end of my second). Michael Yon, famed for his blog and award-winning photos of his nine-month embed with the infantry in Iraq is a former Green Beret. Writer and historian Andrew Lubin, a Fallujah-bound embed I met while getting credentialed on this trip, is a former Marine who goes to the rifle range twice monthly.

But Patrick Dollard, with no military training, left a cushy job as Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh’s agent to bunk down with Marines in Ramadi for seven months to film a documentary series (still being edited) that he hopes will show the real war and the real warriors.

In February, a Humvee he was traveling in hit a massive IED, which shredded the vehicle and killed two of the three Marines aboard. Dollard was injured and hospitalized. But he had a mission, and was quickly back on the job. The next month, another IED blast injured him, less seriously. Then . . . right back to work. Dollard’s experiences alone put the Baghdad press corps to shame. But he insisted to me that exchanging Hollywood for a hellhole wasn’t as hard as you’d imagine. “I had to feel the moral imperative to go, and clearly I did feel it,” he said.

The sad truth is that the mainstream media have no interest in covering the Iraq War for what it is, observes Dollard. He says they are interested in Iraq only so far as it is useful as a weapon against their self-imagined mortal political enemy, George W. Bush. The embeds, however, want the real picture — and we want to tell the truth about it to the world.

These soldiers possess and skillfully deploy the eyes, ears, minds, intellects, passions, and word processors that are the force multipliers in the Media War.

It is perhaps not surprising that mainstream media (MSM) mistrusts, dismisses, or resents these new media operatives encroaching on their turf.

It is unfathomable why DoD would view them the same way.

(Via Memeorandum)

Just one quick comment on the mid-term elections, upcoming in two weeks, and a little thought experiment.

Option 1. Imagine that the Democrats take both houses of Congress. What will the spontaneous and immediate reaction of Jihadists, Al Qaeda, mullahs in Tehran, Palestinians, Assad in Syria, Taliban, and other radical Jihadis?

Option 2. Now imagine that Republicans, contrary to all the political, media, and cultural forces aligned against them, retain both house of Congress. What’s the reaction of our enemies then?

Option 3. If it’s a split decision, houses split, Democrat and Republican, look for a qualified response that awaits whether the Democrats pursue investigations and impeachment probes. Then, see reaction for option #1.

Not that we should make our decisions based on what our enemies think, but it should be a sobering exercise. If you care about our Nation, that is.

Victor Davis Hanson at National Review Online assesses the many reassessments coming in from all quarters on the wisdom, rightness or chance for success of our efforts in Iraq.

As his starting point, Hanson dismisses the great majority of negative commentary about Iraq that dwells on issues that are now entirely moot, and irrelevant. Most of the arguments, how many troops, how much to de-Baathify, what to do with the Iraqi Army, have been done and settled, and even the attempt to harp on these constitutes an implicit missing of the point that reflects ignorance, foolishness, or self or other deception.

He rightly characterizes many of these ruminations as not “second thoughts,” but third ones, as the practitioners of this form of politically opportunistic hindsight surely want to minimize any previous support. In reassessing, they dissemble and revision their history. They attempt to stir things up amid the current complexities of Iraq, and thereby dilute any possibility of their own responsibility for things as we see them now:

As we head for the November elections, most politicians have renounced their paternity of the now-orphaned American effort in Iraq. And pundits of summer 2003 have not just had second thoughts about Iraq in the autumn of our discontent in 2006 — but very public third thoughts about whether they ever really had their enthusiastic first ones.

Hanson correctly observes that the current strategy will be played out, more or less, faster or slower, as an inevitability that turns Iraqi security more and more over to the Iraqis. If the Democrats gain sufficient political control in midterm elections to influence policy in Iraq, they will more than likely be compelled and motivated to allow US military planners and leadership carry on, and continue to adapt as events and outcomes dictate. Any alternative – that will pull out precipitously (that ol’ cut and run) – would almost certainly suggest a far higher political price for their change in direction, than they have shown inclination to pay:

For all the Democrats loud criticism, if they do regain Congress, they would probably rely on the present expertise of a Khalizad, Abizaid, or Petraeus, and not the often quoted wisdom of three years past of a Gen. Shinseki or Zinni. I doubt they will bring back Gen. Wesley Clark to fix the “mess.” They will either have to cut off funds, ensure a pull out before the end of the year, and then watch real blood sport as reformers are butchered; or they will have to trust that our present military and civilian leadership has learned the hard lessons of three years in Iraq, and can find a way to stabilize the nascent democracy.

Hanson, from the solid rock of history, military affairs, and rational logic, sees much good where others see woe and chaos:

The odd thing is that, for all the gloom and furor, and real blunders, nevertheless, by the historical standards of most wars, we have done well enough to win in Iraq, and still have a good shot of doing the impossible in seeing this government survive. More importantly still, worldwide we are beating the Islamic fundamentalists and their autocratic supporters. Iranian-style theocracy has not spread. For all the talk of losing Afghanistan, the Taliban are still dispersed or in hiding — so is al Qaeda. Europe is galvanizing against Islamism in a way unimaginable just three years ago. The world is finally focusing on Iran. Hezbollah did not win the last war, but lost both prestige and billions of dollars in infrastructure, despite a lackluster effort by Israel. Elections have embarrassed a Hamas that, the global community sees, destroys most of what it touches and now must publicly confess that it will never recognize Israel. Countries like Libya are turning, and Syria is more isolated. If we keep the pressure up in Iraq and Afghanistan and work with our allies, Islamism and its facilitators will be proven bankrupt.

And on the verge of substantial accomplishment, if not outright victory, there are those who would try to win the Media War, by convincing us we’ve already lost.

(Via Real Clear Politics)

I know it’s far too late to influence potential movie-goers, but I wanted to comment on the extraordinary movie I saw last night at the local neighborhood discount movie house.

Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center.

As a movie, it’s probably less impressive than the story it could have told.

I hoped to see some glimpse of what went on inside the Towers. Throughout the movie, I kept thinking about what Rick Rescorla was doing in Tower Two in the minutes leading up to the Towers’ collapse, evacuating tens of thousands, going back for more. (For a great account of Rescorla, a tribute to his many acts of courage and devotion to duty, see Mudville’s Rick Rescorla Was a Soldier.)

As Rescorla evacuated thousands, as NYFD responders streamed in and out of the Towers, officers John McLoughlin and Will Jimeno were among a team of Port Authority Police that deployed to the disaster scene, and were organizing and equipping themselves at the base of the Tower, and preparing to climb into eternity.

Through the most miraculous of circumstances, McLoughlin and Jimeno managed to survive the collapse of both towers and agonizing hours trapped in the massive debris field of the WTC.

McLoughlin asks himself during his entombment, “What good did we do?” They answered the call, and catastrophe fell upon them before they could complete their mission. The two were the only survivors from the small team (6 or so?) assembling on the concourse that morning.

As an account of the survival of the two Port Authority Police officers rescued from the living hell that was Ground Zero, it’s an honorable and emotional tribute, to these men and their families, and to all those who toiled in sorrow and mourning on that twisted, hopeless pile.

Mrs. Manly had a powerful reaction to a scene in which Allison Jimeno comes out into her neighborhood the night of 9/11. When every home, in the city or anywhere in America, had TVs flickering with the news that ran all that day, the endless footage of the planes, the towers, for those brief moments in time. Before those who craft our culture decided we didn’t need to see them anymore.

The sound track brilliantly captures what must have seemed to her an anguished cacophony of overlapping and jumbling ruminations and pronouncements on this day that changed everything, forever.

She stumbles along the street, not knowing where to turn, having nowhere to turn, wanting to block it all out. Alone, struggling to stand, losing hope.

Mrs. Manly remarked, that’s how I felt a lot of times while you were in Iraq. I thought too, how often it felt that Mrs. Manly and Little Manly kept me alive.

God may have been my Rock and my salvation, but the Saints he sent my way in the person of wife and son and daughters,  planned for me before the World began, were ever much and ever more, warm confirmation that first He loved me, that I might love and honor Him.

Stone’s WTC is a noble, honorable, honest depiction of human triumph in the midst of the most horrible expression on human brutality.

The film made me very uncomfortable. I was often on the edge of my seat, in tears, or gasping, or remembering how often I sat this same way on 9/11, transfixed by news reporting, my hand over my mouth, as if keeping something safely within.

The thunderous crashes around the base of the Towers as the fires raged above. Otherworldly, unexplained. An escalation of dread and terror, little time for mourning, while hope collapsed with thousands of tons of steel and glass and humanity.

The families are shown gathering in a dreary Belleview cafeteria. Panic and fear awash in bad coffee, noisy worry, and anxious prayer. Packed as tightly in their postponed grief as those miracles awaiting rescue among the carnage.

For many, many thousands, they still dwell in these rooms of sorrow. Bereft of a loved one, lacking even scant evidence of final moments. Far too many left behind.

This is not the last of such reflections on the day, on the war against us. We will revisit and mourn anew this day of grief. It is well that we remember, and dedicate ourselves to whatever we must do, to do our best to prevent any such attack upon innocents, as this.

