Now that Obama's turned to him in a jam, is he still 'General Betray Us' to MoveOn.org?

No thanks to you, Mr. President

"From getting rid of Saddam, to reducing violence, to stabilizing the country, to facilitating elections -- you have given Iraq the opportunity to stand on its own as a democratic country. That is an extraordinary achievement" -- Obama in Baghdad during photo-op visit with American troops.

An "extraordinary achievement" that would have been squandered had the United States done what Obama wanted and turned tail before the surge.

50,000 'residual' troops in Iraq -- for how long?

None of the news I've seen so far answers this obvious question. Will 50,000 troops remain in Iraq indefinitely, as in Europe, Japan and South Korea? Or until the first suicide bombing after combat troops are withdrawn?

Update, Sunday March 1 -- all remaining troops to be withdrawn by end of 2011, according to Obama in his remarks at Camp Lejeune on Friday. Why the lack of clarity on this point from media coverage remains a mystery.

Rove giving Bush his due

Great column by Karl Rove in yesterday's Wall Street Journal. After initially describing the sentimental plane ride back to Texas, Rove wrote --

Yet, as Mr. Bush left Washington, in a last angry frenzy his critics again distorted his record, maligned his character and repeated untruths about his years in the Oval Office. Nothing they wrote or said changes the essential facts.

To start with, Mr. Bush was right about Iraq. The world is safer without Saddam Hussein in power. And the former president was right to change strategy and surge more U.S. troops.

A legion of critics (including President Barack Obama) claimed it couldn't work. They were wrong. Iraq is now on the mend, the war is on the path to victory, al Qaeda has been dealt a humiliating defeat, and a democracy in the heart of the Arab world is emerging. The success of Mr. Bush's surge made it possible for President Obama to warn terrorists on Tuesday "you cannot outlast us."

Silver lining to Powell endorsing Obama?

It led at least one lefty radio talk show host to make an unexpected admission about Bush and company's pre-war belief that Iraq possessed WMD, as described here in a blog post I wrote today for NewsBusters.org.

Rachel Maddow refuses to accept that US is withdrawing troops from Iraq

Maybe Air America Radio and MSNBC pontificator Rachel Maddow just can't help herself.

Here's what Maddow said on her radio show Monday about Defense Secretary Robert Gates visiting Baghdad and talking about a "shrinking" role for US combat troops in Iraq.

Maddow -- "That, of course, is slightly undercut by the fact that the president gave a speech last week in which he said there aren't any troops leaving Iraq, at least until after he's no longer president any more."

That "of course" is demonstrably untrue, as anyone who saw Bush's speech or read about it is aware. Here is what the president actually said on Sept. 9 about the alleged non-withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, as posted at C-SPAN --

"Today, I am pleased to announce the next step forward in our policy of "return on success." General Petraeus has just completed a review of the situation in Iraq - and he and the Joint Chiefs of Staff have recommended that we move forward with additional force reductions. Over the next several months, we will bring home about 3,400 combat support forces (emphasis added)- including aviation personnel, explosive ordnance teams, combat and construction engineers, military police, and logistical support forces. By November, we will bring home a Marine battalion that is now serving in Anbar province. And in February of 2009, another Army combat brigade will come home. This amounts to about 8,000 additional American troops returning home without replacement. And if the progress in Iraq continues to hold, General Petraeus and our military leaders believe additional reductions will be possible in the first half of 2009."

Maddow also said something Monday that was unintentionally amusing -- "I think lying makes you look bad, I don't know. Maybe that's controversial."

"Maybe" only to Maddow.

Maddow and Matthews, slippery as usual

Here's what Rachel Maddow said last week on her MSNBC show about President Bush's announcement of troop withdrawals from Iraq --

"After President Bush announced yesterday that troop levels will stay the same through the end of his presidency and that he proposes that the next president bring home just 8,000 troops next February, which would leave more American forces in Iraq indefinitely then were there before the surge, John McCain didn't go on camera to comment on the subject, opting instead for a short written statement."

But as the New York Times' reporting on the matter makes clear, Maddow's claims are patently false. Here is what the Times reported on Tuesday, Sept. 9 --

"As President Bush announced today that he would draw down the level of troops in Iraq by 8,000 early next year, the presidential candidates and their surrogates — as well as other politicians — began weighing in."

