IT'S WORSE THAN WE THOUGHT

By Doug Patton

Earlier this year, I wrote that congressional Democrats would disappoint their liberal base because "holding power means compromise." I was wrong. Democrats are doing their level best to please their radical leftist constituencies, and it's worse than we thought. In their first 100 days in control of Congress, they have introduced legislation that would cripple small business, surrender in Iraq, socialize our medical care and extend the redundant hypocrisy of "hate crimes" to gays.

The Dems recently passed the "Employee Free Choice Act" through the House. This Communist-inspired legislation (no kidding...the Communist Party USA has proudly endorsed it) removes a worker's right to a secret ballot when deciding whether or not to join a union. Unions could invade workplaces with a "card-check" system that lets them organize if a majority of workers sign up.

Imagine a burly Teamster showing up at your home on a Saturday morning, pressuring you to vote in favor of the union. A small business owner with three employees could be forcibly unionized if two of those employees sign the card. Employees who don't want to work in a union environment would lose their right to vote on this issue.

If you think having unions infest America's 22 million small businesses, demanding absurd wages and outrageous pensions, is a good idea, ask General Motors. After being systematically eviscerated by the United Auto Workers for the last 50 years, GM has now fallen behind Toyota as the world's number one maker of automobiles.

From there we move on to the condescending protection of "minorities" in the form of superfluous hate crimes legislation. The latest attempt has been named the Matthew Shepard Act, in honor of a Wyoming meth addict killed in a drug deal gone bad. The fact that he happened to be gay apparently entitled him to more protection than your average straight meth addict.

Do we really believe that a murderer is going to pause in the commission of his crime and say, "Wait, you're not gay, are you?" What if the killer himself comes out of the closet while on trial? Is it no longer a hate crime? And what are the ramifications for a preacher who dares to tell his congregation what the Bible says about homosexuality? Suppose the next day a homosexual is beaten up in that community? Is that preacher's sermon now "hate speech?"

Then there is the issue the Dems think is their ticket back to the Oval Office: THE WAR. The "This Is Hard So Let's Give Up" bill is set to cross the president's desk this week with a date certain for U.S. surrender to the terrorists in Iraq. Predictably, it will be vetoed. This legislation was passed so that Dems can go back to their districts next year and say, "We tried to bring the boys home, but Bush wanted them to stay and get killed." One of the few Democrats I know of who has consistently hoped for our troops to fail is Dennis Kucinich. The fact that Dennis Kucinich is now a Democratic trendsetter may just be the saddest thing ever.

And, of course, there is the constant Democrat drumbeat to return to the tired old concept of "universal health care." This idea will not die, despite the utter failure of such programs in Europe, Canada and elsewhere.

Several other pieces of legislation are in the works. One is an elaboration of the original 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), which would cost businesses millions and give even more paid leave to new parents. How on earth did we, as Americans, ever manage to have both kids and jobs before 1993? The average family today has fewer children and more disposable income than any previous generation, and yet we need even more time off than they did?

Democrats are singing the same socialist tune they have since FDR declared himself Nanny-in-Chief. It goes something like this (especially since the sixties): "You cannot take care of yourself. You deserve more than others. Rich people owe you. Armed conflict is never the answer, especially when it takes longer than a month. You deserve free medical coverage. If you are gay, non-white, female, 'transgendered' or whatever, you need even more protection."

Here's the reality: we are Americans. Let's start acting more like adults and less like Democrats.

MURTHA-----UGH

Moonbat Murtha strikes again. This time the democratic Congressman is using the "I" word: Impeachment. Not surprising. The goal of democrats like Murtha is to undermine America in any way possible. You might remember his little speech last summer when he called the US's presence in Iraq a greater threat to the world than North Korea or Iran. This is the same Iran that is providing money and means for insurgents in Iraq, who are attacking US and British soldiers and innocent Iraqis. This is the same North Korea that has a Gargoyle at the tip of a nuclear trigger button. And yet the United States, according to moonbat Murtha, is the source of all the wrong in the world—and George W. Bush is the ring-leader.

Mistakes were made in Iraq, but that, in no way, makes George W. Bush a war criminal. He is not like Serbian war criminal Milosevic or Iraq's Saddam Hussein, both of whom tortured and abused innocent civilians.

Calling for Impeachment of your own President because of Iraq not only attempts to place George W. Bush on this hideous level, but also makes the rest of the world think it is ok to do the same. If there is any great threat to our peace, it is John Murtha's insistence of weakening his own country.

For the first time in his relatively lackluster career in politics, Murtha is in the spotlight. He gets recognized in all the fine restaurants, and the interview shows on TV are calling every day. Pretty impressive stuff. Impressive enough to betray our men and women and uniform, not to mention our country.

DEMOCRATS DON'T WANT YOU TO READ THIS

Good news from Iraq...and from the New York Times? Say it ain't so! The Anbar province of Iraq, just west of Baghdad, is showing a homogeneous front against terrorism. Thousands have joined the police force, working with American troops. Office buildings for government workers are being renovated as well as hotels for visitors. While there is still a ways to go, the decrease in daily violent acts and a united police force is showing turns toward a better direction for stability and freedom for Iraqis.

But the reporter, Kirk Semple, points to a simple yet crucial reason as to why this turn has occurred: "While the anti-American sheiks in Anbar and Al Qaeda both opposed the Americans, their goals were different. The sheiks were part of a relatively moderate front that sought to drive the Americans out of Iraq; some were also fighting to restore Sunni Arab power. But Al Qaeda wanted to go even further and impose a fundamentalist Islamic state in Anbar, a plan that many of the sheiks did not share.... For all the sheiks' hostility toward the Americans, they realized that they had a bigger enemy, or at least one that needed to be fought first, as a matter of survival."

This is what I have been saying all along folks. You can't fight "terror" because terror is a tactic. You can't attempt to establish democracy and freedom when you are constantly worried about your basic need to just survive. Only once you have gotten rid of your threat to survival—Al Qaeda—can you finally work towards greater ideals and goals.

By the way ... I began this entry with the phrase "good news from Iraq." Remember this: Good news from Iraq is almost always bad news for the Defeatocrats. Democrats are truly invested in our defeat in Iraq. They feel that they have no chance of regaining full control in Washington if Iraq starts to go our way. With every bit of good news from Iraq look for Defeatocrats to become more vocal in their demands for immediate withdrawal. Oh ... and the media, of course, will be more than willing to help them along.

LIGHT BULBS THAT DON'T SIGNIFY IDEAS

BY MARK STEYN

Everything's difficult, isn't it? In the Democratic presidential candidates' debate, Sen. Barack Obama was asked what he personally was doing to save the environment, and replied that his family was "working on" changing their light bulbs.

Is this the new version of the old joke? How many senators does it take to "work on" changing a light bulb? One to propose a bipartisan commission. One to threaten to de-fund the light bulbs. One to demand the impeachment of Bush and Cheney for keeping us all in the dark. One to vote to pull out the first of the light bulbs by fall of this year with a view to getting them all pulled out by the end of 2008.