I remarked in passing, that those who shape our culture, our arts and our media, decided soon after 9/11 that America must not be allowed to dwell on the images of carnage and destruction that was 9/11.

They claim higher moral purposes in cleansing our civic and cultural life of these images. Some, feared angry retribution, vengeance and violence. Some sought to respect the grief-stricken. Clearly, some sought to prevent a militarization they feared and political ascendancy they opposed. Many see vindication in dispiriting reportage, public opposition, and political polarization.

I think we need to revisit 9/11 often, for as long as the Nation exists. Not to anger or inflame, but to remind us of how high are the stakes, how brutal are our enemies, how sudden can be catastrophe, and how immediate can be the call upon us, to action, and to eternity.

Greyhawk at Mudville Gazette is all over what needs to be the number one story we bang away at, now and through the next two election seasons.

Here’s the Cliff Notes summary.

Of absolutely no surprise to any MILBLOGGER, Al Qaeda maintains a Western Media Public Relations strategy that they actively implement, monitor results, adapt, reapply, and continue to develop. Results have been surprising, and effective. A recently translated, captured AQ document describes their strategy in detail and specifically identifies actual media outlets and personalities who are to be fed propaganda to influence their reporting and public commentary.

Here’s who and what AQ wants to target for their propaganda effort:

- US discussion forums
- US chat rooms
- Well known newspapers and magazines
- American TV channels with web sites
- Famous US authors with email addresses such as Friedman, Chomsky, Fukuyama, Huntington, and others
- Famous US web sites like MEMRI, or those of the Zionist lobby (AIPAC), or research institutes like Rand

Subsequently, Tom Friedman acknowledges receiving AQ press releases, and CNN airs AQ propaganda videos, the sources for both known terrorist entities, with both Friedman and CNN knowingly aware that they have been precisely targeted as receptive and cooperative agents in the dissemination of AQ propaganda.

Here’s the conclusion GH comes to:

And here's the real connection between the two stories: both Friedman at the Times and the folks at CNN acknowledge their complete awareness that they are fully participating in an enemy propaganda ploy. Freidman says he has a copy, and the CNN video includes clips of what it implies are the original Arabic web postings of the "media jihad" call.

That particular story - al Qaeda's "Working Paper for a Media Invasion of America" - first broke right here in downtown Mudville, so it's entirely possible we brought it to their attention in the first place - though it's also possible CNN had it earlier, and didn't see fit to report it. Whatever the case - it's stunning to see them acknowledge it and go right on ahead with what they are doing.

For those who want to read for themselves, here’s GH’s online bibliography:

Previous:

al Qaeda's "Working Paper for a Media Invasion of America"

Al Qaeda "A-list" Journalist Responds

Other links found above:

CNN - Plays Into the Hands of the Enemy (Knowingly) - Blackfive

Tet's Real Lesson - James Taranto, Opinion Journal's Best of the Web Today

Elsewhere:

Glenn Reynolds

CNN Airs Islamic Death Porn - Charles Johnson, LGF

CNN airs video of jihadi sniper shooting American soldier - Allah, Hot Air, who also screen captured that CNN page before it disappeared. (But the video actually contains sniper attacks on 10 American soldiers.)

Now that Greyhawk has so tightly grabbed hold, he needs to keep hold of it, and not let go. We need to come alongside and grab hold, too, and not let go.

Once the participants in this propaganda effort can openly acknowledge how they're manipulated, and there's no (serious) consequence, then any possibility of shaming or shocking the American people to awareness is gone.

“Awake to righteousness,” one of the Old Testament prophets told the children of Israel.

We can let those who have fought this long hard fight, who will continue to fight this long hard fight, to stand in the breech alone. Already, friends faint, supporters grow weary. The banners sag, and the wind is harsh and punishes, as in groups and in isolation, the many become the few.

It was not a mistake to arise to this fight, it will not be any kind of mistake to keep the fight going. No human effort takes place without error or fault, no worthwhile goal turns worthless because of failures in pursuit.

Our enemies know their enemies, and they know us well. We must make their manner known. We must acknowledge our weaknesses and unintended complicities, not just in those among us who desire that we fail, but in ourselves: the many ways our spirit lags, or our commitment shrinks.

Phillip Carter, who normally blogs with intelligence as good as it is voluminous at Intel Dump, scored an Op Ed in the Sunday New York Times. It’s a terrific must read, from a soldier just back from Baquba with the 101^st Airborne Division.

Here’s how Carter starts his analysis:

THE military’s new counterinsurgency manual offers a great deal of wisdom for those who will wage the small wars of the future. Its prescriptions and paradoxes — like the maxim that the more force used, the less effective it is — make sense. However, having spent the last year advising a provincial police headquarters in Iraq, I know it’s far easier to write about such wars than to fight them.

The war I knew was infinitely more complex, contradictory and elusive than the one described in the network news broadcasts or envisioned in the new field manual. When I finally left Baquba, the violent capital of Iraq’s Diyala Province, I found myself questioning many aspects of our mission and our accomplishments, both in a personal search for meaning and a quest to gather lessons that might help those soldiers who will follow me.

Carter seeks to weigh those complexities and contradictions, and if this Op Ed is any indication, possesses a clarity of vision that qualifies him for the task he undertakes. He’s a voice to listen to, read the whole thing and watch his blog.

Here’s his prescription for what’s next:

We should strive in 2006 to build on our successes and to find a smarter way to shift the counterinsurgency effort to the Iraqis in order to secure an imperfect victory. For, as Lawrence wrote eight decades ago about helping the Arabs fight the Turks: “Better the Arabs do it tolerably than that you do it perfectly. It is their war, and you are to help them, not to win it for them.”

Wise words.

(Via Greyhawk at Milblogs)

Jonah Goldberg makes a big concession, but cautions that acting to somehow “reverse” the mistake might be an even bigger misstep.

His big concession? The war in Iraq was a mistake.

Truth is truth. And the Iraq war was a mistake by the most obvious criteria: If we had known then what we know now, we would never have gone to war with Iraq in 2003. I do think that Congress (including Democrats Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Jay Rockefeller and John Murtha) was right to vote for the war given what was known — or what was believed to have been known — in 2003. And the claims from Democrats who voted for the war that they were lied to strikes me as nothing more than cowardly buck-passing.
The failure to find weapons of mass destruction is a side issue. The WMD fiasco was a global intelligence failure, but calling Saddam Hussein's bluff after 9/11 was the right thing to do. Washington's more important intelligence failure lay in underestimating what would be required to rebuild and restore post-Hussein Iraq. The White House did not anticipate a low-intensity civil war in Iraq, never planned for it and would not have deemed it in the U.S. interest to pay this high a price in prestige, treasure and, of course, lives.

Mark at Decision ’08 objects to Goldberg’s premise:

Goldberg says if we knew then what we know now…but you never know then what you know now. That’s an absurd argument. Hindsight is not a policy.

For the White House to have completely anticipated all of the risks, costs, benefits, and other turns of events, the President and his military and international advisors would need to possess a precision of hindsight from a future vantage point that is, of course, impossible. It’s a kind of magical thinking.

I know as I make that statement that anti-war readers will howl that everyone warned the Bush Administration that the war was a mistake, that you couldn’t impose liberty by force, that the Iraqi people couldn’t develop the foundations for democracy, that the US would be bogged down in a quagmire of horrific casualties without any hope for victory.

True enough. Political opponents also said we’d suffer 100,000 combat deaths in the initial invasion. They also warned that Saddam would use his WMDs on US troops with catastrophic effects. They also warned that Iraqi citizens would rise up against us in great waves, and greet elections with violence and civil war.

Three years in, three successful elections, many Iraqi provinces stable and at peace, less than 3,000 soldiers dead, the Iraqi Army and other Security forces gradually taking over security throughout Iraq, still some hot spots, still violence, but within historic norms for other (admittedly dangerous) regions all over the world.

Overall, I’d say this Administration’s projections, forecasts, estimates and war planning was arguably more correct than the nightmare projections of their political opponents, most of whom voted for the war, for funding, and continue to support administration requested anti-terrorism legislation.

One of Mark’s commenters makes a humorous allusion to science fiction:

I grew up watching the same science fiction that Goldberg did…incidents where the death of a mosquito at the hands of a time traveler leads to the death of the human race. Change one tile in a mosaic, changes the whole mosaic. If there are any other historical changes that Goldberg might produce that would change the outcome of world history for the better, I’d love to hear them.

All that by way of commentary on Goldberg’s premise, that the war was a mistake, viewed in some idealized state of where future outcomes dwell alongside the as-yet unfolded fabric of history. A magical place where planners and decision-makers could see all the intended and unintended consequences of action, and compare those to the dangers of inaction, in the face of risks not fully known.

