According to the Senator for Illinois, now the Iraq war is a “dangerous distraction” from the “real” war, which is in Afghanistan. I am really curious why there is such a focus on the geography of where the combat operations are taking place, instead of focusing on what the combat operations are accomplishing. In Afghanistan, there is a resurgence of Taliban activity as they attempt to re-take the country and instill their oppressive way of life on the population. However, only an idiot would see Iraq as being any different.

Looking at some of Senator Obama’s recent remarks as he further refines his policy on Iraq - which is no being reported he will do before he goes to Iraq (myrrh?) - I can clearly see that leftist policy will cloud any sense of reason on Iraq.

“As should have been apparent to President Bush and Sen. [John] McCain — the central front in the war on terror is not Iraq, and it never was,”

As should have been apparent to Barak Obama, the war on terror is not about “did someone attack the United States”. That is an extremely isolationist view of foreign policy, to say the least. It is about stopping terrorism.

Saddam Hussein was harboring terrorists, paying terrorists’ family $25,000 for blowing up Jews, courting people would would benefit a great deal from gaining WMD technology or WMD agents. And these are just the things which are not in debate by anyone but the nutters. Iraq was involved in terrorism at home, in the region, and planning or cooperating with such activities in Europe and other places according to any seriously accepted analysis on the topic. My bet is that the Iraqi people see Iraq as being the central front in the war on terror, as the Islamo-fascists bomb their markets and kidnap their loved ones in order to instill their oppressive way of life on the population. Again, only an idiot would see it any differently.

Pointing to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s recent call for a timetable, Obama said “now is the time for a responsible redeployment of our combat troops that pushes Iraq’s leaders toward a political solution, rebuilds our military, and refocuses on Afghanistan and our broader security interests.”

Obama said he planned to remove combat brigades from Iraq by the summer of 2010. He also said he would send at least two additional combat brigades to Afghanistan.

Pointing to PM Maliki’s recent call for a timetable - which they have since backed off from a great deal - Obama should be saying, “I fully agree with President Bush’s plan to have troops beginning to demobilize and come home toward the end of 2009 or beginning of 2010, if the situation on the ground warrants it.” As Jimmie Bise mentioned last week on The Joel Gaines Show, Barak Obama is finally accepting the Bush plan for an ideal situation regarding how many troops are deployed in Iraq - as the president stated more than 6 months ago.

“By any measure, our single-minded and open-ended focus on Iraq is not a sound strategy for keeping America safe.”

Obama blasted the Bush administration for missed opportunities in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

“Imagine, for a moment, what we could have done in those days, and months, and years after 9/11,” he said.

Senator Obama seems to have forgotten that we have not been attacked since 9/11, even though dozens of attacks have been foiled while either still in their planning stages or just prior to the attempts to carry them out. We should not forget, however, we partially have Senator Obama to thank for that - as he changed his tune on FISA and immunity for the telecom companies who help us, so we can obtain the kind of intelligence we need to continue to thwart attacks on America.

istory tells us something very important about France - they don’t learn from it. Contemporary events tells us something else important about France. Their antisemitism is deeply embedded.

France should be able to see a similarity, if anyone cared to look, between how they approach dangerous Islamist elements today and the appeasement policy prior to WWII. Or perhaps France could see the similarity with the appeasement policy prior to WWI - when France, Russia and Britain instigated the mess, which defines the Balkans and Middle East of today. It could be said then that the unintended results of appeasement could not have been foreseen. It certainly cannot be said today.

The French appear ever-ready to pit themselves against common sense - it is an historical norm for France. From aligning themselves with the Ottoman empire to further their own imperialist ambition against England and Russia to Vichy appeasement of the Nazis; to French appeasement of Saddam and now French appeasement of Hamas.

At a time when Israel celebrates 60 years of struggle for existence against tremendous odds, it comes out that France elevates this terrorist group to the level of statehood  by treating them as a moral equivalent of Israel.

It was even more striking because French President Nicolas Sarkozy has embraced Israel since taking office a year ago, in contrast to predecessors who nurtured France’s traditionally strong relations with the Arab world. But experts noted Sarkozy has signaled the need for “bridges” in response to Carter’s contentious visit.

Speaking on French radio Europe-1, Kouchner insisted the French contacts with Hamas over “several months” did not amount to “relations” or “negotiations.”

He did not delve into the substance of the contacts, but said Hamas has become more “flexible” - even if it still refuses to recognize the Jewish state’s right to exist.

These are “contacts, and nothing else, to inform us about the situation - first on the humanitarian front, and then especially the political one. That’s it,” Kouchner told reporters later at the Foreign Ministry.

