Redstate

Posted at 1:46am on May 17, 2008 Jihadists Admit Defeat in Iraq

By Steve in Tennessee

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Posted at 4:46pm on May 15, 2008 McCain: Troops Out of Iraq by 2013 - Guts Anti-War Movement

By patriotroom

From the New York Times.

Senator John McCain declared on Thursday that most American troops will be home from Iraq by 2013 and that Iraq will be a functioning democracy with only “spasmodic’’ episodes of violence, a striking departure from his refusal so far to set a date for U.S. withdrawal.

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Posted at 11:54am on May 15, 2008 SacBee: Anti-War Bias Hidden in Tale of Iraqi Girl Getting New Legs from US Army

By Warner Todd Huston

Here is a sad example of the subtle anti-war bias that the MSM constantly hides in stories even when they are heartwarming tales of the great things our soldiers do for the people of Iraq. In this case, it is the Sacramento Bee putting in some almost subliminal anti-war sentiments in the mouth of Staff Sgt. Luis Falcon who worked his heart out to get some prosthetic legs for an 11-year-old Iraqi girl who lost her legs to a road side bomb. This is a wonderful story that is marred by the SacBee's attempt to interject into the story doubt about the war effort in Iraq.

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Posted at 11:06am on May 15, 2008 Islam and Free Speech: Canadian version.

By Paul J Cella

The wisest thing in the world is to cry out before you are hurt. It is no good to cry out after you are hurt; especially after you are mortally hurt. People talk about the impatience of the populace; but sound historians know that most tyrannies have been possible because men moved too late. It is often essential to resist a tyranny before it exists. It is no answer to say, with a distant optimism, that the scheme is only in the air. A blow from a hatchet can only be parried while it is in the air.
— G. K. Chesterton.

Any reader involved in our long-running debate (recapitulated just last week) on Islam and Free Speech, should sit down a read this remarkable statement carefully. It concerns a complaint brought before the Ontario Human Rights Commission against Mcleans magazine, which reprinted a portion of Mark Steyn’s book America Alone. The complaint alleged that Mcleans and Steyn violated the Ontario Human Rights Code by unfairly “targeting Muslims.”

Read the statement, and then read on.

Posted in Canada | free speech | Mark Steyn | sedition | the Jihad | War — Comments (11)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 10:19pm on May 14, 2008 The War That Counts

It Ain't Iraq

By absentee

Captain Ed at Hot Air has a post up tonight highlighting an article that is to run in the upcoming edition of the New York Times' Sunday magazine. The excerpt below might put a little hot air under your collar, fair warning:

There is a feeling among some of McCain’s fellow veterans that his break with them on Iraq can be traced, at least partly, to his markedly different experience in Vietnam. McCain’s comrades in the Senate will not talk about this publicly. They are wary of seeming to denigrate McCain’s service, marked by his legendary endurance in a Hanoi prison camp, when in fact they remain, to this day, in awe of it. And yet in private discussions with friends and colleagues, some of them have pointed out that McCain, who was shot down and captured in 1967, spent the worst and most costly years of the war sealed away, both from the rice paddies of Indochina and from the outside world. During those years, McCain did not share the disillusioning and morally jarring experiences of soldiers like Kerry, Webb and Hagel, who found themselves unable to recognize their enemy in the confusion of the jungle; he never underwent the conversion that caused Kerry, for one, to toss away some of his war decorations during a protest at the Capitol. Whatever anger McCain felt remained focused on his captors, not on his own superiors back in Washington.

Not all of McCain’s fellow veterans subscribe to the theory that the singularity of his war experience has anything to do with his intransigence on Iraq. (Bob Kerrey, for one, told me that while he was aware of this argument, he has never believed it.) But some suspect that whatever lesson McCain took away from his time in Vietnam, it was not the one that stayed with his colleagues who were "in country" during those years — that some wars simply can’t be won on the battlefield, no matter how long you fight them, no matter how many soldiers you send there to die.

"McCain is my friend and brother, and I love him dearly," Max Cleland, Georgia’s former Democratic senator, told me when we talked last month. "But I think you learn something fighting on the ground, like me and John Kerry and Chuck Hagel did in Vietnam. This objective of 'hearts and minds'? Well, hello! You didn’t know which heart and mind was going to blow you up!

"I have seen this movie before, and I know how it ends," says Cleland, who lost three of his limbs to an errant grenade during the battle of Khe Sanh. "With thousands dead and tens of thousands more injured, and years later you ask yourself what you were doing there. To the extent my friend John McCain signs on to this, he is endangering America’s long-term interests, and probably his own election in the fall."