Right or wrong on going in, what do we do today? Goldberg argues that we debate the rightness or wrongness of past decisions, at the expense of critical assessments of what to do now:

According to the goofy parameters of the current debate, I'm now supposed to call for withdrawing from Iraq. If it was a mistake to go in, we should get out, some argue. But this is unpersuasive. A doctor will warn that if you see a man stabbed in the chest, you shouldn't rush to pull the knife out. We are in Iraq for good reasons and for reasons that were well-intentioned but wrong. But we are there.
Those who say that it's not the central front in the war on terror are in a worse state of denial than they think Bush is in. Of course it's the central front in the war on terror. That it has become so is a valid criticism of Bush, but it's also strong reason for seeing our Iraqi intervention through. If we pull out precipitously, jihadism will open a franchise in Iraq and gain steam around the world, and the U.S. will be weakened.
Bush's critics claim that democracy promotion was an afterthought, a convenient rebranding of a war gone sour. I think that's unfair, but even if true, it wouldn't mean liberty isn't at stake. It wouldn't mean that promoting a liberal society in the heart of the Arab and Muslim world wouldn't be in our interest and consistent with our ideals. In war, you sometimes end up having to defend ground you wouldn't have chosen with perfect knowledge beforehand. That's us in Iraq.

In this, I would agree. Critics offered no good alternative to dealing with Saddam, or the rest of the Axis of Evil, for that matter. Now, already some years down a road of a muscular response to the very real and serious threats we faced, and continue to face, these same critics are just as empty handed.

They point to polls. They gather up International rebukes and insults. They speak about all that’s wrong with what we’ve done, and spend all their energies talking about some prior alternative in the past that’s behind us, and offer no remedy for the current “catastrophe” they lament. All sackcloth and ashes, no armor, nor plan of battle. We’re wrong, we’re doomed, repent and accept our punishment.

They live in a fantasy world. However much they try to beckon us to join them, we better stop and think about all those potential consequences of pulling out of the present fight, and ignoring the present dangers.

Unfortunately, our vision is no more “hindsight in the future” capable than it was when we faced the world on September 12^th, 2001. However much our critics care to dream.

SpouseBuzz gets a good plug from GX: The Guard Experience!

The folks at GX describe their mission:

To celebrate and support the Soldiers and families of the National Guard. To provide today's Army National Guard Member with information for becoming a better Soldier and better citizen. To encourage and assist Guard Soldiers in maximizing the benefits of their military career as well as their personal and family goals.

Stephanie Weichert of Military Advantage, Inc., at Military.com contributed the following press release, reprinted by the folks at GX:

10/17/06—Timed with the launch of SpouseBuzz.com, an innovative new blog aimed at military spouses, the inaugural SpouseBuzz Live will be a one-day expo in Killeen, TX—a high-energy, informative event that deals with the issues essential to the military spouse community. It is free to all military spouses.
SpouseBuzz Live will feature discussion panels with world-class experts for military spouses.
Panel 1: The Military Spouse Experience
The joys and challenges facing milspouses. This panel will feature a diverse group of spouses including active-duty, National Guard and a male spouse.
Panel 2: Deployment From A-Z
A diverse discussion on topics such as preparation for deployment, separation, career challenges, child care, media coverage, the role of Family Support Groups and more.
Panel 3: Overcoming Life Challenges
This panel will focus on overcoming life's challenges. How do you deal with the often difficult reintegration period? What happens if your spouse is wounded?
Special Guest Speaker Andi Hurley from SpouseBuzz.com
Andi is the wife of an active-duty Soldier who just completed a tour of duty in Afghanistan. She is also the author of Andi's World, a blog that deals primarily with topics of interest to the military community. Andi organized the 2006 Inaugural MilBlog Conference, which took place in Washington, DC. Andi is an ambassador for Sew Much Comfort, an all-volunteer organization that sews special, adaptive clothing for amputees, fixator patients and burn victims.
Where is SpouseBuzz Live?
Fort Hood, TX
The Plaza Hotel
1721 E Central Texas Expressway
Killeen, TX
When is SpouseBuzz Live?
Saturday, Oct. 28, 2006
11:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.
How do I get my free tickets?
Visit www.Military.com/tickets

Pretty cool.

Blackfive weighs in on recent developments of critical interest of MILBLOGS, updated policies on MILBLOGS, and the creation of a National Guard unit to monitor MILBLOGS for potential OPSEC violations.

Blackfive harbored concerns about potential DoD censorship of MILBLOGS, which in part motivated him to initiate what became The Blog of War:

One reason that I wanted "The Blog of War" published was to preserve several excellent military blogger entries from blogs that were either shut down by the military or the author decided to shut down in order to avoid trouble with the military (The Questing Cat, Armor Geddon, Training For Eternity, This Is Your War, A Day in Iraq, etc.).

Andi of Andi’s World posted on this the other day, and both Andi and Blackfive link as well to Noah Schactman’s Defensetech article. Andi quotes Schactman in her piece, and I have to wholeheartedly agree with their takeways:

In my opinion, milbogs have been far more effective in countering the mainstream media than the Department of Defense, and I'm not sure why the DoD has yet to realize their value and embrace their effectiveness. I'm not qualified to make a judgment on Rumsfeld's "penchant for secrecy," but I do agree with Noah's bottom line.

So you would think that the Defense Department would be doing everything it could to encourage positive coverage of the war –- to bring stories of brave American troops, risking their lives for Mideast democracy, to the Internet browsers everywhere. But Rumsfeld's penchant for secrecy -- and the military's fear that even the smallest, most innocuous detail about American operations could give insurgents the upper hand –- has scuttled this crucial media mission.

As I mentioned here, I'm hopeful that the DoD is coming around to the idea that milblogs are useful, and have a place in this information war. I hope I'm right. If I am, I hope it's not too little, too late.

My opinion on this has shifted.

I didn't think this was going to cause problems. I definitely saw postings in the early days that gave away too much BDA, or provided dispositional or other operational details that an alert adversary could exploit.

Even before the recent announcements, the prior guidance from GEN Schoonmaker placed the responsibility squarely on local commanders. If you had a good commander, or your site was clearly free of OPSEC, disrespectful, or otherwise “counter” to US or Army, then it wasn’t a problem. But a nervous commander, or turf-jealous PAO was always a potential threat.

I’m sure we haven’t seen the last of the back and forth, discussions, possible mis-steps, fall-out from bad decisions, fall-out from negative press, fall-out from posting that makes leadership uncomfortable, and how aggressively leading bloggers lead the fight (in and out of service). It also remains to be seen how many will just go underground.

I have to say I am glad I blogged from theater when I did, that I stayed anonymous within my unit (except for my Company Commander and Battalion CSM), and that I maintained good discipline to stay WAY away from OPSEC, details, identification, disposition, tactics, etc.

But. Andi's latest update, Matt's comments, and the story about a unit tasked to ID OPSEC violations have got me rethinking my opinion.

Reminds me of the old MOS, I forget the nomenclature, but they were commonly called BF'ers, or buddy ******s.

I suppose I am too much the optimist not to have acknowledged the probability that DoD (under Rumsfeld) might go too far and weigh the Golden Goose for holiday dinner.

Bad, bad news, if this goes any further than alerting milblogs of slips, unintended exposure, ill-advised details. And alerting to commands if they have been serious vulnerabilities.

Although, as a National Guardsman, I would love to spend my drills scanning MILBLOGS…

We have been here before. May we never act again as we did then.

Over at The Corner, Michael Rubin retells a story told by David Frum in his history of the 1970s:

In his history of the 1970s, my colleague David Frum relates the story of Sirik Matak, whom the US embassy in Phnom Penh offered to evacuate as the Khmer Rouge closed in on the city. Matak refused, writing this letter to the US ambassador. It should be a must read for the “abandon Iraq” crowd:

Dear Excellency and Friend,

I thank you very sincerely for your letter and for your offer to transport me towards freedom. I cannot, alas, leave in such a cowardly fashion. As for you, and in particular for your great country, I never believed for a moment that you would have this sentiment of abandoning a people which has chosen liberty. You have refused us your protection, and we can do nothing about it. You leave, and my wish is that you and your country will find happiness under this sky. But, mark it well, that if I shall die here on this spot and in my country that I love, it is no matter, because we all are born and must die. I have only committed the mistake of believing you.

The Khmer Rouge shot Matak in the stomach. He took three days to die.

If we abandon the friends of liberty in Iraq and elsewhere, what we surrender will greatly outlast whatever duration of mayhem and violence our retreat would provoke. We would slink backwards towards the paltry and tin-cheap legacy of prior days.

There will be no dishonor for our onetime friends, who after all, “only committed the mistake of believing [the US].”

The same could not be said for we who leave, nor would we deserve to “find happiness under this sky.”

So goes the Nation.

I say, bunk and more bunk.

Partisan columnist E. J. Dionne, in his dreams, wants to “blue-wash” the Nation in the upcoming mid-Term elections. The basis for his wistful dreaminess?

New York:

What is happening to the Republican Party in New York state is the national GOP's nightmare. The once-thriving political organization of Nelson Rockefeller, Al D'Amato and George Pataki is a shambles.

And the way the Republican coalition has broken up should have national Republicans scurrying for a new game plan

Again, I say, dream on. New York as harbinger for the Nation is far less a Republican nightmare, than it is a Democrat fantasy.

There is no doubt in my mind that New York’s Republican Party is a shambles, bereft of effective leadership, and devoid of self-less Champions who would carry the banner, rally the troops, and stand firm against the creep of Trojan horse socialism.

“Why?” is surely a useful question, I wish some state Republicans were asking the question.

