“See tape as boost for Prez”:

“In final hours, Bush mailings display images of burning World Trade Center”:

One Nation Under Bush:

Bush-backers-only policy riles voters at RNC rallies:

Uniform Standard:

The Last Straw:

Last Wednesday, Liberal U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer (Dem.California) came to my hometown trolling for votes. Since our town is only about 9 miles from the border, our continuing lack of border security is of great concern. I went down to the local Eagles’ Lodge, got credentials, and managed to ask the senator a couple of questions. Boxer’s recorded responses are transcribed below:

EdWonk: Senator, why doesn’t the Democratic Party support using our military to help seal our borders against the waves of illegal immigrants that continue coming accross?

Boxer: Well, actually, we have a much stronger border patrol than we ever had, and I have in the past said that we should use whatever assets that we have….

EdWonk: Would that include our military?

Boxer: Unfortunately, if you talk to George Bush, he doesn’t have enough military now..ah..in Iraq…and so we’ve got major problems.

EdWonk: So, are you saying that you support using our military?

Boxer: No I didn’t! That’s what you said..I said…I said that we need enough people to make sure that we secure the border and I have always had that position.

Having said that, Boxer abruptly turned away and returned to her talking points about the upcoming Presidential election.

Boxer’s non-answer is just another example of Washington’s continuing neglect of our southern frontier. Some have mentioned The Posse Comitatus Act as a reason why the military can’t be mobilized to defend our border. However, as with any other federal law, that Act may easily be amended to allow for border defense.

While Washington ignores the problem, illegal immigrants continue flooding across our practically undefended border. What is to stop a group of terrorists from infiltrating that wide open frontier? Only after a catastrophe will we (once again) hear the words that are always said afterwards, “Why wasn’t something done?”

Transcript cross-posted from, “The Education Wonks”

The German Picture Magazine “Bild” has covered the US election - and endorsed Bush.

The UK “Guardian” has infamously tried to sway the vote against Bush in a battleground state.

But neither the UK, nor Germany can possibly match the intense excitement that all Australians feel at what’s going to happen on November 2nd, 2004. This contest is one of the most important events this year from Australia’s viewpoint, and many Australians would say it’s more important than our own elections, held in October.

Australians everywhere will be glued to their TV sets and radios, and in this, one of the great gambling countries of the world, literally millions of people will be betting on the outcome. Some only a dollar, others (literally) millions. Virtually every Government and Commercial Office will be running sweepstakes on this crucial issue, who is going to win and by how much. It’s that important to us.

My personal prediction of the winner of the race ? Well, let’s put it this way : the winner will have a face like a horse, and not be from Texas. I’m not going for the favourite, as I think it’s way too close to call.






I’m going for Vinnie Roe, by a nose.

Oh yes, and in the other race that day? Hopefully, like the election we had that the MSM said was “too close to call”, the incumbent by a landslide. But I wouldn’t bet on it.

The following is a small extract from an article over at AEBrain, the Blog.

It helps when reading this to be familiar with the album “War of the Worlds”.

Now imagine a certain Democrat candidate for the US presidency singing it…

Take a look around you at the world we’ve come to know
Does it seem to be much more than a crazy circus show
Maybe from the madness, something beautiful will grow
In a brave new world, with guidance from the UN,
We’ll start… we’ll start all over again!
All over again! All over again! All over again!

The US domination of the Earth is fading fast,
And out of the confusion a chance has come at last,
To build a better future from the ashes of the past,
In a brave new world, with guidance from the UN,
We’ll start all over again!

Look, man is born in freedom, but he soon becomes a slave,
In cages of convention from the cradle to the grave,
The weak fall by the wayside but Progressives will be saved,
In a brave new world, with guidance from the UN,
We’ll start all over again!

I’m not trying to tell you what to be,
Oh no, oh no, not me…
But you’ll see at a glance, that we should learn from France,
They’re gonna have to build this world anew
And it’s going to have to start with the EU … OUI!

I’m not trying to tell you what to be,
Oh no, oh no, not me…
The proles with feeble SATS, they NEED aristocrats,
They’re gonna have to build this world anew
Yes and we will have to be that chosen few…

Just think of all the poverty, the hatred and the lies,
And imagine the destruction of all that you despise,
Slowly from the ashes the phoenix will arise,
In a brave new world, with guidance from the UN
We’ll start all over again!

Take a look around you at the world you’ve loved so well,
And bid that aging empire, AmeriKKKa farewell
It may not sound like heaven but at least it isn’t hell
It’s a brave new world, with guidance from the UN,
We’ll start, we’ll start all over again!
All over again! All over again! All over again!
I’VE GOT A PLAN!

It’s unfair, unjust, grossly exaggerated, satirical, and I fear all too accurate.

Beldar, a notorious solicitor and participant in unpublicized horatory activities, has a tongue-in-cheek post that’s worth a read in these hyper-partisan times:

“What’s more, his daughter Alex is a self-admitted practicing thespian, and has even accepted money for public performances of such acts! Indeed, you can purchase videos of her public exhibitions of thespianism on certain internet websites, which modesty forbids me to link.”

There’s a serious subtext to this, and it sits in an historical reminder of elections and political games that my American friends might benefit from. So set a spell and let me tell you a funny story about George Smathers and the 1950 Florida Democratic Primary for the Senate, a story that Beldar links to at the end of his spoof post. Let’s get a good look at some real political hijinks… and maybe get a bit of perspective on the current election, too:

Continue Reading “Elections, Slander, Hijinks… & Perspective”

For me, there’s one bothersome aspect to the entire ‘debate’ about stem cell research swirling around currently.

It isn’t discomfort that the proponents of the research are making pie in the sky claims of potential cures for people that cling to any possibility of relief from devastating conditions. The claims may be much more science fiction than science probability - but their point about ‘who knows what research may turn up’ seems a valid point of debate.

What bothers me is the way that the issue is framed in the misleading fashion of intimating that no federal funding means a ban on the research altogether.

Which is not the case. There is no ban on a private firm that wishes to invest the money to conduct embryonic stem cell research. The research can take place.

The proponents of federally funded embryonic stem cell research just want the government to pay for it.

Not that the proponents of the research (and this method of funding) want that (the issue that it’s a money trick) to be the forefront and central point of discussion.

Which to me indicates a massive campaign of basic deception on the part of people supposedly seeking truth and knowledge. The may be seeking it, but is it such a great idea to start this entire ‘quest for truth’ on a disingenuous basis? Also, with indications beginning to appear that embryonic stem cells may not be the all curing panacea golden miracle solutions their advocates claim them to be raises this question - to me at least - if this avenue in fact holds as much promise as they claim, why haven’t the major pharmaceutical research outfits plowed tons of money into something that would be a tremendous profit generating vehicle? Where is the free market interest in it? It’s extremely crass, but ultimately the bottom line - how much would someone pay to get up out of a wheelchair? Or how much could their insurance be made to pay? Quite a lot, I would think.

No, the argument isn’t really about conducting the research at all, it’s about having the taxpayers foot the bill for it. And a lot of those taxpayers do, in fact, have fundamental moral objections to this type of research. But federal funding, particularly in the forms such as Prop 71, is a whole lot easier way to get cash in the short term than from a corporation or investors looking for results.

To the researchers, it is merely a question of ease of funding, and job security. Proposition 71 - 300 billion over 10 years. A 10 year revenue stream? You don’t have to explain anything other than ‘we’re working on it!’, and there’s no requirement to offer a guarantee of a useful end product? What a deal! Little wonder the scientists are clamoring in favor of the idea.

But it doesn’t make it any more fundamentally noble or moral than somehow convincing a host of desperate people to vigorously campaign that I should be given huge sums of taxpayer money to go to Vegas and work a craps table.

Heck of a proposition if you can swing it, but it doesn’t make it right, and it doesn’t make you noble, either.

This isn’t a struggle over morality, or an effort to rob the sick of hope. It’s a money trick. Using Quadriplegics, Paraplegics, Diabetes patients, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s patients as the poster images of the argument.

Being against using federal dollars for this goose chase isn’t the heinous part - using those patients to pull on the public slot machine of government is.

The latest and apparently last theory that Kerry and his media allies have settled on is to attack Bush’s execution of the War on Terror, including both the Iraq war and Afghanistan; the theme of the attacks has been that Bush is incompetent, which is taken now as received wisdom beyond challenge by fact. Go read Greg Djerejian’s long essay on this point, and yesterday’s shorter Wall Street Journal op-ed (for a similar analysis, see Dan Darling on the Washington Post’s effort to argue that the Iraq war and anti-Iran hardliners undermined the al Qaeda manhunt). Both contribute to a few of the key points that need to be borne in mind in evaluating the Bush Administration’s performance:

1. War is a difficult and complex endeavor, requiring the making of scores of decisions large and small. Many of those decisions are, by their very nature, made on the basis of severely incomplete information, fraught with uncertainty and likely to have lethal consequences if they go wrong - and often if they go right, as well. The military acronym SNAFU got that way for a reason. Bush, by leading the nation in wartime, is certain to make more mistakes, and with worse consequences, than any peacetime president.

2. The history of wars, in fact, is almost unbroken in the making of catastrophic misjudgments by even the best of wartime leaders. Certainly if you review the records of Lincoln, FDR and Churchill, three of the models of civilian leadership in war, they and their generals and civilian advisers made numerous errors that cost scores of lives, many of which in retrospect seem like obvious blunders. I’d like the critics who formerly supported Bush and have now abandoned him to at least admit that on the same grounds, they would have voted for Dewey in 1944 and McClellan in 1864.

3. More specifically to the issue at hand, in almost all cases, the decisions by Bush and his civilian and military advisers involved avoiding alternatives that had their own potential bad consequences, and the critics are judging these decisions in a vacuum. The decision to disband Saddam’s army and undergo a thorough de-Ba’athification is a classic example, cited incessantly by critics on the Left. But what if Bush had kept that army together, and they had acted in the heavy-handed (to put it mildly) fashion to which the Ba’athists were accustomed, say, by firing on crowds of civilians? Isn’t it an absolute certainty that all the same critics would be singing “meet the new boss, same as the old boss,” accusing Bush’s commitment to democracy as being a sham and a cover for a desire to set up friendly tyrants to keep the oil pumping, that we’d hear constantly about how we’ve alienated the Iraqi people by enabling their oppressors, how we showed misunderstanding of the country by leaving a minority Sunni power structure in place over the Shi’ite majority? Wouldn’t we hear the very same things we hear now about Afghanistan, about using too few US troops and “outsourcing” the job, or the same civil-liberties concerns we hear when we turn over suspects for interrogation to countries without our restraint when it comes to torture? Don’t insult our intelligence and try to deny it.

The same goes for many decisions. More troops? We’d hear that this is a heavy-handed US occupation. I mean, we heard something like that when Giuliani put more cops on the street in New York, let alone a foreign country. Like most conservatives, my preference would have been to go hard into Fallujauh in April. But even if the alternative decision to hold off until there could be significant Iraqi participation in the assault was wrong, it was not an illogical one, but rather a decision made with the patience and foresight to consider the long-range political consequences in Iraq of differing military approaches.

4. Many of the decisions at issue here, from specific ground commanders’ decisions to secure particular sites to Tommy Franks’ call on Tora Bora, were decisions principally made by people lower in the chain of command, many of them in the military. This is not to say that Bush, as the head of that chain of command, is not ultimately responsible to the voters for those decisions; he is. But it is to remind people that they are not second-guessing solely the judgments of a small coterie of the president and civilian advisers, but the entire chain of command. Tom Maguire makes this point explicitly with regard to Tora Bora:

5. Much of the criticism has focused on the idea that Bush needs to admit more errors, and that Kerry would be better at recognizing and admitting mistakes. Djerejian zeroes in on an argument made by David Adesnik and Dan Drezner:

As a professional researcher, I think I simply find it almost impossible to trust someone whose thought process is apparently so different from my own.

In theory, I am sure that Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld all believe in evaluating the relevant data and adjusting their decisions to reflect reality. Thus, when I say that I object to the way that this administration makes decisions, I am saying that I do not believe that it has lived up to the intellectual standard it presumably accepts. [emphasis added]

As an initial matter, admitting mistakes, especially in wartime, is overrated, particularly if that means (1) admitting a decision was wrong before you have all the information to reach a final conclusion about it, or (2) making a public self-analysis that gives useful information to the enemy. How often did Churchill, battling daily to keep up the fighting spirit of the British, go on the radio to say, “sorry folks, I blew it again and got a bunch of people killed”? I tend to think that Bush made a big mistake of this kind when he conceded the point last summer on the inclusion in the State of the Union Address of British charges that Saddam was trying to buy uranium in Africa; as it turned out, the Brits stood by their report, and Saddam really did send an envoy there to do precisely that.

The more important point in wartime is the ability to recognize what’s not working and change tactics or, if appropriate, strategies. Djerejian cites several examples of Bush doing precisely that, most notably with the firing of Jay Garner but also extending to expanding the number of troops on the ground.

In any event, where, I would ask, is the evidence that Kerry is better at admitting mistakes than Bush? This is a guy who brought all sorts of political grief to himself by stubbornly refusing for three decades to admit that he was wrong to repeat false charges, under oath and on national televison, that smeared his comrades in Vietnam as guilty of pervasive war crimes. Has Kerry admitted he was wrong to oppose nearly every aspect of the foreign policy strategy that President Reagan pursused to great effect in the closing and victorious chapter of the Cold War? Has he admitted he was wrong to oppose the use of force to kick Saddam out of Kuwait in 1991? Maybe I missed something, but I don’t even recall him admitting he was wrong for trying to slash the intelligence budget in the mid-1990s following the first World Trade Center bombing. Indeed, one of the most common threads throughout Kerry’s behavior in this campaign has been his unwillingness to take any personal responsibility for mistakes, from blaming his speechwriters for things that come out of Kerry’s own mouth to picayune things like blaming the Secret Service when he falls down on the slopes. As Jonah Goldberg notes, Kerry’s “liberal hawk” backers may argue that the decades of bad judgment in Kerry’s past are rendered inoperative by September 11, but Kerry’s stubborn insistence that he hasn’t changed in response to September 11, and that he had the right answers all along even when he wrote a book in 1997 that barely mentioned Islamic terrorism, gives the lie to the notion that Kerry is a model of self-reflection. Even the man’s own supporters can’t seriously defend the proposition - on which many of them heaped well-deserved scorn during the primary season - that Kerry has been consistent from the start on whether Saddam was a serious threat that justified a military response. Yet there Kerry stands, insisting to all the world what nobody believes, that he hasn’t changed his position. Preferring Kerry to Bush because Bush won’t admit mistakes is like preferring fresh water to salt water because salt water is wet.

In any event, will Kerry somehow change, grow in office, shed a lifetime of bad judgments and blanching at the use of American power, suddenly stop valuing diplomacy as an end and the status quo as the highest virtue? Just because Bush changed in office means nothing. First of all, Bush was a guy who had already proven his willingness to change and admit his problems when he quit drinking, had a religious awakening and basically overhauled his whole approach to life in his forties; Kerry can show no similar example of a willingness to change. And Kerry is now in his sixties, six years older than Bush in 2000, and while Bush may count September 11 as a life-changing event, Kerry had already had his, in Vietnam. Kerry’s foreign policy world view was set decades ago, both by the example of his diplomat father and by Vietnam. The fact that Kerry has been malleable and vascillating over the years, clear a pattern though that may be, is no reason to think that he will suddenly re-examine his approach to accept the need for the United States to lead a continuing effort to overturn the corrupt, rotten and deadly status quo in the Arab and Muslim worlds.

6. The final charge is that Bush’s errors would be forgiveable if he had done more, earlier, to explain the risks and burdens of war to the American people. Of course, this has nothing to do with the execution of the war, but political leadership is important, and in many ways it’s much more the president’s job than is the decision to use X number of troops to seal off a particular location. First off, the charge that Bush argued the war would be easy is refuted by virtually all his speeches, in which he said over and over and over again that we were in for a long haul, and there would be difficult times ahead. Of course, that has long since become obvious from events, and in any event we really were not in a position before the war to know precisely how it would all play out. But I will agree that he never gave a Churchillian “blood, toil, tears and sweat” speech specifically about Iraq, and that many hawks in and out of the administration underestimated in their public arguments the difficulties of a post-conquest insurgency (then again, many doves told us that we’d be bogged down with thousands of casualties taking Baghdad). Of course, the war itself, up to and through the fall of Baghdad, was as much of a “cakewalk” as a real life shooting war against a substantial enemy can ever be; the problem is simply that we didn’t broadcast the coming insurgency (which, by the way, would have had the effect of greatly encouraging the insurgents).

In the end, that’s what this argument is all about - not the difficulties of war, which are well-understood, but simply a political argument about the use of speeches to predict the unpredictable. Moreover, on that ground, again, there’s no reason to think Kerry would be better; after all, Kerry is the guy who won’t even admit to this day that his war vote was a vote for war. Kerry’s the guy who wasn’t able to predict that his campaign would have to prepare for attacks by people who’d been holding a grudge against him for 30 years.

No, Bush hasn’t been a perfect war leader, but show me who was. He’s had tough calls to make, and unlike Kerry he can’t shift with the wind without consequence. Progress has been frustrating at times, because our overall enemy - the forces of terror and tyranny, of radical Islamism and fascist gangsterism - have recognized that an American victory in Iraq would be a defeat for them in the war on terror. You know that, I know that, they know that. But that just makes it all the more urgent to stick with a guy who believes in the mission, and who has proven that he will keep on trying new approaches until the job is finished, rather than looking for the door.

I am honestly amazed that the race appears to be so close. There is a very real possibility that Senator Kerry, who I consider to be one of the worst Democratic contenders for a very long time, might get elected.

So let’s assume that he does.

First, let’s look at what happens in Iraq. Now, a lot of Iraqis will be very dissapointed, but perhaps some good will come of it - if they can see that an orderly transfer of power is possible, and that Americans of goodwill, both Republicans and Democrats, accept the results. It may bode well for the Iraqi elections in January.

On the other hand, it will certainly give Al Qaeda a much-needed boost, both in Iraq and elsewhere, even more than the fiasco in Magadishu did. Still, it would be a sad day for the USA if they let terrorists dictate policy.

And Kerry has A Plan.

A Plan to get everybody together, just as he got the Security Council together before the war, a plan that would lead to Peace.

Except he didn’t. The claim of a meeting with the whole Security Council was, let’s be charitable, a little exaggerated. In fact, he did meet with some (not all) of the permanent members, and some (not all) of the others. And not at the same time, these were individual pow-wows, there was no Grand Meeting. If you look carefully at Kerry’s statements, he never said there was - quite. It’s a bit like his earlier claims to have been in Paris to meet “both sides” to talk Peace back in the 70’s. I’m reminded of the Blues Brothers quote:

“We like both kinds of music, Country and Western”

Because it turns out he met with Both Sides all right - the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong. Literally. They were the two sides he was referring to when he said it.

So Kerry convenes a meeting to extort, sorry, exhort help in Iraq, via the UN. But how is he to pursuade those not already in Iraq? After all, during the campaign, the DNC and even Kerry’s sister has been roving around the world telling everyone how dangerous Iraq is, and how any involvement there would make the nation concerned a bigger target. Every country would ask, simply, what’s in it for them? Well, one of the very few policies Kerry has made clear is that he’s against this “free trade” rubbish. Perhaps threats of a new set of tariff walls, subsidies and taxes on imports might do the job. This would also help shore up his support with the AFL-CIO etc. and re-animate, for a short while at least, the inneficient industries of the rust belt. Taxes on offshore jobs would also be quite popular, especially in Silicon Valley. Bribery and coercion are the tools the US uses, at least, according to Kerry’s own speeches. He can be expected to use both, that’s the way he genuinely believes the US operates. Historically, he’s been at least partially right. Kerry wants to get the USA back to business-as-usual, after all. The Good Old Days of the 1990’s, where Terrorism was just a nuisance (unless you were in a US warship or Embassy). A matter for the courts to handle.

Now would this be sufficient to get military forces in Iraq? I’d say, probably yes, especially from the third world. Donations of a few million to various Swiss Bank accounts would no doubt be very pursasive to many “Maximum Leaders” and “Presidents-for-Life”. US Marines would be replaced by even larger numbers from places like Sierra Leone, Belgium, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe. Some, like the Belgians or Indians, would be professional - though the Professional Dutch watched helplessly the massacre of Srebeniza. But others would be rather less able, and as hopelessly corrupt as the Kleptocracies that spawned them. Or the UN itself, for that matter.