In 1914, on the eve of the Great War, British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey observed, "The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime." Whether he was proposing a solution to global warming is unclear. But he would be impressed to hear that nine decades later the lights are going out all over Washington.

This week, both the House and the Senate voted for defeat in Iraq. That's to say, Congress got tired of waiting for deadbeat insurgents to get their act together and inflict devastating military humiliation on U.S. forces. So America's legislators have voted to mandate the certainty of defeat. They want the withdrawal of American forces to begin this October, which is a faintly surreal concept: Watching CNN International around the world, many viewers unversed in America's constitutional arrangements will have been puzzled by the spectacle of a nation giving six months' notice of surrender. But the cannier types in the presidential palaces will have drawn their own conclusions.

For example, as Congress was voting, Vladimir Putin announced that Russia would withdraw from the post-Cold War arrangements of the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty in protest at American plans to install missile defense systems on the Continent. In the first months of the Bush administration -- pre-9/11 -- this issue was mostly theoretical. European leaders couldn't quite figure out why anyone would need a system to take out incoming nukes but Bush seemed hot for it and, that being so, you might as well be inside the system rather than out.

Six years on, Iran is going nuclear and nobody seems minded to stop them. So a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe is a more practical benefit than it once seemed. In fact, the mullahs are precisely the kind of fellows the system's intended for: small nuclear powers less susceptible to conventional deterrence theory. There might be quite a few of these a decade down the line. Reluctant to find themselves living under a Shia Persian nuclear umbrella, the Sunni Arab dictatorships are said to be pondering whether they might benefit from going the nuke route. The Saudis and Egyptians could certainly afford it very easily.

So what's Putin's game? Well, he leads a country with severe structural defects (a collapsed birth rate for everyone except Russia's Muslims, a depopulating east, disease-ridden menfolk face down in the vodka) but a relatively buoyant economy -- or, to be more precise, kleptocracy. In particular, Western Europe is increasingly dependent on Russia as an energy supplier. Putin calculates that even a weak Kremlin can make mischief for America. The missile-defense interceptors might have been expressly designed for fin-du-civilization Europe: You don't have to do anything, you don't have to attack anyone, you don't have to be beastly and aggressive like the swaggering Texan cowboy. You just have to go about your business and, if anything's heading your way, the Yanks will press a button and blow it to smithereens and send you a confirmatory e-mail afterward. But Putin is putting Continental leaders in the position of having to choose between even this benign defensive technology and relations with Russia. And, given European dispositions, he must surely feel he's got a sporting chance of winning this one. And, if he does, he will in effect be making the world safe for Iranian nuclear blackmail.

Why would he do this? Well, why wouldn't he? As I always say, if you live in Tikrit and Ramadi, the Iraq issue is about Iraq. But, if you live anywhere else on the planet, Iraq is about America. In Tehran, Pyongyang, Khartoum, Caracas, Beijing, Moscow and the South Sandwich Islands, they watch Harry Reid & Co. on the 24/7 cable channels and draw their own conclusions about American will.

The Defeaticrats are being opportunist: They think they can calibrate the precise degree of U.S. defeat in Mesopotamia that will bring victory for them in Ohio and Florida. Contemptible as this is, it wouldn't be possible had the administration not lost the support of many of the American people over this war. The losses are devastating for the individuals' families but they are historically among the lowest in any conflict this nation or any other has fought. So I don't believe the nightly plume of smoke over Baghdad on the evening news explains the national disenchantment. Rather, the mission as framed by the president -- help the Iraqi people build a free and stable Iraq -- is simply not accepted by the American people. On the right, between the unrealpolitik "realists" and the "rubble doesn't cause trouble" isolationists and the hit-'em-harder-faster crowd, the president has fewer and fewer takers for a hunkered-down, defensive, thankless semi-colonial policing operation. Regardless of how it works on the ground, it has limited appeal at home. Meanwhile, the leftists don't accept it because, while they're fond of "causes," they dislike those that require meaningful action: Ask Tibetans about how effective half a century of America's "Free Tibet" campaign has been; or ask Darfuris, assuming you can find one still breathing, how the left's latest fetishization is going from their perspective:

"On Sunday, April 29, Salt Lake Saves Darfur invites the greater Salt Lake community of compassion to join with us as we honor the fallen and suffering Darfuris in a day of films, discussion and dance with a Sudanese dance troupe."

Marvelous. I hope as the "Salt Lake Saves Darfur" campaign intensifies in the decades ahead there'll be enough Darfuris to man the dance troupe. It would be truer to say that the greater Salt Lake community of compassion, like Sen. Obama with his light bulbs, is "working on" saving Darfur.

In Khartoum, Tehran, Moscow and elsewhere, the world's mischief-makers have reached their own conclusions about how much serious "work" America is prepared to do.

ROSIE GETS THE BOOT.....RIGHT IN THE.......

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to celebrate the ousting of one Rosie O'Donnell. No longer will the public be forced to hear her fat trap jabber on about the 911 "conspiracy" or her vitriolic hatred of Donald Trump. (We all know she is just jealous of his comb over...as am I!). Barbara Walters and "The View" claim that she is leaving because of the money — the bleeding heart liberal just can't get enough. Go figure. But we all know it is because audiences, yours included, cannot stand to have her as an outrageous mouthpiece for one minute longer. The people have spoken. Rosie, you're fired!

But fear not, my friends. She plans to come back and guest host special programs on autism and depression. That's depressing. This is exactly the sane, level-headed woman that I would want preaching about the mental and physical health of our country.

Oh, and the article happens to be written by my buddy at the NYTimes Jacques Steinberg. You might remember that he is too busy to print a correction about my computer's instrumental musical selection, but he happened to have time to give a big, fat plug to Rosie's personal blog in this article. Here's an idea Jacques: why don't you print a correction to your story, attacking me and talk radio, and then link to Nealz Nuze where readers can read about it first hand (in journalism speak, you might call that "directly from the source"). This way the people can determine for themselves what is truth and what isn't, since in your job as a journalist you don't seem to feel that that is necessary.

DATE CERTAIN FOR SURRENDER

Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats have finally delivered to Al Qaeda and Islamic radicals across the world a message of American surrender and weakness. Sure, the Democrats call for a specific date for surrender to Al Qaeda in Iraq will be vetoed ... but the message is clear. Americans -- at least the party in charge of our congress and our purse strings -- have lost their will to fight. There they were, Pelosi and Reid, standing in front of one of those made-for-TV backdrops reading "Strategy for Security" cutting the legs out from underneath every man and woman serving in our armed forces, not only in Iraq, but everywhere in the world.

Look --- I understand fully that mistakes have been made in this war. I'm one who believes that not enough troops were sent to Iraq in the first place. I still can't understand why we didn't dedicate the resources that were needed to seal the borders with Iran an Syria. Perhaps elements of Saddam's army should have been retained to serve the new Iraq. Mistakes? Sure! But what is the proper course of action when mistakes are made? Do you abandon the project, or do you regroup and forge ahead, perhaps wiser from your experience.