Here’s my take on an answer, and it says a lot more about leading Republicans in the state, than about the many scavenger Democrats scampering to overwhelm the field the GOP has left them to occupy.

George Pataki, number one.

Our Governor may be many things, and possess many fine qualities, but he’s lifted not even the most minor of digits to do anything to build his party for the past 6 years. Sure, he’s no Conservative, he presides over the most bloated of bureaucracies, and he managed to keep powerful unions moderately under fealty, at least to him and his personal objectives. Mario-right, He’s been more in league with the state’s leading Democrats, however, no friend of Upstate, and the Invisible Man on a range of issues of greatest concern to Republican voters. It’s as if 9/11 was the last thing he needed to do, outside of cultivating friends elsewhere, who can help him achieve his long term career goals.

Build a Party? New York’s blue, he needs friends in Iowa, New Hampshire, the West, and big-time down South. No sense wasting the time.

Joseph Bruno and whatever remains of Upstate GOP leadership, number two.

Much like George, it sometimes seems as if the Senate Majority leader sits sidesaddle with State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. That’s when he’s not out building monuments to himself.

Why did NY Republicans surrender the Governorship to the preordained Eliot Spitzer? For that matter, why was Hillary Clinton given a completely free pass back in 2000, and for sure, no opposition in 2006? Why such lousy candidates for office at all levels?

Dionne may eulogize the GOP of Al D’Amato, and well he might, for D’Amato gained the throne for George Pataki at the expense of any other accomplishment the GOP made have made in NY. No surprise, Al is my pick for number three.

The National GOP left New York to their own devices, and like a parent that knows the prodigal son is going to go raise havoc and party around no matter what Dad says, left them to their mess.

Sure, New York is Blue. That’s because most of the Red drained out of the state some time ago. Note that NY is rated 47 out of 50 in terms of business tax climate, that probably tells you most of what you need to know about how crimson-less the state is. (New Jersey, Ohio, and California round out the bottom of the list.)

To say that current GOP woes are at all reflective of GOP fortunes nationwide might give partisans like Dionne great encouragement, but to anyone else, it’s like Global Warming.

Each season’s weather will surely fluctuate, year to year. When it’s warmer than usual, everybody wants to say it’s Global Warming. When it turns cold again, everybody laughs it off. Just because it’s warm, doesn’t mean we all caused it to be. Just because it’s cold, doesn’t mean somehow we didn’t.

The Republican meltdown in New York has been going on for years, and surely in evidence during two Presidential and one midterm election that the GOPs gained big victories.

Whether or not the Democrats take one or both chamber of Congress in these midterm election, events won’t bear any causal relationship to the long, sad decline of the GOP in New York.

(An update to my earlier The Blog of War - Live)

I interviewed live this morning on the local Fox Affiliate, Fox 23, for their Daybreak Program, with a five minute interview running around 7:40.
The video of the interview is already up at their website. I don’t know if there’s a problem with the link or that the video is blocked where I am at present.

Daybreak Hosts Diane Lee and Mark Baker did a great job, were very animated, showed genuine interest, and otherwise gave me lots of room to talk about my experiences, and of course, plug the book. Diane even read a portion of my piece from the book, which I thought was very nice.

If anyone actually gets the video to run, you’ll have to let me know how it looks and sounds. It felt like it went fairly well, the Mrs. and Little Manly were very impressed – Little Manly missed his bus watching the segment and Mrs. had to run him off to school – but we know they’re big fans!

Andy McCarthy at National Review Online makes a strong case for why the long delayed investigation into the actions of former Clinton Administration National Security Advisor Sandy Berger in handling classified information.

McCarthy highlights the grand hypocrisy of so many critics of the current Administration by presenting the following situation:

Imagine for a moment a public official of the highest order. He was a confidant of the vice president and the president. Entrusted with the most sensitive national defense information, he enjoyed full access to the gamut of our country’s deepest secrets. In short, he was as central as any member of the executive branch to the decisions on which hinged the security of nearly 300 million Americans.

The times were tumultuous and critics abounded. Some of them accused the administration of rank incompetence, of gratuitously putting loyal public servants lives at risk. The administration circled the wagons, and our high public official became its point-man for rebutting the charges. He used his extraordinary public trust to gain access to relevant classified information.
In his ardor to protect his principals, he went overboard. He was, to put it mildly, recklessly irresponsible with intelligence. When they learned of his actions, others in government decided there was no alternative: However reluctantly, an investigation had to be opened. Investigators confronted the high public official. He was, of course, under no obligation to speak. The Fifth Amendment gave him that protection. But he calculated that the political risk of refusing to appear cooperative was too great. So he submitted to questioning … and lied, wantonly.
Quickly, evidence mounted. The high official had obstructed an official investigation — one that the press and Democrats had clamored for; one that cost the public millions. The potential jeopardy mounted, too. Under federal law, making false statements to investigators is a felony — each individual lie exposing the declarant to as much as five years in jail. Obstruction of justice is at least equally grave. And more serious still is the purloining and misusing of intelligence — each instance exposing an offender to up to ten years’ incarceration. Our high public official was easily staring at a possibility of spending the remainder of his professional prime in a federal penitentiary.

Man, that sounds familiar. From recent press accounts, we all know of whom McCarthy speaks, right? Only for some of us, absolutely not for others.

For rather than advisor Lewis Libby, McCarthy’s forensic examination applies to Sandy Berger.

Do we remember? How can we forget? Here’s McCarthy’s account of the outrageous behavior of Sandy Berger:

Berger was permitted access to the national archives to prepare for his commission testimony (and to help prepare President Clinton for his). He used that public trust as an opportunity to filch, on at least two occasions, highly classified information — stuffing some of it into his clothing to avoid detection. This bizarre behavior caused authorities to investigate and discover the theft. In the ensuing investigation, Berger brazenly lied. He told the government that his undeniable removal of the intelligence was an honest mistake … only to admit later (as the Washington Times reported) that he had quite intentionally stuffed the documents into his pants, jacket and a leather portfolio.
That’s not the end of the story — not by a long-shot. Berger did not take just any documents. As recounted by National Review’s Byron York, among others, he took various drafts of a so-called “after-action report” prepared by top Clinton counterterrorism officials. The purpose of the report was to assess the Clinton administration’s 1999 performance in connection with terrorist threats that riddled the run-up to the millennium observance. Annotated on some of those copies is believed to be reactive commentary by some high-ranking Clinton officials. The report and the manner in which it was finalized were patently germane to the commission’s investigation.

I routinely handled classified information as part of my duties as an Intelligence Analyst for the US Army, Reserves, and Army National Guard, and I can assure you of one thing.

If I treated classified information as Sandy Berger did, I would have lost my access and my clearance, been formally reprimanded, and probably have done jail time, in addition to being relieved from any position of responsibility. Even the possibility of error or leak of information regularly place Intelligence professionals under clouds of doubt, suspicion, and administrative discipline.

These standards of classified document handling are well known, appreciated, and respected by Intelligence professionals. The same cannot be said of some Clinton Administration officials, and certainly those CIA, State Department, DoD, other government officials, and of course the Editorial Board of the New York Times.

That all goes without saying.

It is astounding, though, when you note the almost total silence from Administration critics and press sycophants, who so obviously ignore gross malfeasance from a partisan Clinton Administration official, intentionally obstructing critical investigations, and clearly acting to protect the reputations and legacy of those Clinton era officials most responsible for potential national security threats, in response to post 9/11 investigations.

(Via TigerHawk and Instapundit)

Based on this one single excerpt:

Here is his rejoinder to an Episcopal priest who told his congregation after the London bombings “There are no Muslim terrorists. There are terrorists.”
“It’s not the perfect fatuousness of the assertion so much as the meta-message it conveys: we’re the defeatist wimps; bomb us and we’ll apologize to you.” Later, he warms to the subject: “Most mainline Protestant churches are, to one degree or another, post-Christian. If they no longer seem disposed to converting the unbelieving to Christ, they can at least convert them to the boggiest of soft-left political clichés, on the grounds that if Jesus were alive today he’d most likely be a gay Anglican bishop in a committed relationship driving around in an environmentally friendly car with an ‘Arms Are for Hugging’ sticker on the way to an interfaith dialogue with a Wiccan and a couple of Wahhabi imams.”

How can you not want to read Mark Steyn’s new book, America Alone?

(Courtesy of Mona Charen’s review at National Review Online.)

I love Peggy Noonan, (spouse alert on) in much the same way I love Abraham Lincoln (/spouse alert off). Noonan’s prose always bears tribute, that her cogent analysis and passionate argument once graced the speech-making of Ronald Reagan.

In her Opinion Journal piece today, Noonan reports four occasions of the suppression of free speech, or the advocacy for such suppression. She notes that in each case, partisans and participants of the political left demonstrated a deep-rooted intolerance towards opposed view points and political expressions:

What is most missing from the left in America is an element of grace--of civic grace, democratic grace, the kind that assumes disagreements are part of the fabric, but we can make the fabric hold together. The Democratic Party hasn't had enough of this kind of thing since Bobby Kennedy died. What also seems missing is the courage to ask a question. Conservatives these days are asking themselves very many questions, but I wonder if the left could tolerate asking itself even a few. Such as: Why are we producing so many adherents who defy the old liberal virtues of free and open inquiry, free and open speech? Why are we producing so many bullies? And dim dullard ones, at that.