In other words, 8,000 US troops will leave Iraq by February, not in "next February," as Maddow falsely claims, nor did Bush say "troop levels will stay the same through the end of his presidency," as Maddow also pulled out of thin air.

Maddow's MSNBC colleague Chris Matthews did much the same thing in speaking with Maddow, claiming the US is "still stuck" in Iraq "to the point they can't, the president says they can't spare a man or a woman, we're that stuck."

This only two days after president announced that 8,000 troops will be, uh, unstuck from Iraq by February.

Liberals like Maddow and Matthews who complain about deceit from McCain and Palin might make a more convincing argument if they did not engage in it themselves.

Did Iran suspend its nuclear weapons program because of the invasion of Iraq?

According to the NIE released Monday, Iran suspended its illicit nuclear weapons program in the fall of 2003.

About six months after the US-led invasion of Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein. And only two months before Libya decided to abandon its pursuit of nuclear arms.

Did the war with Iraq prompt Iran to suspend its nuclear weapons program? Maybe, maybe not. The timing begs the question, but what's odd about the media coverage over the last few days - and I've read a half-dozen stories on the NIE in the New York Times, the Boston Globe and on the CNN website - I have yet to see a single reference to even the possibility of a connection.

But what if the NIE had reported that Iran initiated a covert nuclear weapons program six months after the invasion of Iraq - think we'd hear about a connection then? We'd be hearing of little else.

They're baacckk .... and boy, are they ever

... and a hat tip to wavemaker for this one ...

Murtha: 'The surge is working'

A headline I also never thought I'd see, or at least the part that includes Congressman John Murtha. But in fairness to Murtha, an early proponent of US withdrawal from Iraq before the job is done, the man is willing to give credit where credit is due.

Here's the full story as reported today by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Bill Press's Polish joke falls flat

Radio host Bill Press in a promo for his show, as heard Monday afternoon on Sirius Left -

"Who says the level of violence in Iraq is decreasing? Iraq claimed another victim over the weekend and a really big one this time," Press chortled with barely concealed glee, "the prime minister of Australia, just the latest political leader to fall for his support of George Bush's war in Iraq. First, remember, it was Prime Minister Jose-Maria Aznar. Next, Italy's Silvio Berlusconi. And then, the UK's Tony Blair. And now, it's Australia's John Howard, humiliated in defeat after 11 years in power. Why? Because he insisted on keeping Australian troops in Iraq when everybody else - even Poland - had decided to bring their troops home.

"Even Poland," Bill?

Not only are Press's comments insulting to anyone of Polish descent, they are glaringly inaccurate. "Everybody else" have not turned tail and fled from Iraq, as Press would like to see. American troops have turned the tide of this war - and we are winning. And the more the situation improves in Iraq, the more unhinged the Left becomes in America.

I'd suggest they should be ashamed, but that would presume they have any.

The difference between us and them, in a nutshell

As reported today by the Associated Press -

BAGHDAD - A suicide bomber detonated his explosives as American soldiers were handing out toys to children northeast of Baghdad yesterday, killing at least three children and three of the troops, US and Iraqi authorities said ...

Dept. of Unintentional Humor

"We have to play hardball if we're going to try to end this war" - US Senator Russ Feingold, D-Wisc., speaking today with radio talk show host Ed Schultz.

Chicken Little morphs into Give 'em Heck Harry

"We can't just walk away and no one suggests we can" - Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid telling radio host Ed Schultz today why Democrats won't end funding for the war.

Quite a change of tone for the good Senator since his assertion last spring that "this war is lost."

Reassuring its readers worried about American victory in Iraq

From an editorial in today's Boston Globe under the headline, "Iraq's war of the warlords" -

"When the radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada Sadr called last week for a freeze on his Mahdi Army's operations, it might have been tempting to take it as a positive step toward reducing violence and promoting stability in Iraq."

... Yes, especially "tempting" for the sane and rational among us ...

"But even if his directive is heeded by most components of the far-from-unitary Mahdi Army, any such timeout will only be a tactical pause to let Sadr's forces regroup."

... Globe editorialists being privy to an infallible crystal ball allowing them to predict the future ...