I think that from the very beginning the Democrat leadership has been dedicated to undermining Bush in Iraq any way they can. Their goal has been solitary and simple. Destroy the Bush presidency and pave the way for complete Democrat control in 2009. I truly believe that Democrats are perfectly willing to strengthen Islamic terrorists generally and Al Qaeda specifically if that is what needs to be done for them to destroy George Bush. The desire for revenge for 2000 is that strong. Perhaps the true motivation behind Democrat obstruction and maneuvering might have become more obvious to the American people if it were not for the fact that the mainstream media shared the Democrats goal ... destroy Bush, defeat Republicans, return liberalism to power in Washington.

By the way ... concerning last night's debate ....Hillary Rodham said last night that her vote to authorize the war in Iraq was "based on the information that was available to me at the time." Well, guess what? That is exactly the position President Bush was in when he pressed for war against Saddam Hussein. Hillary gets a pass on her "information that was available to me at the time" line, Bush does not. And so it goes.

HILLARY VIOLATES HER OWN "RUTGERS PLEDGE"

By Michelle Malkin ·

Neeever mind...

Last week, Hillary Clinton issued what she called the "Rutgers pledge" in the wake of the Don Imus firing:

"Will you be willing to speak up and say, "Enough is enough,' when women or minorities or the innocent or powerless are marginalized or denigrated?" Clinton said in her speech to about 700 people. "Will you say there's no place -- if there ever was, there certainly isn't now -- for disrespect or bigotry to be seen as funny?"

Despite condemning bigotry, misogyny, and disrespect, however, Hillary decided to guest-blog this week on one of the far Left's most degrading and bigoted sites. The Hillary campaign was quite proud of the appearance. Mary Ann Akers and Danny Glover report:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton caused a minor stir this week with her guest-blogging appearance at Firedoglake, a site where one of the lead bloggers last year painted Sen. Joseph Lieberman in blackface before apologizing and removing the entry at the behest of Lieberman's opponent.

Clinton, D-N.Y., posted an entry at Firedoglake on Tuesday to mark Equal Pay Day and to tout her legislation aimed at guaranteeing women the same pay as men when they do the same work. Clinton also briefly engaged the blog's readers in the comments at the bottom of her post.

Mary Ann Akers, who writes The Sleuth blog for The Washington Post, reported that Democratic activists privately questioned Clinton's decision to appear on Firedoglake because of the tarnished reputation of Jane Hamsher, one of its chief bloggers.

Last summer, while following Democrat Ned Lamont of Connecticut in his bid to unseat fellow Democrat Lieberman, Hamsher posted an image of Lieberman in blackface at The Huffington Post. Although Hamsher never worked in a paid capacity for Lamont's campaign, she did produce a video for the campaign. Her close connections to Lamont prompted the campaign to contact her about the image.

She deleted it and apologized, but according to Akers, the incident is fresh enough in the minds of some Democrats that they think Clinton should have kept her distance from Firedoglake.

Hamsher's blackface stunt is the tip of the iceberg.

Hamsher is the woman who criticized conservative author/commentator Kate O'Beirne as "sandpaper snatch" and who snarled "The bitch is dead meat."

Hamsher's blog is the site where one unhinged regular blogger (not a commenter, mind you, but a Hamsher-approved guest blogger...like Hillary) attacked Democrat Ellen Tauscher as a "prostitute" and applauded another blogger for calling her "a bribe-taking corporate whore and shit eater who has guaranteed herself a nasty primary in 2008."

Hamsher's blog is the site where another unhinged regular blogger referred to conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham as a "cunt," which he later changed to "Bitch Troll From Hell."

What was that pledge again, Hillary? Oh, yeah:

Will you be willing to speak up and say, "Enough is enough,' when women or minorities or the powerless are marginalized or degraded...

...Will you say there's no place -- if there ever was, there certainly isn't now -- for disrespect or bigotry to be seen as funny?

Ask Hillary to take her own pledge: Click for contact form.

***

FRC spotlights another case of Hillary violating her own pledge...by refusing to give back gobs of money raised by foul-mouthed rapper Timbaland:

Hat tip: Matt Lewis@Townhall.com

Ed Driscoll: Don Imus could not be reached for comment.

***

Meanwhile, Hillary tries to spin her bogus black-cent. She really thinks she's good at this.

REID'S GLASS HOUSE

by Amanda B. Carpenter

Majority Leader Harry Reid (D.-Nev.) has a nasty habit of name-calling, which reared its ugly head again when the Nevada senator tried to deflect charges from the White House about his position on the war.

Last week, Reid told reporters that Vice-President Dick Cheney was the “administration’s attack dog.” To warrant this charge, Cheney had said Reid’s views on Iraq policy were “uniformed and misleading.”

This testy exchange was prompted by an April 23 speech Reid gave at the Woodrow Wilson Center. There, Reid told listeners that “winning the war is no longer the job of the U.S. military.”

Revolving Views

A few days before that, on April 19, Reid declared the “war is lost” and said the President’s surge of U.S. troops to Iraq is “not accomplishing anything.” But the next day on the Senate floor, after receiving some backlash from his own party, Reid claimed, “No one wants us to succeed in Iraq more than Democrats.”

After breaking from the Republicans’ weekly policy luncheon on April 24, Cheney told reporters Reid was campaigning against the war for political gain. “Sen. Reid himself has said the war in Iraq will bring more his party more seats in the next election,” Cheney said. “It is cynical to declare that the war is lost because you believe it gives you political advantage.”

Through the midterm elections, Reid pledged to keep full funding for U.S. troops in Iraq. Then, after the Democrats took the majority on Capitol Hill, Reid said he supported funding the war as long as certain benchmarks were met. In early April, Reid signed on with Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold’s legislation to prohibit funding for the war by March 31. The bill also calls on the President to begin withdrawing troops within four months.

“Last November, Sen. Reid said there would be no cut-off of funds for the military in Iraq,” Cheney said. “So, in less than six months time, Sen. Reid has gone from pledging full funding for the military, then full funding with conditions, and then a cut-off of funding. Three positions in five months on the most important foreign policy question facing the nation and our troops.”

Doubts Petraeus

In January, Reid voted to confirm Gen. David Petraeus to be commander of U.S. Forces in Iraq. Petraeus was appointed by President Bush to carry out a surge of about 21,000 U.S. troops, most of them into the Baghdad area. When Reid was asked by CNN if he would believe Petraeus if Petraeus said the surge policy in Iraq was working, Reid said, “No I wouldn’t.”

In a press conference, Reid was asked to address the charges of inconsistency the Vice President made against him. Reid refused to answer. Instead, Reid called Cheney the “administration’s chief attack dog” and told reporters “I’m not going to get into a name-calling match with someone who has a 9% approval ratings.”