Astonishingly, yet predictably, this mild rebuke from Noonan will certainly generate much heat and criticism from the very denizens of the left to whom Noonan appeals.

I can hear it now: Of course we have to scream, denounce, and shout down our political opponents. Otherwise, they will completely silence “we brave few” who stand against the lurch towards fascism, with each accusation against our patriotism and love of America.

Funny, how one ever actually hears a Republican or Conservative actually accuse Democrats of being unpatriotic. Funny, too, how many of these brave voices there are, all over the media and entertainment industries, fair to drowning each other out with loud, discordant voices of opposition.

The Sounds of Silencing, indeed. But for only certain, conservative voices.

Jonah Goldberg at The Corner poses the question to fellow blogger John Podhoretz:

In a presidential contest between Giuliani and Hillary who do you think would carry New York State?

Podhoretz responds:

Hillary wins New York. But Rudy makes it a race. A costly race. And maybe he wins California.

As an upstate New Yorker, I have to disagree with JPOD, at least on Hillary winning NY. I think by ’08, the luster will have faded from a Sen. Clinton, substantially among the many erstwhile RINOs, certainly upstate NYers, and Rudy I think outruns her in his NYC home turf.

New York politics will always be upstate versus downstate. State-wide or nationwide candidates succeed either because they don’t play against or within that dynamic, or find a way to win both camps. In other words, in typical Dem versus GOP, the state goes blue unless there’s some really G*d-awful Dem candidate. (Yes, worse than Kerry, readers can discern.)

Hillary won over enough upstate Republicans (who were really clueless and wary of the overly youthful and “out-on-the-Island” Lazio), and has aggressively courted the Red-tinted upstaters with her National Security stands and plenty of pork. That wins her a landslide for ’06 Senate seat. Many actually like her upstate, but actually turn against her on suggestions she leave Congress and try for the Presidency. That was a big part of her message in ’04, one she absolutely needed to make, “I’m not running in ’04.”

This dynamic all changes from ’06 to ’08. Rudy pulls majorities in NYC, Hillary loses a good deal of her support upstate. Upstaters, while they would normally resist the appeal of a city pol, love Rudy for NYC cleanup and of course, 9/11.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton put forth her positions on Iraq today in the New York Daily News.

No obvious moon-battery here, and reasonable sounding. She’s made some good points, she’s someone to at least hear out, doesn’t it sound?

Forgive me for a certain skepticism about how genuine are Sen. Clinton’s convictions about the threats to National Security, how she would lead as Commander in Chief, how she would direct Iraq policy differently than the Bush Administration.

More importantly, how would she make judgments between the eternally opposed perspectives of the CIA, the State Department, and the Pentagon? Does she even recognize that these three spheres are in covert (and often overt) battle with each other? Is she already a party to the internecine warfare?

One clue is here prescription, described as “Step 2: Diplomacy:”

The second thing that needs to happen is an international public gathering of the parties in the region. Right now, we have sort of private conversations with all these different groups, with the exception of Iran and Syria. So we talk to the Saudis, the Kuwaitis, the Jordanians, the Turks — but we're not bringing them to any kind of resolution about what they will publicly do and get them on record in a way that we can then bank on.

So, there is no understanding. The Turks are massing troops because they're scared to death about the Kurds and the infiltration. We know what the Iranians are doing. The other Sunni countries are playing their double game. And we're basically sort of watching it.

Our failure to have even backdoor talks with Iran and Syria with respect to Iraq and everything else in the region is, I think, another in a long line of mistakes on the part of the Bush administration.

Here we go again. All we need is an “international public gathering of the parties in the region.” Kind of sounds like a UN solution, doesn’t it? Sen. Clinton maintains that the reason all of our various private and public conversations with all these interested parties (excepting our sworn enemies of course), is one of a failure in “bringing them to any kind of resolution.”

Has the Junior Senator not had a chance to get briefed up on the UN and other natter-ma-bob organizations? Can she really be that naïve?

The problem is with her premise, which fails on multiple counts. Nations conduct international diplomacy as a helpful but largely irrelevant backdrop for whatever practical steps they take behind the scenes. Nations lie, cheat, misrepresent, and try to manipulate foreign and domestic public opinion. Communist Dictatorships and other autocratic and fascists regimes, do it at orders of magnitude more.

The Senator Clinton, in just the next breath suggests that, despite our neglect in opening private conversation with them, “We know what the Iranians are doing.” Senator, might you go ahead and state what that is? I know I know, but I sure would like to believe you do. I don’t, because I know by not saying, you don’t really believe whatever you’d say, and whatever you’d have to say publicly, you wouldn’t agree with at all.

Backdoor talks with Iran and Syria? Unless that backdoor talk runs along the lines of, “this shotgun is loaded and the next time you step out of your yard into mine, you get both barrels,” dear Lord, I’m not interested. This sounds an awful lot like John Kerry’s “I’ve talked to a lot of foreign leaders” type of foolishness.

As to her first or third steps, they’re unserious and distort the realities on the ground in Iraq. Further, they contradict Sen. Clinton’s other arguments. In this, she echoes the common errors of previous Democratic Presidential Candidate Kerry, proving herself just as inconsistent. Not surprising, given her military experience and background closely mirrors his.

She states that the US must show they did not invade Iraq for oil by dictating to a sovereign Iraqi Government how they must apportion oil wealth to satisfy the good Senator. Kind of flies in the face of portraying the lawfully elected government of Iraq as independent and sovereign, wouldn’t it?

She also slanders the many very brave and resolute Iraqi Army officers and soldiers, 350,000 by her own assessment, as avoiding the difficult work of building an Army and protecting their new freedoms:

Because they are basically able to just allow us to take the brunt of the impact.

There are certain groups of the Iraqis that will fight, but the vast majority of the 350,000 are not prepared to stand up and fight for Iraq.

That must be news to the many thousands of Iraqis (but not 650,000) who have died thus far for their country and the preservation of their new democracy. It contradicts, of course, what US military leaders and advisors, with a few opportunistic exceptions, are saying about the new Iraqi Security Forces.

All that said: If these arguments came from any lesser figure politically than the ambitious Junior Senator from New York (and former First Lady to another dominant political figure), I’d say she was doing fine.

But this particular one is not some common, ordinary Joe or Jill Senator. She’s an intelligent, smart, ambitious woman. She has a very specific ambition, one that mandates she establish a kind of permanent standing, as a reluctantly pro-War, middle of the road, Security minded Democrat.

Unbelievably, I find myself recalling Old Man Potter from It’s a Wonderful Life:

Now, if this young man of twenty-eight was a common, ordinary yokel, I'd say he was doing fine. But George Bailey is not a common, ordinary yokel. He's an intelligent, smart, ambitious young man — who hates his job – who hates the Building and Loan almost as much as I do. A young man who's been dying to get out on his own ever since he was born. A young man... the smartest one of the crowd, mind you, a young man who has to sit by and watch his friends go places, because he's trapped.

Sen. Clinton’s public stances on Iraq, Iran, and North Korea reflect the necessity of her political position. It’s the only way she wins what she wants. She has to hate all this military and geopolitical stuff, taking up the forefront of her campaign, when what she really wants to talk about are all those other “It Takes a Village” priorities.

I suppose it’s a crowning irony to suggest that It’s a Wonderful Life, one of Frank Capra’s greatest films, could shed any light to that complicated personality that is Sen. Hillary Clinton. The comparison is awkward, the details incomplete, and we haven’t yet seen the end of the story.

But let me suggest, Sen. Clinton has been cooped up playing a role necessitated by what she’s inherited. She does hate this old Savings and Loan, almost as much as our enemies, for the compromises and sacrifices she’s had to accept to survive, and persevere.

The rest of the crowd, all the little and anonymous loan recipients, sold out to Potter, taking 50 cents on the dollar. But still, she has to hold out against the whisper in her ear, that says, “Sell now! While you can still get something out of it!”

Because to frame herself as tough on defense, and strong on National Security, she needs that image more than she needs the more immediate gain she’d get from joining her political friends.

She’s a kind of George Bailey, I’ suggest, but one I think who listened to the whispering voice of Mr. Potter. Only, she can’t let the other investors know, she gave up her stake to Potter a long time ago.

The Associated Press reports on the latest Public Health propaganda crafted by the partisan duo of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the British Medical Journal, The Lancet:

Deaths are occurring in Iraq now at a rate more than three times that from before the invasion of March 2003," Dr. Gilbert Burnham, lead author of the study, said in a statement.

The study by Burnham, of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and others is to be published Thursday on the Web site of The Lancet, a medical journal.

For those who don’t recall, these are the same folks who, using an equivalent “methodology,” suggested that over 100,000 Iraqi Civilians were killed in the initial Coalition Invasion. These claims at the time of their earlier report were widely discredited, and their methods rightly derided.

Here’s how their survey is described by AP:

For Burnham's study, researchers gathered data from a sample of 1,849 Iraqi households with a total of 12,801 residents from late May to early July. That sample was used to extrapolate the total figure. The estimate deals with deaths up to July.