Given such nations’ past record in “peacekeeping”, this does not bode well for the Iraqis. There have been UN successes - such as the liberation of East Timor. But those have all been accomplished by nations already in the Coalition of the Willing. They at least know where Bush stands. But Kerry? It is, as they say in Paris, to laugh.

Kerry also says he will raise a brace of new Divisions, some 40,000 troops. This may well be doable - Bush is adding 30,000 new troops, after all. That’s as many as the US armed forces say they can handle and still retain their professional edge. The question is, who’s going to volunteer? Kerry’s anti-military attitude is so well known that over 70% of the US military is voting against him. Bush may be able to inspire enough people to join up, but will Kerry? In fact, the US Military, should Kerry be elected, is going to face its greatest test. Here’s someone who openly consorted with the enemy in time of war, who appears to have had a general discharge rather than an honourable one as the result, is a self-confessed war criminal (though possibly innocent despite that), and whose team has stated quite blatantly that they don’t care what the soldiers’ morale is, they have to do as they’re told. And he’s the new Commander-in-Chief.

Kerry’s voting record appears to be the most anti-military (though he’d say anti-militaristic) of any Senator - though some Representatives (for example, Barbara Lee) beat him there. Not by much though.

I’d expect the number of people serving in the US military to, not exactly implode, but re-enlistments would dramatically decrease. And new enlistments? What new enlistments?

Kerry would not re-introduce the draft - no way he’d get the legislation through Congress, for one thing, and because the US military is absolutely dead-set against the idea. One area he might look at is the scandalously low pay of people at the lowest end of the spectrum in the military. An across-the-board increase of, say, $10,000 (before tax) for every person in the military might do it. Given a target troop strength of ~1 million, this would cost only $10 Bn a year, (assuming tax witholding and additional bureacracy would balance out). Now of course, this might mean a few corners would be cut. Instead of people joining to defend the nation, they’d be in it to “be all they can be”, not actually fight anyone. And should there be a real risk that they may get hurt, say, by terrorist actions, then they might join, but would they fight? Maybe. If they don’t believe in what they’re fighting for though, I’d say it’s likely they’d be a lot less effective than the current personnel mix.

As for Kerry’s domestic policy - I don’t know. And being Australian, I frankly don’t care too much I’m afraid. It doesn’t affect me, as long as there’s no great economic disaster (because if the US economy sneezes, the World economy catches cold). From what I’ve read of the Republican and Democrat platforms, in the US I‘d almost certainly vote Democrat in the main. Americans reading this article should bear that in mind, I’m only talking what a walking Foreign Policy Disaster Kerry is, not what he’s like on domestic issues.

As for Bush, has he been so conspicuously incompetent that he should be thrown out anyway? Again, on domestic issues, I don’t know. But on Foreign Affairs - including Defence - he’s got the “runs on the board” as we say in Oz. He’s pursued Free Trade agreements, giving a little where he had to (e.g. the disgraceful Steel subsidies) but getting back on course at the earliest possible opportunity. More to the point, his mettle was tested like that of no other President (with the arguable exception of FDR) by 9/11. He didn’t nuke anyone. He caused the liberation of Afghanistan, something even Kerry didn’t vote against (though Kerry voted against going to war over Kuwait). He finally lanced the dangerously infected boil that was Saddam Hussein’s regime, and did so with unbelievably low casualties. I mean, really, how much more successful could he have been? How many major terrorist attacks have taken place on American soil since 9/11?

Jeez, I’m against Bush’s policies on Gay Marriage, I’m against his policies on Drugs, I’m against his policies on Abortion, and Stem Cell Research, and… but let’s get a sense of proportion, shall we?

One criticism that the DNC has made was that Bush had no plan to “Win The Peace”. Well, exactly which Peace are we talking about? The one where there was an Iraqi Civil War? The one where there were millions of civilian casualties streaming over the borders? The one where large parts of Iraq were contaminated with radioactivity and/or persistant chemical weapons, anthrax spores and smallpox?

All of these were possibilities, as far as we knew. Plans were made to deal with them, as best we could. Had we known, been 100% sure, that we’d have the “Catastropic Success” that we did have, less time would have been spent searching for great arsenals of WMDs and ignoring comparitively trivial issues like museums and conventional ammo dumps. But would that have been wise, given the terrible consequences if we had been wrong?

The Dirty Little Secret of the Republicans, and the Bush Administration, is that the planning for the Post-War phase was very, very sketchy. It had to be, as they couldn’t know even remotely what would happen during the conflict. It may have been just a few guiding principles: try to install an interim administration under a known friend (Chalabi seemed a good bet). Prevent a Civil War. Aim for elections in 2006, earlier if possible. Rebuild the infrastructure, and install a Democratic Base in the region, one that would hopefully spread virally. De-fang the WMD stockpiles and arrange for safe disposal.

As events took their course, Chalabi was a bust, and so the plan was altered in detail, though remained on track in the large. How many people would have predicted Iraqi elections taking place less than 2 years after hostilities opened? How many people would have predicted an interim Iraqi government would be in power less than 18 months after the war began? There were two major surprises - the lack of stockpiles of WMDs (only one WMD was ever used against US troops), and the intensity of the post-war Terrorism from outside forces. We got suckered by at least one Iranian disinformation campaign. Our intelligence was worse than we feared, even worst-case (though in the right direction - we thought there were large quantities of WMDs when there were only a few, rather then the reverse). Mistakes were made that shouldn’t have been, like not getting enough body armour and up-armoured vehicles. But despite this, the plan for elections was adhered to, a plan that had been announced very early on in the post-war phase. The troops now have the body armour, because Kerry got out-voted.

Ye Gods And Little Fishes, people, what the hell more do you expect? Things have gone wrong - looting, devastation of infrastructure, but what about the tens of thousands of military casualties we didn’t incur? What about the hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties that just did not happen, that should by all military norms and expectations have occured? What the Bush administration, and the US military, has done is little short of miraculous, and you are bitching about it because it’s not perfect? Well, it’s your country, and your right to do that, and I have no right to criticise you if you do. But I don’t understand it, that’s for sure.

As a concluding remark, I’d like all readers to ask themselves an honest question. It doesn’t matter whether you’re Republican, Democrat, or Independant. My question is - if a Democrat had been in the White House, and had done what Bush has done, would you vote for him?

Unlike many in the GOP, if Kerry gets in, I don’t predict disaster, ruin and catastrophe. Thanks to Bush, the Iraqi forces may just be strong enough to stand unaided (they’ll have to try, that’s for sure). The UN Kleptocracy will get a boost, but although that offends my sense of justice, that may do no great harm in the long term, just represent a missed opportunity. Assuming China doesn’t go after Taiwan, or North Korea stage a nuclear showdown, or Iran decide to match its rhetoric with action and incinerate Israel - none of which I think is likely - then Kerry may be fine in the job. He may even do a better job than Bush. As for attacks on the US mainland, well, 95% of containers don’t get inspected on entry currently, but that’s because they’ve been evaluated before they leave for America. Only the ones with any possibility of a terrorist content get manually searched, in fact, that’s where the resources are concentrated, as they should be. This policy was introduced under Bush, and I don’t see Kerry changing it any time soon. The encouragement that Al Qaeda would receive would increase the risk of losing a few cities in coming decades, but not by much, and the risk is low.

It would make as little difference as if the anti-war Wilkie had defeated Roosevelt in 1940. A few years added to the war’s duration, a few million more dead, a few tens of millions denied democracy for an additional decade, no great effect in the long term. Wilkie became FDR’s greatest ally after Pearl Harbor, just as Bush, Rice, Cheney or Powell would be for President Kerry should disaster occur. We’ll still win - despite Kerry, rather than because of him, but win we will.

Now please go read James Lileks on the subject.

So this is how it ends … defying all probability there’s been no break for either candidate. We’re as evenly divided today as we were four years ago. Fitting isn’t it. The punditocracy is frantically scrambling to put together last minute predictions … but all we can find are a few scenarios.

If Bush wins Florida but loses Ohio … If Kerry wins in Pennsylvania but does not win in … If there’s an upset in Michigan … If there’s an upset in Iowa … and on and on and on.

Full Article

Documentary evidence has been uncovered that ‘connects the dots’, as it were, regarding John Kerry’s Vietnam era publicity grabbing antics against the Vietnam War.

These documents indicate that there was a much closer relationship between the leadership of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, the group Kerry played front man for along with proven fake Al Hubbard, and the Communists actively seeking to defeat the United States.

While the known public record has indicated that Kerry returned from meetings in Paris and became an advocate for the very same demands the Vietnamese Communists were publicly demanding from the US Government as terms for withdrawal from the conflict, these documents indicate that the activities of the VVAW, and other groups, including the American Communist Party, were taking their lead from the Vietnamese.

John Kerry as a Communist agent provocateur during the Cold War? His pattern of behavior during this time doesn’t seem to make this too hard to swallow - his advocacy of nuclear freeze (a movement and idea heavily promoted and supported by the Communists in the West); his seemingly unwavering opposition to the actions of President Reagan; his visit with, then advocacy for the nascent Communist regime in Nicaragua, his lambasting of the removal of Marxist murderers and their Cuban muscle from Grenada; and his 1991 opposition to the removal of the psuedo-Stalinist Ba’athist strongman Saddam from Kuwait.

Sort of makes his mid-90’s “hawkish” period look almost like an opportunistic attempt to jump ship on the losers of the Cold War struggle.

Appears to be only three possibilities here - that John Kerry is either an aging active Communist Agent - that John Kerry is a willful idiot and was a willing puppet of the Communists during the Cold War - or that John Kerry is a shallow political opportunist riding whatever wave he perceives is heading towards the beach at the time, regardless of the consequences other than his own personal advancement.

The end result is pretty much the same - America now has the opportunity to vote a man into the highest executive office in the land that was apparently blatantly acting, for substantial portion of his public career, as a de facto agent for a foreign power.

So is this election the first election of the Age of the War on Terror, or one of the final epilogue struggles of the Cold War? Either way, Kerry needs to lose.

Nov. 4 will mark the 25th anniversary of the start of the Iran Hostage Crisis – a day when Iranian extremists and militants seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and captured several dozen U.S. diplomats, servicemen and civilians and began a 444-day siege that captivated Americans and the world.

Command Post contributor Ed Moltzen interviewed the youngest of the 52 hostages who had been held for that period, Kevin Hermening, who at the time was a 20-year old Marine assigned to guard the Tehran embassy. Since 1981, Hermening has become active civically in Wisconsin, becoming a school board and twice running unsuccessfully for U.S. Congress as a Republican.

CP: Does it seem like 25 years ago?

Hermening: From my perspective, there is so much that has occurred in my life since then. It rarely is given a second thought by me. It doesn’t mean that it’s ignored – especially in the context of current events. Obviously there are a lot of current events that have affected the way that our country has – and in many aspects hasn’t – dealt with the threat of state-sponsored terrorism.

CP: What are your most vivid memories of your time being held against your will by the Iranian students?

Hermening: Probably the uncertainty of knowing how it would all end, or if it would come to an end. There was so much emotion and drama and trauma during that time. Of course, the Soviets had invaded Afghanistan, the Iraq-Iran war began. There was the failed attempt to rescue us, resulting in the deaths of eight men who perished in the Iranian desert.

CP: Being a marine, did it make it more difficult for you?

Hermening: There were many aspects of it - including being young - that were involved. There was an element of adventure and excitement surrounding it. It doesn’t mean we were any less fearful. But when you’re 20 years old and you’ve been through military training you kind of feel invincible. How quickly that false image is shattered. Bravado is important, but only if it doesn’t result in your getting yourself foolishly killed. I tried to escape once – I never really had an opportunity later – that resulted in 43 days in solitary confinement.

CP: Hostage and then-CIA agent William Daugherty wrote a book two years ago in which he describes 444 days of mostly solitary confinement, and suggested he and the other military personnel taken hostage had it worse out of any Americans. Were you mistreated?

Hermening: After the failed escape attempt by a few of us, about a week later they had a mock execution that occurred in which they stormed into our rooms in the middle of the night, strip searched us and had us standing out in the hallway. Some of the most radical elements ran up and down in the hallway – we were spread eagle – and they were shouting out execution commands at the top of their lungs.

Meanwhile, others were in our rooms searching out for anything we may have had, including weapons. Although we know now anything can be a weapon.

CP: How did you plan the escape?

Hermening: Joe Subic, Steven Lauterbach and I – in my case, I never made it out of the room. They had taken us to a different building for showers. They put me into the only room in the ambassador’s residence that was a safe-room….I never made it out of the room. They immediately handcuffed me and put me into another room, in which I was put into solitary. Five feet by ten feet.*

CP: Were you able to form a bond, or friendships, with any of the other U.S. diplomats and civilians that lasts today?

Hermening: Alan Golancinksi was one. Don Cooke and I, we kind of became friends for the short time we were together. I was roommates with Alan right after I got out of solitary. That was a real relief to me to get out of solitary confinement. Some of the other guys in Vietnam who were in POW camps for seven years – my experience pales in comparison. It doesn’t mean it was easy, but I would never try to suggest our (situations) were similar.

CP: You’ve spoken of your admiration for Ronald Reagan and your opportunities to meet him. But some hostages, in returning from Iran, have said they were measurably cooler toward President Carter – whom you also met after you were freed. What’s your assessment of Carter?

Hermening: I would describe it that way, too. But for me, it was in my pre-political days…I would describe it – there was a cool reception given to him. For me, I would describe it as being honored to meet a president. I do think that President Carter is one of our best ex-presidents, though I would describe his presidency as a failed presidency. I fail, personally, to see the merits of putting the interests of 52 individuals ahead of the nation’s national security. I really do believe our situation was one of the first terrorist acts in a series that have victimized Americans worldwide. I would further say that when President Carter agreed to return $9 billion of frozen Iranian assets to the terrorist government under the Ayatollah Khomeini, as Charles Scott said, Iran walked away with no cost in blood or treasure. In essence, the terrorist organizations, those who put a face on terrorism – al Qaeda, Hamas and others – they get their support from governments. By not extracting a penalty, or anything punitive, I think it simply encouraged more acts against Americans.

CP: Looking at Iran today, some of the students who took over the U.S. embassy are now in positions of power, including Tehran Mary – who is an Iranian vice president – and one of the leaders who the New York Times has even described as a reformer…

Hermening: I just read recently that some are in the government, some are in the opposition – today – and some are in prison. That’s, in my opinion, what you get when you look at a group of anarchists which is really what terrorism is. Anarchy.

CP: Many of the same people who took you hostage are now seeking to expand a nuclear program for Iran. Is this something that angers you? What are your thoughts?

Hermening: That should scare the heck out of every American and anybody in the West and, I would submit, their Muslim neighbors. The other thing lost in the broader context is, that Iranians are not Arabs. Except or Israel and Iran, every other country over there is Arab or Arabic. Iranians are Aryans. Despite their common interest in a religious background, Islam, they do not share a cultural connection. Hence the acrimonious relationship between Iraq and Iran and some of their neighbors to the east. I was one of the few people I know, I think, who understood why (Gen. Norman) Schwarzkopf and Colin Powell decided not to take out Saddam in 1991. We weren’t prepared to deal with, as a country, militarily or diplomatically, creating a vacuum in Iraq where Syria and Iran could consumer that country. And with all the difficulty this President Bush has had in winning the peace, at least he is willing to fortify the forces. There are 16,000 forces whose job is to protect the oil fields from sabotage. I personally don’t see that as a bad thing.

CP: Do you believe there are enough pragmatists in Iran to ever see a successful reform movement?

Hermening: I think there are some forces over there that are interested in breaking the stronghold the mullahs have on their country. I don’t know. They’ve had, I believe, about two dozen government buildings burned by government protesters in the last two months.

CP: Anyone under the age of 25 – including what could be millions of voters – weren’t even born yet when you were held captive. If you could have them understand one thing about that time, what would it be?

Hermening: I think it would have to include what I consider to be a reality: that there are individuals and entire governments who are so opposed to Western values and freedom that they are willing to use every means possible to bring about our destruction. Even to the point they are willing to support financially those who are willing to come into our own country to make us fearful and uncomfortable without our own borders.

CP: Do people still stop you, and ask questions about your experience?

Hermening: It’s become less and less, just by virtue of the fact that I am more active in other things. I’ve done a lot of public speaking. I speak on Veterans Days and Memorial Days in schools. I make civic appearances. The sad irony is that people care more about what we had to eat (while being held hostage) and whether I’ve had any nightmares since I got back – which I haven’t – than they do wondering how did this happen to begin with, and how can we protect Americans here and abroad in light of what they’re trying to do today?

CP: Yet at the same time, the same holds true in Iran: Anyone under the age of 25 doesn’t remember what happened back then – they weren’t yet born. How does this work in our favor?

Hermening: I think that there is some hope, because young people do not have a historical attachment to the Ayatollah Khomeini…

Once you open up the Freedom Genie, the Technology Genie – whether it’s satellite dishes, or the Internet, I think it’s next to impossible to put it back. And that’s why I personally hold out a great hope for many of these Middle Eastern nations to become more democratic. Even for China to try to contain what is likely to spread like wildefire – and that’s economic development and recognition of personal liberties and civil liberties – I don’t think you can permanently keep that down.

In Iran, it was a very strong sense that the United States was meddling in the internal affairs of their country. The mullahs were very fortunate. They almost had the perfect storm: the Shah was getting ill, President Carter being a particularly weak president not standing by our ally, and we left (the Shah) and all of his supporters out to dry. This is the big concern that somebody like myself would have in a change of the administration in Washington right now. – would be people like the president of Pakistan, who has really gone out on a limb at the risk of his own political survival (although he has the iron hand of military power), Musharraf is using (the military) to support the war on terror. If we have a total reversal of policy, what’s it going to mean for the folks who have gone out on a limb? Personally, I think it’s going to mean an even more unstable world over time.

I hate to sound like a partisan – even though I am – but I think in the big scheme of thigns I think it is more in our nation’s advantage to stand for something principled in a part of the world that only understands force and, I should say, respects strength.

CP: Is there any one solution for the U.S. to have a normal relationship with Iran?

Hermening: The problem is we are not in the cold war nay more. Countries such as France and Germany, and some of the more longstanding alliances, play less of an important role to our national security, and our way of life for that matter, than they once did. After all, 25 years ago and prior to that, most of our international trade and international exchange students came from largely western countries. Our economic interaction occurred mostly with Western nations. That’s because that’s where most of the wealth of the world was located…

Egypt and Pakistan play much more of a role to us today. They are the new France and Germany as an example - economically, politically, culturally perhaps not yet. I don’t think it’s a bad thing for us to have as an objective to spread freedom around the world.

Many, of late, have spoken of the disintegration and desperation of the Democrat party. Democrats such as Zel Miller look and ask, “Where has my party gone?” The party increasingly reveals itself as an embattled coalition of dogmatic single-issue focused groups practicing gender politics, racial politics, sexual-orientation politics and defining themselves along whatever narrow lines allow themselves to claim a sufficient modicum of victim hood to guarantee their bona fides. How has the party of Jackson, FDR and JFK come to this point, where open partnership with the most crass of propagandists and collaboration with avowed enemies of the state are seen as legitimate paths to power? It may, at first blush, sound a paradox, but the Democrats have found themselves at this point by a simple path. They won.

Let’s turn the situation around, and posit a typical Republican contemporary of Eisenhower or Roosevelt (the Teddy variety) peering into his crystal ball at 2004. It is they, I believe, who would cry, “Where has my party gone?” After almost a half-century of control, the social conscience and ideals of men such as FDR have become so universally and subconciously accepted by successive generations that these once “Democratic” ideas are now common in both parties. That a Republican majority would not debate how to remove the government dependency created by Medicare but, rather, to only debate how much the benefits will be increased is all that needs be said. Some might attribute this sentiment to crass pandering by politicians to their constituency, but these ideals are honestly deep in the heart and soul of many a Republican. So, Democrats, in the dawn of the 21st century, have a real party, because your victory over the Republicans is confirmed. And, if this were a movie, this would be the triumphant celebration at the end. Little dancing Democrat Ewoks singing their obnoxious little song as the patriarchs of the Democrat Force, Jackson, FDR and JFK, look on approvingly.