Reid is wise to decline answering these charges: They are correct. Below is a compilation of quotes from Majority Leader Reid that show both his propensity to insult and his inconsistent position on the war.

“I think that he [Justice Clarence Thomas] has been an embarrassment to the Supreme Court.” --NBC’s "Meet the Press," December 5, 2004

“I'm not a big Greenspan fan -- Alan Greenspan fan. I voted against him the last two times. I think he's one of the biggest political hacks we have in Washington.” --CNN’s "Inside Politics," March 3, 2005

"The man's [President George W. Bush] father is a wonderful human being. I think this guy is a loser." --Speech at Del Sol High School May 7, 2005

"When he [Bill Frist] got this job, he had had limited experience on the Senate floor, and he was leaving. He had term-limited himself. So he has no institutional integrity. ... He doesn't feel as strongly about the Senate. He does whatever the White House wants him to do.” --Washington Post, December 19, 2005

“Can you think of one thing that has gone right in Iraq? And I'm having -- searching and I'm having trouble finding that.”-- Press conference, September 19, 2006

'I'm going to throw bombs sometimes -- I'm going to be conciliatory other times.”- New York Times, November 10, 2006

“We're not going to do anything to limit funding [for the war] or cut off funds, even though there are some on the outside who suggest that.” --Associated Press, November 29, 2006

“Just as with Vietnam, there was never a time when funds were cut off from Vietnam. And I don’t think anyone can find a war that this country was engaged in where the funds were cut off. No one is talking about cutting off the funds.” --"The Charlie Rose Show," March 5, 2007

“Reauthorization [of the war] isn’t such a good idea, more than likely. I think probably what might be better is to specifically do away with the authorization whatsoever, period. And then just assign specific legislative authorizations to what the troops there could do. Get rid of the original authorization [of the war]. --"The Charlie Rose Show," March 5, 2007

“I am pleased to cosponsor Senator Feingold’s important legislation…. If the President vetoes the supplemental appropriations bill and continues to resist changing course in Iraq, I will work to ensure this legislation receives a vote in the Senate in the next work period.”-- Joint statement issued by Feingold and Reid on April 2, 2007.

"The American people, I repeat, have to understand what is happening. It is not worth another drop of American blood in Iraq. It is not worth another damaged brain." --interview with Ed Schultz, April 2, 2007

“We’re going to pick up Senate seats as a result of this war. Senator Schumer has shown me numbers that are compelling and astounding.” --Press conference, April 12, 2007

“I support, with Senator Feingold, legislation that would start redeployment in 120 days, and there would be a cut-off date April 1, 2008. I support that. And there will be a time when I’m going to be looking to Senator Feingold and others for a time to do that.” --Press conference, April 19, 2007

“Now, I believe myself … that this war is lost and that the surge is not accomplishing anything.”-- Press conference April 19, 2007

“No one wants us to succeed in Iraq more than Democrats.” -- Speech on the Senate floor, April 20, 2007

"General Petraeus, the commander on the ground, has said so himself. Twenty percent [of the war in Iraq] can be won militarily and 80 percent has to be won through our diplomatic efforts, politics, and economics. I repeat: the only way to succeed lies through a comprehensive political, diplomatic and economic strategy. So says the commander on the ground there, General Petraeus." -- April 20, 2007

CNN: [President Bush] has also said that General Petraeus is going to come on the Hill and make it clear to you that there is progress going on in Iraq, that the so-called surge is working. Will you believe him when he says that?

REID: “No, I don’t believe him.” --CNN’s Situation Room April 23, 2007

REPORTER: The Vice-President suggested you've been inconsistent in your position [on Iraq], changing, he said, three times in five months, from no cutting off of funds, to funding with limitations, to now cutting off funds --

REID: I'm not going to get into a name-calling match with somebody who has a 9 percent approval rating. --Press conference, April 24, 2007

SENATE PASSES SURRENDER BILL; EMBEDS REPORT FROM THE GROUND

Senate passes surrender bill; embeds report from the ground

By Michelle Malkin

Get out the veto pen, President Bush.

***

The Tank publishes Joe Lieberman's floor statement. Here's a tidbit:

I have great respect for my friend from Nevada. I believe he has offered this proposal in good faith, and therefore want to take it up in good faith, and examine its arguments and ideas carefully and in depth, for this is a very serious discussion for our country.

In his speech Monday, the Majority Leader described the several steps that this new strategy for Iraq would entail. Its first step, he said, is to “transition the U.S. mission away from policing a civil war—to training and equipping Iraqi security forces, protecting U.S. forces, and conducting targeted counter-terror operations.”

I ask my colleagues to take a step back for a moment and consider this plan.

When we say that U.S. troops shouldn’t be “policing a civil war,” that their operations should be restricted to this narrow list of missions, what does this actually mean?

To begin with, it means that our troops will not be allowed to protect the Iraqi people from the insurgents and militias who are trying to terrorize and kill them. Instead of restoring basic security, which General Petraeus has argued should be the central focus of any counterinsurgency campaign, it means our soldiers would instead be ordered, by force of this proposed law, not to stop the sectarian violence happening all around them—no matter how vicious or horrific it becomes.

In short, it means telling our troops to deliberately and consciously turn their backs on ethnic cleansing, to turn their backs on the slaughter of innocent civilians—men, women, and children singled out and killed on the basis of their religion alone. It means turning our backs on the policies that led us to intervene in the civil war in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, the principles that today lead many of us to call for intervention in Darfur.

This makes no moral sense at all.

It also makes no strategic or military sense either.

***

Michael Yon's latest dispatch is up with many trademark vivid photos, like this one, giving you an up-close look at the soldiers and the surge:

Yon's caption: "Combat soldiers can sleep anywhere: leaning curled in hallway steps , with bricks as pillows. With practically nobody here to tell the stories of their hard work, sacrifice and heartening professionalism, we have left our soldiers behind in this war."

Yon to broadcast a reality show from Iraq:

Michael Yon, the acclaimed independent photo journalist and war correspondent currently embedded in Iraq covering the “surge” has signed an exclusive deal with Peace River Company LLC and Extant Media to produce a verite television series that will film his war zone dispatches from Iraq.

This television vehicle, tentatively titled “Michael Yon: Dispatches/Iraq”, will bring a new dimension to Yon’s sometimes brutal blog accounts and vivid images as he covers the life and death struggle of the soldiers and citizens of this war torn country. Yon is one of the only journalists to brave the streets of Baghdad beyond the protected Green Zone and bring unfiltered war accounts to the American public...

13 episodes are planned.

Meanwhile, the tireless J.D. Johannes reports from Iraq:

48 hours without sleep.

24 hours without food.

6 hours with little water.

It was the most successful mission I had ever been on. Insurgencies are not beat with hammer and anvil clearing operations. They are not beat with presence patrols conducted from the confines of humvees that resemble bank vaults or Bradly fighting vehicles or Strykers.