The survey participants attributed about 31 percent of violent deaths to coalition forces.

You don't have to be an "expert" in social scientific "method" to recognize crap when you see it.

Much like polls in general, anything based on anecdotal evidence is going to be hopelessly biased and potentially orders of magnitude from reality. Even if we take these researchers at their word that they "checked 92%" of death records, how did they ensure they didn't double count? Did they keep a copy and reconcile no dupes? In a tribal community, many "families" would claim the same family member as "one of their own."

I remember clearly when the earlier report came out from these researchers. Then, it was clear that any “insurgent” who managed to die away from the location of combat would almost surely be counted as a “civilian” casualty, as the Al Qaeda in Iraq and Baathist holdouts we were fighting at the time purposely hid their identities and wore no uniforms. Many injured and killed were showing up at Iraqi hospitals and morgues, mis-identified as “civilians.” Call it an early prototype of the same public relations and deception efforts that Hezbollah would later professionalize.

The same objection applies to this new report. Death certificates are no doubt completed in many cases without adequate or sufficient information to know whether those deaths were the result of combat or not, or whether the corpse was that of a combatant.

And more on the sample: how did they statistically ensure that their neighborhoods, streets, blocks, cities were a good sample? Methinks the answers sought dictated the scope for questioning.

Surveys often breed a response whereby the survey subjects steer their answers towards subtle survey or survey taker biases. They get social "credit" and approval from providing information.

One last point on methods. In Social Science in particular, statistical extrapolations are notoriously unreliable. Results need to be checked for validity (call it the sniff test).

As this post suggests, the idea that more than 700 (out of 770) deaths go unreported daily -- in an atmosphere where reporters and their sources are rewarded for high body counts -- is unbelievable on its face.

That these boobs from Johns Hopkins retain zero credulity for the magnitude of disconnect between physical evidence and what anecdotal "data" they've gathered says far more about their own biases, rather than denial on the part of us skeptics.

Forget the politics, that’s almost beside the point, however partisan the timing. As with the earlier report that came out just before US Presidential elections in November 2004, this one has been carefully timed to align with a US election cycle. That’s to be expected, when all good Democrats rally to the support of their party, and contribute in any way their industry, media organization, non-profit, or other partisan construct gives them opportunity.

Republicans no doubt have their share of helpful partisans, too, but even more, they have the realities of continual reminders of emerging and growing threats to US National Security, and thus are less reliant upon manufactured news and scandals.

Unless you believe, as some do, that the evil genius Karl Rove is behind such events as Al Qaeda attacks and North Korean nuclear provocations.

Also posting: Gateway Pundit, James Joyner, Sister Toldjah, The Ugly American

One nurse’s perspective of life at the US Detention Facility at Guantanamo, courtesy of Patterico:

Part One: Introduction. Stashiu tells us about a terrorist who threatened to have Zarqawi (who was then still alive) cut off the heads of Stashiu’s family while he watched — and then cut off Stashiu’s head.

Part Two: Stashiu arrives at GTMO, and tells us what the terrorists are like.

Part Three: Hunger strikes, suicides and suicide attempts, and mental illness. Stashiu opines that the suicides were a political act.

Part Four: Treatment of the detainees, and the detainees’ treatment of guards. Also, desecration of the Koran — but by whom?

Part Five: Stashiu reacts to Big Media pieces about GTMO.

(Hat tip http://instapundit.com/archives/033036.php)

Andi announces at SpouseBuzz Live!

SpouseBUZZ will become SpouseBUZZ LIVE on October 28 in Killeen, Texas, home of Ft. Hood. SpouseBUZZ LIVE is going to be a great event for milspouses, unlike anything you've ever attended. You can expect a lot of laughs, and probably a few tears too.

Speaking of attending, you'll need a ticket. Download your FREE ticket here, and make sure you're there early enough to get a gift basket. Doors open at 11:00 and panels are as follows:

12:00 The MilSpouse Experience
Discuss the joys and challenges facing the military spouse.

1:00 Deployment A - Z
Discussion on the wide range of issues surrounding deployment.

2:00 Overcoming Life Challenges
Learn how to overcome life events.

You do not have to be assigned to Ft. Hood to attend SpouseBUZZ LIVE, this event is open to all milspouses. The SpouseBUZZ authors are looking forward to meeting you later this month.

If you live anywhere near Kileen, Texas, or have the resources to make the trip to the home of Fort Hood, as Andi says, Download your FREE ticket here!

I’ll be there – Mrs. Dadmanly is on the third panel. Those who’ve read some of Mrs. Dadmanly’s posts – or heard her speak about the Guard MILSPOUSE experience – know her passion and heart for soldiers, their MILSPOUSES and families.

I hope to be live-blogging the event as well.

Drudge reports that the incendiary Instant Messaging (IM) files that provided accelerant to the Congressman Mark Foley scandal were a Page Prank Gone Awry.”

So was this just a malicious prank played against a Congressman, presumably targeted because of his reputation as a closeted gay, and for his habit of paying undue attention to young male pages?

Not that this will stop the Dems.

The storyline will change. Republican leadership had “no way of knowing” the IMs were fake, and should have investigated vigorously. Or, the emails were enough. Or rumors. Or cloakroom page-gossiping. Whatever.

(Via Mark Levin)

National Public Radio (NPR) Marketplace featured a report today, with a very scant review of an Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report, a gratuitous reference to Brad Delong (super, the folks at NPR read blogs, at least if they’re “reality-based”), and a curiously one-sided attack on Pharmaceutical money that gets spent in Washington.

NPR reported neither the name of the report, nor provided an online link, but it’s this one, found via DeLong and Greg Mankiw.

I suppose it’s predictable that a mass consumption outlet like NPR’s Marketplace would probably want to skirt or completely ignore the complex economics issues that fill the CBO’s report, but turning this piece into an attack ad against Pharmaceuticals seems too much, even for NPR.

Marketplace Economics Correspondent Chris Farrell explains the CBO report in one paragraph:

Their bottom line is, there's a reason why the industry charges high prices. Profitability is exaggerated. Profitability is not the measure of whether or not this industry is charging too much for drugs, too little, whether as a society we're spending too much on drugs or too little.

Perhaps understandable that an anti-marketeer wouldn’t want to dwell on that. Indeed, Farrell wastes no time in the interview shifting focus from profits to political malfeasance, throwing in all the anti-free market theology we’ve long grown accustomed to on the left:

The amounts of money that big pharma spends lobbying to get the rules in its favor — whether it's an international trade agreement, whether it's to prevent cheaper drugs from Canada being re-imported into the country — that's where we should get upset. Limit the competition that are negotiated in Washington in return for campaign contributions and other forms of contribution. That is wrong, that we should be upset about.

Farrell makes another half-hearted attempt to characterize all this political influence as actually counter competitive, “there's some fascinating things going on with the industry and I think to a large extent, we should be applauding what's going on.” Of course, we can’t evaluate how fascinating those things are, as Farrell neglects to mention them or explain why we should applaud. That would get in the way of his attack:

You can still say they're taking an arm and a leg, maybe it's just not an arm and two legs. But it's still incredibly profitable.

Damning with faint maim, I suppose. That arm and leg the Drug Companies charge?

They send your arm and leg off to Washington.

Let’s play a little thought experiment, courtesy of Farrell’s own Economics guru, DeLong, who frames his concerns thusly:

Greg [Mankiw] would say (and I would agree) that high average pharmaceutical company profits are not the thing we should be looking at to determine whether drug prices are too high or too low, or whether we as a society are investing too much or too little in new drugs, or whether we are providing too much or too little in the way of intellectual property protection.

What should we look at? That's a harder question.

But there is one rule of thumb that is, I think, reliable: when (as under the current administration) the laws Congress passes are in large part drafted by the lobbyists of PhRMA, then there is a very strong presumption that the members of PhRMA:

1. Enjoy too much intellectual property protection, and

2. Able to set their prices of drugs too high.

But I have no clue as to whether we are collectively investing too much or too little.

Is there a national newsreporter who covers a Washington beat who doesn’t already know, that lobbyists write the overwhelming majority of legislation in Washington, across all industries and special interest groups? Why pick on the Pharmaceuticals, in particular, especially in the context of a piece that comments on a CBO report?

Why, it’s a matter of who’s ox is being gored, of course.

Sure, Pharmaceuticals have donated to politicians, and while I’m sure many Dems are beholden, the GOP has had the advantage. And there’s money to be had, for sure.

But think about the nemesis of Big Drug Companies: Trial Lawyers, Litigators, and other Class Action Extortionists. Pharmaceuticals will tell you the biggest threat to profitability is liability cases where any isolated occurrences of adverse events within those taking drugs can be grossly exploited by Class Action litigants, seeking obscene wrongly injury or death claims for clients, for whom the traceability for ultimate causation is dubious, non-existent, or even fraudulent.

I speak as a victim of the unintended consequence of the overly litigious approach to pharmaceuticals, a patient who saw great benefit from Vioxx, and was deprived its benefits because of what are largely spurious legal claims. Call me a statistical outlier if you want, but I think I paid the price for somebody else’s greed, and it wasn’t the owner of Pharmaceutical Company stock. It was a Lawyer.