The problem, though, is that unlike a film life goes on. And so, unfortunately, do the Democrats, rapidly becoming an anachronism that, having won the major battles and war of ideas now find themselves, instead, more like the apocryphal stranded Imperial Japanese soldier, unaware the War is over, left fighting their own isolated insignificant battles. As evidence, look only to those individual groups mentioned earlier and evaluate the “vitally important” work they are doing today. At the turn of the last century, the NAACP had to do all it could just to guarantee that a man of color could exercise his right to vote without ending up dead the next morning. They fought the scourge of violent racism embodied by the KKK. In the ’50s and ’60s they marched in the face of dogs, fire hoses and hostile police to say, “I AM A MAN!” Today they trouble themselves about a silly flag and insensitive language. In the 1900s women even trying to vote were harassed, often beaten and jailed. Some died. In WWII women, as a group, began to gain the respect as people that society, as a whole, had long denied them. Today, feminist groups emphasize latent sexism in a patriarchal society and push to change words like “councilman.” The Democrats have been too successful for their own good.

The conversion of what are called “neo-cons” is not so much a winning of Democrats by the conservative argument as it is a logical political realignment of Democrats to the “new-Democrat” party. People who used to identify themselves as Democrats but now call themselves Republicans echo the same thought over and over again. “I didn’t leave the Party, the Party left me.” As I said, life goes on. Since the life of the Democrat Party relies upon fighting the Republicans, as the Republicans move more left so, too, must the Democrats. But, while there are still true believers, more and more rank and file Democrats find themselves looking at the Party’s “important” issues and end up just shaking their heads.

I’m not a political scientist, but I’ll go out on a limb here and say that this year’s election, like the past two in 2000 and 2002, will end up shocking the Democrat Party. They will see a big win for a President they envision as the embodiment of evil itself (at least that brand of evil that doesn’t actually jail, kill, torture or otherwise ruin its opponents’ lives). They will see a significant minority vote for the Republicans (I’ll go on a limb and call it >20% based upon nothing other than anal extraction). They will see Republican gains in both houses of Congress. And they will pull out their hair and rend their clothes and cry to the heavens “why?” never realizing what it really means. Because in the defeat of today’s Party, the ghosts of the Democrat Jedi masters of the past will celebrate their victory.

The following was written by Alex Epstein of the Ayn Rand Institute and originally appeared here. It is reprinted with permission of the author.

Every Election Day politicians, intellectuals, and activists propagate a seemingly patriotic but utterly un-American idea: the notion that our most important right—and the source of America’s greatness—is the right to vote. According to former President Bill Clinton, the right to vote is “the most fundamental right of citizenship”; it is “the heart and soul of our democracy,” says Senator John McCain.

Such statements are regarded as uncontroversial—but consider their implications. If voting is truly our most fundamental right, then all other rights—including free speech, property, even life—are contingent on and revocable by the whims of the voting public (or their elected officials). America, on this view, is a society based not on individual rights, but on unlimited majority rule—like Ancient Athens, where the populace, exercising “the most fundamental right of citizenship,” elected to kill Socrates for voicing unpopular ideas—or modern-day Zimbabwe, where the democratically elected Robert Mugabe has seized the property of the nation’s white farmers and brought the nation to the verge of starvation—or Germany in 1932, when the people democratically elected the Nazi Party, including future Chancellor Adolph Hitler. Would anyone dare claim that America is thus fundamentally similar to these regimes, and that it is perfectly acceptable to kill controversial philosophers or to exterminate six million Jews, so long as it is done by popular vote?

Contrary to popular rhetoric, America was founded, not as a “democracy,” but as a constitutional republic—a political structure under which the government is bound by a written constitution to the task of protecting individual rights. “Democracy” does not mean a system that holds public elections for government officials; it means a system in which a majority vote rules everything and everyone, and in which the individual thus has no rights. In a democracy, observed
James Madison in The Federalist Papers, “there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention [and] have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property.”

The right to vote derives from the recognition of man as an autonomous, rational being, who is responsible for his own life and who should therefore freely choose the people he authorizes to represent him in the government of his country. That autonomy is contradicted if a majority of voters is allowed to do whatever it wishes to the individual citizen. The right to vote is not a sanction for a gang to deprive other individuals of their freedom. Rather, because a free society requires a certain type of government, it is a means of installing the officials who will safeguard the individual rights of each citizen.

What makes America unique is not that it has elections—even dictatorships hold elections—but that its elections take place in a country limited by the absolute principle of individual freedom. From our Declaration of Independence, which upholds the “unalienable rights” of every individual, among which are “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” to our Constitution, whose Bill of Rights protects freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the freedom of private property, respect for individual liberty is the essence of America—and the root of her greatness.

Unfortunately, with each passing Election Day, too many Americans view elections less as a means to protect freedom, and more as a means to win some government favor or handout at the expense of the liberty and property of other Americans. Our politicians promise, not to protect the basic ights spelled out in the Declaration and the Constitution, but to violate the rights of some people in order to benefit others. Today’s politicians want subsidies for farmers—by forcing non-farmers to pay for them; prescription drugs for the elderly—by forcing the non-elderly to pay for them; housing for the homeless—by forcing the non-homeless to pay for it. The more “democratic” our government becomes, the more we cannibalize our liberty, ultimately to the
detriment of all.

This Election Day, therefore, we should reject those who wish to reduce our republic to mob rule. Instead, we should vote for those, to whatever extent they can be found, who are defenders of the essence of America: individual freedom.

——

Alex Epstein is a writer for the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, CA. The Institute promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.

As the election draws closer more thoughts from concerned citizens show up in my inbox. This was forwarded to me by a friend, written by a woman he met on a mission to Israel, who describes herself thus:

I am a physician in the Baltimore area. This will be the first election in which I will vote for a Republican president since I was first eligible in 1984. I do not agree with the overwhelming majority of Mr. Bush’s domestic policy, but that currently takes second place to the issues discussed in the essay [or, below].

— Judith Weiss

We are nearing the end of the bitter campaign season, and I am writing to offer what will be my final thoughts. If anything, my views on this matter have intensified.

While a historical perspective leads one to take campaign promises in general with a keg of salt, one of the few constant themes reiterated by the Kerry campaign is his belief that he will be more successful than Bush in recruiting other nations to our cause, and his reliance on the international community as a desirable arbiter of American policy. The former belief has been almost uniformly refuted by the very nations he plans to call upon; Kerry will receive no significant assistance from any nation that has thus far failed to contribute to the Iraq war effort.

Reliance on the international community, specifically the EU and the UN, sounds like a wonderful policy but is equally problematic, particularly when elements of both institutions have other priorities, and some consider restriction of the American “hyperpower” to be a prime policy goal. Thus the justice of America‚s claims, like the justification for Israel‚s security fence, will be considered secondarily, if at all.

The US will continue to encounter instances where we may feel it necessary to engage in (hopefully limited) military action to defend ourselves and others, but those in the EU and the UN, who believe that military action is always wrong, and that talking will inevitably result in a just solution, whatever the dispute, and whoever the parties to that dispute, will always endeavor to block action, or to delay it to the point where talk is overtaken by action, and reaction becomes considerably more dangerous. This, unfortunately, is the same mentality of the 1930s that led to the realization that Germany was a threat only after Germany had fully rearmed, and then continued to appease hoping Germany would be satisfied. History has shown that this only delays the inevitable, it does not prevent it, and that death on both sides may be exacerbated as a result.

Despite Kerry’s statement that he will not allow another nation to have a veto over American policy, this is effectively in contradiction to his idea of a “global test.” It is difficult to understand at what point Kerry would be willing to take action. Would he, for example, be willing to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities before they are capable of producing a nuclear weapon, even in the absence of UN support? If not, is he willing to risk an Iran supporting terrorist networks like Al-Qaeda and Hezbollah from behind a nuclear shield? An attack on a nuclear Iran would be infinitely more dangerous.

Any physician will tell you that denial and delay in dealing with a serious disease will not make it go away, but will often make it more difficult to treat. I simply do not have confidence that Kerry is prepared to take action without the consent of the global community, and the global community I am certain will never give it. I am not prepared to take the risk that Kerry might, or might not, defend America‚s vital interests based on whether he feels he has tried hard enough to win international support. I respect my friends‚ opinions, and I listen to them, but I do not take a poll every time I make a major decision in my own life. Some decisions simply need to be made because I know them to be right.

Some have ridiculed Bush’s refusal to admit mistakes, his alleged insistence that he is always right. I don’t know whether Bush believes he is entirely right, or whether he prudently refrains from admitting to error from the knowledge that the Kerry campaign would use any admission against him. (The admission of “miscalculation‚” in regards to the Iraq war suggests the latter.)

Supporters of Kerry, on the other hand, boast that he offers a more nuanced policy and (according to the NY Times), takes an in-depth prosecutorial interest in minutiae.

The President of the United States, however, is not equivalent to a third string CIA analyst. The president is a decision maker. One can be brilliant, highly nuanced, and absorb infinite shades of gray, but in the end one must come to a decision. Too many details can sometimes lead to paralysis. It is possible to see many sides of every question, but in wartime - and we are certainly at war with Islamic terrorism - paralysis can be fatal. We have had intelligent presidents in the not too distant past who simply were unable to take decisive action˜and American foreign policy suffered for it. Similarly we have had presidents who many believe were not too bright - perhaps even slipping into dementia - who had a very clear idea of their goals, and were able to put them into effect, to America’s ultimate benefit.

Kerry’s support for Israel has been boilerplate. He has not taken a leadership position on this issue and has made a few troubling statements in the past. The indications so far are that Kerry’s policy towards Israel will be the customary words of support, with harsh pressure administered. There are several reasons to believe this.

First, Kerry has indicated a desire for the US to get “more involved.” Presumably he does not mean pressuring the Palestinians, since Bush is already trying to do that. “More involved” always means pressuring Israel. We saw the result of being highly involved during the Clinton era. Maximal effort on the part of the Clinton administration, coupled with pressure on Israel and maximal Israeli concessions led absolutely nowhere, because the Palestinians were unwilling to make a deal. The Palestinians have shown absolutely no change in their stance, so it is absurd to think that becoming more involved alone will solve the problem. It is also absurd to think that further Israeli concessions, even under duress, will resolve the problem, since the Palestinians have again shown no indication of retreating from their maximalist positions.

Second, the names the Kerry campaign has put forward for possible envoys are extremely troubling. Jimmy Carter, James Baker, Martin Indyk. The first two are not liked in Israel, and all three are associated with previous attempts to pressure Israel. If these men are the indicators of a Kerry policy towards Israel (or at least, are indicative of the positions of those advising him), we are sure of more pressure being put on Israel at a time when this is not at all the appropriate course of action.

Third, it is natural for a new administration to define itself on certain issues by doing the opposite from its predecessor. Bush did this with the Israel-Palestinian issue at first as well. Failure of the Camp David summit led to a sense of futility that a solution could be found, or at least was to be found with intense US involvement. Kerry presumably will want to distance himself from Bush’s policies, which he has so harshly criticized, and this mean more pressure on Israel.

Fourth, given Kerry‚s reliance on international opinion, it is not unreasonable to assume he will be swayed by European insistence on being more “even-handed” in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, and to give the EU and UN a larger role in negotiations, which Israel clearly does not want. It is also likely that Kerry will be asked to offer some gestures of good will to heal the breach with Europe (which, as I indicated above, is not wholly the fault of the US, nor are disagreements unique to the Bush administration), and one of the most likely, and easiest to offer, is a US promise of “even-handedness and increased EU input on the “peace” process.

In a related matter, the Palestinians have delayed submitting a resolution to the Security Council on Israel’s security fence. Bush has made his position on one-sided resolutions very clear. Kerry‚s position is not at all clear. A change in US policy, a series of abstentions, another means of pressuring Israel, could have catastrophic implications for Israel’s future. Needless to say, what passes for “even-handedness” in the EU and the Arab world might be considered suicidal, if not genocidal, in Israel.

Lastly, Kerry appears to have won the endorsement of Arafat and a number of other non-allied Arab dictators. While this certainly does not mean Kerry has espoused their ideology, it does indicate a belief that he will be friendlier to their cause. Now that some pressure is actually being brought to bear on the Palestinians - for the first time - they are understandably upset. But why would we wish that to change? Bush’s policies have certainly had a part in the nascent self-criticism now underway in the Arab world. This can only be a healthy thing for both them and us. Reverting to a European pattern of enabling bad behavior, excusing themselves and blaming others for same, is not at all desirable.

In the past, pressure on Israel would not have been a voting issue for American Jews. Events of the past four years should have changed this assessment. Inappropriate pressure on Israel is now a matter of life and death. Palestinians have made it clear their aspiration of eliminating Israel has not changed; Israel has made all reasonable concessions: there are no more to offer without endangering its existence.

While there are certainly grounds for disagreement on the Iraq War (a whole separate argument), very few rational people would now disagree that this is a war that has to be won, at the risk of allowing Iraq to become a failed terrorist state. Bush has made his intent to win it very clear. Kerry‚s statements have been vague, uncertain, and fluctuant. This in itself is of some concern. At present, Iraq bears no resemblance to Vietnam. But indecisiveness as to our commitment there could very well make it one. An attitude of “setting a timetable” or looking for an “exit strategy,” is implicitly a strategy of defeat. Such a strategy is necessary only once you have decided you have already lost. If Kerry sets his sights solely on withdrawal, he will miss the target entirely: the goal of making Iraq a viable, secure, hopefully democratic state. He will overlook opportunities that may exist to further that goal, and will have created a self-fulfilling prophecy that will endanger Americans and other Westerners for years to come.

Many Jews vote for the Democratic candidate because of concerns regarding civil rights issues and belief that the Democratic Party stands for tolerance, and is therefore inherently friendlier to Jews. Sadly, I no longer feel this is the case. In the name of protecting the rights of free speech, Democrats and many liberals are loathe to denounce the virulent Jew-hatred coming from Muslims, the far left-wing, and the flagrant anti-Semitism festering in many universities. The most outspoken anti-Semitism now comes from the left - rarely from the right, where it is almost unanimously denounced. It is not necessary to give up a belief in free speech to disavow and refute the statements of those preaching hatred, and I have not seen expressions of this on the part of the Democrats.

We are now at war with Islamic terrorism, whether we wish it or not. This war was declared on us in 1998, (1) but we only realized it in 2001. There are many domestic issues important to all of us, but virtually none of these will kill us in the next four years. Terrorists can.

(1) Bin-Laden / Al-Qaeda declared jihad in May, 1998. It was not reported at the time. No one was listening. The embassy bombings in Kenya/ Tanzania were less than 3 months later, on Aug 7, 1998. HOPEFULLY, after Kenya/ Tanzania, intel picked up on it, but it still did not become public knowledge until after 9/11.

The tape of a May 26, 1998, news conference is among 64 obtained in Afghanistan from a source, who said the tapes were found in an Afghan house where bin Laden had stayed. Experts say the collection of tapes sheds new light on al Qaeda’s training, capabilities and mindset.

“By God’s grace,” bin Laden says on the tape, “we have formed with many other Islamic groups and organizations in the Islamic world a front called the International Islamic Front to do jihad against the crusaders and Jews.”

“And by God’s grace,” he says at another point in the tape, “the men … are going to have a successful result in killing Americans and getting rid of them.”

CNN terrorism analyst Peter Bergen, who interviewed bin Laden a year earlier, believes the tape depicts a key moment for al Qaeda.

“They’re going public,” Bergen said. “They’re saying, ‘We’re having this war against the United States.’”

In its latest edition of NEA Today, The National Education Association has strongly endorsed the candidacy of John Kerry for President. Speaking in the name of its 2.7 million members, NEA President Reg Weaver warns,"A vote for the current road will bring more of what we've seen these last four years... School budgets strained to the breaking point by unfunded mandates, more testing, and lack of respect for educators." This message of fear is directed at public school teachers, who constitute a large majority of this union's membership.

Like all other endorsements by the NEA, there is just one problem. It never bothers to ask its gigantic rank-and-file membership who they would like to endorse. In its long history of advocating the Liberal Agenda, the National Education Association has never polled its membership before taking a stand on any issue. The union pleads that effective polling cannot be done due to the enormous size of its membership. They "brush aside" any suggestions to implement such advancements in technology as telephone or computerized polling.

In a form of paternalism that harkens back to the early days of unions, a conclave of leaders endorses a candidate only after the "top bosses" have made their preferences clear.

Unlike other organizations, the top leadership of the NEA is a self-appointed cabal; the rank-and-file never have an opportunity to vote for any of them. Therefore, none of these people enjoy the mandate of the dues-payers. Without this mandate, the union's leadership cannot truly say that they are representative of the membership at large.

Contrary to prevailing stereotypes, all educators are not uniformly liberal in their political viewpoints. Like all other Americans, they adhere to a variety of ideologies. In fact, many of those that teach in k-12 public school systems are surprisingly conservative. Many belong to the NEA simply because they are forced to pay membership dues as required by "closed shop" laws in many states. Witholding payment of dues as a method of expressing disatisfaction is not an option.

Do conservatives actually constitute a majority of the NEA membership? The National Education Association would prefer that we do not know.

If legendary journalist H.L. Mencken was alive today and just starting out, what would he do?

Would he try working his way up the ladder in the newspaper business? Or would he, instead, work for himself and start blogging?

Maybe this is one of those pointless mental exercises, but it provides the chance to look at the real difference today between newspapers and blogs. It provides the chance to figure out who are the real keepers of the legacy of men like Benjamin Franklin and Mencken.

It was Mencken who said the job of a newspaper is to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” But who’s really doing that now? Bloggers or newspapers?

First let’s take a look at the gold standard of American journalism: The Pulitzer Prize.

Last year, the New York Times and PBS’ Frontline collaborated on a piece that ran in print and on TV. (You can read it here.) It’s hard to argue against this piece winning the Pulitzer. The examination of how a large, profitable corporation – McWane Inc. - paid such little regard to its workers’ well-being has all the elements of what in-depth journalism should be. The paper gave it time, resources and space. The writing is compelling and flows. It absolutely comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable:

In the last decade, many American corporations have embraced such a vision of capitalism — cutting costs, laying off workers and pressing those who remain to labor harder, longer and more efficiently. But top federal and state regulators say McWane has taken this idea to the extreme. Describing the company’s business, they use the words “lawless” and “rogue.”

The company’s managers call it “the McWane way.”

Only the people involved in crafting this story know how long it took to put those four sentences together. A good bet: a very long time.

It’s journalism like this that inspires kids in high school and college to get into the business. But is it the exception or the rule? It’s probably not quite either. Here are some more examples of great journalism. Each one of these stories and series must have taken a grueling effort. When you work for an organization with deep pockets, libel lawsuits are always an issue – more so when you’re exposing wrongdoing, corruption or human suffering. You want to make sure you don’t get sued. But these reporters also want to get it right.

It’s easy to rip “MSM” for being biased, self-serving and loathsome. Often, it is. But, come on. There’s more to the story as those stories show. The problem is that these stories aren’t every day events. That’s why they win awards. They stand out.

Now let’s take a look at the best of the blogs. What would Mencken think of them? Do they afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted?

You can’t argue with Strengthen The Good, a collaborative effort of a number of bloggers to put the spotlight on people who need help. Blogs like this even go a step further: They deliver that help.

Who can forget Chief Wiggles efforts to bring toys to kids in Iraq war zones? The effort was even noticed by President Bush.

How about afflicting the comfortable? You can find examples of this faster than you can say, “Rathergate.” Or “Trent Lott.” Or “Ted Rall.” Or the name of anyone ever mentioned on Gawker.

So which wins, newspapers or blogs? Right now it looks like a tie. Newspapers still can hold true to the Mencken rule. But they don’t nearly often enough. There still seems to be too much newsroom bureaucracy and lawyering going on when it comes to important stories.

Blogs don’t really match the depth and texture of good newspapering – yet. But, man, every day bloggers are pounding it.

So where would Mencken turn, as a kid out of school, trying to break into journalism and writing? He would probably still opt for newspapers. He loved the prestige. He loved the access. He would probably be miserable inside today’s politically correct newsrooms. Editors would not even want him today if he couldn’t keep his bigotries under control. But Mencken loved newspapers.

One can only imagine, though, how he would have liveblogged the Scopes Monkey Trial.

(Cross-posted at Late Final.)