Insurgencies are beat with a piece of paper: A Census Form...

THE DEMOCRATS" GONZALES

By David S. Broder

Here's a Washington political riddle where you fill in the blanks: As Alberto Gonzales is to the Republicans, Blank Blank is to the Democrats -- a continuing embarrassment thanks to his amateurish performance.

If you answered " Harry Reid," give yourself an A. And join the long list of senators of both parties who are ready for these two springtime exhibitions of ineptitude to end.

President Bush's highly developed tolerance for egregious incompetence in his administration may have met its supreme test in Attorney General Gonzales, who at various times has taken complete responsibility for the firing of eight U.S. attorneys and professed complete ignorance of the reasons for their dismissal. This demonstration of serial obfuscation so impressed the president that he rushed out to declare that Gonzales had "increased my confidence in his ability to do the job."

As if that were not mind-boggling enough, consider the mental gyrations performed by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) as he rationalized the recent comment from his majority leader, Harry Reid, the leading light of Searchlight, Nev., that the war in Iraq "is lost."

On "Fox News Sunday," Schumer offered this clarification of Reid's off-the-cuff comment. "What Harry Reid is saying is that this war is lost -- in other words, a war where we mainly spend our time policing a civil war between Shiites and Sunnis. We are not going to solve that problem. . . . The war is not lost. And Harry Reid believes this -- we Democrats believe it. . . . So the bottom line is if the war continues on this path, if we continue to try to police and settle a civil war that's been going on for hundreds of years in Iraq, we can't win. But on the other hand, if we change the mission and have that mission focus on the more narrow goal of counterterrorism, we sure can win."

Everyone got that? This war is lost. But the war can be won. Not since Bill Clinton famously pondered the meaning of the word "is" has a Democratic leader confused things as much as Harry Reid did with his inept discussion of the alternatives in Iraq.

Nor is this the first time Senate Democrats, who chose Reid as their leader over Chris Dodd of Connecticut, have had to ponder the political fallout from one of Reid's tussles with the language.

Hailed by his staff as "a strong leader who speaks his mind in direct fashion," Reid is assuredly not a man who misses many opportunities to put his foot in his mouth. In 2005, he attacked Alan Greenspan, then chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, as "one of the biggest political hacks we have here in Washington."

He called President Bush " a loser," then apologized. He said that Bill Frist, then Senate majority leader, had "no institutional integrity" because Frist planned to leave the Senate to fulfill a term-limits pledge. Then he apologized to Frist.

Most of these earlier gaffes were personal, bespeaking a kind of displaced aggressiveness on the part of the onetime amateur boxer. But Reid's verbal wanderings on the war in Iraq are consequential -- not just for his party and the Senate but for the more important question of what happens to U.S. policy in that violent country and to the men and women whose lives are at stake.

Given the way the Constitution divides warmaking power between the president, as commander in chief, and Congress, as sole source of funds to support the armed services, it is essential that at some point Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi be able to negotiate with the White House to determine the course America will follow until a new president takes office.

To say that Reid has sent conflicting signals about his readiness for such discussions is an understatement. It has been impossible for his own members, let alone the White House, to sort out for more than 24 hours at a time what ground Reid is prepared to defend.

Instead of reinforcing the important proposition -- defined by the Iraq Study Group-- that a military strategy for Iraq is necessary but not sufficient to solve the myriad political problems of that country, Reid has mistakenly argued that the military effort is lost but a diplomatic-political strategy can still succeed.

The Democrats deserve better, and the country needs more, than Harry Reid has offered as Senate majority leader.

davidbroder@washpost.com

NUTS IN THE CROSSHAIRS

by Ann Coulter

For cranky right-wingers who think politicians don't listen to them, this week I give you elected Democrats running like scared schoolgirls from the media's demand that they enact new gun control laws in response to the Virginia Tech shooting.

Instead, Democrats are promoting a mental health exception to the right to bear arms. We've banned mass murder and that hasn't seemed to work. So now we're going to ban mass murderers. Yes, that will do the trick!

This is a feel-good measure that is both wildly under-inclusive (the vast majority of nutcases receive no formal court adjudication of their nuttiness) and wildly over-inclusive (the vast majority of nuts don't kill people.) The worst thing most nuts do is irritate everybody else by driving their electric cars on the highway.

As lovely as it would be, we cannot identify mass murderers before they have broken any law, and mass murder is often the first serious crime they commit. No one can be locked up permanently for being potentially dangerous.

Even stalking laws can put away a person known to be dangerous for only a few years -- at best -- which is generally not worth spending a day sitting in court, facing your stalker, and then waiting a month for the court order.

So on one hand, the mental health exception is a feel-good measure that would be largely pointless. But on the other hand, it's no skin off my back. Liberals go to therapy. Conservatives go to church. And I think we'd all sleep better knowing that David Brock could not buy a gun.

In fact, I think we should expand the mental illness exception to cover First Amendment rights as well as Second Amendment rights.

I note that before mass murder, the only harassment the Virginia Tech killer was guilty of involved speech: creepy e-mails, creepy short stories, creepy phone calls. Stalkers, too, engage in frightening speech -- but that is protected. Revealing a stalking victim's address is "speech" but is little different from being the one to pull the trigger.

This small measure would have taken Dan "What's the Frequency, Kenneth" Rather off the airwaves years ago, preventing him from presenting doctored National Guard documents to the American people to try to throw a presidential election. A mental illness bar would deal a quick blow to Air America and both its remaining listeners. It would also free up about 90% of the Internet.

And it would end the public lunacy of Jim Wallis, the Democrats' Christian. Wallis' first remark on the massacre at Virginia Tech last week was to hail the remarkable "diversity" of the victims. True, Cho murdered 32 people in cold blood. But at least he achieved diversity!

Anyone who thinks a single-minded fixation on diversity must be the ultimate goal of every human endeavor, including mass murder, is not the sort of person who should be able to buy a gun or to publish his daft ruminations in public forums.

But just to get this straight: Democrats are saying we should be able to jail "strange" or "angry" people, but we can't deplane imams who demand extra-length seatbelts after boarding?

Speaking of which, has anyone else noticed the public expressions of shame and contrition from the Korean-American community after the Virginia Tech shooting? Of course, no one blames this exemplary community for the actions of one nut. The Koreans are manifestly law-abiding and decent -- nipping at the heels of Italians as the greatest Americans and tied for second with the Cubans.

Indeed, I believe this marks the first time a Korean has killed anyone in the United States, not involving an automobile. Nonetheless, Korean congregations, community groups and the family members themselves are issuing statements of sorrow. Not "pleas for tolerance." But sorrow. Remorse. Remember those? They were big back in the day.

If the Koreans can do it, why can't the Muslims? What explains the lack of a Muslim guilt impulse -- so normal, as seen in the case of the saddened Koreans -- after dozens of terrorist attacks on Americans?