“I think … we’re not the only ones to have contacts of this type - just to inform ourselves - and particularly in the European Union,” he added.

The French government is exhibiting yet another example of the myopic approach to dealing with those who vow the destruction of not only Israel, but anything not contributing to the benefit of an Islamic caliphate. Those of you who think this is much ado about nothing have no understand of the goal of these Islamists since the 13th Century especially.

Understanding liberals is not easy - mostly because they relegate debate to the emotional aspects of the topic. In order to get closer to an understanding of the liberal mind, you must be able to decipher the language of liberalism.

Take “appalling attack” for example. Liberals often talk about how something someone said is an “appalling attack”. Senator Barak Obama said that President Bush’s statement to the Knesset was an appalling attack on the good Senator.

What President Bush said was:

“Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along.

“We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is—the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

Now, unless Senator Obama has been engaged in appeasement politics with Hamas - or plans to work with terrorists in the future - he should have no issue with the President’s shoe of “Some”. then again, if the shoe fits, wear it.

So, “appalling attack” really means: You’re right, but I am pissed you’d say that.

The liberals want to talk with those who have pledged holy war against us because:

• They think this whole mess of Islamists wanting a worldwide caliphate is America’s fault
• Their elitist tendencies make them believe they can just talk Islamists out of their unreasonable notions, if someone smart enough would just try.
• They are immersed in victimization and identity politics to the point of not being capable of leading anything more than a moral retreat.

Once you grasp these things, it is relatively easy to understand a liberal. Understanding them is the first step to marginalizing and defeating their crazy ideals.

The Sudanese government has been providing air support for Janjaweed fighters for some time. This is an example of the Khartoum government taking action against civilians in Darfur without Janjaweed attack.

KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) — The peacekeeping force in Darfur said Tuesday it was still trying to evacuate those wounded in airstrikes two days earlier that an aid group reported left 12 people dead, including six children.

The U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan, Ameerah Haq, called for immediate access to the wounded.

“I am deeply perturbed by the reported bombings of a school, water installations and a market where civilians, especially women and children are present,” she said in a statement.

Gen. Martin Luther Agwai, commander of the joint African Union-UN peacekeeping mission, said the bombings were “unacceptable acts against civilians” and said recent Darfur violence reflected a “total lack of commitment” by the government and the rebel groups to the peace process.

U.S.-based Darfur Diaries said six children, ages 4 to 11, were killed in an airstrike Sunday on a school it funds in the village of Shegeg Karo in North Darfur. Six more people were killed when the village’s market area was bombed.

Residents reported that a Sudanese government aircraft hovered over the area for some time before repeatedly bombing it, the aid group said.

The United Nations - a study in how to call Iran’s sister and request silly things (Monty Python).

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called Monday for immediate presidential elections in Lebanon without foreign interference and told Syria and Iran they must support the disarmament of Hezbollah’s well-armed militia.

How odd - what exactly is the message here? Does anyone take United Nations sound-bite declarations seriously?

Set aside the pre-war statements by prominent Democrats about the need for regime change in Iraq. Set aside, the post invasion castigation of our “reasons for the war”. Set aside the attacks by prominent Democrats on our military. They attack using every angle of their geopolitical virtual reality as possible.

The simple truth is the leftists in America will not be disabused of their silly positions on Iraq by the facts.

But Democrats said President George W. Bush, who began the war five years ago and who will leave office in January with more than 100,000 troops still there, was failing to focus on the bigger threat of al Qaeda from the Afghan-Pakistan border.

“Protecting this nation from direct attack is job number one, yet our allocation of forces does not match this imperative,” said Rep. Ike Skelton, chairman of the House of Representatives’ Armed Services Committee.

The implication is the Iraq is detracting the US from the threat of terror attacks in the US. Really?

• Jose Padilla was interdicted at O’Hare airport - we was returning from Pakistan and had been recently messing about with nuclear materials.
• The Lakawanna  Six were apprehended for plotting an attack after having trained in Pakistan with AQ.
• Eleven men - four of whom plead guilty - were apprehended in Virginia for working with AQ and the Taliban.
• Dhiren Barot was apprehended for plotting to blow up major financial institutions, including the NYSE, after training in Pakistan.
•  James Elshafay and Shahawar Matin Siraj were arrested for plotting to bomb a subway station in New York City.
•  Umer Hayat and Hamid Hayat were arrestedafter the Hamid’s attendance at an Islamic terrorist training camp in Pakistan.
• Assem Hammoud, an al-Qaeda loyalist living in Lebanon, and others, was arrested for plotting to bomb the New York City train tunnels.
• A plot to blow fuel pipelines that runs through residential neighborhoods at the Kennedy International Airport in New York City was foiled.

