Newz From Neal

The nefarious liberal media and Democrats can't fool Neal Boortz:

This may come as a bit of a surprise to some, but the United States has already won the war in Iraq, and we have already established a stable Democracy there...all in record time and with very low casualties. By any measure of modern warfare, the invasion and occupation of Iraq has been a resounding success.

Ignore the hundreds of terrorist attacks and thousand of Americans and Iraqis killed in the last two years and celebrate victory.

Looking Backward

Surely John Derbyshire isn' this sheltered. "While my scorn for the 'Bush lied, men died' gang is every bit as great as yours, it is a fact that no American, in March 2003, thought we would have a huge army planted in Iraq 2½ years later."

Obviously Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld had no clue about what would happen. I think most neocons figured that the Bush Victory tour would have moved to Syria and Iran by know. But looking at the premier issue of The American Conservative, from October of 2002 I found an article by Eric Margolis called Iraq Folly which spoke of a coming "quagmire" and said, "Though U.S. forces could quickly defeat Iraq’s regular army in the field, there is a high risk of prolonged urban guerilla warfare and great numbers of civilian casualties." The same issue had a Pat Buchanan column that I have quoted many times. "With our MacArthur Regency in Baghdad, Pax Americana will reach apogee. But then the tide recedes, for the one endeavor at which Islamic peoples excel is expelling imperial powers by terror and guerrilla war."

I could find more examples of people warning of the consequences of invading in 2002 and early 2003, but when it would have helped, they were drowned out by the cakewalk brigade.

Summer Replacement

Andrew Sullivan's summer replacement likes democracy, but is a bit squishy on freedom of speech. "I can only hope that Lebanon will not be as ungrateful as to serve as a host to a blatantly anti American conference."

She gets one thing right. "P.S. Iraq is no longer occupied and neither are Germany, South Korea or the Philippines." Occupation occurs after successfully subduing the enemy.

Movies on TV

The USA Today has a debate on the subject of watching movies on the big screen, or on DVD. I end up watching movies on DVD, or from Turner Classic Movies more by default than design. One of the arguments of the theater advocate, Susan Wloszczyna caught my attention, however. Wloszczyna contrasts the two experiences and notes, "You probably can recall your first film in a theater. Can you name the first DVD you watched?" Actually, I can't quite remember either, but I do have several fond childhood movie-related experiences. I remember my grandfather taking me and my brother to see Jaws when I was about eleven. I also memorably saw The Sting, Earthquake in "Sensurround." None of them would have been as good on TV.

But I also have fond memories of watching movies on TV. When I was a kid we watched the Wizard of Oz, almost every year around Christmas; and it was always great. I also saw movies that I would have never seen in theaters because they were not new releases or were for more mature audiences, such as The Assassination Bureau and Take the Money and Run. Then there were the cheesy regular movie programs such as Knoxville's Early Show, hosted by Rex Rainey on weekday afternoons and "Unknown Zone" on Friday nights where I first saw The Abominible Dr. Phibes.

Today, with dozens of movies on DVD and video, I don't have to depend on my local network affiliates for good movies the way I did when I was a kid. I know I miss part of the experience when I don't see larger than life projections on the silver screen, but in my own private movie palace I can see better movies.

News From the Front

I find Iraq veteran, David M. Lucas's column in Sunday's Knoville News Sentinel(registration required) unconvincing. Let me first correct an obvious problem. He says, "'Bush lied to America' is not only false, but it is laughable. Every single major intelligence agency in the world agreed that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction." I have seen this assertion about a million times in the last three years, but never any documentation. Even if true, the beliefs of other intelligence agencies wouldn't support the administration's claims. The president didn't simply assert that Iraq had "weapons of mass destruction." He declaimed that Iraq presented a "grave" and "gathering" threat that might come in the form of a "mushroom cloud."

The headline of the column states, "A soldier speaks out: The good military is doing often not reported." Yet when he gets to the point, more than half-way through the column, Lucas says nothing that alters my perception of the war. Instead I get anecdotes such as this:

After one particular suicide car bomb went off, killing nearly two dozen people and destroying several civilian homes, my platoon helped a family out by bringing wood to board the windows that had been blown out and brandishing brooms to clean up the rubble caused by the blast. I can assure you that those people were glad we were there, and we were more than happy to help, even though our efforts were not known to anyone outside that family and my platoon.

This is a nice story. But why in heaven's name is it as remotely important as the fact that such attacks happen more than two years after the President triumphally landed on an aircraft carrier and conveyed by his deeds, if not from a literal reading of his words, that the war was over and we had won?

I would be happy to see the media report more of the "good news" from Iraq, if only to pacify the war's supporters. Unfortunately, no amount of human interest stories about restoring power and opening schools changes the reality of the Iraq War.