How about a Muslim exception to the Second Amendment? That would have prevented the Virginia snipers from killing 10 people within three weeks in 2002. But most important: It would help us achieve "diversity" in our gun law prohibitions.

RUDY WARNS OF ANOTHER 9/11.....

.... if the Democrats win, that is. Giuliani says, however, that if a Republican is elected another terrorist attack can be anticipated and stopped because, he says, Republicans will remain on the offense. "I listen a little to the Democrats and if one of them gets elected, we are going on defense. We will wave the white flag on Iraq. We will cut back on the Patriot Act, electronic surveillance, interrogation and we will be back to our pre-Sept. 11 attitude of defense."

Giuliani also says that the Democrats do not understand the threat of the "terrorist war against us." Uh oh ... did you notice a bit of PC in that statement? How about the "Islamic terrorist war against us"?

Giuliani has much of this right. Democrats will absolutely go on the defense as soon as they can .. and a defensive posture before these Islamic murderers is suicide. Simply put ... we have identify them and go kill them over there before they come and kill us over here. But why allow political correctness play such a role here? The enemy is radical Islam. How can we say we are serious about fighting the enemy if we won't even speak its name?

ROSIE LEAVING THE VIEW?

By Michelle Malkin

That seems to be the buzz.

Here was her vulgar performance at the Matrix awards in case you missed it. Lorie has a big round-up.

I said earlier this month that ABC was not going to do the responsible thing and and proactively can her after her "9/11 was an inside job" cheerleading. I was right. Out of ideological sympathy and then cowardice, they let her drag down public discourse further and they let her choose her time and manner of departure.

The question now is: Where will she take her big mouth next?

***
Previous:

9/11 conspiracy-mongers and the advertisers who love them
Hey, Rosie: read my lips
Hey, Rosie O'Donnell: Did you teach your kids to speak "ching chong," too?
The (Conservative) View
Rosie O'Donnell: Psycho mom

McCAIN V, REID THIS ISN'T JUST ABOUT POLITICS

by William Kristol

"We, who are willing to support this new strategy, and give General Petraeus the time and support he needs, have chosen a hard road. But it is the right road. It is necessary and just. Democrats, who deny our soldiers the means to prevent an American defeat, have chosen another road. It may appear to be the easier course of action, but it is a much more reckless one, and it does them no credit even if it gives them an advantage in the next election. This is an historic choice, with ramifications for Americans not even born yet. Let's put aside for a moment the small politics of the day. The judgment of history should be the approval we seek, not the temporary favor of the latest public opinion poll."

Sen. John McCain (R-Az.), speaking at the Virginia Military Institute, April 11, 2007

"We're going to pick up Senate seats as a result of this war. Senator Schumer has shown me numbers that are compelling and astounding."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), speaking to reporters, April 12, 2007

"This war is lost."

Reid, April 19, 2007

Usually, politics is a murky business--gray upon gray, one set of mixed motives jostling with another. But sometimes there is a time for choosing--between courage and cynicism, between honor and disgrace.

John McCain's speech to the cadets of the Virginia Military Institute is the best single analysis by any political figure of where we stand in the war in Iraq. It is a serious and sober attempt to persuade the American people that the war is winnable, that we should give Gen. Petraeus a chance to win it, and that accepting defeat would be both ignoble and disastrous to American interests. With this morally and intellectually impressive speech, John McCain took leadership of the fight for victory in Iraq.

McCain was hard on the opponents of the war here at home. He didn't just describe troop withdrawal proposals as unwise. He derided "the fanciful and self-interested debates about Iraq that substitute for statesmanship in Washington." And he suggested that the Democrats had decided "to take advantage of the public's frustration, accept defeat," and hope that "the politics of defeat" would benefit them.

McCain continued: "In Washington, where political calculation seems to trump all other considerations, Democrats in Congress and their leading candidates for President, heedless of the terrible consequences of our failure, unanimously confirmed our new commander, and then insisted he be prevented from taking the action he believes necessary to safeguard our country's interests....I watched with regret as the House of Representatives voted to deny our troops the support necessary to carry out their new mission. Democratic leaders smiled and cheered as the last votes were counted. What were they celebrating? Defeat? Surrender? In Iraq, only our enemies were cheering."

Tough words--especially because, here in America, much of the mainstream media was also cheering. McCain, a onetime media favorite when he last ran for president, was effectively forswearing the possibility of regaining their favor.

Meanwhile, the mainstream media paid little attention to Harry Reid's comments quoted above. Republican criticisms of them were treated as the normal tit-for-tat of partisan politics. Reid's cynicism wasn't thought noteworthy, and his defeatism wasn't thought extraordinary. Apparently, cynicism in the service of the defeat of Republicans is no vice. Undercutting the efforts of American troops you have voted to send to fight in a war is a virtue.

Earlier this month, the "surge" was beginning visibly to work. Al Qaeda fought back, with massive slaughter of civilians, whose purpose was in part to undercut support for the war against al Qaeda on the home front. Harry Reid followed script.

Now we are at a moment of truth. There is McCain's way, a way of difficulty and honor. There is Reid's way, a way of political expediency and dishonor. McCain may lose the political battle at home, and the U.S. may ultimately lose in Iraq. But some of us will always be proud, at this moment of choice, to have stood with McCain, and our soldiers, and our country.

WHAT IMUS TAUGHT SOROS

by Jed Babbin

It’s been a tough month. Those of us who successfully resisted the temptation to write about radio shock jock Don Imus’ racial slur of the Rutgers womens’ basketball team may have been left off Oprah’s invitation list (and Tim Russert’s), but we may have gained the advantage of perspective. Let’s pull back on the stick and gain some altitude, because this is the next stage of the battle for the media in 2007 that will substantially affect the results in 2008.

What Imus said was both predictable and inexcusable. He got fired, and deserved it. But such -- and worse -- will be repeated forevermore in gangsta rap, on satellite radio and wherever else it is tolerated by the same people who fired Imus. But the fact that Imus was forced off the air by an apparently well-orchestrated assault on his advertisers may be a lesson conservatives need to learn because liberals will study and apply it with all the energy they can muster.

As I’ve written before in this space, liberals are prepping the media battlefield while Republicans and conservatives (sigh; yes, there is a difference) fail to defend their assets and prepare to battle the liberals’ amen chorus in everything from the blogs to the New York Times editorial page.

Those of us who study the military all day and half the night are familiar with the notion that “getting inside the adversary’s decision loop” is one of the surest ways to win a fight. Translating from Pentagonese, when you get inside the other guy’s decision loop, you have managed to: (1) determine what his next move is likely to be; and (2) take countermeasures -- in attack and/or defense -- to defeat that next move and use the adversary’s momentum against him. On the kinetic battlefield, that can mean everything from seizing a piece of real estate before the other guy gets there to bombing a force maneuvering for position, and everything in between. In the media wars now going on, the liberals are inside the conservative decision loop.