Farrell is all vexed about Drug Industry money in Washington? I’m more dismayed about the Lawyers and law firm lobbyists who keep blocking tort reform. But most of their money goes to the Democrats.

John Podhoretz at The Corner writes what I think should be the final postscript to the Foley Follies. He echoes a theme I sounded yesterday, in reaction to David Corn’s outrageous suggestion that Gay Republicans somehow deserve to be outed. Corn used a trademark notoriously associated with Senator Joe McCarthy, hence Podhoretz’s fantastic appellation for Corn’s contribution:

McCornthyism

I wish it had occurred to me yesterday!

From somewhere in CENTCOM, a nice compilation of links for some great service organizations and efforts to give something back to soldiers and soldier families of those deployed in Afghanistan or Iraq.

From: ... (CENTCOM) [mailto:...@centcom.mil]

Sent: Monday, October 02, 2006 6:36 PM

Subject: MISC: Free Stuff for Troops

Free Stuff for Troops

If you know someone in Iraq or Afghanistan or their family members, please

forward this info.

http://www.operationhomelink.org - Free computers for spouses or parents of

deployed soldier in ranks E1 - E5.

https://www.operationuplink.org - Free phone cards.

http://anysoldier.com/ForSoldiersOnly.cfm - To sign up for sponsoring

soldier care packages for theater.

http://www.operationshoebox.com - free shoebox care package.

http://www.treatthetroops.org -free cookies.

http://bluestarmoms.org/airfare.html - lowest airfare available.

http://bluestarmoms.org/care.html - free care packages.

http://www.heromiles.org - free air travel for Emergency Leave, and for the

family members of injured soldiers to travel to Medical facility.

http://www.bluestarmothers.org/airlinespecials.php - Airline discounts for R

& R.

http://www.booksforsoldiers.com/forum/index.php - free books, DVD's, CD's.

http://www.militarymoms.net/sot.html free care packages (your family member

signs up to have sent to you).

http://operationmilitarypride.org/smsignup.html - free care packages.

http://www.soldiersangels.org/heroes/submitasoldier. php - get adopted to

receive stuff.

https://www.treatsfortroops.com/registration/index.php - free gifts and care

packages.

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Nov2004/n112320042004112312freeshipping/ -

packing materials for shipping to troops

Just a tip of the iceberg.

David Corn has a list in his hand. He’s waving it about, trying to score yet more points against Republicans. But like the Bogeyman from yesteryear he emulates, he’s not sharing the names on The List.

But he’ll tell you what kind of individual the List identifies:

It's a roster of top-level Republican congressional aides who are gay.

He’ll even tell you who they work for:

These include Representative Katherine Harris and Henry Hyde and Senators Bill Frist, George Allen, Mitch McConnell and Rick Santorum.

Now, the not-so-veiled threat:

Let's be clear about one thing: the Mark Foley scandal is not about homosexuality. Some family value conservatives are suggesting it is. But anytime a gay Republican is outed by events, a dicey issue is raised: what about those GOPers who are gay and who serve a party that is anti-gay? Are they hypocrites, opportunists, or just confused individuals? Is it possible to support a party because you adhere to most of its tenets--even if that party refuses to recognize you as a full citizen? The men on The List might want to think hard about these questions--as they probably already have--for if I have a copy of The List, there's a good chance it will be appearing soon on a website near everyone.

Okay, David, in fairness, how about asking yourself one other question.

If the Democrats know that 95% of the negative reaction that this scandal evokes in the electorate is homophobic -- it's that he's gay, not that the targets of his advances were 16 (yet consenting adults in DC) -- and they gain at the expense of homophobic and anti-gay sentiment, is that morally defensible?

I mean, more so than the "hypocrisy" you suggest about scoial conservatives having gays on the payroll? It is the law to not discriminate, isn't it? It would somehow be more moral to break the law and discriminate?

And what about your morals? If Republican Gays don’t share your Political Agenda, it’s A OK with you to out them, you applaud it. Serves them right. You don’t share that view when someone agrees with you, though do you?

Or would it be equally acceptable if a GOP operative does the same thing for closeted Gays who serve Democrats, right?

Just asking.

David Corn, in my mind, confirms that the Foley Follies are part of a concentrated Democratic initiative. Withheld information. Open Secrets. Foley. Setup of Republican Leadership. Then The List. Ring the GOP is Gay Friendly Bell. Wait for Social Conservatives to peel, stay home, or turn away.

By all means: who knew what, and when did they know it. Bring it on.

A Democratic Staffer and former page has known about some potentially inappropriate behavior by Mark Foley since joining the Page Program in 1995, didn’t report or act on it or urge others to do so, now reaches out to The Post and the LA Times to fan the flames, according to the Washington Post:

Mark Beck-Heyman, now a graduate student in clinical psychology at George Washington University, and more than a dozen other former House pages said in interviews and via e-mail that Rep. Mark Foley was known to be extraordinarily friendly in a way that made some of them uncomfortable.

Beck-Heyman, who was a Republican page and is now a Democrat, said the attention was "weird," and he provided a handwritten letter that Foley sent him after the page left Washington to return home to California. The note suggested that they get together during the Republican National Convention in San Diego in 1996.

Beck-Heyman “later worked in the Clinton White House and on Sen. John F. Kerry's presidential campaign.”

Democrats conduct a virtual lynch mob to destroy the careers of Republicans and interfere with upcoming Congressional elections on the basis of the negligence and malfeasance of Republican leadership “not acting on” suspicions and allegations.

Democrats in a position just as capable of reporting abuse and initiating investigations, likewise did nothing to report, investigate, or otherwise act of what they knew.

There is no clear evidence of illegal behavior, however obviously inappropriate.

Democrats, probably Democratic National Committee leadership, knew they had a potential “October Surprise” at least as early as late last year, and if one the primary sources for this story can be believed, for over 10 years.

What did they know, and when did they know it? Are they only interested in investigations, taking action, causing a publicity storm, when it can hurt their political opposition, during election season?

And this scandal is supposed to tell us, not about the perversity of a single Representative, but everything we need to know about hypocritical Republicans. I would say it tells us everything we need to know about a cynical, scheming, amoral, and grasping Democratic Party, not able to sway America to their taunts and carping, with no ideas, no plans, no alternatives to the urgent issues we face, first and foremost National Security and the terrorist threat.

Victor Davis Hanson weighs in on where we go from here, in a must read today, posted at Pajamas Media.

Only one excerpt, fire for effect:

At some point all these retired generals need to simply quiet down and think. In World War II, Nimitz or Eisenhower never blamed the Secretary of War or FDR for the mistakes on Iwo Jima or the Kasserine Pass. Instead, they called in their top brass, drew up a plan, followed it, and then presented a successful fait accompli to their civilian overseers. In other words, our four-stars need to summon their colonels and majors in the field, draw up a military strategy that ensures our political aims of seeing a stable consensual Iraq, and then win. Blaming Bush, or faulting Rumsfeld is a waste of time; figuring out as military officers how to achieve victory over a canny enemy is all that matters.

This is the best answer possible to stuck on stupid critics like Captain Roly Poly Bius and his obliging band of retiring Generals, so intent on hanging Secretary Rumseld in effigy (or in person).

(Via Instapundit)

The New York Times sanctimoniously admonishes all Republicans today in their Editorial on Congressman Mark Foley.

Here’s their lead paragraph.

History suggests that once a political party achieves sweeping power, it will only be a matter of time before the power becomes the entire point. Policy, ideology, ethics all gradually fall away, replaced by a political machine that exists to win elections and dispense the goodies that come as a result. The only surprise in Washington now is that the Congressional Republicans managed to reach that point of decayed purpose so thoroughly, so fast.

How anyone can continue to read statements like this from the supposed leading US print daily, and renounce claims that the media is biased towards Democrats, is impossible to explain.

Republicans are damned, according to the Times, and on any given matter, sacrifice morality for political gain:

When there is a choice between the right thing to do and the easiest route to perpetuation of power, top Republicans always pick wrong.

If this were Britain, “top Republicans” could sue for slander.

Only the Editors of the NY Times can make that kind of statement about Republicans, without a trace of the irony of how well such a statement could apply to the Democrats who are against the war but always vote for it, against the “destruction of the Constitution” but keep voting for each supposed mortal blow.

Here’s another slander from the Times:

The obvious first step — notifying the bipartisan committee that oversees the page program — was never taken, presumably because that would have meant bringing a Democrat into the discussions.

Another absolutely absurd claim – that Republicans “covered up” the elsewhere described “open secret” of Congressman Foley’s predilection for young men and kept that knowledge from Democrats – can almost be assumed as false based on the way this scandal was held just long enough (at least 10 months) to then be used as an October Surprise.

Please. Many pages well knew Foley’s reputation, and kept silent. Allegations were made to leadership, but with little evidence, but no Democrats likewise elected not to pursue formal investigation, charges, or other action.

And this makes only Republicans guilty of sins of omission. Only in the moral universe of the Democrats, also inhabited by the Editors of the NY Times.