Before the invasion, Colin Powell anunciated the Pottery Barn Rule: You break it, you own it. The Bush adminstration broke the country, and is now responsible for what happens there. If Lucas's service has endowed him with any insight that demonstrates that Iraq is on the road to being a liberal democracy instead of becoming a Shiite theocracy, or collapsing in a three way civil war, or anything that makes America better off and more secure than before we invaded Iraq; he should stop withholding it.

Lucas doesn't like it when people say, "Let's support our troops. Bring them home." Fine. How about, "lets support America. Bring the troops home."

South Park Conservatives

The August Chronicles is out with my review of Brian C. Anderson's South Park Conservatives: The Revolt Against Liberal Media Bias. Chronicles doesn't put a great deal of content from the magazine on the web, so you should subscribe. In the meantime, here is an excerpt from my review:

The largest single media phenomenon that Anderson chronicles is the launch of the Fox News Channel in 1996. Anderson simply gushes about Fox, and, indeed, it is fair enough that Republicans should have their own news channel, given that most of the other networks lean politically in the other direction. However, I cannot swallow the working-class baloney that Anderson serves up when discussing Fox. He practically spits Red Man chaw in quoting "pugnacious Irishman" Bill O ’Reilly, who describes his show as representing a "working class point of view." Anderson also informs the reader that Fox's CEO, Roger Ailes, who grew up in a "blue-collar Ohio community," reports news for the "whole country that elitists will never acknowledge." Reading such hogwash gives me a new appreciation for ABC's Peter Jennings, who couldn't be any snootier if he read the news in French while enjoying a piquant Chardonnay.

Beneath Contempt

Leave it to John Hindraker at Power Line to assume that a snarky blog post by a Manhattanite Homosexual(the only kid at his Indiana high school with a subscription to Interview) is part of a campaign being coordinated by the Democratic National Commitee.

Yeah John, these Dems are so far beneath contempt that they will soon be peddling books claiming that Laura Bush is a dyke and that young Barbara and Jenna were conceived in rape!

The Logic of Jonah

I can't argue with Jonah Goldberg's logic. It seems we invaded Iraq to make the Jihadists really mad, or something like that:

Indeed, isn't the determination of jihadi fanatics to defend Iraq by attacking London exactly the sort of evidence required to demonstrate a linkage between terrorism and Iraq? If America and Britain invaded Canada, Islamic terrorists wouldn't care. But when we invaded Baghdad, they immediately declared it to be the defining battle of their movement. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of al-Qaida in Iraq, has flatly declared that the future of their cause depends on the outcome of the fight in Iraq.

Liberal Media

Arianna Huffington notes from abroad what the Liberal Media is failing to report in this country: "Take Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari's lovefest visit to Tehran on Sunday, where he laid a wreath on the tomb of Ayatollah Khomeini and hailed what he called 'a new chapter in brotherly ties' between Iran and Iraq. Now, by all rights, this should have been a major story in the U.S. "

If the "MSM" were as anti-Bush as conservatives claim, or just committed to reality; the fact that Americans are dying to bring an anti-Israel, pro-Iran regime to power would be trumpeted from every newspaper headline in the country.

Liberal Democracy

John Cole examines the forthcoming Iraq Constitution that Americans are dying on a regular basis to put into place. It has interesting provisions concerning one country in Article 1, Sec. 3 & 4:

3. Any individual with another nationality (except for Israel) may obtain Iraqi nationality after a period of residency inside the borders of Iraq of not less than ten years for an Arab or twenty years for any other nationality, as long as he has good character and behavior, has no criminal judgment against him from the Iraqi authorities during the time of his residency on the territory of the Iraqi republic.

4. An Iraqi may have more than one nationality as long as the nationality is not Israeli.

I can't wait to bring democracy to the rest of the world.

Regression to the Poddy

Never bring a knife to a gun fight, an old adage says. In a similar vein, a half-wit shouldn't try to match wits . . . with anybody. Steve Sailer takes apart the embarrassingly mediocre son of Norman, John Podhoretz who has about a thimble-full of wit .

In a just world, Poddy junior would be selling shoes with Al Bundy, instead of being a nattering nabob of the neocon punditocracy. He currently holds forth at National Review's the Corner, which more and more resembles the Web equivalent of a high school study hall.

Blind Spot

If Prof. Reynolds thinks that the CIA is the center of "incompetent, or politically motivated and dishonest" policy making in the Bush administration then he is either blind or a fool, or both.