We’ve watched, and not answered, the assault on Fox News. Beginning with Bill Clinton’s well-planned attack on Chris Wallace last year and succeeding in blocking Fox’s key role in Democratic candidate debates, the one cable news network that even tries to be fair to both sides is being marginalized. So what is to be learned by the facts surrounding the Imus firing? What will the liberals try to do with it?

For decades, conservative talk radio has been a hugely effective political weapon. Rush Limbaugh has proved over and over again that conservative radio is effective both politically and economically. In the free market of ideas, Rush -- and Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity and so many others -- have succeeded. Sponsors gladly pay for time on shows that reach millions of people every day.

On the other side, liberal talk radio has been the Edsel of the broadcast media. When the folks at Air America weren’t cooking their own books, they were striking out as regularly as a Little Leaguer would facing the Minnesota Twins Johann Santana or the Toronto Blue Jays’ Roy Halladay. No matter how loudly they preached liberalism, they couldn’t succeed in either market: for commercials or in the market of ideas. (RA’s “star” -- thuggish Al Franken -- is surrendering to market forces and running for the US Senate in Minnesota.)

In the past, liberals have taken every shot they could at Rush and the others, seeking to force them off the air. In 2002, then-Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D.-S.D.) accused Rush of inciting violence against him after Limbaugh said -- correctly, of course -- that Daschle and others were obstructing progress on Homeland Security legislation. Dachle said, “Rush Limbaugh and all of the Rush Limbaugh wannabes have a very shrill edge…But what happens when Rush Limbaugh attacks those of us in public life is that people aren’t satisfied just to listen. They want to act…and so, you know, the threats to those of us in public life go up dramatically, on our families…” If Daschle could have had Rush arrested, he would have.

That assault on Rush failed, as it had to, because it attacked him at his strong point. But what could the libs learn from the Imus mess?

If you want to get inside the liberals decision loop, you have to understand their intent -- to destroy conservative talk radio -- and their capabilities, from blogs to pols and all the politically activist media in between. What would you do if you were, say, George Soros? If you had a ton of money and wanted to render conservative talk radio ineffective in the 2008 election cycle?

What you’d do is employ some group to pick at the statements of the talkers, and make every politically-incorrect utterance a cause celebre. Take words out of context. No one will notice. Make any statement about Hillary, Obama or whoever into some sort of outrageous racial/religious/sexist/whatever slur. Petition the advertisers on that show, bash them by name in every corner of the blogosphere and rely on the media to contrive stories around the blogs. Create media feeding frenzies to threaten advertisers who continue to buy time on the supposedly “offensive” shows.

If that’s what the libs will try, and they will -- if that’s the weapons they will use, and they are -- we are now inside their decision loop. The question is what to do before they get started? What’s the countermeasure?

There are two. First and foremost, we need to dig hard to discover the sources of the attacks, and we will. When we do, we’ll expose them, naming names and by doing so showing that the attacks aren’t by consumers or about them. We have to deal in facts, not fiction and whenever we get them we need to be as aggressive as the liberals in stirring the media to show how the attacks are orchestrated.

Second, conservatives must refuse to be intimidated. Political correctness is a threat to free speech. The talkers are usually right, and when they are we must stand with them.

HARRY REID'S 'LOST WAR'

by Reid Collins

No, Senator Reid. The "war" is not lost. The "war", which has become the misnomer of this or any other age, was won a long time ago. In 2003 American troops invaded Iraq on the heels of a "shock and awe" bombing and missile campaign. Within months the war was over. Officials of the Iraqi government either surrendered or fled. Among the latter, Saddam Hussein would later be found hiding in a hole in the ground. Military commanders and their troops surrendered. Organized resistence was ended. The war, by any measure of conflict, was over and the United States and its allies had won.

What remained was, and is, a postliminium conundrum having nothing to do with a war. A secularly-divided populace has resumed an internicine struggle held in abeyance for years only by the iron-fisted cruelty of the now-absent dictator, Hussein. To the extent that they were victors, and occupiers, the American and other foreign forces were met by rag-tag civilian opposition in a nation universally armed. Since the vast majority of the victorious forces are American it is they who bear the brunt of casualties.

The misnomer, "war," has become the semantical mistake of this new century for the United States. The President and his administration embrace the misnomer with fervor, calling for "victory" in this non-existant war without ever carefully defining what victory in a phantom struggle might entail. Opponents swiftly adopted the misnomer in the belief that a "war" was surely something to be ended. They have been trumped. You want to surrender, cut and run, in the middle of a war? America does not lose wars! Ah, but America, as poiinted out, has already won this one. The misnomer is of course adopted by the Generals. They wear stars composed for warfare. They do not fight postliminums.

So long as the great debate is framed around that word, "war," there can never be rational discourse. But what would happen should some national political candidate issue a statement of policy: "I will not refer to the continued presence of American forces in Iraq as a war in any debates to come or any speeches to be made. I will make possible rational discourse on the subject."

If widely adopted, this will depoliticize a subject which has depoliticize a subject which has brought the American psyche to its knees.

The War in Iraq is Over. We won.

THE FAIRTAX..WHY CAN'T THE CRITICS AT LEAST BE HONEST?

Is any tax reform plan perfect? Of course not. Can't happen. I doubt that there is a way to devise a perfect plan for the government to seize money from its subjects, either through force, such as the income tax, or through choice, such as with a sales tax, in a perfect way. Certainly nobody, not even the most fervent big-government socialist liberal, would say that our current income tax system is anywhere near perfect.

Lacking perfection, it is inevitable, then, that any tax reform proposal would escape criticism, and there are criticisms of the FairTax that need addressing. To that end Congressman John Linder and I are now working on a sequel to The FairTax Book. The new book will be called "The FairTax, Answering the Critics." In researching for this book we have gathered letters from politicians as well as private citizens, tax policy experts, government officials, elected representatives, academicians, think tanks and, of course, those crafters of public opinion --- the pundits.

Work on the new book has shown that critics of The FairTax can be divided into two groups; those who deal with the subject honestly, and those who do not. Perhaps we shouldn't have been, but we were amazed to discover that most --- not some, but most --- of the critics of The FairTax have to first lie about the proposal before they launch into their critique. Amazingly enough, the president's tax reform commission took just such a tact. In laymen's terms, the tax reform commission said that while the FairTax idea looks good, there is no way the congress would pass it as written. So the commission then proceeds to re-write the FairTax legislation into a form that it thought the congress might actually pass, and then proceeded to criticize it.

The FairTax is the most thoroughly researched piece of tax reform legislation ever presented to the U.S. Congress. Well over $20 million has been spent on economic and sociological research in putting this plan together, and the research continues to this day. Still, though, we have a tax reform proposal that actually transfers power to the people, and this is just not to be tolerated -- especially by the left. So the procedure is to develop a list of lies and half-truths about the FairTax and then use those lies to go on the attack.