— Ed Moltzen

This past week The Truth Laid Bear has been promoting a “blogburst” where individual bloggers channel their favorite heroes of fiction and reality to state why those heroes are voting for President Bush. It’s called Heroes for Bush, and the response has been great: over 25 heroes have appeared on weblogs across the Blogosphere to endorse President Bush’s re-election thus far, including such widely diverse notables as King Henry V, The Tick, Captain James T. Kirk, Rhett Butler, and even Rin Tin Tin!

The effort continues through end-of-day Friday, November 22, so there is still time left to send in a submission if you so choose. Drop by, and check it out!

Last week I posted an essay by a friend, a liberal Jewish New Yorker who is voting for Bush. You can read it here. My friend has more to say.
— Judith Weiss

“Never again.”

As Jews, we teach these sacred words to our children.

We raise millions of dollars and build Holocaust museums throughout the country to spread the message.

We form committees, spearhead educational initiatives, and aggressively reach out to the non-Jewish world to lecture them about their moral responsibility to fight anti-Semitism.

Do we then turn around and vote for the candidate who’s allied with forces intent on Jewish destruction?

Yasser Arafat has endorsed John Kerry.

So has Mahathir Mohamed, the ex-Prime Minister of Malaysia. You remember him. Last year, he hosted the Organization of the Islamic Conference, where he said, “Today the Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them.” and “1.3 billion Muslims can not be defeated by a few million Jews.” He urged his audience of Arab leaders “to plan, to strategize and then to counterattack,” and they leapt to their feet in an ecstatic standing ovation.

These endorsements by Jew-haters and Jew-murderers are not meaningless background noise, as some would you have believe.

They are the logical outgrowth of John Kerry’s avowed foreign policy.

John Kerry says American actions must pass “a global test”, a test which Israel conspicuously fails.

He believes the central organ of our foreign policy must be the United Nations, whose General Assembly voted that “Zionism is racism”, and which in 2003, passed eighteen resolutions condemning Israel for human rights violations, and only four resolutions condemning other countries. Of the ten emergency special sessions convened by the General Assembly, six have focused on accusing Israel. And in the vast U.N. bureaucracy, Israel is the only country subject to permanent monitoring for human rights abuses.

Kerry feels the most important foreign power we must please is France, whose Ambassador called Israel “that sh-tty little country” and which this year successfully marshaled all twenty-five European Union members into voting against Israel’s life-saving security fence in the United Nations.

Martin Peretz writes “I’ve searched to find one time when Kerry - even candidate Kerry - criticized a U.N. action or statement against Israel. I’ve come up empty. Nor has he defended Israel against the European Union’s continuous hectoring.”

Of the 5,156 words, John Kerry spoke at his acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention, exactly 0 was about Israel.

He may try to duck this inconvenient topic, secure in his belief that American Jews vote Democratic, no matter how much the result may go against their own interests.

But we cannot duck it, for this is no ordinary time.

The next four years may well determine whether Israel survives or perishes in a nuclear holocaust.

The mad mullahs of Iran are hotly pursuing nuclear weapons, even as the United Nations issues half-hearted statements of “concern” and sends ineffectual inspectors. Experts say Iran will rapidly achieve the capability of reaching Israel, probably within the next year.

John Kerry has already allied himself with Iran’s current regime. His campaign sent an email to Iran’s official news agency, Mehr News, stating his plan to “repair the damage done” by President Bush’s policies and to “build new friendships and overcome tensions.”

So as the mullahs stage giant military parades of Shihab-3 ballistic missiles festooned with banners reading “We shall crush America under our feet” and “Israel must be wiped off the map”, Kerry proposes to provide Iran with lightly-enriched uranium to “test” whether the mullahs were “actually looking for it for peaceful purposes.” And if the mullahs fail his global test? Kerry suggests….(drum roll please)… a summit.

Ah yes. The delegates will gather in a lovely chateau outside of Paris, dining on fine wines and cheese, debating exactly how to word this week’s expression of “grave concern”, as the nuclear bomb hits Jerusalem. Shaking their heads, these bureaucratic pooh-bahs will sigh at the Jews’ historic propensity to attract trouble, and then philosophically return to their brie.

Too extreme? You don’t believe Kerry really sides with the mullahs? Then listen to The Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran, a brave group of student activists working inside and outside of Iran. On October 8, they issued a statement condemning Kerry, noting that “John Kerry is proving himself to be an ally of those seeking to impede internal revolution which would draw to a close the era of Islamo-Fascist mullahcracy.”

These students believe that Kerry’s pro-mullah policy is influenced by three of his top fund-raisers, Hussun Nemazee, Faraj Aalaei, and Susan Akbarpour, all Iranian-Americans with close ties to the current regime. Nemazee has actively tried to destroy the student group, launching a ten million dollar suit against them in the hope of shutting it down.

But perhaps Kerry is more influenced by love than money: His wife, Theresa Heinz Kerry, has publicly scolded President Bush for his stern warnings to Teheran. Specifically in regard to Iran, she said, “The way we live in peace in a family, in a marriage, in the world is not by threatening, not by showing off your muscles. It’s by listening, by giving a hand sometimes, by being intelligent and being open, and setting high standards.”

So there you have it.

Kerry is endorsed by Yasser Arafat, whose hands are dripping with Jewish blood, including that of New Jersey’s own beautiful daughters, Sara Duker and Alisa Flatow.

Kerry is endorsed by Mahathir Mohamed, who spreads classic Jew-hatred from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, in hopes of rousing Arab leaders to even greater destructive fury.

Kerry is endorsed by leading supporters of the mullahs of Iran, who even as we speak, are putting the finishing touches on their nuclear weapons and pointing them at Jerusalem.

Despite all this evidence, you may continue to say, “Well, Kerry would be good for Israel. Bush is bad for the Jews because now everyone hates us.”

Then let me ask you to consider the opinion of those most vulnerable to the results of your vote: our six million brothers and sisters in Israel. Their families are dying in pizza parlors, school busses and seder tables. Their sons are marching off to war. Their children are suffering in hospitals, in burn units, in rehab wards.

Israelis support President Bush 3 to 1. In that fractious, divided, argumentative society, there is as close to universal agreement as you will ever find: Kerry is the wrong candidate. In a horrifically dangerous time, President Bush is the one to protect them.

So if you wish, go ahead and vote for Senator Kerry. But if you do, I have one request:

Please do not send in your check to your local Holocaust Museum or Tolerance Center.

Abandon writing your ground-breaking curriculum on Lessons of the Holocaust.

Do not write incensed letters to the editor about the rise of Holocaust denial.

Stay home on Yom Ha’Shoah and catch up with your laundry or pay your bills.

Our six million dead are silent in the grave, with no need of your indignation and tears.

Our six million brothers and sisters in Israel - and vulnerable Jewish communities everywhere, including here - are alive, alone, and desperate for you to hear their cry:

Never again.

Never again.

Never again.

UPDATE: Judith here. I just want to add this scenario by Charles Krauthammer.

Recent claims have been made that Saddam Hussein had no connections to terrorists, or terrorism, or more specifically, just not to Al Qaeda or 9/11. Claims have also been made that before the invasion, Iraq was not a haven for terrorists.

Deroy Murdock, a Media Fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and contributing Editor at National Review, has accumulated a considerable amount of material on the subject, supplying the sources for all of the items presented. The materials may be reviewed at the site Saddam Hussein’s Philanthropy of Terror.

Go check the material, then sit back, and decide for yourself.

::Update:: Typo and link fixed. Apologies.

The new 527 ad - Ashley’s Story - is one of the most powerful election ads I’ve seen in a long time.

It’s powerful for me in a different way than it might be for an undecided voter. I have already made my decision to vote for George Bush. Ashley’s Story just underscores one of the main emotional reasons why I am voting for him.

There are many points people address when they are talking who they are voting for. This election, it’s the war on terror for some, the economy for others. There’s education, welfare, taxes, health care and a myriad of other issues that voters consider before making their choice.

But there’s something else, at least for me. That’s the intangibles. The things that a candidate won’t base a whole campaign on but nonetheless are vital to gaining confidence in voters who are thinking about voting for them.

What is evident about George Bush in this ad is one of those vital things that give me faith and hope enough to vote for him with confidence. His sincerity, his passion and his compassion are all on display here. What’s moving is that the captured moment in Ashley’s Story was spontaneous; it wasn’t scripted, it wasn’t planned out in advance. It’s just a brief moment that shows the true spirit of what lies beneath George Bush, President.

Oh, there are some who look at our President and see a liar, a thief, a devil in disguise. They refute even this small yet powerful gesture of the President, one in which he comforted a young girl whose mother died on September 11, 2001. They won’t see what they don’t want to believe.

What I see is a man with integrity. I see a man who believes in every word he says, who truly believes that he is doing what is right for this country and the world. He has passion and compassion and displays them both without the prompt of cue cards or the clandestine whisperings of Karl Rove.

When I listen to George Bush speak, I hear honesty. I hear a man who believes his own words. I hear the voice of trust.

There are many other reasons why I am voting for George Bush, all of which I have stated here before. But it’s what I see in this ad that encompasses all of the emotional reasons why I trust this man to be my president. It’s not enough that Bush stands for the issues that are most important to me this election; in order to get my vote I have to believe in his sincerity and trust him with my life and the lives of my children. That I do.

I have to vote with both my head and my heart, and they both want to vote for George W. Bush on November 2.

The following was written by Jim K. and originally appeared here.

——————-

I just finished watching “Stolen Honor.”

I don’t even know what to say, so this post may seem to ramble. I am emotionally torn up at this moment. I feel hatred, fear, sorrow, but I also feel a tremendous sense of pride in the men and women featured in this story. I feel pride in the men and women fighting in Iraq. I feel pride for the men and women, one of whom we all know right here at MOOREWATCH, for serving in war or peace.

I am not responsible for the horrible things John Kerry has done to veterans in this country, but I feel absolutely compelled to say this anyway: I am so sorry. I am sorry for what you had to endure. I am sorry for those of you who were captured and tortured. I am sorry for those of you who lost a friend in Vietnam. I am sorry for the families that lose soldiers in Vietnam. But most of all I am sorry that my parents and their generation did not support you when you came home. I will forever feel shame for that, and I wasn’t even born when most of it happened.

I realize those words don’t mean much, but I feel compelled to say them anyway. I am sorry.

And now I move on to why this is a MOOREWATCH post. Right now, Michael Moore is trying the same filthy, dirty tricks on Iraqi veterans than Kerry pulled on Vietnam vets. No wonder these two despicable excuses for men like each other so much. They think alike. Abuse the public’s notion of a war time soldier for fun and profit.

I beg you, do not fall for Moore’s portrayal of the American soldier. Do you homework. If you can read this, you have a computer and access to the Internet. Open Google and type the word “milblogs.” Start reading the words of the men and women themselves, not someone’s twisted representation or outright fraudulent version of the truth.

If you consider yourself a fair and honest person, a good and decent person, and you plan to vote for John Kerry, I am begging you to do two things. First, Get yourself a copy of Stolen Honor and watch it. Twice. It’s short, just 42 minutes long.

Secondly, please consider voting for anyone else. It doesn’t have to be Bush. Write in John McCain’s name. Write in Howard Dean. Mickey Mouse. Hell, vote for Badnarik. Just don’t vote for Kerry. I’m begging you not to validate the horrible things that man has done in
the name of furthering his own personal gain. Don’t make it OK to rob an entire generation of their place in history, don’t validate the creation of horror myths that plague these men to this day. Don’t make it OK for John Kerry to have lied repeatedly and for 35 years about what went on in Vietnam. Don’t make it alright for Kerry to have made the incarceration of P.O.W.s longer, more painful and in some cases, permanent.

Don’t reward that man for his traitorous behavior. If you consider yourself an honorable person, please get a copy of Stolen Honor and watch it with an open heart.

If you can still pull the lever for Kerry after seeing it…well, then I can’t reach you, and I’m sorry for that.

But most of all, I’m sorry for the men and women for whom this nightmare is reborn. The people whose lives John Kerry made a living hell in 1971, and the men and women for whom Michael Moore is trying to do the same in 2004.

I am sorry, and I thank you all for your service.

—————

Jim K. writes at MooreWatch.com

The New York Times endorses John Kerry for President.

Wait, that’s not right.

The New York Times does not endorse George Bush for President.

23 paragraphs in the NYT endorsement. Only three of those paragraphs detail why the NYT supports Kerry. The rest is an anti-Bush manifesto worthy of Democratic Underground.

Even our nation’s vaunted media can’t come up with enough cogent reasons to vote for Kerry other than he’s not George Bush.

I predict that if Kerry does win, there will be a very short honeymoon period in which his presidency is celebrated. Eventually the reality will set in for the millions that voted on the “he’s not Bush” agenda. Kerry will end up with the lowest approval rating of any president in recent history. The morale of our nation will go into its own little recession.

I’m envisioning a little peanut farm next to the White House garden.

NYT magazine offers “Without a Doubt”, a ten-screen discussion of Bush and how his faith motivates his decisions. It’s from Ron Suskind, the author of “The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O’Neill”. Suskind was the senior national-affairs reporter for The Wall Street Journal from 1993 to 2000.

Some will denounce this as a liberal NYT hit piece. Others - those wouldn’t mind seeing, say, Pat Robertson as president - will find comfort in parts of the article. And others will find partial confirmation for what they already suspected.

Excerpts:

The following is an excerpt from Tom Friedman’s editorial appearing in yesterday’s New York Times. It’s definitely worth a read.

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when I hear the president and vice president slamming John Kerry for saying that he hopes America can eventually get back to a place where “terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they’re a nuisance.” The idea that President Bush and Mr. Cheney would declare such a statement to be proof that Mr. Kerry is unfit to lead actually says more about them than Mr. Kerry. Excuse me, I don’t know about you, but I dream of going back to the days when terrorism was just a nuisance in our lives.

If I have a choice, I prefer not to live the rest of my life with the difference between a good day and bad day being whether Homeland Security tells me it is “code red” or “code orange” outside. To get inside the Washington office of the International Monetary Fund the other day, I had to show my ID, wait for an escort and fill out a one-page form about myself and my visit. I told my host: “Look, I don’t want a loan. I just want an interview.” Somewhere along the way we’ve gone over the top and lost our balance.

That’s why Mr. Kerry was actually touching something many Americans are worried about - that this war on terrorism is transforming us and our society, when it was supposed to be about uprooting the terrorists and transforming their societies.

Read the rest here.

From the 10/13 debate, President Bush:

I wonder how many nurses, teachers, or high-tech workers would work for $8 an hour. Wait, you didn’t know that Bush’s “guest worker” plan would be open to those people too?

That’s what they have in mind. And, there would be no wage-related restrictions on it other than the minimum wage. So, employers could offer a teaching job for $8 an hour. American teachers would either take that rate or, more likely, they wouldn’t. So, the employer could hire that “guest” worker from Bangladesh. The Bangladeshi would consider that a king’s ransom. All the requirements of Bush’s plan had been met: there wasn’t an American willing to do the job.

Bush’s plan would force millions of previously higher-wage jobs down near the minimum wage. What phrase would most Americans use to describe such a plan?

See Analysis: Bush temp worker plan open-ended and Bush “guest worker” program to be “open to any type of employee”. Also, “Hutchinson’s Remarks Indicate Cheap Labor Bias of Administration” and the links here.

What exactly does he mean by “families”? Will their immediate family come with them or not? If not, are we going to be able to split up families? Not all people coming here would be Mexicans or from the parts of Mexico near the border. Is Bush going to require men to travel hundreds of miles to see their immediate family?

If, however, they’re bringing their immediate family with them, there will no doubt be hundreds of thousands of children born, and those children will be U.S. citizens. Who’s going to be able to make them go home after they’ve had a U.S. citizen child? And, won’t most “guest” workers intentionally have children here so it will be harder to make them go home?

And, given that, doesn’t this plan consist not just of an amnesty, but as a massive incentive for a huge chunk of Mexico’s population to come here? Was any thought put into the consequences of this plan at all?

A Bush assistant addresses those questions in Bush “guest worker” program to be “open to any type of employee”. No change to the 14th Amendment is expected to accomodate the “guest worker” plan.

No, it doesn’t. People will sneak across the border for many reasons, but primarily for employment. And, if employers are willing to employ people illegally - under any guest worker plan - people will keep coming here illegally. People don’t hire illegals primarily because of a lack of legal workers. They hire illegals because of the cost or to avoid paperwork or safety laws. If those who currently employ illegals want to continue to do so, they will under any guest worker program unless they’re stopped. If Bush won’t enforce the laws against hiring illegal aliens now, what makes anyone think he’d enforce the laws under his plan? And, note that under the last guest worker program (the Bracero program) illegal immigration went up during and after that program.

See “Employer fines plummet for hiring illegals” and “The Mirage of Mexican Guest Workers”.

His plan is perceived as an amnesty, and it’s caused an uptick in those coming here expecting to take part in the amnesty. Whether it’s truly an amnesty hinges on how exactly we define amnesty. And, when you get down to the level of minute differences in definition, you might as well be Bill Clinton.

See “Border Agents Warn of Influx” and “[Bush] Immigration plan envisions ‘incentives’ to illegal aliens”.

Bush was governor of Texas before 9/11. I’d hope the borders are better protected now than they were before that date. But, are they? What of all the chatter about terrorists attempting to infiltrate the U.S. via Mexico? What of the report of 25 Chechen terrorists possibily having succeeded in that effort?

Once again Bush’s rhetoric just doesn’t match up to reality. If the administration would take the novel approach of fining those companies that employ illegal aliens, all that manpower and equipment would have a much greater impact. As it is, to a certain extent they’re just there for show.

SCHIEFFER: Mr. President, what do you say to someone in this country who has lost his job to someone overseas who’s being paid a fraction of what that job paid here in the United States?

BUSH: I’d say, Bob, I’ve got policies to continue to grow our economy and create the jobs of the 21st century. And here’s some help for you to go get an education. Here’s some help for you to go to a community college.

So, to all you fancy-pants university grads in the IT field who are losing your jobs to outsourcing, those who used to have the jobs of the 21st century, just get off your ass and go to community college. I hear McDonald’s is hiring.

Thank you, Mr. President. Do you want fries with that?

That stuff isn't working! You need to enforce the law, not just make excuses.

Kerry touches on the subject of middle easterners and over 4000 people crossing the border everyday. He vows to crack down on employers who hire illegals. He also went on to discuss biometric fingerprinting in order to know who is coming across.

While I applaud his comments on cracking down on employers, his fingerprinting thing is fine for the actual border, but the 4000 streaming across daily aren't going through the checkpoints. They're fence hoppers, lawbreakers and aren't going to be lining up for you to see who they are.

This problem is out of control and neither candidate is serious about it. They have a one paragraph memorized script they go by with no conviction behind it.

The sad thing is there was only one single question on immigration. The moderator prefaced the question by saying "I received the most email on this issue and next question", yet the candidates only spent maybe 4 minutes total on it.

Shameful!

Originally posted at Diggers Realm

In John Kerry, Owen Wilson, and Facing Reality, I noted that:

“I even understand the impetus to look at 2 candidates who offer less than the times demand, and see the stakes before us, and tell oneself that Kerry will have to do the right thing….”

Or, as Josh Chafetz puts it:

“The reason I am still undecided is simply that, as I said above, I find Bush’s strategic vision for foreign policy much more compelling than Kerry’s (if Kerry can be said to have a strategic vision). If Kerry sufficiently reassures me on foreign policy, I will vote for him.”

Which is just fine. The question is, what standards of judgment does one use to determine this - because I’m seeing bloggers weakening the standards of judgement they apply elsewhere in order to convince themselves. It strikes me as a semi-conscious attempt at self-deception, and Josh’s recent Oxblog post (via Andrew Sullivan) is is only notable for having the juxtaposition conveniently packaged in one place.

I’d urge Josh (and others) to consider the contrast between this excerpt:

Read The Rest…

Reading Andrew Sullivan’s blog reveals a riptide of conflicts over the upcoming presidential election. Many have derided the largely conservative Mr. Sullivan for becoming weak before our odious adversaries at the fateful hour of the election. His public irreconcilability between two deficient candidates presents a prescient portrait of internal conflictions within many people who want to promote a progressive, tolerant world without feeding the Zarqawian head-eating monsters seeking its end. It is a tribute to Mr. Sullivan that he presents his struggle publicly, where so many satisfy themselves with assured positions. Heel-digging has its merits in the face of tyranny, but comes with the risk that the entire mountain of reason might collapse beneath you.