Typical

How has the Bush administration handled money in Iraq? Incompetently, of course. Ed Harriman provides the details in the July 7 issue of the London Review of Books. The first paragraph sets the tone:

On 12 April 2004, the Coalition Provisional Authority in Erbil in northern Iraq handed over $1.5 billion in cash to a local courier. The money, fresh $100 bills shrink-wrapped on pallets, which filled three Blackhawk helicopters, came from oil sales under the UN’s Oil for Food Programme, and had been entrusted by the UN Security Council to the Americans to be spent on behalf of the Iraqi people. The CPA didn't properly check out the courier before handing over the cash, and, as a result, according to an audit report by the CPA’s inspector general, 'there was an increased risk of the loss or theft of the cash.' Paul Bremer, the American pro-consul in Baghdad until June last year, kept a slush fund of nearly $600 million cash for which there is no paperwork: $200 million of this was kept in a room in one of Saddam's former palaces, and the US soldier in charge used to keep the key to the room in his backpack, which he left on his desk when he popped out for lunch. Again, this is Iraqi money, not US funds.

Support the Troops?

Dennis Prager's column on "supporting the troops" is a masterpiece of reducing political commentary to meaningless obfuscation. According to Prager, the "left" doesn't "support the troops." I'm not sure whether I agree, since the phrase has beome meaningless.

Prager attempts to define it. "In order to understand this, we need to first have a working definition of the term 'support the troops.' Presumably it means that one supports what the troops are doing and rooting for them to succeed. What else could 'support the troops' mean? If you say, for example, that you support the Yankees or the Dodgers, we assume it means you want them to win."

So rooting for your side in a war is the same as rooting for your team in a baseball game. But if you accept his logic, then for a Yankees fan, the Boston Redsox are literally the same as the enemy in a war. I don't much care for baseball, but I come from Knoxville, Tennessee and root for the Univerisity of Tennessee Volunteers. The Big Orange, as we call them. In my capacity as a football fan, I hate the Universities of Alabama, Georgia and Florida; among others. Except that I don't really. I have known graduates of all three schools and liked them. I have come into contact with a lot of Tennessee fans that I don't much care for.

So I must conclude that war is much more complex than sports. The war in Iraq is and has been very controversial. Prager is attempting to eliminate the controversy by conflating two different categories. The Bush adminstration makes the policy that is carried out by the Army and Marine Corps in Iraq. Americans tend to have warm and fuzzy attitudes towards the military. Which is why we so frequently see the president in this setting. Prager is attempting the same thing by tying support for the policy with support for the troops.

If Prager thought a bit, he might find other meanings for the phrase. For instance, one can actually materially support the troops. I did that once by sending books via Booksforsoldiers.com. Al Franken has done several USO tours.

Prager should ask if supporters of the war are doing enough to support the troops. I have seen plenty of troop support at the almost meaningless Tony Orlando and Dawn level. Except people don't even bother to tie them on Old Oak Trees these days. Instead they just attach them to their vehicles. With support like that . . .

Poddy & Bell

Steve Sailer saves me the trouble of pointing out the serial idiocy of John Podheretz in NRO's the Corner. I especially enjoyed his reformulation of one Poddy post: "Sorry, pal. If you're born a Podhoretz, you get to make a living offering your opinions, no matter how big of a jerk and fool you are. Period. That's how it works, and thank God for it, otherwise a great deal of the money made in the 21st century by Podhoretz relatives would not have come to pass."

Now if he could perform the Sailer magic on Warren Bell, whose deep thoughts are now gracing the corner. "No doubt whatsoever that the Squarepantsed One would be the best choice for my sons, George W. Bush, and the nation. He firmly believes in law and order (see the Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy episodes). He has stopped the evil Plankton many times from stealing the Krabby Patty recipe, so he would similarly stop Breyer and Ginsburg from stealing the Constitution. He is absorbent, so if sat next to Scalia and Thomas would quickly soak up the right ideas. And perhaps most importantly, as Plankton notes in the SBSP Movie, his chops are too righteous."

"Ties"

The War Party is desparate to justify dragging the country into the quamire in Iraq. Christopher Hitchens tied it to the 17 year old Islamic death sentence against Salman Rushdie the other day. Now I see this to prove "ties" between Saddam and Osama, from Stephen Hays and Thomas Joscelyn. One must be very precise with the War Party these days. The question is not (or shouldn't be) "ties" between the two, but -- did Iraq attack the United States on Sept. 11, 2001?

Part of the Hayes article includes evidence that an Iraqi conscript later went on to join the Taliban and then al Qaida. So, if any Iraqi grunt later joins the Taliban that justifies occupying Iraq. Note this one line from their evidence:

11. From 1997 to 1998, the detainee acted as a trusted agent for Usama Bin Ladin, executing three separate reconnaissance missions for the al Qaeda leader in Oman, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

That the detainee conducted recon missions in Iraq is actually consistent with al Qaeda working against Iraq. It doesn't matters now. Even if I became convinced that the war was justifed, I could not for give the incompetence -- the arrogant stupidity -- with which Bush administration prosecuted the war. I don't have time or patience to repeat the whole litany of failure and incompetence of the Bush admnistration's handling of the Iraq War.