Andi, posting at http://www.mudvillegazette.com/milblogs/2006/10/03/#006635, sends out an SOS for a very important Soldiers’ Angels effort:

We have been supporting the Evacuation hospital at Balad, Iraq for several months. Now we've made contact with the Main Hospital there. This is the largest military hospital in all of Iraq, and they need our help.

Be sure to read Balad: First Step of a long Journey Home

Here are some requests I've received just in the past week:

I work in the front line ER smack dab in the middle of the Sunni triangle and we barely have time to breathe. Not only do we take care of our fellow soldiers but we take care of anyone that comes into our ER via Blackhawk, ambulance, Humvee or being carried on the shoulder of their battle buddy. –Senior Airman Darenda S.

I work in the hospital here and see many, many Soldiers and Marines wounded. We see as many as 13 new patients a day! I want to help do some thing for them, because when they get to us, the field medics have cut their uniforms off to get to the wounds. Where I am stationed, there is little to buy at the PX for them, so maybe you could help me out.

Thank you for our support, there are a lot of people who don't agree with our mission or with this war on terror and it's so nice to receive thanks and praise for what we do. It also makes me proud to be an American and proud to be supporting this mission. –Airman First Class Naomi H.

We have a Physical Therapy clinic, Optometry, Urology here. We are the only facility in Iraq that deals with Brain and Neuro injuries. We have the best brain surgeons in the Military. – Senior Airman Shannon G.

Just standard size pillows and pillow cases are fine, color doesn't matter the troops seem to like the super hero characters...LMAO! We get them and they either leave with the troops when they are flown out or get ruined and have to be thrown in bio hazard. So we go through sheets, pillows and cases a lot. Bath Towels any colors, we use those so the soldiers can take showers here. – Senior Airman Shannon G.

Here's what they need most right now:
Bath Towels - New, any color, unwashed
Fitted and Regular Sheets – New, unwashed, twin sized, any color - (even super hero)!
Pillows – New - Standard sized with pillow cases – New, unwashed, any color

If you can help with any of these items, please PM me or email me at rogerfg22 at yahoo.com

Roger
Tactical Medical Support Director
Soldier's Angels

At the risk of giving ammunition to a certain troll who frequents MILBLOGS, I have to say I’m beginning to budge on my previous view on troop levels in Iraq.

I’m not entirely convinced that more troops earlier would have substantially improved outcomes or diminished violence, but I find it hard to argue with the logic of an “on-the-ground” military observer, one with no axe to grind, no book to sell, and no objection to the war’s genesis.

First Lieutenant (1LT) Pete Hegseth, as credited by the Opinion Journal, “served as an infantry platoon leader and civil-military operations officer in Iraq with the 101st Airborne Division.”

Critics who use any passing call from disgruntled Generals or other booksellers or partisan opportunists invariably argue disingenuously. On record against the war, they echo calls for more troops, or to impose a draft. They do so to gain political advantage in the hopes of making victory less certain, and hype dimming prospects to to reinvigorate the fight but to hasten the surrender.

Not so 1LT Hegseth:

I volunteered to serve in Iraq because I believe in our mission there. I share the president's conviction about the Iraq war--we can and must win, for the Iraqi people, for the future of our country and for peace-loving people everywhere. But I'm frustrated. America is fighting with a hand tied behind its back. Soldiers have all the equipment we need--armored humvees, body armor for every body part, superior technology, etc.--but we simply do not have enough troops in Iraq, and we need them now.

1LT Hegseth saw first hand the Iraqi “man-on-the-street” reaction to continued violence. Contrary to what war critics often misreport, most Iraqis will tolerate the presence of American troops, and even welcome them warmly if they perceive US presence as reducing or preventing violence. This forms the basis for 1LT Hegseth’s warning:

I also understand calling for more troops is contrary to conventional thinking inside government and the military. Supporters of the current approach argue sending more troops would further inflame anti-American sentiment, incite more violence and retard independent progress. My experience suggests otherwise. American troops are tolerated, even welcomed when they effectively provide security; but their presence is cursed when it does not accompany progress. Violence persists not because American troops are present, but because our presence is futile. Many local leaders asked us, "How come the most powerful country in the world cannot defeat local criminals and thugs?" They suggested our failure was part of a larger conspiracy to keep the Iraqi people suffering.

I fear that 1LT Hegseth correctly diagnoses the present situation. I don’t agree that this has been the case since the Coalition first toppling the Hussein regime and its brutal oppressions, but I think it may be the case now.

I think I saw hints of this in the cagey responses of some of our Iraqi guest workers in Tikrit, and maybe too in the cautious rejoinders to tribal politics and cultural norms of the Iraqi Army officers we trained. A mix of respect, fear, face saving, and strong man politics. Arab perhaps, but tribal and historical.

“One day, you will leave. The strong will take charge. Those who want to lead, must fight. The rest of us, we see who wins, we get what we can.”

I keep coming back to 1LT Hegseth’s piercing assessment:

Violence persists not because American troops are present, but because our presence is futile.

As currently deployed, in the current disposition, with the current capabilities, with the current mission, and with the current rules of engagement (ROE).

No plan survives the first contact with the enemy, and the best Generals monitor the situation reports (SITREPS), watch trends, and look for opportunities. They do not dictate war aims or overall strategy. But they are required to advise civilian leadership of threats, opportunities, and the cost benefits of strategies in light of accepted objectives.

And if there’s a way to win, explain it and advocate for it. Which, in essence, is the call to arms voiced by 1LT Hegseth:

I believe, as the president noted, that "the safety of America depends on the outcome of the battle in the streets of Baghdad." Why then do we have just enough troops in Iraq not to lose?

(Via The Corner)

Fairness. Equal treatment. That’s all I would ask. As such, I must disagree with The Washington Times.

If there were members of Congress who knew about Representative Mark Foley’s predilection towards young males in general, and Congressional Pages specifically, then they should have acted on specific information or even suspicion and reported him.

Likewise, if there are members of Congress who know today of similar behavioral offenses by members of Congress, they should act on specific information or even suspicion and report them.

My guess, such watchfulness in the halls of Congress would implicate dozens of members and cause havoc in both parties.

Note that nobody is asking for this kind of vigilance.

I am a born again Christian, a registered Republican, and I abhor the behavior in evidence on the part of Congressman Foley. The parents of his victims had every reason to suppose proper motives for any attentiveness towards or interaction with their children. He violated trust in multiple ways, as a Congressman, as a public servant, as a leader in Washington and as an elected official towards his constituents.

Were Congressman Foley’s behavior or violations of his public trust isolated phenomena in Washington, I would no doubt argue for a vigorous investigation and laud any consequential prosecution or censure.

But having witnessed the way things are in Washington, for the entire of my adult life (just short of 30 years), I resist what will surely be a whitewash of partisan color, illiberally brushed solely for political gain in a turbulent election period.

Have we so quickly forgotten previous Congressional Page sexploitation scandals? Similar Congressional and Executive Branch sexploitation of interns?

Why stop with sexual misbehavior? Why not go after the senile, or those who sleep through sessions? Why not go after drug abusers or chronic alcoholics? Talk about your open secrets, anyone that came across certain Democratic Congressmen at social events past say 8 pm at night knew at first sight the explanation for their slurred speech, wobbly gait, and reddened complexions.

Don’t our elected officials have an obligation to all of us as constituents, to blow the whistle on those incapable of fulfilling the high standards of public office?

If the Democrats want to suggest failures of oversight and “sins of omission,” they might as well tender their own resignations en masse. All of them, both parties.

One other point, then I’ll shut up.

The Democrats and their netroot blog-allies frequently decry every faint trace of the evil Karl Rove and his political machinations. Most of this is tinfoil at its finest, surely.

But here we have a political contract hit, classically and finely orchestrated as an archetype for an October surprise. For the ignorant or deliberately obtuse, here’s how it works.

1. Find an open secret, preferably with some salacious aspects or characteristics most disturbing or damaging to the target. For Dems, that would be something involving an act of treason or complicity with an enemy. For Repubs, any sexual (preferably, homosexual) behavior that offends “family values.”
2. Find a single piece of evidence or allegation, without reference or connection to the larger scandal, that can be used in hindsight to say, “the writing was on the wall.” This is the red herring for the later surprise.
3. Expose the red herring. Frame it in a way that encourages its own dismissal or discounting. If possible, pass it privately to Opposition Party officials who can be counted on to ignore, dismiss, or discount.
4. Wait for political opportunity.
5. Recruit media co-conspirators, expose full scandal in full court press.
6. Highlight inaction by Opposition Party, spin as evidence of “irresponsibility at the highest levels.”

A variation on this technique works time and time again with Ex-Official Washington Books, hit pieces on individual officials, and media campaigns of selectively leaked classified information. The point to remember is, no scandal or event or transgression can ever be accepted merely as the failure of a single individual, but rather, a damning of the enemy as a whole.

Karl Rove as he exists in fevered Democrat imaginings has nothing on the folks who cooked up this October surprise.

By all means, let’s agree to clean up Washington. But if it deals exclusively with one side of the aisle, then we’ve left an awful lot of sewage left for future Congresses to endure. And we won’t like that any more than we like what we have today.