Today, Mr. Sullivan points out that American forces in Iraq failed to secure equipment and facilities that collectively can be used to create WMDs—-Missing Iraqi Nuke Material:

Here’s a report that sends chills down my spine:

Equipment and materials that could be used to make nuclear weapons are disappearing from Iraq but neither Baghdad nor Washington appears to have noticed, the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency reported on Monday. Satellite imagery shows that entire buildings in Iraq have been dismantled. They once housed high-precision equipment that could help a government or terror group make nuclear bombs, the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a report to the U.N. Security Council. Equipment and materials helpful in making bombs also have been removed from open storage areas in Iraq and disappeared without a trace, according to the satellite pictures, IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei said.

Where has the stuff gone? Why was it left unguarded? Another money quote:

The United States also has not publicly commented on earlier U.N. inspectors’ reports disclosing the dismantling of a range of key weapons-making sites, raising the question of whether it was unable to monitor the sites. In the absence of any U.S. or Iraqi accounting, council diplomats said the satellite images could mean the gear had been moved to new sites inside Iraq or stolen. If stolen, it could end up in the hands of a government or terrorist group seeking nuclear weapons.

“We simply don’t know, although we are trying to get the information,” said one council diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity. U.S. officials had no immediate comment on the report.

It’s about time they did, don’t you think?

Portions of the article not quoted by Mr. Sullivan also say:

A new CIA report last week by chief U.S. weapons investigator Charles Duelfer made clear, however, that Saddam had all but given up on his nuclear program after the first Gulf War in 1991.

ElBaradei, whose agency dismantled Iraq’s nuclear arms program over a decade ago, drew similar conclusions to the Duelfer report well before the March 2003 invasion.

The article seems slanted towards the opinion that inspections alone will ensure that the bad stuff stays secure and watched. It underscores how the invasion was unnecessary, and undermined the job of the IAEA to safeguard the WMD materials in question. Meanwhile, next door in Iran, and further away in North Korea, the work of the IAEA has delivered poor results with each nation on the verge of being nuclear powers. Inspections without the threat of force did little to contain the production of WMDs. It is also interesting to note that the anti-war position stipulating that the invasion was unnecessary due to lack of WMDs is refuted in the article, since now related materiel is going missing, according to the IAEA themselves. So there were WMD programs in Iraq after all?

The attributed Duelfer report mentioned in the article provides much egg for all faces in the debate. It underscores how the French were supplying Saddam’s forces right up to the invasion; surely, some Americans died from French hardware in the bargain. No, France was never going to be for invasion, nor the UN who was raking in Oil For Food petrodollars. Nor the EU, under the spell of France. Cooperation and goodwill from erstwhile allies might have secured WMD sites in Iraq —- there’s plenty of blame to go around for Western intransigence.

The Duelfer report underscores failure from all sides: inspections guarantee nothing, nor does invasion.

So, like Mr. Sullivan, this blogger finds himself on a flimsy rope bridge swaying in the winds of a chasm created by two flawed popular positions for defending the Western world. It may be that our system really has met its match this time, because the enemy is not a system at all. It’s empowered anarchy, welling up from within and without. It challenges who we are, fundamentally.

This blogger has stated that he’s voting for Bush but rooting for Kerry. That’s a vote cast from the rope bridge, the logic of which could be inverted. As the chasm widens, this little bridge seems more fragile every day. How many people actually occupy this space? How many feel like the choices presented just don’t fill the bill? There’s emotional solid ground on each side of this bridge. It would be quite tidy to simply take one or the other position and receive pats on the back from either Democrats or Republicans. In this position, if either of the two cliffs representing the West gives way, so does this little bridge. The world will not be saved by either conservatives or liberals. It will be saved by a strong sense of common ground and new thinking from both sides. It will be saved by reducing the gap that this little bridge must span. Is this remotely possible?

If there’s solace to be taken from a Kerry victory, it will be the possibility that liberalism will be truly taken to task by historical forces, like conservativism has been. This time around, a liberal president will not have the political advantages afforded by the power vacuum at the end of the Cold War, concurrent with a miracle tech economy that kept eyes planted on the NASDAQ and not the Cole disaster. This time, a liberal president has the unenviable job of showing that the French can be reformed, that the UN is not utterly dysfunctional and that Carterism has workable limits. Let the sobering begin.

President Bush, who ran on a near-isolationist platform in 2000, redefined conservatism in 2001 because the world changed. That’s why he’s got my vote. Mr. Kerry, so far, seems reluctant to redefine liberalism in the context of the modern world. His heels are firmly planted on a mountain floating on magma. As President, liberalism, as we know it, will either be redefined or it will perish.

Four more years of Bush will only prolong liberalism’s promenade with fantasy; four years of Kerry will either return a functional balance within our system or consummate its disequilibrium, at the risk of chaos. It is a vote of fate.

This essay was written by a friend of mine who would like to remain anonymous. A busy working mom with a couple of kids, she reads blogs when she can, but doesn’t post herself. I find her essay eloquently applies ancient Jewish values to the challenges we face today. I am pleased to use my access to Command Post to bring her words to a wider public.
— Judith Weiss

When I pull the lever on November 2nd for George Bush, I will be voting with more passionate conviction than I have ever mustered in a lifetime of voting Democratic.

My motive is simple: I believe the moral imperative of our time is to fully prosecute the War on Terror. As a Jew, I believe this sacred fight embodies the deepest Jewish values, so eloquently expressed by the ancient sage Hillel: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?”

Let me explain.

“If I am not for myself, who will be for me?” How do we make sense of the violence engulfing our world since September 11th? We reel from one barbaric slaughter to the next, unable to understand the horrors unfolding in front of our eyes: office workers jumping from burning buildings in New York, school children shot in the back in Russia, families exploding in pizza parlors and busses and seder tables in Israel. What unites these disparate acts of terror? Who is the enemy we face?

The phrase, “War on Terror,” studiously avoids naming our foe. Some have proposed calling this fight the War on Radical Islam or the War on Islamo-Fascism. I suggest the term the War on Islamic Terror for what binds together these acts is a religiously-inspired frenzy to destroy. Fueled by the fiery theology of jihad, or global holy war, the terrorists define every non-Muslim, including women and children, as enemy combatants who must be annihilated. They seek no compromise or negotiation. They seek our death.

We therefore face an existential challenge: Do we have the right to exist? Does our civilization merit continuing? Do we claim our freedom? On the most basic, inescapable level, as Rabbi Hillel asked us 2,000 years ago, are we for ourselves?

If we answer yes, we must answer with our actions. No one will stand with us if we do not stand for ourselves. We must commit to a long, difficult battle that will inevitably encounter agonizing setbacks along the way to victory. This fight will assume many guises as we seek to deter, disarm, and demolish the shifting forces intent on our murder. We will disrupt and weaken free-floating terror groups like Al Qaeda and Islamic Jihad. We will depose incorrigible terror masters like Saddam Hussein, who lobbed Scud missiles into Israel, publicly conferred fat checks on the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, and invited Abbu Abbas, the murderer of the wheelchair-bound American Jew, Leon Klinghoffer, to live out his days as an honored pensioner in Baghdad. And we will deny nuclear capabilities to the mad mullahs of Iran, whose Defense Minister this week vowed to “crush America” and “wipe Israel off the map.”

The task may be complex, but the morality is straightforward. We believe that both our lives and our way of life are worth preserving. And although we carry the heavy burden of protecting liberty, our steps are lightened by the rewards of meeting Hillel’s second challenge.

“But if I am only for myself, what am I?” On October 9th, Afghanistan conducted the first one-person, one-vote democratic election in its history. Out of 10 million eligible Afghanis, an astonishing 9.9 million registered to vote for president, including the former king. 42% of the registered voters are women. Under the Taliban, Afghani women were prisoners in their homes, many literally starving to death. Today Afghani women compete in the Olympics, attend Kabul University, and open craft-based businesses, while their daughters constitute one-third of the 4 million Afghani children enrolled in school. 2,200 child soldiers have been demobilized; platoons of ex-combatants are being trained to build and maintain roads; electrification is spreading throughout the country, and the famous Buddhist statues destroyed by the Taliban are being reconstructed. And in an overwhelming sign of optimism, 3 million Afghani refugees have returned from Pakistan and Iran, eager to rebuild their lives in their newly-freed homeland.

In a country successively tormented by Soviet occupation, civil war, and the Taliban’s brutal theocracy, hope is alive. Democracy is being born. Human dignity is taking root.

These inspiring developments are no accident: They have been purchased with American blood, sweat and treasure, and those of our allies, and they reflect our truest national character. With every illiterate adult taught to read, every young girl heading off to school for the first time, every boy trained to earn a living, we prove our deepest desire is to spread the blessings of freedom.

In Iraq, too, our painfully hard work of implanting democracy is proceeding. (You won’t find full portraits of either country’s progress in The New York Times or on CBS. Read for the bigger picture.) Sovereignty has been passed from the American-led Coalition Authority to the Iraqis, who are now preparing for nation-wide free and democratic elections in January. Meanwhile, on a local level, democracy is springing up through newly-elected town councils. Ahood Aabass, the first woman elected to the new governing council in Basra, reports that under Saddam, children went to schools without windows, doors and toilets, and the local water had worms. Now she praises the “great strides” that have been made in education, human rights, health care and the infrastructure. 20 million Iraqis now enjoy clean water and improved sanitation. Schools have been renovated and reopened. 159,000 new school desks have been distributed, millions of new textbooks have been printed, thousands of children have been vaccinated, and teachers now make between $300 and $500 a month, instead of the $3 they were paid by Saddam. The new Iraq Stock Exchange is now open for business (ISX) and commercial ties are increasing between Iraq, Europe and Japan. A newly-accessible internet is allowing Iraqis to openly exchange ideas, and a free press is flourishing.

A country once brutalized by a sadistic dictator who filled its earth with mass graves, tortured its dissidents, raped its women, and starved its children, is striving mightily to transform into a prosperous democracy. American resolve has let freedom reign.

“If not now, when?” Senator Kerry has decried “the rush to war,” stating that America “has lost its moral authority” because we overthrew Saddam without a sufficient number of allies. 34 countries joined us in our military endeavor there; Senator Kerry preferred to wait until we secured the co-operation of France, which means we would still be waiting today.

If we went to Iraq too early to please Senator Kerry, we are now lingering too long for his taste. Dismayed by the hopeless “quagmire” he perceives, he has declared his intention to bring our troops home as soon as possible, preferably in six months.

Too early, too late: It’s never quite the right time to do battle on Senator Kerry’s calendar. There is always another ally to consult, resolution to be passed, conference to be convened, process to be perfected, obstacle to be avoided.

And yet history has appointed the hour of our challenge, and however much we wish to turn back time, our moment has come. When the World Trade Center was attacked the first time in 1993, we chose to ignore the true seriousness of its implications. But on September 11th, 2001, with the Pentagon in flames, the World Trade Center collapsing, and a hijacked plane speeding towards Congress, we finally began our generation’s rendezvous with destiny.

“You can not escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today,” said President Lincoln at another decisive moment in our nation’s history. The War on Islamic Terror must be waged fully, humanely, and successfully. This monumental battle is both our burden and our privilege, for as Thomas Paine said when our country was born, “If there must be trouble let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.”

On November 2nd, I will choose to honor my heritage as a Jew and as an American by voting for George Bush.

UPDATE: My friend wrote a second essay, which you can read here.

Responding to Kerry’s “nuisance” comment from the NYT, President Bush said the following today in Hobbs, NM:

Even if we destroyed a thousand terrorist networks and spread freedom and liberty around the world one country after another, wouldn’t there always be new terrorist networks somewhere out on the horizon?

Will we know when we’ve finally defeated the abstract notion called “terror,” or will this be a perpetual war?

In Afghanistan this weekend, millions of people came out to vote. And while it may not be the perfect picture of an election, they did it with opponents threatening to kill them. Vote and die. Think about that when your only excuse is “I don’t have time.”

Now, name this country…

The women were innocent and defenseless. And by the end of the night, they were barely alive.

They beat one of them, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air. They hurled another into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate thought she was dead and suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.

For weeks, the women’s only water came from an open pail. Their food—all of it colorless slop—was infested with worms. When one of the leaders embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.*

Nope, it’s not Afghanistan. It’s not Iraq or Saudi Arabia, either. That’s the United States. Just 87 years ago.

This was your grandmother’s world. She couldn’t vote for Kerry or Bush or Nader. She didn’t have a say in whether we invaded Iraq or raised taxes or funded education or banned gay marriage. For securing the blessings of liberty, she was beaten and jailed. She was called “insane.”

An HBO movie called Iron Jawed Angels is airing now, and it should be required viewing for any citizen, not just women.

How could anyone take their right to vote for granted after realizing the struggles of their ancestors to obtain it for them? If you’re a woman, you dishonor their memory by not voting. If you’re black, how could you even think of not voting, considering the struggles of your race? Hell, even if you’re a male white guy, you have the efforts of millions of patriots through history to thank.

To my mind, voting isn’t even a right. It is a debt to be repaid.

*A liberally edited version of an e-mail called “A Short History on the Privilege of Voting” that’s going around.

”We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they’re a nuisance.”

nui·sance
n.

1. One that is inconvenient, annoying, or vexatious; a bother:

That’s Sen. Kerry speaking, in case you haven’t read that elsewhere already.

What I’d like to know is, when exactly is Kerry talking about? When were terrorists just a nuisance? Was terrorism every just a bother, an annoyance? Just an incovenience?

Does he mean before September 11, 2001?
Before October 12, 2000?
Before August 7, 1998?
Before June 25, 1996?
Before February 26, 1993?
Before December 21, 1998?
Before April 5, 1996?
Before October 7, 1985?
Before November 4, 1979?
Before any of these dates?

I’m sure the families of all the victims of all the above attacks would love to know that their loved ones were murdered at the hands of nothing more than nuisances.

This, in a nutshell, is why I could never even think about giving my vote to John Kerry and why I will vote for George Bush.

Perhaps terrorism should not be the daily focus of our lives - meaning us ordinary citizens - but it should certainly be a daily focus of the President of the United States and all who work for him.

The problem with Kerry is he thinks that the war on terror begins and ends with bin Laden. He thinks that once bin Laden is frog marched into some prison cell where he can go think about what he’s done, the war on terror is over.

Look at this list. And this is just attacks on U.S. interests here and abroad. This does not take into account all of the terrorism that happens world wide, all of which greatly effects us because we want world peace, damn it.

The war on terror is a GLOBAL one. It encompasses every nation and hundreds of different terrorist organizations, all with different goals and different targets. It damn well better be the daily focus of my president for a long time. Not only until bin Laden is caught. Not only until al Qaeda is demolished.

And it’s great that Kerry thinks we should obliterate terrorism to the point that it’s just a nuisance, whatever that means, but does anyone have any idea just how he plans to do that?

Keeping our coutnry safe should be the number one priority of the president and anyone who thinks that terrorism was ever just a nuisance does not deserve the title of president.

This year’s choice isn’t between Bush and Kerry so much as between Bush and divided government with Kerry at the helm.

Under President Kerry, the GOP would control the House and the Senate, and they would help to keep any of Kerry’s “liberal” impulses in check.

Bearing that in mind, what is the argument against such a divided government?

(Today’s suggested reading: Bob Barr’s An agonizing choice: Conservatives have plenty of cause to abandon Bush)

[by Robin Burk of Winds of Change.NET]

What to do about North Korea? This long blog entry is a summary of a much longer, detailed analysis of what hasn’t worked so far - and why.

Given years of starvation, the brutal if canny dictatorship of Kim Il Jung and the occasional exploding train, why hasn’t the North Korean state collapsed?

Nicholas Eberstadt predicted they would, several years ago. Today, however, North Koreans are no longer starving and they pose a serious threat to international stability. Eberstadt has a thought-provoking article out in Policy Review that examines The Persistance of North Korea. And his conclusions are strongly stated: US aid begun in 1998 not only allowed the NORK regime to survive, it also directly enabled them to proliferate deadly missiles and WMD technologies on the black market. North Korea, he argues, is following a deliberate policy of living off of foreign aid, while bulding a self-sustaining economy based on creating demand for its arms and WMD products by fostering instability around the world.

Before getting into the details (statistics, policy statements), Eberstadt looks for a parallel situation in history to North Korea’s persistance and finds one from a century ago. In what is certainly going to be viewed by some as a provocative charge, he compares the situation with North Korea a few years ago to the Franco-British campaign at Gallipoli in WWI, in which 100,000 lives were lost in a futile attempt to bring down the tottering Ottoman empire — and finds disturbing parallels.

Read the Rest…

[AP photo via Yahoo] Afghan women wearing burqa line up to vote at a polling station in Kabul Saturday, Oct. 9. 2004.

Yes, there’s trouble brewing in Afghanistan right now. But, did anyone expect the opposition to embrace the elections without stirring up controversy? This is the first ever direct presidential elections in Afghanistan and that’s the important thing here.

There will be tons of people dismissing this as theater or ignoring it completely. You think it’s a farce? Tell that to those women in burqas standing in line to vote. They don’t think it’s theater. Do you have any idea what an astounding moment this is for them?

These elections will do more for the people of Afghanistan then just vote in a new government. It will give the people who are begging for democracy hope. It will give the ordinary citizens of Afghanistan a feeling of freedom and independence. It will give the women of Afghanistan a sense of empowerment that they never thought they would experience.

You can bitch and moan all you want about it; the fact remains that this is something we should be proud of. It’s a moment the people of Afghanistan should be proud of. Why it’s not getting more coverage in the news is beyond me. This is the spread of democracy in action. Democracy is able to spread not only through voting, but through the joy and pride one feels when taking part in its creation for the first time.

The elections will not be perfect, but they are a huge step on a long road to freedom. If you cannot put yourself on that line, wearing a burqa and ready to vote - if you cannot for one second stand in their shoes and imagine what it must feel like to participate in such a thing - if you are unwilling to do that because you are so entrenched in your negativity, then you are doing an incredible disservice to the people of Afghanistan and to the Afghan forces and the soldiers of the coaltion and our American soldiers who have died in the process of making this day a reality.

Memo to Democrats: based on U.S. history, attacking W. for his mannerisms, intellect, et. al. is not a winning strategy. The liberal bloggers at Sozadee.com picked up on an interesting L.A. Times piece that discusses the dangers of attacking politicians for their style of speech, intelligence, or articulateness here in North America.

Those of us who remember Jean Chretien’s recent 10+ years as Prime Minister of Canada know what they mean: if your target has any political skills, it ends up backfiring big time. Sozadee throws in some American examples from across the spectrum, and they’re pretty entertaining.

As Chris Bray put it: “Most people can smell contempt” - and many see it aimed at them as well as the candidate.

True - but does this mean politicians should get a pass in this area? I’ve been thinking about this, and the answer is no… but the situations and grounds for attacking an opponent as unintelligent or inarticulate are very specific, and ignoring them courts disaster.

Today (Australian Time) there are two elections being held.

One of them is in Australia, where voters have to fill out ballots that look something like, er, this. (150K pdf).

I’ll try to explain the intricaccies of voting in Australia.

This example’s for the Federal Senate, in the state of New South Wales, and shows the “party line” for the Australian Labor Party - broadly equivalent to the US Democrats. A voter can just put a number above the line, or numbers below the line (but not both). A valid vote can be something as simple as a single number “1” in one box above the line, or as complex as filling out every single box below the line, in order of preference. The example shows what a “1” for the ALP entails - the order of preference for everyone else.

After the 4 ALP candidates, the votes go to the “Ex-Service, Service and Veterans” party, then the “Liberals for Forests”, then the “Help End Marijuana Prohibition” party, and so on.

The ALP is the major opposition party, and is trying to displace John Howard’s Liberal/National coalition, so the Liberal/Nationals are wayyy down on the ticket. Though not quite at the bottom.

European readers will be surprised that the “Christian Democrats” are a very small minority party, almost fringe. The emphasis is on the “Christian” bit, these are God-Botherers, but quite nice people despite that. As for the “Australian Democrats”, since their leader joined the ALP, and her replacement was caught on camera drunkenly assaulting someone in parliament, they’ve moved from “third force” to “minority” status, with their base emigrating wholesale to the Greens.