I will leave it at this. Nothing is more obvious than the fact that the President had no clue as to what to expect when Saddam's regime collapsed, otherwise we would have never seen this at the beginning of an endless guerilla war:

Hitch & Ronnie

Much has been made of Christopher Hitchen's take down of Ron Reagan on MSNBC's Connected Coast to Coast Friday afternoon. I saw a bit of the exchange and Hitch definitely has more brain power with a hangover than Reagan does at his best. Radio Blogger posted an excerpt, and while Hitchens wins on style, his substance is wanting:

RR: Christopher, I'm not sure that I buy the idea that these attacks are a sign that we're actually winning the war on terror. I mean, how many more victories like this do we really want to endure?

CH: Well, it depends on how you think it started, sir. I mean, these movements had taken over Afghanistan, had very nearly taken over Algeria, in a extremely bloody war which actually was eventually won by Algerian society. They had sent death squads to try and kill my friend Salman Rushdie, for the offense of writing a novel in England. They had sent death squads to Austria and Germany, the Iranians had, for example, to try and kill Kurdish Muslim leaders there. If you make the mistake that I thought I heard you making just before we came on the air, of attributing rationality or a motive to this, and to say that it's about anything but itself, you make a great mistake, and you end up where you ended up, saying that the cause of terrorism is fighting against it, the root cause, I mean. Now, you even said, extraordinarily to me, that there was no terrorist problem in Iraq before 2003. Do you know nothing about the subject at all? Do you wonder how Mr. Zarqawi got there under the rule of Saddam Hussein? Have you ever heard of Abu Nidal?

Note Hitchen's "answer" to the first question. He tosses in a kitchen-sink-full of examples of Islamic extremism that have little to do with our current predicament. He failed to note that prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Zarqawi operated out of Northern Iraq, where Saddam had no control. As bad as Abu Nidal was (he died in 2002, before the invasion), He was hardly the reason we invaded Iraq. That occurred because of the "grave threat" posed by Saddam's large collection of chemical and biological weapons and his drive to get nuclear weapons.

Christopher Hitchens is a follower of "they hate us for our freedom" school of thought. "We know very well what the 'grievances' of the jihadists are. The grievance of seeing unveiled women. The grievance of the existence, not of the State of Israel, but of the Jewish people. The grievance of the heresy of democracy, which impedes the imposition of sharia law. The grievance of a work of fiction written by an Indian living in London." He should read Robert Pape, who argues convincingly that their grievance is actually foreign military occupation.

James Stockdale, RIP

Thomas Fleming pays tribute to a great American:

Jim Stockdale’s story belongs to the history of republican virtue, and it would take the talents of Livy to do justice to him. He was a brave man who served in a war he did not entirely believe in but refused to take the easy way out.

When In Doubt, French Bash

Not knowing what else to do, neos bash the French. A correspondent of Katheryn Lopez notes, "When [Chirac] was actually challeneged by a question that suggested that his version of fighting terrorism hasn't worked, he admitted that it needs to be stepped up." Chirac's methods of fighting terrorism haven't worked? Is there some reason to believe that the Bush-Blair method has? On top of the horrid attacks in London, terrorists in Iraq -- where security is provided by Bush-Blair-Rumsfeld, etc.-- have murdered the Egyptian ambassador.

Roger Simon adds an idiotic comment: "Jerk of the day . . . make that jerk of the year . . . Jacques Chirac, who only a day or so ago dismissed the English for their food." For those who can't follow his inane logic, he is saying that it is in poor taste to mock the English on the day before a terrorist attack in London.

Rah! Rah! Rah!

Kevin Michael Grace questions the benefit of cheering for the Home Team:

My question for members of the "conservative movement" in America or Canada is this: What are the benefits of membership? If tribal solidarity ("us vs them") is your thing, there are other, far more rewarding binary divisions: Yankees vs Red Sox, Eskimos vs Stampeders, Celtics vs Rangers, Coke vs Pepsi, dogs vs cats, that hooligan Beethoven vs Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Brahms and all the other composers that knock him into a cocked hat, etc. Conservative movementarians will reply that their membership demonstrates they are on the side of prudence vs recklessness, right vs wrong and even good vs evil, but I remain unpersuaded. What has the conservative movement ever done to make America and Canada better places? And no, I don't mean the phantom accomplishment of growing the Gross Domestic Product, whatever that might be.

Why Freedom around the world, Kevin. Freedom around the world!