"It hardly portends a transformation of the basic situation in Iraq."

... Let me see if I have this straight - even if "most" of Sadr's army lay down their arms, thereby refraining from further mass killings that have already stained their hands with the blood of thousands, this is not a "positive step"?

In other words - not to worry, we might lose this war yet!

Reminiscent of relentlessly biased coverage

A story published yesterday by the New York Times Service, running under the headline "Bush relentless in making case for his Iraq strategy," and written by Steven Lee Myers:

CRAWFORD, Texas - President Bush's Iraq strategy faces a crisis of faith these days - from the American public. And he is confronting it the way he has previous crises: with a relentless campaign to persuade people to see things his way.
Bush interrupted his annual August retreat here last week for a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars replete with historical references to Vietnam.
Back at his ranch, he recorded a radio address that showed neither doubt nor any intention to reducing the U.S. commitment in Iraq. On Tuesday, he will speak to the American Legion in Reno, Nev., arguing a hasty withdrawal of troops would prove disastrous.

( ... wow, two speeches and a radio address - pretty "relentless" stuff ...)

"We are still in the early stages of our new operations," Bush said in the radio address Saturday as if there were not those who fervently wished the country was in the later stages, preparing to bring the troops home.

(... most of whom are dutifully employed in the mainstream media ...)

In military parlance, the White House's strategy is called preparing the battlefield - in this case for the series of reports and hearings scheduled on Capitol Hill next month to debate the wisdom of struggling on in the midst of Iraq's sectarian chaos and bloodshed. If recent history is a guide, Bush may well prevail, as he did in January when he made a similar blitz ...

(... as Nazis are inclined to do ...)

... to build the case for dispatching more troops to Iraq, despite swelling public opposition to the war and a Democratic rout in last November's elections.

( ... what's this "rout" stuff, paleface ...?)

Ron Paul's sliver of truth

First off, what Texas Congressman Ron Paul actually said in last night's debate about 9/11:

"I think the party has lost its way because the conservative wing of the Republican Party always advocated a non-interventionist foreign policy. Sen. Robert Taft didn't even want to be in NATO. George Bush won the election in year 2000 campaigning on a humble foreign policy, no nation building, no policing of the world. Republicans were elected to end the Korean War, Republicans were elected to end the Vietnam War. There's a strong tradition of being anti-war in the Republican Party, it is the constitutional position, it is the advice of the Founders to follow a non-interventionist foreign policy, stay out of entangling alliances, be friends with countries, negotiate and talk with them and trade with them.

"Just think of the tremendous improvement in (our) relationship with Vietnam. We lost 60,000 men, we came home in defeat, now we go over there and invest in Vietnam. So there's a lot of merit to the advice of the Founders and following the Constitution. And my argument is that we shouldn't go to war so carelessly, because when we do, the wars don't end."

Which led to a follow-up question from Fox newsman Wendell Goler -- "Congressman, you don't think that changed with the 9/11 attack, sir?"

Paul: "What changed?"

Goler: "The non-interventionist policies."

Paul: "No, non-intervention was a major contributing factor. Have you ever read about the reasons they attacked us? They attacked us because we'd been over there, we'd been bombing Iraq for 10 years, we've been in the Middle East. I think Ronald Reagan was right, we don't understand the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics. So right now we're building an embassy in Iraq that's bigger than the Vatican, we're building 14 permanent bases. What would we say here if China was doing this in our country or in the Gulf of Mexico? We would be objecting. We need to look at what we do from the perspective of what would happen if somebody else did it to us."

Golen: "Are you suggesting we invited the 9/11 attack, sir?"

Paul: "I'm suggesting that we listen to the people who attacked us and the reasons they did it, and they are delighted that we're over there because Osama bin Laden has said, I'm glad you're over on our sand because we can target you so much easier. They've already now, since that time, have killed 3,400 of our men and I don't think it was necessary."

To which Rudy Giuliani responded: "That's really an extraordinary statement, an extraordinary statement. As someone who lived through the attack on Sept. 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don't think I've ever heard that before, and I've heard some pretty absurd explanations for Sept. 11" (followed by the biggest applause of the night, all but sealing the pundits' later verdict that Giuliani won the debate).