The way the system works is that the candidate with the lowest number of primary votes ( “1” s) gets excluded, and their votes re-counted, allocating them to whoever was no 2 on those ballots, etc etc. In this election, the process continues until only 6 candidates remain - those are then the 6 senators for NSW.

In addition, there’s a ballot paper for the House of Representatives, different for each electorate. In this case, the counting continues until only one remains, there’s only one representative for each electorate.

In all cases, the real fun in voting is who to put LAST. In practice, all that really matters is the order in which you put the Greens, Labor, and Liberals, no-one else in NSW has a reasonable chance of getting elected. But it’s the principle of the thing.

There is no election for a “Prime Minister” as such: as in the UK, the party with the most votes in the lower house gets to chose whoever they want.

Are you confused yet?

Now for the other, and more important election. The one in Afghanistan. I have no idea what electoral system they use. I have no idea who the candidates are, nor indeed, the exact difference between the “Islamic Unity Party of Afghanistan” or the “Islamic Unity Party of the People of Afghanistan”. There are 63 political parties in Afghanistan, by the way.

The overwhelmingly important thing is that elections are being held at all, and that women are being allowed to vote. Will the elections be “free and fair”? Given the level of violence and intimidation, “reasonably” free and “reasonably” fair is the best that can be expected, for now. But the same can be said for nearly every country west of Pakistan (a military dictatorship) and east of Israel (a true democracy).

There’s an important point Bush needs to drive home tonight, and it’s a point he seems comfortable making in its broad outlines, but has to really underline. Here’s what I’d like to hear:

You know, I’ve been listening in this campaign to Senator Kerry talk about foreign policy, domestic policy. And it’s clear that we have some fundamental differences in philosophy. But leadership matters too. You can’t tell people you’re going to get things done better if you can’t lead.

Dick Cheney and I know a few things about leadership. I’ve been the president through some tough times, I’ve been a governor, I’ve run companies, run a baseball team. Dick Cheney’s been Vice President, he was Secretary of Defense during the first Gulf War and Panama, White House Chief of Staff, CEO of a big company. He was elected to a leadership position in Congress when he’d only been there two years. And in the last four years, we’ve gotten an awful lot done - kept our promises to cut taxes, reform education, pass a Medicare prescription drug bill, lead coalitions in two wars.

When have Senator Kerry and Senator Edwards ever been leaders like that? They’ve never been executives, never been governors or run a significant business. Their own Senate Democrat colleagues have never elected either one of them to a leadership position, not even trusted them to chair an important committee. They’ve never led the fight on a major piece of legislation. How are they gonna work with Republicans in Congress?

I’ve worked with allies around the world. I’ve worked with Democrats in Texas and in Congress. I know how to get enough people on board to get the job done. That’s a proven record of leadership. Where’s Senator Kerry’s record? Where’s Senator Edwards’ record? Where’s the leadership? When have they ever put people together to follow them anywhere?

You’ll hear me talk tonight about my record. Like I said, I’ve got a record I’m proud of. I’ve been in Washington four years, and I’ve gotten a lot done. Senator Kerry’s been in Washington twenty years, and he hasn’t done a thing worth talking about. Any time he talks about an issue tonight, just ask yourself: where’s the record? When has anything ever happened in Washington because John Kerry made it happen?

It’s easy enough to criticize. My opponent looks at the wars we’ve had to fight and says, not enough troops, too many American troops, too many Afghan troops, too much money, not spending enough money to get the job done, not a big enough coalition. He says the coalition should be more like in 1991, but he voted against that war too, said it could still be bigger. Well, the president doesn’t have the luxury to wait and see what happens and say, “too little,” or “too much.” The president has to lead. I’ve led, and you can judge me by my record. My opponent can’t say the same.

There’s a common thread throughout Bush’s career, from his admittedly checkered business career, to his days as Texas Governor, to his presidential candidacy, to his domestic policy and his conduct of foreign affairs. Bush’s expertise is in finding out how many people he needs on board to get a particular job done, and putting together a coalition that will do the job. He has a practical politician’s understanding that you need to make concessions to win allies on any issue, so you don’t bring along more than you need. And sometimes, you sacrifice some long-term good will to do it, from inflaming Jim Jeffords during the tax cut flap in 2001 to enlisting allies in Iraq (namely, Spain’s Aznar government) who couldn’t survive the poilitical pressures caused by going along. But in each case, Bush got what he needed.

Kerry’s record couldn’t be more opposite. Kerry’s done nothing with respect to our allies this whole campaign - both the Iraqi allies and the countries that have sent troops - but scorn and insult them. There’s a reason his Senate Democrat colleagues have never followed him anywhere, let alone cobbling together enough help from Senate Republicans to pass a bill. There’s a reason the great majority of Kerry’s peers in Vietnam, as well as the guy who spent the most time in his command on his boat, are willing to drop everything to run around the country opposing him. There’s a reason almost nobody can find close Kerry friends among his peers anywhere he’s been. Even Kerry’s finest hours in the Senate were either lone-wolf investigations or tasks like the POW issue that nobody else wanted to get involved in. Kerry’s not a coalition-builder, not a leader, not a guy who gets things done. And Bush, who is all those things, needs to point that out.

Since the Duelfer report has now definitively revealed that Saddam had no stockpiles of WMDs, I thought it was worth pointing out just SOME of the many reasons why taking out Saddam was the right thing to do.

1) Saddam was one of the world’s foremost sponsors of terrorism. Without question, Iraq was a nation that provided “safe haven” for terrorists with “global reach”. Among them were terrormaster Abu Nidal, Abdul Rahman Yasin, one of the conspirators in the 1993 WTC bombing, “Khala Khadr al-Salahat, the man who reputedly made the bomb for the Libyans that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over…Scotland,”Abu Abbas, mastermind of the October 1985 Achille Lauro hijacking and murder of Leon Klinghoffer,” & “Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, formerly the director of an al Qaeda training base in Afghanistan” who is now believed to be leading Al-Qaeda’s forces in Iraq. Quite frankly, any war on terrorism that didn’t tackle that nest of vipers would have been a war in name only.

2) As George Bush has said many times, the war on terrorism CANNOT BE WON without stopping rogue nations from supporting terrorist groups. Since we had more than a decade of experience that showed it was impossible to reason with Saddam, it was clear that war was the only way to stop him from supporting terrorists. In other words, as long as Saddam Hussein remained in power, the war on terrorism would have been unwinnable.

3) As Vladimir Putin revealed, Russian intelligence believed Saddam was planning terrorist attacks inside the US,

“I can confirm that after the events of September 11, 2001, and up to the military operation in Iraq, Russian special services and Russian intelligence several times received…information that official organs of Saddam’s regime were preparing terrorist acts on the territory of the United States and beyond its borders, at U.S. military and civilian locations.”

Because George Bush acted, we may have been spared Iraqi terrorist attacks here in the United States.

4) One of the likely reasons that we’ve seen such a decrease in Palestinian terrorist attacks in Israel is because Saddam is no longer around to pay the families of suicide bombers $25,000 per homicide bombing. How many buses and pizza parlors full of Israeli women and children would have been blown into chunks by now if John Kerry had his way and Saddam were left in power?

5) While Iraq has not been implicated in the 9/11 attacks, Iraq has had ties to Al-Qaeda for more than a decade. The evidence of this is irrefutable and the people who are denying it are doing so for political purposes. Here are just a couple of quotes that prove what I’m saying…

“(Abu Musab al) Zarqawi was said to have received medical treatment in Baghdad in May and June of 2002 after being wounded in Afghanistan during the war. His leg was amputated, U.S. officials say, by a surgeon in Iraq. Before the war, Secretary of State Colin Powell pointed to Zarqawi’s al Qaeda-affiliated group that he said was operating inside Baghdad, as evidence of ties between al Qaeda and Iraq.” — Today, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, who was in Iraq before the war began, is leading terrorist attacks against the Coalition and Iraqi people.

“Credible reporting states that al Qaeda leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire WMD capabilities. The reporting also stated that Iraq has provided training to al Qaeda members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs.” — CIA Director George Tenet in a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee on October 7, 2002

6) Because we’re fighting in the Middle-East, terrorists who might otherwise be coming to America to kill civilians are coming into Iraq to fight our troops. George Bush prefers it that way. He’d rather have the best trained soldiers ever to walk the planet fighting the terrorists in Iraq rather than here at home. If John Kerry had his way, we might have civilians being attacked by those same terrorists in the streets of New York, LA, or Chicago. Which makes more sense; soldiers fighting the terrorists in Iraq or civilians being attacked by them here in the US?

7) Even though the Deulfer report has revealed there were no stockpiles of WMD in Iraq, it also says that they were waiting for an opportunity to produce them,

“ISG has no evidence that IIS Directorate of Criminology (M16) scientists were producing CW or BW agents in these laboratories. However, sources indicate that M16 was planning to produce several CW agents including sulfur mustard, nitrogen mustard, and Sarin.”

What the Deulfer report is saying echoes what the man Deulfer replaced, David Kay, said earlier,

“Even those senior officials we have interviewed who claim no direct knowledge of any on-going prohibited activities readily acknowledge that Saddam intended to resume these programs whenever the external restrictions were removed.”

Weren’t we better off taking Saddam out when he didn’t have WMDs than waiting until he did have them in stock?

8) Iraq was not completely free of WMDs. “10 or 12 sarin and mustard gas shells” have been found. Furthermore, it’s of course possible that there are more we haven’t found yet. There was also plenty of radioactive material Saddam could have given to terrorists to make a dirty bomb. So did Saddam Hussein have the capability of giving WMDs to terrorists? Yes, he did. Apparently, John Kerry has no problem with that.

9) Because we invaded Iraq, nations like Iran and North Korea cannot blithely disregard the idea that we will attack them and they’ll be much more likely to make a deal with us, just as Libya did. As Mark Steyn said,

“You don’t invade Iraq in order to invade everywhere else, you invade Iraq so you don’t have to invade everywhere else.”

10) Obviously Saddam had such poor judgement that it was dangerous to allow him to stay in power. Just look at this quote…

“It would be naive to the point of grave danger not to believe that, left to his own devices, Saddam Hussein will provoke, misjudge, or stumble into a future, more dangerous confrontation with the civilized world….He has supported and harbored terrorist groups, particularly radical Palestinian groups such as Abu Nidal, and he has given money to families of suicide murderers in Israel. …We should not go to war because these things are in his past, but we should be prepared to go to war because of what they tell us about the future.”

You know who said that back on 10/09/02? John Kerry. He was right the first time.

11) By taking out Saddam Hussein, we freed more than 25 million Iraqis and are helping them towards Democracy. This is no small thing given that Democrats justified military intervention in places like Bosnia and Haiti SOLELY on humanitarian grounds.

Conclusion: Would America be safer if a madman like Saddam Hussein were still around? John Kerry thinks so and that’s one of the many reasons that he would make a poor Commander and Chief.

Let’s say it’s 2002 and France is eager to install a democratically-elected, pro-Western government in Iraq but the U.S. is opposed.

How would France have achieved its objective?

(Since this is a “what if,” saying that France would not have wanted to do that is not a proper response. If it makes it easier, you are permitted to assume that the bribes to France had stopped and they wanted to keep the money flowing or similar. Concentrate on what comes before the invasion - if any - instead of concentrating on how the after-invasion would have been handled.)

“Unlike Cheney, Edwards is not spending today explaining any falsehoods.” - Boston Globe

“Now, in my capacity as vice president, I am the president of Senate, the presiding officer. I’m up in the Senate most Tuesdays when they’re in session.” - Dick Cheney

Kos has a list of all the presiding officer of the Senate on every Tuesday since 2001. Guess what? John Edwards has been acting president of the Senate at least as many times (twice) as Dick Cheney.

“His hometown paper has taken to calling him ‘Senator Gone.’” - Cheney

Um…no… According to the Raleigh News & Observer, the dig was in an editorial in a little paper called The Pilot.

The Pilot never itself called Edwards “Senator Gone.” Specifically, the editorial said the senator “is becoming known as ‘Senator Gone’”

“I don’t think it was at all accurate to say we have ‘taken to calling’ the senator anything,” Bouser said. “Remember, this was a one-time reference in an editorial that appeared 15 months ago.”

Not only that, but most of the editorials in the paper are critical of George Bush and in support of John Edwards.

“I have not suggested there’s a connection between Iraq and 9/11, but there’s clearly an established Iraqi track record with terror. And the point is that that’s the place where you’re most likely to see the terrorist come together with weapons of mass destruction, the deadly technologies that Saddam Hussein had developed and used over the years.” - Cheney

It has everything. A denial that they ever said there was a connection between Iraq and 9/11. The assertion that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction that were likely to fall into the hands of terrorists. The incredible blindness to the fact that before we invaded Iraq, there may have been one or two al-Qaeda leaders in Baghdad, but now it is a rallying point for terrorist recruitment and a big, fat mess. And, as Newsweek points out, “a brand-new version of the events that led to war.”

I’m not even counting all the other listed fibs or all the other mischaracterizations of the Kerry/Edwards record at FactCheck.org or SpinSanity.org.

I must retract my earlier opinion that the Vice Presidential debate was a win for Cheney. While it is true both men stretched the facts to meet their agendas, Cheney is the one that’s having to explain himself, not Edwards. The aftermath of Dick Cheney’s “dot COM” and “Who the hell are you?” gaffes has made it easy for Bush opponents to press home credibility gap charges regarding Iraq. It set up an easy-to-understand rallying point at fact-checking sites and tossed a softball to The Daily Show (which, let’s be honest, is where a ton of people get their political news).

In the end, I think Dick Cheney’s debate performance actually hurt George Bush more than it helped him.

“When it was popular to be a Massachusetts liberal, (John Kerry’s) voting record was that. When it was popular to be for the Iraq war, he was for it. Now it’s popular to be against it, and he’s against it.” — Jay Carson, a Dean campaign spokesman

“(F)irst, they voted to commit the troops, to send them to war, John Edwards and John Kerry, then they came back and when the question was whether or not you provide them with the resources they needed — body armor, spare parts, ammunition — they voted against it. I couldn’t figure out why that happened initially. And then I looked and figured out that what was happening was Howard Dean was making major progress in the Democratic primaries, running away with the primaries based on an anti-war record. So they, in effect, decided they would cast an anti-war vote and they voted against the troops. Now if they couldn’t stand up to the pressures that Howard Dean represented, how can we expect them to stand up to Al Qaida?” — Dick Cheney

John Kerry’s waffling on the war on terrorism is almost entirely based on politics. Quite frankly, that should scare the living hell out of anybody who cares about the safety and security of the American people. In an age when a failure in the war on terrorism may literally lead to nuclear bombs going off in American cities, can we afford to have a man in office whose first consideration is politics, not protecting our country?

If John Kerry had been in office after 9/11, would he have had the guts to pass the Patriot Act over the objections of his base? Would he have allowed John Ashcroft to go after illegal aliens from terrorist sponsoring countries? Vladimir Putin said that,

“I can confirm that after the events of September 11, 2001, and up to the military operation in Iraq, Russian special services and Russian intelligence several times received…information that official organs of Saddam’s regime were preparing terrorist acts on the territory of the United States and beyond its borders, at U.S. military and civilian locations.”

If Kerry had been President, if he had been the one to receive Putin’s warning, would he have been willing to take action or would he have risked another 9/11 rather than make his base angry and fail the “global test”? If John Kerry had been our President instead of George Bush over these last four years, is it not entirely possible that we might have been hit again and again by terrorists while John Kerry made decisions that left us vulnerable to attack simply because he thought they were political winners?

You’re not supposed to point this sort of thing out, even though it’s obvious, because it upsets Democrats. But, everybody — even his own supporters — knows that John Kerry is letting politics dictate his position on Iraq and the rest of the war on terrorism. If John Kerry came to the conclusion that being pro-war in Iraq gave him a better chance of being elected, his position would change, just like that — and it has many times. That’s why John Kerry has earned his well deserved reputation as a flip-flopper. Whichever way the polls move, his position soon follows.

Then there’s George Bush who has shown time and time again that he’s willing to do what he thinks is right in order to stop another 9/11 from happening, whether it’s popular or not. That’s quite a shift from John Kerry who has shown time and time again that he’s willing to radically change where he stands on national security to reflect what he thinks is the popular opinion of the moment.

Now think back to great American war leaders like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan. Were they dovish flip-floppers who based their decisions around telling people what they wanted to hear or men who made decisions and tried to lead people towards what they believed was the right direction?

In perilous times, you need a man in the White House who has the guts to hang in there and do the right thing, not a politician who makes life or death decisions based on nothing more than which way the political winds are blowing. That’s why John Kerry would be the wrong man for the job of Commander and Chief.

Fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers had a combined total of 63 separate drivers licenses issued by Virginia, Florida and New Jersey.

Bearing that in mind, Nanci Pelosi, the ACLU, and others want to gut the House 9/11 Bill of some of its most vital provisions:

Please take action now. You can quickly send free FAXes about this bill at numbersusa.com/fax.

There’s more on how the hijackers obtained driver’s licenses here, and see Their Money or Your Safety for more information on those Mexican ID cards that the FBI and the DOJ call a security threat. Chapter 3 of the 9/11 Commission Staff Report provided example after example of how past terrorists have gamed our immigration system.

But, most importantly, please send a FAX today.

I did it. I boldly went where no man in a reclining chair with a playoff baseball game on the other channel has gone before. I watched the entire Vice Presidential debate. I am, as the French say, Le Dumbass.

After sitting through 17 hours of a watered-down version of “Meet the Press,” I came away more tired than informed. At least on style, I also felt like Cheney kicked Edwards’ butt. He was calm, articulate, and knew when to shut the hell up. I give him high marks for not backing down on his disagreement with the President over gay marriage. Edwards was a yappy little pup to Cheney’s old bulldog.

Unfortunately, that’s all anyone will see, because few people will bother checking out anything either one of them said. If the rhetoric sounds good and reinforces my pre-held opinion, then by gum why do I need to let pesky facts get in the way?

All one needs to do is take the Vice President’s advice and go to FactCheck.org (Not dot COM! As one of my blog readers said, “I hope he doesn’t tell people to go to whitehouse dot com…”) or Spinsanity or even Snopes. There, you will find a lovely list of poo that both monkey armies have been flinging at each other. And the cage is getting messy.

Cheney made the ludicrous (and false) point that he’d never met John Edwards. He continued the Republican distortion of John Kerry’s position on Iraq.

Edwards twisted the facts in the Halliburton case into a mangled ball of confusion. He also made the false assertion that the Administration tried to cut military pay.

I’m pretty sure that anyone watching the debate will think their guy won (except me, ‘cuz I’m a pessimist). But anyone listening to it and digging deeper will come up empty. It was a typical, political show designed to keep us reminded of each side’s themes for Friday night. I don’t know that anyone expected anything different.

In the long run, a Vice Presidential debate is pretty meaningless. Who remembers anything from any of them over the last 200 years (besides the Lloyd Bentsen “you’re no Jack Kennedy” spanking of Dan Quayle)? Unless they’re a political junkie or a VP history nut, nobody cares. But in the short term, this debate has already had more impact on my life than any other. I missed an opportunity to watch the Yankees lose. Damn it.

“Cicero,” like Jeff Jarvis, Armed Liberal, and many other centrist bloggers these days, isn’t undecided - he’s unhappy. So he tries on Michael Totten’s approach and attempts to convince himself that while he favours Bush, electing Kerry would finally force the Democrats to face reality:

“I want to see some political credibility build on both sides of the aisle, or in absence of that, a serious reality set in. We won’t hear a President Kerry babble on about Vietnam in the midst of this unfolding war, because it’s nothing like Vietnam — it never was, and never will be. His Vietnam experience will offer little guidance when, for example, he’s playing the shell game with the Iranians, waiting for the nuclear nut to reveal itself, with the free world as the stakes. Kerry as president will finally bury Vietnam. Good riddance.”

In response, I get a vision of Owen Wilson’s character in Shanghai Knights. Cornered and in deep trouble, with only one difficult means of escape, he looks incredulously over at Jackie Chan and says:

“What in our history together makes you think I’m capable of something like that?”

Is he? Are they? What does the evidence suggest? Is the reform of the U.S. Democratic Party a pipe dream? Are there comparable historical examples that might illuminate this discussion?

Read the Rest…

Shiba Pillai-Diaz, a middle school teacher in New Brunswick, New Jersey walked out of her class after being instructed by her supervisors to remove a picture of the President of the United States
from her classroom or be fired.