I love you brother, but you aren't a real vet. Nice.

Read On ...

Posted in Smearing And Sliming John McCain | War — Comments (38)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 3:04pm on May 14, 2008 Poppies in Iraq and Arabs in Afghanistan: Did Barack Obama “Pull a McCain” in his SpeechTuesday Night ?

No -- What he did was far worse.

By Jeff Emanuel

You could say that Barack Obama "pulled a John McCain" Tuesday night, with his verbal gaffes regarding Iraq, Afghanistan, Arabic-speaking translators, and the War on Terror.

You could say that -- but you would be wrong.

“Conflating” Sunni and Shi’a?

Almost two months ago, pundits and politicians alike descended upon Mr. McCain with accusations of confusion, a lack of touch, and even outright dishonesty when the Republican presidential nominee said that al Qaeda fighters in Iraq have been receiving funding, training, and equipment from Iran during the last year-plus of the Iraq War.

Mr. McCain "conflated" Sunni and Shi'a organizations, which clearly "represent opposing sides in the Iraqi civil war[sic]" crowed the liberal web site ThinkProgress. In an ABCNews blog post entitled "Err-Jordan," Jake Tapper wrote that McCain "seemed to step in it" with his assertion that Sunni al Qaeda and Shi'a Iran were working together, asking if the Senator was suffering from "jet lag." (Tapper, who has been one of the better reporters of this campaign season, later posted an opposing viewpoint, if not an outright correction.)

Susan Rice, then still a senior foreign policy adviser to Barack Obama, called McCain's assertion "very bizarre," saying that "there is no body of evidence to suggest Iran is aiding Al Qaeda in Iraq" and noting that Mr. McCain had "made the same statement three times in as many days. Surely he must know, as Senator Lieberman reminded him, that Iran is not engaged with Al Qaeda in Iraq. I don't know if he is confused, or is he cynically trying to conflate Al Qaeda and Iran as Cheney and Bush did Al Qaeda and Iraq in 2002 and 2003?"

Read on.

Posted in 2008 | Afghanistan | Barack Obama | GWOT | inexperience | Iraq | John McCain | War | zero-sum foreign policy — Comments (6)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 8:01pm on May 13, 2008 Deadly bombings in India have "hallmarks of an al Qaeda operation"

It truly is a *global* war on terror

By Jeff Emanuel

Eight bombs were detonated today in Jaipur, India, killing at least 60 people and injuring at least 200. A ninth bomb was found and disarmed by Indian authorities.

The blasts occurred within a dozen minutes of each other, according to the Times of India. Indian authorities have said that early evidence points to the terrorist attacks being the work of the Bangladesh-based al Qaeda affiliate Harkat ul Jihad al Islami, or "HuJI-B."

The Long War Journal is reporting that "some officials believe the Pakistani-based Jaish-e-Mohammed terror group assisted in the attacks," as well.

Read on.

Posted in Al Qaeda | Bangladesh | GWOT | India | Long War Journal | Pakistan | terrorism | War — Comments (4)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 11:42am on May 13, 2008 AP: Military Hits Recruiting Goals Despite 'Slow Economy,' and 'Unpopular War'

By Warner Todd Huston

Don't you just love the MSM? They can't even report good news without interjecting their doom and gloom, agenda driven verbiage into any report. This time it is the Associated Press with the good news that the Marines and the rest of America's armed forces have reached their recruiting goals. In fact, many branches of the service exceeded them. All good news, right? Well, naturally the AP had to throw some cold water on the good tidings. You see, according to the AP the Marines fulfilled their recruiting goals because of a "slow economy" and despite Iraq being an "unpopular war." They just can't let it go, can they?

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Posted at 12:47pm on May 12, 2008 The Sadrist/Iraqi Government "Truce" -- A play for peace, or a quick time out to rearm and catch their breath?

Time will tell, but for now the bullets are still flying

By Jeff Emanuel

Note: More background is provided in this Human Events column.

Over the weekend, spokesmen for the Iraqi government and the Sadrist political bloc confirmed what our own lovable fuzzball Moe Lane posted here Friday night: that a cease-fire agreement concerning Sadr City had been reached. A large Shi'a district northeast of Baghdad, Sadr City has been the site of intense fighting between Jaish al Mahdi (JAM, or "Mahdi Army") militants and Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) and coalition forces for the last six weeks or so. During that time, JAM has lost exponentially more of its fighters than the ISF and coalition forces have.