But lost amid the gnashing of teeth over Paul's suggestion that al Qaeda was justified in slaughtering 3,000 Americans was the kernel of truth at the heart of his remarks -- the undeniable connection between Iraq and al Qaeda's motivation for the 9/11 attack.

For years now we have heard the singsong of a claim, mainly from the Left but also from conservative isolationists like Paul and Pat Buchanan, that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. To the extent that Iraq was not involved in the planning and execution of the attack, this remains a plausible assertion due to lack of evidence to the contrary (that such a link may eventually be proven, however, would not surprise me).

But this assertion has morphed into something entirely different -- that Iraq had nothing remotely to do with al Qaeda's motivation for attacking the US -- and this claim is not only false, but deceitful. In fact, US and United Nation policies toward Iraq -- yes, United Nations -- constituted two of the three reasons cited by bin Laden for the 9/11 attack when al-Jazeera broadcast its first post-9/11 video of bin Laden on Oct. 7, 2001, the same day US forces began bombing al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Bin Laden's statement, all of a dozen paragraphs, wasted little time in getting to Iraq -- it's in the fourth paragraph, according to the copy I saved from the New York Times.

"A million innocent children are dying at this time as we speak, killed in Iraq without any guilt," bin Laden said. What he was referring to were economic sanctions against Saddam's Baathist regime -- sanctions imposed by the UN, not US -- for Saddam's refusal to comply with every single one of 16 UN resolutions for him to disarm after the first Gulf War and renounce his pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. A war precipitated by Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, followed by a coalition of 30 nations led by the US ousting Iraq from Kuwait -- but not dishonoring the purpose of that coalition and taking ground forces all the way to Baghdad.

Here is how bin Laden ended his statement:
"Every Muslim must rise to defend his religion. The wind of faith is blowing and the wind of change is blowing to remove evil from the Peninsula of Muhammad, peace be upon him.
"As to America, I say to you and its people a few words: I swear to God that America will not live in peace before peace reigns in Palestine, and before all the armies of infidels depart the land of Muhammad, peace be upon him. God is the greatest and glory be to Islam."

The "evil" that bin Laden refers to on the "Peninsula of Muhammad"? American military forces in Saudi Arabia -- sent there at the invitation of the Saudi government after Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990. Forces that remained in Saudi Arabia, as requested by the Saudi government, for the decade to follow -- due to Saddam's continued defiance to disarm in good faith.

As for Paul's claim that we'd been "bombing Iraq for 10 years," he was conspicuously negligent in elaborating. Allow me to fill in the gaps. Shortly after the first Gulf War, and in a move to prevent Saddam from slaughtering thousands more Kurds and Shiites rising up against him, no-fly zones were imposed over huge swaths of north and south Iraq -- by the US, Great Britain and -- are you sitting down for this? -- France -- without -- still sitting down? -- UN authorization.

Two years after the first Gulf War, then-President Bill Clinton ordered aerial attacks against Saddam's regime after evidence was uncovered of an Iraqi plot to assassinate former President George H.W. Bush during a visit to Kuwait.

In December 1998, Clinton ordered another attack on Saddam's regime one month after UN weapons inspectors were ousted from Iraq -- an absence that remained right through 9/11 and leading up to the months before the second war. The reason many people don't remember the four-day Desert Fox campaign? It neatly coincided with the House vote to impeach Clinton.

I have nothing but respect for the strength of character exhibited by Giuliani on 9/11, and for Giuliani's resolve in the difficult weeks and months followed. And Giuliani's anger toward Paul's suggestion that America had it coming on 9/11 is entirely justified.

But I find it disheartening that Giuliani, of all people, a man nearly murdered by al Qaeda on Sept. 11, 2001 and who may well become our next president, is oblivious to the obvious role that Iraq played in al Qaeda's rationale for attacking us.

Reviving the Bubba Doctrine

Revisiting Hillary Clinton's response to the debate question last month on how she would respond to an al-Qaeda attack on American cities -- what Clinton suggested sounded vaguely familiar, as if we'd done this before. In fact, we have, and with disastrous consequences.
First, Clinton's response:

"Well again, having been a senator during 9/11, I understand very well the extraordinary horror of that kind of an attack and the impact that it has, far beyond those who are directly affected. I think a president must move as swiftly as is prudent to retaliate. If we are attacked, and we can determine who was behind that attack, and if there were nations that supported or gave material aid to those who attacked us, I believe we should quickly respond.