In a country where there’s a lot of people who couldn’t tell you who the President or the Vice President are this is ridiculous.

From the Home New Tribune

Though she says he has not resigned, the teacher’s situation at Crossroads Middle School South is not yet resolved.

Shiba Pillai-Diaz’s walkout involved the local police, left school officials mum and appalled the local Republican Party.

Pillai-Diaz, 33, a volunteer with the Bush campaign and an English teacher, has had a publicity picture of the First Couple hanging in her classroom since the start of the school year, she said.

The photo became an issue last week.

…

“Students said, ‘You like George Bush? He’s killed people,’ ” Pillai-Diaz said. “As a rule I don’t talk about my politics in the classroom.”

…

Thursday, at back-to-school night, the controversy exploded after a parent asked why the picture was up, Pillai-Diaz said.

“The way she asked was a political assault,” the teacher said.

Then the parents started their own debate about the picture, and one mother stormed out of the classroom, Pillai-Diaz said.

Friday morning, the teacher, who is in her sixth year of teaching and her first in South Brunswick, was called into the assistant principal’s office. Daniels told her to remove the picture, Pillai-Diaz said.

“He said, ‘If you care about your job, you’ll take the picture down,’ ” she said.

Pillai-Diaz told the assistant principal to take the picture down himself. Then she sought Principal Jim Warfel, who gave her an upbraiding.

“He said, ‘You’ve caused more disruption, hatred and anger than anyone I’ve ever known,’ ” she said.

The teacher said the principal told her to “get out,” so she left and headed to the South Brunswick Police Department.

An officer accompanied Pillai-Diaz back to the school because she said she feared for her safety when she went to collect her belongings, police said.

Once Pillai-Diaz felt safe at the school the officer left, police said.

In the school, Pillai-Diaz had a two-hour meeting with Superintendent Gary McCartney and a representative from the teachers’ union. Both parties told the teacher she would lose any fight she would try to start about the picture, Pillai-Diaz said.

I don’t see where the problem is with a picture of the current President being displayed. One day soon I’m afraid we will see certain groups asking that Presidents be removed from textbooks because they may offend some students. Should Harry S. Truman be removed from textbooks because his decision to use the bomb in World War 2 may offend some students of Japanese decent? Should Ronald Reagan be removed from all references because he was a Republican and may offend a high school student that may have Democratic beliefs?

I personally would be offended if in the 1990’s a Republican asked that an image of Bill Clinton be removed from classrooms because it is “furthering an agenda” rather than informing students of who the current leader is.

There is nothing in the story above that shows the teacher was pushing the presidents, or her own, agenda on the students. It was displayed next to the Declaration of Independence and the constitution.

When are people going to become annoyed enough at all the blatant political correctness and partisan bickering to realize that education of students is more important than whining about something?

Update:
Pete over at Encyclopeteia has pointed me to press release by Gary P. McCartney, Superintendent of Schools for the South Brunswick School District. It can be found here (PDF file). I have reproduced it below in its entirety.

October 3, 2004

In an incident that has recently been reported to several media sources, a claim has been made by South Brunswick Middle School teacher Shiba Pillai-Diaz, that she was fired for not removing a picture of President George W. Bush from a classroom bulletin board. The claim is false. While I am normally reluctant to discuss personnel matters in public, Ms. Pillai-Diaz’ distortions of the facts, along with her aggressive efforts to get herself national media attention, leave us no choice but to set the record straight.

The facts are as follows:

Ms. Pillai-Diaz is a new Language Arts teacher in the South Brunswick Schools. Recently, the school administration began receiving complaints from students and parents that Ms. Pillai-Diaz was using her position, classroom and teaching time to engage in partisan politics. Students reported that she had made statements which denigrated one party over the other. The conversations included Ms. Pillai-Diaz telling some students who offered opinions contrary to her statements, that she was “glad they were not old enough to vote.” Other comments to students, including such statements as, “you should be ashamed to be a Democrat” have been verified through student interviews.

A classroom bulletin board, normally intended for curriculum-related matters, was set up as what she herself described as a “personal bulletin board.” On the bulletin board she placed a picture of the President, the President’s dog, the Oval Office and several other Presidential artifacts. In addition, she placed a stuffed elephant on a classroom cabinet, which generated student reaction and discussion about partisan politics. Following receipt of complaints from parents, the Assistant Principal met with Ms. Pillai-Diaz and cautioned her not to engage in partisan political discussions in her Language Arts classes. He did not initially ask her to remove the picture of the President. As the issue grew in intensity, the teacher herself chose to remove the stuffed elephant because of student
comments.

In the ensuing days, parents expressed increasing concern about the teacher’s classroom behavior, the misuse of classroom instructional time and the personal bulletin board. The level of concern resulted in a classroom confrontation between some parents and Ms. Pillia-Diaz at the Back-to-School night program. It was at this point that the school administration decided to intervene again.

On Friday morning, October 1, Ms. Pillai-Diaz was directed by the Assistant Principal to remove bulletin board materials because they were being viewed as contributing to an ongoing disruption of the teaching-learning environment. She refused. She then met with the Principal who repeated the directive. At this point, Ms. Pillai-Diaz abruptly left the building, abandoning her post of duty and her classroom responsibilities.

At no time was she told to leave, asked to leave or given authorization to leave. School was still in session. At no time was she told she was suspended or fired. With professional responsibilities of a classroom teacher waiting, Ms. Pillai-Diaz chose, of her own volition, to walk out of the school, contact various media sources and claim she had been fired. I had occasion to meet with Ms. Pillai-Diaz, along with a union representative and a police escort that she had requested, for approximately two hours when she returned to the building later that same afternoon. After listening to her story, I asked if any member of the administration had used the phrase “you’re fired” or anything that remotely sounded like it. She admitted that no one had used any such language. When I further pursued why she reported to media sources that she had been fired, she said that she “thought” that she had been. I explained that principals cannot fire employees, that only Boards of Education can do so. With her union representative present, she said that she now understood. I asked that when she next spoke with the media, that she clarify her new understanding.

I fully support the actions of the Principal and Assistant Principal. It is never acceptable for a teacher to utilize the classroom to advocate for political purposes or advance personal beliefs. The courts have always admonished teachers for proselytizing in public school classrooms. This issue is not about a picture of the President, but rather a zealous misuse of seventh and eighth grade student instructional time. The South Brunswick School community is enormously respectful of the Office of the President of the United States, President Bush and the democratic process for choosing our
President. Anyone trying to suggest the contrary has the worst of intentions. Under other circumstances, the display of a picture of the President would have been viewed as completely appropriate and uncontroversial.

It is important to note that pictures of President Bush are openly displayed in all of the South Brunswick Schools. The teacher’s own actions here, however, took it out of the realm of education and made the presentation appear partisan to many of our students and parents. Under these circumstances, our actions in directing the removal of the display were singularly appropriate.

Gary P. McCartney Ed D.
Superintendent of Schools
South Brunswick School District

With this latest salvo from the school district it’s confusing as to who to believe. It is also brought to the readers attention that in the original article the whole district is controlled by a Democratic majority and the Democrats in the district outweigh the Republicans by a 3-2 margin. Also educational institutions are, in general, usually liberal slanted. I’m not saying that plays into the Superintendents position or not, just mentioning it as a valid concern with regards to the subject at hand.

Update 2

WABC in New York has picked up on the story and done an article and news report on it. The article has a link to the video news story. From the article:

Rita Bianco, Parent: “Children should know their president and their first lady!”

Parents expressing outrage after a teacher is kicked out of her public school for hanging a picture of President Bush next to pictures of other presidents in her classroom.
…
Paula Sjolund, Parent: “She didn’t do anything wrong, and I think that it should have stayed up there.”
…
Shiba Pillai-Diaz, Teacher: “There was no political intent, nor was there any political content in that photograph nor on the bulletin board.”
School officials would not talk on camera but insist nobody here has been fired. To that, Ms. Pillai-Diaz asks what does it mean then when your boss asks you to hand over the keys and kicks you out of the building? She also says she is not sure if she’ll be returning to school tomorrow.

Update 3

This story was picked up and posted on The Drudge Report

The Story also was been picked up by Bill O’Reilly on The O’Reilly Factor. Tonight he interviewed the teacher, Shiba Pillai-Diaz. One little factoid that came out in the interview is that she is not a member of the teachers union because she had just moved jobs.

Update 4 (Oct 5 12:25AM PST)

There are several more developments in the story. According to the Home News Tribune, Shiba Pillai-Diaz has hired an attorney in the case. Not a bad move in my opinion seeing as though she has the full force of the Board of Education against her.

She explained she changed her mind about returning to the classroom because of the prejudicial nature of McCartney’s version of events. “I don’t how I can go to that school again after he distorted everything and sent (the letter) to all the teachers,”

Interviewed yesterday, McCartney said if Pillai-Diaz stopped making political statements he would allow her to return to the classroom and even return the picture to the bulletin board, telling her, “I encourage you to do so.”

The letter she refers to is the press release from Mr. McCartney that is reproduced above.

She said yesterday the principal told her to “get out,” which she interpreted as being fired. “When the principal says get your stuff and get out — what would you think?” she said.
…
McCartney described her leaving the building as “abandoning her post of duty and her classroom responsibilities. At no time was she told she was suspended or fired.”

Read the rest of the article and you will see that Mr. McCartney comes off as real arrogant and a man who made a mistake, but is unwilling to admit to it. From the above statement of “get your stuff and get out” I would figure I was relieved of service as well.

The New York Post is also on the story. The post reports that school officials now want to compromise by letting her hang the picture.

“How can I go back to work and have a normal environment when they distributed this false press release about me?” the 33-year-old mother-of-one asked.

“They’re trying to take attention away from the real issue — that they tried to make me take down the picture.”
…
N.J. Sen. John Corzine, who is a Democrat, told WABC Radio he would help her if she contacted his office. “If it’s just a straight-up picture of George Bush and Laura, then I don’t understand the issue at all,” he said.

Update 5 (Oct 7 8:16AM PST)

There’s a few little tidbits more in this ongoing story. First we have an update from the local paper and then I have a press release from the teacher that ws sent to me by one of my readers, Brian F. Curley Esq. Thanks Brian.

Home New Tribune Oct.6

Pillai-Diaz, her attorney and Superintendent Gary McCartney were in a conference until last evening. McCartney said nothing had been resolved and would not comment further.

Pillai-Diaz did not return numerous calls for comment yesterday.

Principal Jim Warfel met with Pillai-Diaz’s pupils yesterday to answer their questions about the incident, said parent Michelle Donahue, whose daughter is in Pillai-Diaz’s class.

Donahue sent a letter to the board saying she would not permit her daughter in the classroom if Pillai-Diaz continues to teach.

“These kids are old enough to know what’s going on,” Donahue said. “This is not a good environment for them to be in.”
…

Pillai-Diaz joined the district this year as a language arts teacher. She had previously taught in Brooklyn and Tenafly. She is a graduate of Cornell University and has five years teaching experience.

According to Terry Collins, director of personnel with the Tenafly district, Pillai-Diaz worked as a long-term substitute last year.

“She was hired as a substitute for a teacher that was on maternity leave, and her assignment ended in June,” Collins said. “She was fine, we never had any problems.”

Below is the press release in it’s entirety.

PRESS RELEASE

October 7, 2004

Statement of Shiba Pillai-Diaz In Reply to the Press Release Issued By
The South Brunswick School District

The root of this matter is the misguided and unfortunate demand by Middle School Principal, James Warfel last Friday that I leave the school building due to my refusal to remove a portrait of President Bush and First Lady Laura Bush from a bulletin board in my classroom. The portrait of our President and First Lady was a small part of the bulletin board that also displayed a copy of the Declaration of Independence, a copy of the Constitution of the United States, copies of prints from Benjamin Franklin’s printing press, and other patriotic symbols including the White House. There was no political content or intent reflected in the bulletin board.

It has been missed that the bulletin board had been up since before the start of the school year in late August. It has also been missed that the school principal, James Warfel, was present in my classroom several times since the beginning of the school term and never expressed any problems or objections to the bulletin board. Moreover, Assistant Principal Mark Daniels specifically reviewed the bulletin board last week, and told me that displaying the Presidential Portrait was not a problem and stated, “It is fine, it is a part of our culture.”

After the matter generated some press coverage over the weekend, Superintendent McCartney chose to issue a press release that accused me of “zealous misuse of seventh and eighth grade student instruction time” to “proselytize” my political beliefs. The press release issued by the Superintendent has only inflamed the situation.

I categorically deny that I ever engaged in any of the activities alleged in the Superintendent’s press release.

In fact, there is evidence that I refused to engage students in political discussions, which may have resulted in complaints from parents to school administrators that I was stifling discussion. On at least one confirmed occasion, I REFUSED TO ENGAGE a student who stated that the President was “killing people” in Iraq.

As a result of my policy of avoiding political discussion, I was specifically asked by Assistant Principal Daniels to allow political discussion in my classroom, to which I responded that I did not view that to be appropriate. The failure of the School District to disclose those facts in its press release speaks for itself.

The question that should be asked is why the School District chose to publicize supposed accusations by parents that should have been handled discreetly and confidentially between the School District administration and me. The School District was under an obligation to me not to disclose such matters publicly. Despite requests by my attorney to document the alleged parent and student complaints cited in the press release, the School District has steadfastly refused to provide any proof whatsoever of the allegations. Superintendent McCartney has responded that the alleged complaints were tendered in confidence and he will not provide proof of the allegations to the public or to me without a court order or legal action on my part.

Superintendent McCartney cannot have it both ways by asserting those purported complaints are confidential while making them the focus of his attack on my character and professional reputation. If he were truly concerned about not involving parents and students in the public forum, he should not have publicized the alleged statements in his press release.

Moreover, the Superintendent and the School District have been adamant in clarifying that I was not terminated on Friday, despite the alleged political “proselytizing” and purported “abandoning of her post.” The sheer fact that I was not and have not been terminated belies the strength of those allegations.

In the press release, Superintendent McCartney alleges events he was not witness to on Friday. In particular, the characterization that I voluntarily left my classroom and “abandoned [my] post” is not supported by the facts. On Friday morning, BEFORE my first scheduled class had even entered the classroom, I was asked by Assistant Principal Mark Daniels to come to his office. Despite his earlier review of the bulletin board and expression that there was no problem with the bulletin board and in particular the Presidential Portrait, Assistant Principal Daniels instructed me to remove the Presidential Portrait immediately. When I refused, the discussion moved to the office of Principal Warfel, which culminated in Principal Warfel demanding that I leave the building.

When I complied with the Principal’s directive to leave, THERE WERE NO STUDENTS IN MY CLASSROOM FOR WHOM I WAS RESPONSIBLE. It was incumbent upon Principal Warfel to cover my next assigned class before that class convened by arranging for a substitute teacher, or sitting in the classroom himself. At no time did I abandon my duties or leave children unattended as alleged.

Compounding the problem, the “facts” asserted by Superintendent McCartney have apparently been adopted in the press by, among others, Board of Education President Robert F. Long, who is attributed in press reports to have called McCartney’s press release a “clarity of the facts.” The rush by Mr. Long as the President of the Board of Education to take sides in the dispute without making any effort to independently investigate the truth, or even speak with me, should be a cause for further discussion. One might expect that the President of a School Board would make the effort to objectively evaluate the situation and get both sides of the matter before publicly passing judgment.

In addition to releasing his version of events to the media, Superintendent McCartney appears to have distributed his press release to teachers and staff at Crossroads South Middle School. If the press release was in fact distributed to teachers and staff, it is not clear why this was done.

It has also been reported that in the wake of the School District’s press release, at least one teacher has been soliciting parents to send emails to the Board of Education not to allow me to return. If that is occurring, it is not clear if that teacher is acting on her own, or at the direction of school officials.

It is indeed a sad day for our schools that displaying a photograph of the President and the First Lady produced this state of affairs. Whatever one may think of me or my political leanings, I do not deserve to be treated in this manner. No one does.

I have been on administrative leave at the direction of the Superintendent through today, and have been instructed to report to the Office of the Superintendent tomorrow morning at 8:30 for further direction.

Shiba Pillai-Diaz

Thanks once again to Brian for this press release.

Update 6 (Oct 7 11:00PM PST)

EdWonk over at The Education Wonks has an exclusive interview with the teacher Shiba Pillai-Diaz. As it is their exclusive I offer you nothing more than this tidbit.

… she is looking forward to being out of the limelight.

Head over to their site at the link above for the exclusive news from the interview.

This story originally published at: Diggers Realm.

As I watched the morning talk shows I became angrier and angrier. As a Boomer I am ashamed. Ashamed that my generation whines, pisses and moans when faced with defending ourselves from the threat of worldwide terrorism.

We ask “What’s in for us?” How about not being flown into a skyscraper for starters, or having your children murdered?

“Why us, why not them?” we implore. The fatwa is on our heads. We can argue how many angels dance on the head of the blame pin to no avail, for the answer is still the same; America is the target.

We should be greatful that the Brits and Aussies signed on at great risk to themselves, that other nations joined in the peackeeping, not belittle them or betray the Iraqis again by handing them over to the tryants, thieves and miscreants at the UN.

We cry “It’s too costly.” What will the cost be if we retreat? The implied costs to our economy post 9/11 may have been as high a half a trillion dollars and a million jobs.

One attack.

We toss away billions of dollars on instant gratification without a thought. We are awash in personal debt, how many credit cards in your wallet, have a second or third mortgage? We will spend an estimated $2.6 B for halloween this month. — HALLOWEEN — people. Yet whine about firehouses for Iraq?! We have been making lousy choices with our personal income and tax dollars for decades.

Now you’re worried?

We did nothing about terrorism or terrorist attacks for almost a decade after the first WTC attack, failed to secure our borders and ports, placated North Korea, squandered a Russian realignment, fought the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time in the Balkans, reduced the size of our standing military for theoretical strategies, and ham-strung our intelligence services with lawyerly caveats.

Now you’re worried?

Are you kidding me?

Yes, the task ahead of us daunting and expensive, but failure will be even more so, if it is even an option. Turning away will not resolve this issue for our future is bound up with those who seek to destroy our way of life. We must defeat the radical element and provide the means for a better way of life for the generations to follow or we will reap terror for generations.

The war on terror requires a long view, much as the Cold War and the space progam did in their time. John Kerry may fancy himself the new JFK, but Kerry has nothing in common with John F. Kennedy other than a monogram. For like Senator and Presidential candidate Walter Mondale, who sought to cancel the Apollo program, John Kerry fails the “vision test”.

“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”
—John Kennedy speaking at Rice University, 1962

Subsititute “moon” for “war on terror,” are we up to the challenge or not?

Our fathers saved the world from tryanny, rebuilt Europe, defeated Communism and went to the moon.

What will be our legacy?

Ladies and Gentlemen, Al-Qaeda’s number two leader Ayman al-Zawahiri: [via Allah, who obviously had the same thoughts on this as me]

Oh, young men of Islam, here is our message to you. If we are killed or captured, you should carry on the fight. Don’t betray God and His Prophet.

Don’t wait for the American, British, French, South Korean, Hungarian and Polish forces to enter Egypt, the Arabian Peninsula, Yemen and Algeria to start the resistance.

“We should start the resistance from now. The interests of the Americans, English, Australian, French, Polish, Norwegian, South Korean and Japanese are everywhere.

“All (these countries) participated in the occupation of Afghanistan or Iraq or Chechnya, or help Israel to survive.

I don’t have the full transcript of his speech, but you get the gist of it. al-Zawahiri likes the pre-emptive strike idea so much, that he’s using it for himself. His idea seems to be, “let’s destroy the infidels before they can ever hope to eradicate radical Islam and our evil, murderous ways.”

Wouldn’t it be a great thing if we caught - even killed - al-Zawahari before he could lead his band of thugs to make a pre-emptive strike on the U.S. or any of its allies or interests? On a terrorism level, it would be more important than capturing bin Laden. Zawahari is obviously leading the troops now. OBL is either dead or useless at this point. If we want to crush al Qaeda, we capture Zawahari.

Capturing OBL would be important on a more cosmetic level. He is the face of terrorism, the man behind 9/11, a desipicable force hated by millions. While he may not be at the controls now and capturing him would not stop any events already in the planning stages, it would certainly be a victory for the United States and all of its citizens to see the man responsible for the death of 3,000 innocent people be brought to justice. Or killed.