Combine your knowledge of these instances with the simple fact that NO terrorist attacks have occurred on US soil since the invasion of Iraq. Add, as a seasoning if you will, the fact that AQ had a substantial subsidiary operation in Iraq. That AQ found it more desirable to attack US forces in the Middle East than to attack the US itself.

If the Democrats were serious about securing America from the potential of terrorist attacks, they would be more active in securing the borders. They are simply posing yet another childish “Nya!” to something they philosophically have no ability to understand.

 This post will define for you - exactly - the completely irrational nature of the philosophy driving Islamo-fascists. If you still think you can reason with these people after reading this, you are incurably delusional.

Al-Zawahiri - Al-Qaeda’s Deputy Commander - had no compunction against killing civilians of any stripe in the planning of the 9/11/2001 attacks in the US. Since this time, AQ has been responsible for scores of deaths of women and children across the globe.

Even as recently as yesterday, when he called for attacks in Algeria against military and civilian targets, he can explain why some women and children are killed by AQ operations.

He is able to explain this away by calling them human shields to the “real target”. You see how he can bastardize his beliefs to make something abhorrent seem acceptable - this is the depth of his lie.

Hamas randomly fires 20 - 50 Qassam rockets from gaza into populated areas of Israel on a daily basis. These rockets have no guidance system and there is no way for the person firing them to know what the target will be.

 GAZA, April 5 (Xinhua) — Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) on Saturday denied it aims at killing Israeli children and women by the rocket it fires from Gaza Strip.

    ”Hamas doesn’t mean to kill children by its rockets,” spokesman Ismail Radwan told reporters in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. His remarks were in response to al-Qaida’s No. 2 leader Aymanal-Zawahiri who said Hamas’ random rockets kill Jews women and children in violation of Islam law.

Now, you see the depth of the Hamas’ lie. ” We don’t purposely target women and children.” is technically a correct statement, since the rockets cannot “target” anything.  Yet, the statement is also n insidious lie because the rockets are designed to create death and chaos in order to achieve a percieved political outcome - the very definition of terrorism.

Oh - about Al-Zawahiri’s condemnation of the Hamas rocket attacks on women and children. This is easy to figure out. Hamas is on a course toward the international community offering Israel the latitude to wipe Hamas off of the map. If this happens, a more moderate governing body will fill the Hamas vacuum in Gaza -  killing any chance of AQ to use Gaza as an operations center. Having AQ operating on a large scale that close to Israel is the dream location for the Islamo-fascists. They don’t want Hamas messing that up.

The Nine/Eleven Finding Answers (NEFA) Foundation has published an analysis of the documents Columbia captured in the recent raid on the FARC camp in Ecuador. Among the findings is an extremely close tie between Hugo Chavez and the criminal narco-terror and kidnapping enterprise that FARC represents.

In 1992, Huga Chavez attempted a coup d’etat in Venezuela and was jailed when it was unsuccessful. FARC sent Chavez $150,000 while he was in prison. When Chavez rose to the Presidency in 1998, the friendship had already been well entrenched.

The first thing the captured documents uncover is the business relationship between FARC and Chavez.

The second is the FARC’s extraordinary reach into regional politics, particularly in Ecuador, where the government appears to be willing to change senior military commanders along the border (the area where Reyes was killed) in order to curry favor with the FARC.

The third is the FARC’s apparent willingness to engage in trafficking of material (uranium) that could be used for a low-grade nuclear bomb. The type and grade of uranium in question indicate the FARC had been the victim of a scam or was planning on perpetrating a scam on an unsuspecting third party.

The fourth major theme is the desire to exchange their hostages for captured FARC leaders, using an international stage that will gain the FARC increased legitimacy. This plan, called the Humanitarian Accord, is a strategy explicitly copied from the strategy used by the FMLIN and other insurgent groups in Central America in the 1980s.
That process, initiated on Contadora Island off the coast of Panama, would be substituted for a similar process of negotiations on Isla Margarita, off the coast of Venezuela.

 Read more (PDF) >>>

I don’t do book reviews.  I leave that to smart people.  However, I do spend a lot of time trying to figure out what is going on in the world around us. 

This week we have seen another phase of the war in Iraq.  The Iraqi military is attempting to assert its influence and regain control of the country.  We are going to be able to see pretty soon if the training and equipping we have done were enough and whether there is the political will by the Iraqi government to enforce its sovereignty over its territory.  Our forces are still there in a supporting role but it appears that a decision has been made to try to allow the Iraqis to take the lead.  When they are able to do this, we can realistically start talking about our forces coming home. 