Sadrist leaders made a series of concessions in their rush to get a peace deal inked -- though whether or not that deal will actually be honored is another question. The deal and the likelihood of its being lived up to are explored below the fold.

Read on.

Posted in Iraq | Mahdi Army | Muqtada al-Sadr | Nouri al-Maliki | Sadr City | War — Comments (7)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 10:19pm on May 11, 2008 So that "Real War on Terror" is in one country, and crosses no borders, right?

By Jeff Emanuel

From the Long War Journal comes this report that Abu Suleiman al Otaibi, the "former leader of the legal system of al Qaeda in Iraq's political front, the Islamic State of Iraq," has been killed in Afghanistan.

That's right -- the al Qaeda leader who used to the supreme authority in Iraq on that Shari'a law that all AQ live by so devoutly was killed in Afghanistan.

But, you know, the War on Terror is only in one place, and doesn't cross those pesky national borders.

Posted at 12:10pm on May 10, 2008 [Insert tired Godfather reference here.] [Video fixed.]

[Insert yet another one here.]

By Moe Lane

While in the process of reading this National Interest attempt to link American foreign policy positions to The Godfather (and this rather well done beatdown of said attempt, via Ace), I was reminded of the clip below (via Hot Air), which I should have mentioned at the time:

[Or, try this YouTube, which actually works.]

Do you know why we don't trust the Democrats on foreign policy? It's because too many of them applaud when national security ignoramuses make ignorant statements like that. Or, as see-dubya put it, very succinctly:

Yeah, Truman negotiated with his enemies; his emissaries were Fat Man and Little Boy.

Please, Democrats, nominate this man: I'm learning to enjoy watching people stop by three times a week to earnestly, and somewhat desperately, explain the latest damfool thing that came out of his mouth.

Posted in Barack Obama | GWOT | The Godfather | War — Comments (13)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 8:28pm on May 9, 2008 Oh, look. Maliki beat the Sadrists like a red-headed stepchild.

But... but... but... that doesn't fit the Media narrative!

By Moe Lane

And I can almost hear the teeth grinding of Ms. Fadel as she had to write this particular article (via Instapundit):

In big concession, militia agrees to let Iraqi troops into Sadr City
By Leila Fadel | McClatchy Newspapers

BAGHDAD — Followers of rebel cleric Muqtada al Sadr agreed late Friday to allow Iraqi security forces to enter all of Baghdad's Sadr City and to arrest anyone found with heavy weapons in a surprising capitulation that seemed likely to be hailed as a major victory for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki.

In return, Sadr's Mahdi Army supporters won the Iraqi government's agreement not to arrest Mahdi Army members without warrants, unless they were in possession of "medium and heavy weaponry."

The agreement would end six weeks of fighting in the vast Shiite Muslim area that's home to more than 2 million residents and would mark the first time that the area would be under government control since Saddam Hussein was toppled in 2003. On Friday, 15 people were killed and 112 were injured in fighting, officials at the neighborhoods two major hospitals said.

There's something pleasant about watching a site like McClatchy being forced to deal with objective reality. But enough about them! I have a question each for both of the Democratic candidates for President:

For Barry: Given that, if we had listened to you when you called for our cutting and running from Iraq, this scenario would not only not have happened, but the entire country would have probably collapsed into an inchoate mess - when are you going to actually revise and extend your position on the war so that it reflects conditions in this universe?

No, you may not ask a friend. Frankly, I don't know why you even have advisers, given that they seem to have a half-life of seaborgium. At this rate, I expect that you will soon have them all fitted with explosive collars that will go off whenever the policy positions they espouse go under 50% 60%* in the polls.

For Hill: Given that you are rapidly acquiring a rogues' gallery of left-wing pundits, bloggers, activists, anarchists, Marxists, and just plain insane nutballs that any self-respecting neo-conservative would envy... have you thought about just taking the damn plunge already and rejoining the side of the angels wrt the GWOT? All of those people above are prepared to climb over broken glass rather than vote for you anyway.

Come on. You know that you want to.

*Dammit, Addison. Having an actual sense of humor is fighting dirty.

Posted in Barack Obama | GWOT | Hillary Clinton | Iraq | Sadr | War — Comments (28)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 7:31pm on May 8, 2008 Re: Head of al Qaeda in Iraq captured

By Jeff Emanuel

More here, including some great background information.

Posted at 5:05pm on May 8, 2008 Head of al-Qa'eda in Iraq captured

By Robert A. Hahn

The leader of al Qaida in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, has been arrested in the northern city of Mosul, an Iraqi Defence Ministry spokesman has said.
Press Association