"Now that doesn't mean we go looking for other fights," Clinton went on to say. "You know, I supported President Bush when he went after al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. And then when he decided to divert attention to Iraq, it was not a decision that I would have made had I been president because we still haven't found bin Laden. So let's focus on those who have attacked us and do everything we can to destroy them."

In other words, do exactly what Bill Clinton did in response to the bombings of two American embassies in Africa in August 1998. After quickly determining that al Qaeda was responsible, then-President Clinton ordered cruise missile attacks against al Qaeda targets in Sudan and Afghanistan two weeks after the bombings -- followed by withering criticism that Clinton was engaged in "wag the dog" chicanery to divert attention from the Lewinsky scandal.

And what happened after the cruise missile attacks ...? Nothing much, at least for the remainder of Clinton's lame-duck, post-impeachment presidency. Come to think of it, Saddam Hussein booted UN weapons inspectors out of Iraq a few months after the embassy bombings, not that Iraq and al Qaeda had anything remotely to do with one another, as we've heard claimed ad infinitum ad nauseum for years now. Clinton responsed to Hussein's ouster of weapons inspectors by lobbing cruise missiles into Iraq, postponing the congressional vote on his impeachment for a day, before the status quo of American timidity was quickly restored.

Then in October 2000, al Qaeda fanatics struck at the USS Cole in Yemen, killing 17 American sailors, followed by Clinton doing ... nothing. All the while, al Qaeda grew emboldened by the specter of a paper tiger worried about looking like it was looking for a fight.

What was it that line from Trotsky? You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.

But it's standing-room only in the "Peace Studies" courses

From an article in the May 7 issue of The New Republic on the dearth of college courses focusing on military history --

"At Harvard this spring, for instance, only two of 85 history courses focus mainly on war," writes David A. Bell, author of "The First Total War: Napoleon's Europe and the Birth of Warfare As We Know It."

"This is not surprising, because Harvard does not have a single specialist in military history among the 58 members of its history department," Bell writes. "Neither does my own history department at Johns Hopkins; just two of our 61 spring courses are principally concerned with war."

Not to worry, though. Should liberals succeed in their fervent desire for America to lose the war in Iraq, we'll see lots of collegiate offerings about that in the future.

That's why Bubba calls her 'Sarge'

Great cover story by Michael Crowley in this week's The New Republic titled, "Hillary and the War: The Real Reason She Won't Apologize." An eyebrow raiser of an excerpt:

"Sifting through Hillary's life, a portrait begins to emerge of a woman who's always been more confortable with the military than many of her liberal peers," Crowley writes. "I found that Clinton had aggressively pushed her husband to use force when he was president; that one of her most influential new advisers was a former senior aide to hawkish Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia; and that, although she opposed President Bush's Iraq 'surge,' she has consulted regularly with one of its prime architects. I even found that, in her late twenties, Hillary Rodman Clinton briefly attempted to enlist in the U.S. Marines." (emphasis added)

Then again, is this really such a shock, Clinton's rhetorical contortions on Iraq aside?
The timing of Clinton's attempt to become a grunt is illuminating. The war in Vietnam "apparently didn't imbue Hillary with a loathing for the military," Crowley writes. "In 1975, just months after the last U.S. troops returned home, Hillary was living in Arkansas with Bill, who had mounted a failed bid for Congress the previous year. The young couple, who would marry later that year, were both teaching law at the University of Arkansas, when Hillary, for reasons never made entirely clear, decided to enlist in the Marines.

"When she walked into a recruiting office in Little Rock and inquired about joining, the recruiter on duty was unenthusiastic about the 27-year-old law professor in thick, goggle glasses. 'You're too old, you can't see, and you're a woman',' Clinton recalled him saying. 'Maybe the dogs' - Marine slang for Army - 'would take you.' Deflated, Clinton said she decided to 'look another way to serve my country.' "

Crowley doesn't attribute where Clinton recounted the episode, but my guess is that it appears in Clinton's memoirs, "Living History."