While I was in law school I did not have much time to read about how we got to the position we are in with regard to Afghanistan and Iraq.  I think it is important to understand this because we are on the verge of electing a new president and new members of Congress.  Much of the political debate this year will concern what mistakes were made and what we should do in the future.  Much, if not all, of the commentary will be politically biased.  A great deal of the discourse will come from people who don’t know what they are talking about and who don’t think you are smart enough to find out for yourself; the old “Trust me, I will solve the problem” approach to politics.

It is interesting that histories of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are being written so soon.  In past wars we had reporter accounts created during the war but it generally took twenty years or so before the substantive histories were written.  Thankfully, that is no longer the case.  Now it seems that everyone has at least one personal computer, a good word processor program and we have the Internet to spread the word. 

I think it is great that we can understand how our national policies are formed in such a current fashion so that we can actively engage our political leadership to reflect the views of the American citizens.  However, it puts the responsibility on each of us to be accurately informed and not depend on the media commentators and various news sources to digest our history for us and only give us the information they want us to have.

I recently had the opportunity to read several books which provide a lot of insight and useful information to help me better understand what happened in the decision making process at the national level in the aftermath of the attacks of September 11.  If you are as concerned about our national security as I am, you might want to spend a little time gathering facts about what really happened.

If you decide to read these books, please remember that each of the authors and editors writes and publishes these books from their own perspective; they were participants and they have a story they want to tell.  Historians apply the filters of history to produce their works.  The products are different.  Don’t take any single source of information as the gospel.  However, these three books serve as a good basis for understanding much of what has happened in the last six years with regard to our national response to the September 11 attacks.  I am sure there are many others and you might choose to enlighten me about what you have read as well.  I will take a look at whatever you recommend.

I have included links to reviews that present contrasting views of the books.  This clearly shows that there are widely varying opinions on what the “facts” really are.  Also one more note:  Don’t read Cobra II if you are not ready to admit that George Bush’s administration and our military leadership have made mistakes in the conduct of the war.  Cobra II is the best of the three books but you will probably be disappointed, frustrated or outraged that many of the mistakes described in the book were allowed to happen.

 Here are links to reviews on three books I think are important to understanding how we got to where we are in Iraq and Afghanistan:

1.      American Soldier, by Tommy Franks, HarperCollins/Regan Books, 2004. $27.95. 

Review located at:

·        http://www.strategypage.com/bookreviews/229.asp and

·        http://www.bookreporter.com/reviews2/0060731583.asp and

·        http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/bookrev/franks1.html

2.      At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the C.I.A. By George Tenet with Bill Harlow, HarperCollins, 2007. $30.

Review located at:

·        http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/28/books/28kaku.html?_r=1&ref=books/oAn%20Ex-C.I.A.%20Chief%20on%20Iraq%20and%20the%20Slam%20Dunk%20That%20Wasn%92t/t_blank&oref=slogin

·        http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OWVjNjgyOGZiYzBlMzFlYTM3YTg4OGQ3NTBhYjc4NjQ=

·        http://www.dougfeith.com/coverage_6.html

3.      Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq, by Michael R. Gordon and Bernard E. Trainor, Random House, 2006. $27.95

Review located at:

·        http://www.nationalreview.com/owens/owens200604170810.asp

·        http://www.powells.com/review/2006_04_20.html

·        http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/30/books/review/30heilbrun.html?ex=1304049600&en=ffc80747ae84f966&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss.

Benny

The war effort news from Afghanistan has been backgrounded by - well - just about everything. However, there are a few of us keeping an eye on things over there. In the Intelligence Community (IC), people make a lot out of “chatter”. We might not know what they are talking about, but there are changes in the volume of talking that might point to something happening.

My view is that the news is not really so different. Taking all of the “story of the moment” aspect out of the picture, you can look over the landscape of the news and get an idea of changes in the world. To my way of thinking, there are changes which have been going on in Afghanistan for some time - things we really need to jump on now.

A couple of years ago, the Taliban was decimated and the survivors were deep underground. They dared not show their faces, 72 virgins or no. Now, you see Taliban strikes on a very regular basis. They are gaining confidence with every bomb or ambush they succeed in carrying off. I am not saying this change in the battle space dynamic is because of the change from US to NATO prosecution of war against the Taliban, but the coincidence (or Ko-inki-dink as we used to say) is certainly there. I am also not saying we need a “surge” in Afghanistan. This is not an attempt to REMF Quarterback the operation. I would not know any more what to do to “redouble the effort” than I would know how to groom a llama. I am speaking of this completely holistically.

My feeling is we need to stop talking about our efforts to bring and/or retain other countries in the “war on terror” and get back to taking the fight to the bad guys.