But would it? Would the capture of Zahawhari and/or bin Laden be cause for rejoice for everyone? I suppose that depends on when it happens.
Say it happened today. Or sometime within the next 20 days.

..Ross Baker, a political science professor at Rutgers University, said the administration risks a backlash.

“Producing a high-level al Qaeda leader would immediately invite suspicion about whether this person has been cooling his heels in a safe house some place,” Baker said.

On a possible OBL capture before the elections, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said:

“I think it would be outrageous, frankly, but you know, there’s those kind of rumors out there.”

It would be outrageous if bin Laden were captured now. Not outrageous as in righteous, man. Outrageous as in outrage.

And the possible future First Lady says:

“I wouldn’t be surprised if he appeared in the next month.”

I don’t need to spell out to you what she meant by that.

Go through any Democrat or leftist discussion board. They are terrified of a an “October Surpise” ruining the chances of their candidate. Terrified of bin Laden being captured. Imagine that.

Take this idiot for example:

“But a nuclear, biological, or chemical attack would be in Kerry’s favor. This is because Bush has failed to support initiatives against non-proliferation, something Kerry strongly supports.”

In Kerry’s favor? Is this how people are now judging the impact of a devastating attack on our country? How many people will be quietly saying “Yesssss!” if a biological attack occurs before the end of October? And don’t tell me none. Do not insult my intelligence. You only have to read around a bit to know how true it is. Kerry at any cost. No, correct that. Bush out of the White House at any cost. That’s how you explain the above idiocy spoken by that young college student.

If, in the next two weeks, bin Laden was caught, Zawahiri killed and every insurgent in Iraq laid down their arms and declared their insurgency over, there would be a million tongues wagging the tale of the October Surprise, all mastered by that evil genius, Karl Rove.

In Zawahiri we have a man who just issued a fatwa upon us. Yet capturing him would be seen as a bad thing to some people. Think about that. There are actually people worried right now that Zawahiri or OBL will be captured before November 2nd. While this guy is planning attacks against us, there are people who are crossing their fingers that he doesn’t get caught because of what it will mean to “thier side.” Maybe people like Albright and Heinz-Kerry need to be reminded that in this case, we should all be on the same side.

If John Kerry himself were to march into Afghanistan right now, hunt down Zawahiri and kill him himself, I’d call him a hero. I still wouldn’t vote for him, but he would be a freaking hero to me. If Bush were to do the same, some people would be dismayed. They’d start yelling about plastic turkeys.

And that’s all the capture of these men in the coming weeks would be to the anti-Bush crowd; a plastic turkey served to the American people.

How very sad.

Cross-posted to my blog

In light of John Kerry’s puzzling insistence on a go-it-alone approach to North Korea in Thursday night’s debate, I thought I’d make a little list. Admittedly, I’m doing much of this from memory, but there seems to be a certain consistency . . .

1. The North Vietnamese, during the Vietnam War, compared Ho Chi Minh to George Washington, argued that their war was one of national liberation, accused US troops of regularly committing war crimes and atrocities, called on Nixon to end the war immediately, argued that the people of South Vietnam would be happy to accept communism, and generally argued that the US war in Vietnam was immoral from beginning to end. John Kerry, during the Vietnam War, compared Ho Chi Minh to George Washington, argued that the North’s war was one of national liberation, accused US troops of regularly committing war crimes and atrocities, called on Nixon to end the war immediately, argued that the people of South Vietnam would be happy to accept communism, and generally argued that the US war in Vietnam was immoral from beginning to end.

2. The Soviet Union and its allies denounced the US invasion of Grenada in 1983. John Kerry denounced the US invasion of Grenada in 1983.

3. The Soviets, in the 1980s, denounced Ronald Reagan as a warmonger and a threat to peace for deploying missiles in Western Europe. John Kerry, in the 1980s, denounced Ronald Reagan as a warmonger and a threat to peace for deploying missiles in Western Europe.

4. Daniel Ortega, in the 1980s, denounced US support for the Nicaraguan contras and argued that the US should have peace talks with his regime. John Kerry, in the 1980s, denounced US support for the Nicaraguan contras and argued that the US should have peace talks with Ortega’s regime.

5. Moammar Qaddafi argued that Reagan’s bombing of Libya was unjustified and caused excessive civilian casualties. John Kerry argued that Reagan’s bombing of Libya was unjustified and caused excessive civilian casualties.

6. Our adversaries during and since the Cold War have argued that we were reckless and irresponsible by pursuing missile defense. John Kerry has argued that we were reckless and irresponsible by pursuing missile defense.

7. Fidel Castro has, for decades, regularly denounced US sanctions against Cuba. John Kerry has, for decades, regularly denounced US sanctions against Cuba.

8. In 1991, Saddam Hussein wanted to draw out the process of the Western response in the hopes that it would bog down. John Kerry said we should have drawn out the process.

9. Yasser Arafat has denounced the security fence erected by Israel. John Kerry has denounced the security fence erected by Israel.

We can add four more from the debate alone:

10. In 2002-03, Saddam Hussein wanted to draw out the inspections process and make it more multilateral. John Kerry says we should have drawn out the inspections process and made it more multilateral.

11. Kim Jong-Il wanted to have bilateral talks rather than multilateral talks. John Kerry says we should have had bilateral talks rather than multilateral talks.

12. Osama bin Laden says we helped him by invading Iraq. John Kerry says we helped bin Laden by invading Iraq.

13. The Iranian mullahs oppose US sanctions against Iran, wish to enter into agreements with the US, and insist that there are plausible reasons why a poor but oil-rich country needs nuclear power. John Kerry opposes US sanctions against Iran, argues that we should enter into agreements with Iran, and insists that there are plausible reasons why a poor but oil-rich country needs nuclear power.

Does Kerry have company on some of these stances? Yes. Can he defend some by pointing to occasions (as with Israel and Cuba policy) where he’s since taken the opposite position? Yes. Is he actually an unpatriotic America-hater? Of course not. But remember: Time and time and time again, America’s enemies have argued against us - and Kerry has echoed their charges. I’d rather trust the national defense to someone who’s not so quick to echo the words and strategies of our enemies.

(A partial list of sources: Kerry’s stances on Grenada and Nicaragua, the first Gulf War, the Cold War and Grenada again, the security fence, the Cold War again, Libya, Nicaragua again, and Grenada again, and Cuba).

After accusations of allowing the UNRWA ambulances and resources to be used by terrorists to ferry gunmen and rockets throughout Gaza with impunity, UNRWA Commissioner Peter Hansen responded that it would be impossible for a rocket to be loaded into an ambulance with one hand and that it looked more like a portable stretcher.

It’s highly possible that both the Israelis and Peter Hansen may be right. The video that shows the equipment being loaded into the van, driven off, parked, unloaded, set up, launched, and then the van used to get away from the scene may be demonstrating a whole new technology developed by the Palestinians.

Behold, the Qassam Rocket-Powered Mobile Stretcher!

Palestinian Red Crescent partnerships with Magen David Adom require cooperation after terror attacks, but the roadblocks at Erez prevent scores of willing volunteers to pour into Tel Aviv, Sderot and Ashkelon after these attacks take place. Unwilling to be thwarted from lending a helping hand, Hamas and Islamic Jihad engineers have teamed with the UNRWA and ICRC to equip and train squads of Qassam Stretcher crews to launch these new rocket-powered mobile stretchers into Israel during terror attacks. First responders can now expect handy, ready-to-use foldable stretchers in the event of terror attacks.

Or so they thought. Their guidance systems are crude, and they tend to blow up on impact, but the Palestinians remain undaunted and are focusing on extending the range of these rocket-powered mobile stretchers to cover more of Israel. Once all of Israel is within range of these humanitarian supplies, they can work the bugs out of the guidance and explodes-on-impact-killing-more-children issues.

So three cheers for Peter Hansen and his UNRWA staff for hitting the blackboards and coming up with this new tool in the War On Terror! And shame on the Israelis for making snap judgements and assumptions about this mobile-stretcher launching technology meant to save lives instead of snuff them out.

As expected, misconstruing John Kerry’s remark from the 9/30 debate about a “Global Test” is the main GOP talking point. Here’s what Kerry said last night:

So, Kerry is saying that if we preemptively strike, we need to first make sure that we can justify our strike to the world.

Does that mean that Kerry would not preemptively strike if France were opposed to the strike? No, he says specifically that he would not.

He’s saying that we shouldn’t preemptively strike if we can’t prove that it was the right thing to do, and gives Colin Powell having to apologize for his speech as a counterexample.

Is that really so hard for Bush to understand? Shouldn’t we care about world opinion and our own credibility? Or, does Bush not care if America’s credibility around the world is reduced? Should America be known as the country that fibs?

Bush misrepresents Kerry’s point in today’s speech in Allentown, PA:

The president has many jobs, two of which are defending America and making sure that we look good around the world.

From March 19, 2004, here’s something that caring about America’s credibility could have prevented:

UPDATE: A related lesson could be learned from the NYT’s “How the White House Embraced Disputed Iraqi Arms Intelligence”:

Originally from AEBrain, the Blog.

Australians have recently been treated to the spectacle of Mark Latham and John Howard going at each other in a televised debate. And even more recently, Americans have had the same kind of viewing pleasure, watching John Kerry and George Bush having it out.

Mark Latham wants Australia to “concentrate on our region”, Iraq is a “distraction” from the War against Terror.

Meanwhile Kerry said (quoting General Shinseki), and I quote in return,

Invading Iraq in response to 9/11 would be like Franklin Roosevelt invading Mexico in response to Pearl Harbor

Actually, it’s more like Franklin Roosevelt invading Morocco in response to Pearl Harbor. Which, of course, he did in 1942 in the ‘Operation Torch’ landings, the first offensive action the Allies performed against the Axis. It was a Global War.

Even our enemies understand that. Here’s the latest-and-greatest from Al Qaeda, courtesy of the ABC :

Senior Al Qaeda official Ayman al-Zawahri, in a purported audio tape aired on Friday, urged Muslims to set up an organised resistance to hit the interests of “crusader America” and its allies throughout the world.

“We should not wait until US, British, French, Jewish, South Korean, Hungarian or Polish forces enter Egypt, the Arabian Peninsula, Yemen and Algeria before we resist,” said the voice on the audio tape aired by Al Jazeera television.

“Let us start resisting now. The interests of America, Britain, Australia, France, Poland, Norway, South Korea and Japan are spread everywhere.

“They all took part in the invasion of Afghanistan, Iraq or Chechnya or enabled Israel to survive.”
[…]
The man on the tape said Muslim youths should emulate insurgents in Iraq, where US forces are battling an uprising against the US-backed government, and also in Afghanistan, where guerrillas from the ousted Taliban regime are stepping up violence ahead of presidential elections next month.

The tape urged fighters to form a leadership to organise resistance around the Muslim world and told them to carry on even if al Qaeda leaders were killed or arrested.

Australia has interests globally. Iraq was always a major trading partner, even under Saddam we sold them millions of tonnes of wheat (though how much of that actually got to the Iraqi populace is doubtful). And although it’s not “All about Oil”, neither can we ignore the effect of Oil on the world (and hence Australia’s) economy.

To say that fighting Islamic terrorists on this (or any other) front is an irrelevancy is plainly innacurate. Or as we say in Oz, complete Bull. Even if we’d never gone in to Iraq as part of the Coalition, it would be in our interests to be there now, that’s the most active front there is. And the enemy’s hurtin’. People who’re winning don’t go around talking about post-mortem resistance even if their whole organisation’s destroyed.

Now nobody could ever accuse (as I’ve said elsewhere) Al Qaeda of being any great Sheikhs in the fact department. Neither Norway, nor Japan, nor any of the other nations on Al Qaeda’s Hit List^tm had anything to do with Chechnya, for example. And I think few sane people would argue that it’s likely for Hungarian military operations to include supping Ghoulash in the shadow of the Pyramids any time soon. But one thing’s quite clear : our most unforgiveable crime in their eyes is not to support Israel, it’s merely to “enable Israel to survive”. For that, they’ll strike us anywhere in the world, not just in our own local region.

Anyone who can’t see that suffers from Myopia of the worst sort. Latham and Kerry have political contacts, lots of them. But they need a new prescription.

My American friends may not take this very well, but… your candidates suck! Canadian politics is also renowned for its suckiness, but at least when we suck, we don’t take the whole world with us.

Watching the tail end of your Presidential debate was depressing beyond words.

I’m going to start with Iran, because, unbelievably after all this time, neither candidate addressed it - or even seems to know what to do about it.

Read The Rest…

It’s October 1st, people. Even though it’s just 32 days before the election, baseball is heavy on my mind. For some of us lucky fans, October is Baseball Month.

Was my president as triumphant as my baseball team? No, not at all. But neither was his opponent.

Neither one clinched the division with this one, although some Bush haters (who can be as rabid as Yankee haters) would have you think otherwise. Atrios, who I see as the Johnny Damon of the blogosphere (that would mean hated by everyone but his sycophant fans), had an open thread titled Goodbye George Edition. Goodbye? So very cocky. That’s like a Red Sox fan saying “Yankees suck, we’re gonna kick your ass!” while they’re still five games out of first.

I don’t see how the Kerry fans (or anti-Bush crowd, depending on your view) can call this a decisive, sweeping, grand, overwhelming, election grabbing win for their candidate. And let me make this statement here before I go any further:

Bush did not win the debate. But he did not lose, either. Stay with me.

Most people have called it a draw by now and I tend to agree. I can’t see eye to eye with the Bush voters who declared a victory any more than I can agree with the Kerry supporters that he rounded the bases and tagged home. If you want to insist Kerry hit a home run, then it was an inside-the-park job, one that let Kerry reach the plate only because the fielders were too slow to react. There’s a big difference between that and slamming a bat-cracker into the upper deck.

Here’s the thing about this debate - the important thing. It’s not going to change a single mind. Neither candidate will see a bounce in the polls. In fact, it’s a good bet that at the water cooler today people will be talking about the Yankees or The Apprentice, and if they are talking about the debate, the conversation will revolve around John Kerry’s tan or George Bush’s smirk.

It’s not that people don’t care about issues; they do. I just don’t think that anyone besides self-described pundits (self included) and the die hards of either candidate’s camp would bother to watch the whole thing. And if they are relying on the media to tell them who won, they’re going to come up with a tie.

That’s the great thing about baseball. No ties. There’s always a clear winner. Maybe they should have the media sit in the front row of the debate with scorecards (much like this one). Then we could know immediately how the debate was scored and, if there is a tie, we could force the opponents into a shoot out. Maybe throw them U.S. History questions in rapid succession. Or see who could balance a pencil on their nose the longest. It would certainly be more interesting than listening to things we’ve heard a thousand times before.

I’m going to concede something that will drive some of my readers crazy: I do not think John Kerry sucked. While I still don’t want him as my president, I’m not going to light myself on fire if he wins. Look at it this way: He’s still the Red Sox to me, and not the Mets. I could deal with the Sox winning the World Series some day. But if the Mets won, I would set myself on fire. Al Gore is the Mets in this analogy, by the way.

So maybe it wasn’t a draw, after all. Kerry needed to be Bernie Williams last night, to walk up to the podium and knock one the hell out of there. It wasn’t just a home run. It was the Yankees’ 100th win of the season. It clinched their seventh AL East title in a row and it was the teams’ 241st home run of the season, setting a franchise record. It was also their 61st comeback win of the season. And that’s what Kerry needed. An extraordinary win. The onus is always on the team who’s playing catch up and sometimes a win is not just enough. You need a decisive win to give you the momentum you so desire to carry you through the playoffs. I don’t think the champagne flowed in the Kerry clubhouse last night.

That’s not to say the Bush clubhouse was celebratory. They have to know they were lucky to get out of Miami with Kerry having scored a whimper rather than a bang.

Sometimes you just have to wait until the morning after to tally up your runs, hits and errors. You review the boxscore and think, well that wasn’t as bad as it seemed last night. Maybe that wasn’t an error after all. Maybe that ball I thought was foul was really fair. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Unlike baseball, the umps can change the calls in debates. The media can spin a play this way or that and a fan or player can go crazy from reading all the different takes. Sometimes, you just turn to your teammates and say, be honest, how did I do?

Well, it’s gotta suck when your manager is caught on tape saying that you kissed your sister. Some people will call a tie a loss for Kerry, a victory for Bush. I’m not sure about that. I think at tie is just that, a tie. The standings stay the same. Perhaps it was a moral victory for Kerry, in that he proved he could look presidential at times.

I don’t see how the Bush haters (not so much the Kerry fans, I’m talking about people that will go see a team that’s playing the Yankees just so they can yell Yankees Suck!) can be doing a victory dance. The champagne bottles have uncorked themselves over at Atrios’s place.

Kerry may have “won,” but it wasn’t decisive enough to be called anything more than a tie. Bush needs to shore up his defense and maybe work on his swing a bit before the next debate. And Kerry needs to practice going for the long ball. If he swings for the seats instead of the outfield the next time, the maybe his fans can start doing the Tomahawk chop.

No matter how you slice it, this series is going to be close. I’m hoping that Bush can smack a few long balls to put a little distance between himself and Kerry. It all comes down to which guy will be Mr. October. My money is still on my favorite team and I’ll be wearing the jersey and waving my team flag around until the fat lady sings. It’s still my impression -and my hope - that when that lady does sing, it will be a farewell song to Senator Kerry, but I’m a stalwart when it comes to these things.

This Monday Morning Quarterback is going to read the boxscore again. Sometimes, as I’m doing now, you can see the performance of your team in a different light by studying the card. I may not feel triumphant today, but I don’t feel like my team lost, either.

Carmel and I just managed to catch the Great Kerry vs Bush Debate on CNN’s Asian service a few minutes ago.

We found it most entertaining. By the third Kerry reference to Vietnam, we were bursting into gales of laughter whenever he did it, but that may mean we are just easily amused.

Carmel expressed shock when Kerry said that he’d never vowed to withdraw US troops within 6 months - as we’d both seen the video of him saying something very much like that on SBS news not that long ago. In Australia we’re probably even more cynical about politicians than Americans are, but me expect a higher standard to their mendacity.

But those were just minor pecadillos. Kerry won the debate, hands-down. Now that’s not to say he’s particularly wonderful at debating.
He’s not, at least, not from this performance. Any of the top 6 teams in the GPS (Greater Public School) Debating competition in Sydney, Australia would have him as, at best, a second reserve.

But in terms of a debate, he did all the right things, made all the right moves, moves which are as stylised and formalised as anything in Olympic diving or gymnastics. So many points for eye contact, so many points for gestures at the right time, so many points for inflection and expression. Not a perfect 10, or even a solid 8, but a pedestrian 7.5. Kerry’s performance was quite reasonable for a High School or College debate, though even I in my hayday could have made mincemeat of him - as could many people.

Bush’s, on the other hand, wasn’t. He didn’t behave like he was at a debate at all. He was comparatively inarticulate, halting at times, and confined his argument to only one main point : that whatever qualities he may have had, Kerry had shown himself to be incompetent to be a Commander-in-Chief. I got the impression he wasn’t trying to engage in the highly formalised verbal combat that is debate at all - though repetition of a main them can be very effective in the right hands. When Bush did it, by the fourth or fifth time it was starting to grate on my nerves. Still, my impression was that Bush wasn’t particularly interested in Kerry, nor Lehrer, nor even the studio audience. He was using this so-called “debate” as a tool to communicate with the American people, confident in the belief that if they heard what he had to say, and got to know him as a man, a President, and a leader, that he’d garner more votes than with mere bardinage and verbal fencing. Arrogance or merely the courage of his convictions?

If that was his aim, I think he succeeded. He came across as honest, plain-dealing, and straightforward. As the old saying goes : “The most important quality in Honesty : if you can fake that, you’ve got it made.” Well, he’s really good at that, because after listening to him, I’m not sure he’s faking.

As to which candidate would make the better President? Well, I’m Australian, so the “best interests of the USA” are not my prime concern. But Kerry’s constant dismissing of the UK, Poland, and Australia as unworthy of consideration was insulting in the extreme, and would not bode well for any “coalition” in the future should he be elected. Because we’d never know when he’d decide to cut and run, leaving us in the lurch. Any alliance involving Kerry would truly be of the “coerced and the bribed”, as they’re the only ones who’d be willing to take the risk. Bush keeps his word - for good or ill. But that’s another story.