Such is the path that was taken in today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution by Jay Bookman, the deputy editorial page editor. Bookman is a fervent liberal, a huge believer in the cause of big government. Perhaps he's most troubled by the fact that the FairTax would constitute the biggest transfer of power from the government to the people since the formation of this country. He also may be upset that if the FairTax were to become the law of the land politicians would no longer be able to pursue their class warfare goals through tax policy. With the FairTax Jay Bookman would no longer be able to write opinion pieces relating to tax matters with constant references to "the richest 1%" and phrases like "pay their fair share."

So ... why pick on Jay Bookman today? Because he has a column in today's AJC entitled "Fervent faith in FairTax defies reason." First, a small critique. It's "FairTax." One word .. with the F and the T capitalized. No big deal? Well, you could actually read the bill or the book and discover this fact, or a few Google clicks. Besides .. the name is trademarked. I'm sure Mr. Bookman has a great fondness for accuracy .. so this should matter to him.

Wait! Did I say Jay Bookman had a fondness for accuracy? Sorry. By the second paragraph of his column we find out that this is not so. There he is, doing what so many other critics of the FairTax have done, blatantly lying about its terms. Bookman writes "Instead, those taxes will be replaced with a retail sales tax of 30 percent on all services and new goods."

That is flat-out wrong, and he knows it to be flat-out wrong. Bookman has adopted the "first lie, then critique" policy of the FairTax opponents. The FairTax is a 23% inclusive tax, not 30%. The FairTax is a replacement for the income tax, so it is calculated using the same methods we use to calculate the income tax. You know --- comparing apples to apples and all that? I wonder if someone would do me the favor of researching the writings of one Jay Bookman to find out if he ever quotes our income tax on an exclusive basis. If he did, he would find out that the top rate is somewhere well over 50%. But wait! He likes the income tax, so those figures will be reported honestly.

The problem here is that you just know that if a critique of the FairTax contains a blatant and intentional misrepresentation in the second paragraph, there is not much that will follow that can be treated seriously. Sure enough ... in the very next paragraph Bookman says that Congressman Linder has claimed that the FairTax would force prices down by as much as 30%. Wrong again. That figure is closer to 22%.

And so it goes. Misrepresent, then attack. The tactics of the left.

Hey ... here's an idea! I'm up for a fight right now. How about a public debate somewhere? Jay Bookman and me! Look, I've debated Yale tax law professors and former deputy assistant Treasury secretaries on the FairTax, I think I might be able to stand up pretty well against a deputy editorial page editor who finds it necessary to lie about an idea before he can criticize it.

Date and time? We'll work it out!

MAKE NO MISTAKE: THIS IS WAR

By Michael Chertoff

As the rubble of the Twin Towers smoldered in 2001, no one could have imagined a day when America's leaders would be criticized for being tough in protecting Americans from further acts of war.

Now, less than six years later, that day has arrived.

Since Sept. 11, a conspiracy-minded fringe has claimed that American officials plotted the destruction. But when scholars such as Zbigniew Brzezinski accuse our leaders of falsely depicting or hyping a "war on terror" to promote a "culture of fear," it's clear that historical revisionism has gone mainstream.

Brzezinski stated the obvious in describing terrorism as a tactic, not an enemy ["Terrorized by 'War on Terror,' Outlook, March 25]. But this misses the point. We are at war with a global movement and ideology whose members seek to advance totalitarian aims through terrorism. Brzezinski is deeply mistaken to mock the notion that we are at war and to suggest that we should adopt "more muted reactions" to acts of terrorism.

The impulse to minimize the threat we face is eerily reminiscent of the way America's leaders played down the Ayatollah Khomeini's revolutionary fanaticism in the late 1970s. That naive approach ultimately foundered on the kidnapping of our diplomats in Tehran.

A sensible strategy against al-Qaeda and others in its ideological terror network begins with recognizing the scope of the threat they pose. Al-Qaeda and its ilk have a world vision that is comparable to that of historical totalitarian ideologues but adapted to the 21st-century global network.

Is this actually a war? Well, the short answer comes from our enemies. Osama bin Laden's fatwa of Feb. 23, 1998, was a declaration of war, a self-serving accusation that America had somehow declared war on Islam, followed by a "ruling" to "kill the Americans and their allies -- civilians and military . . . in any country where it is possible to do it."

Since then, bin Laden and his allies have sought to carry out acts designed to strike at our global system of security, safety and economy. I am reminded of that every day when I see threat assessments and other evidence of a militarized and networked foe.

Measured by intent, capability and consequence, fanatical Islamist ideologues have declared -- and are prosecuting -- what is, by any objective rendering, a real war.

Intent: Today's extreme Islamist groups such as al-Qaeda do not merely seek political revolution in their own countries. They aspire to dominate all countries. Their goal is a totalitarian, theocratic empire to be achieved by waging perpetual war on soldiers and civilians alike. That includes the use of weapons of mass destruction.

Capability: The fanatics' intent, while grandiose, is not entirely fanciful. Islamist extremists such as those in al-Qaeda, the Taliban and associated groups from North Africa to Iraq and South Asia are fighting for and sometimes achieving control of territory in which they can train; assemble advanced, inhumane weaponry; impose their own vision of repressive law; and dominate local life. To be sure, as Brzezinski observes, the geographic reach of this network does not put them in the same group as the Nazis or Stalinists when they achieved first-class military power. But without relentless vigilance and effort from the civilized world, Islamist extremists could gain control of a state or establish a network of radical "statelets" in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

Consequence: The events of Sept. 11 highlight the dramatic difference between the consequences of Islamist extremist war-making and those of the political terrorist attacks unleashed against the West in the 1970s. The Sept. 11 attacks were the most devastating single blow ever visited upon our homeland by foreign enemies. The Islamist extremists' plot last summer to blow up multiple transatlantic airlines in Britain threatened a similarly devastating -- but thankfully unrealized -- consequence. Both episodes demonstrate that the terrorist ideologues aim to achieve not only a massive loss of life but also substantial disruption of our international system of travel and trade.

Simply put, our foes have declared their intent to make war, have demonstrated a capability to prosecute war and have laid on us the horrific consequences commensurate with war.

In the aftermath of Sept. 11, our allies correctly perceived al-Qaeda's strikes as acts of international aggression. By Sept. 12, the U.N. Security Council had passed a resolution vowing to respond, and NATO began its unprecedented move of declaring the attacks to be aggression against all of its members.

That radical Islamist fanatics have not yet achieved all the elements of state power should not blind us to the global threat they pose. This globalized war has theaters from traditional battlefields in Afghanistan and Iraq to the streets and alleys of cities where al-Qaeda-trained killers lurk. Moreover, this war cannot be won by arms alone; "soft" power matters. In these ways, our current struggle resembles the Cold War. As with the Cold War, we must respond globally. As with the Cold War, ideas matter as much as armaments. And as with the Cold War, this war requires our patience and resolve.

Perhaps the rhetoric of war makes Brzezinski and others uncomfortable. But history teaches that the false comfort of complacency is a dangerous indulgence in the face of a determined enemy.

HARRY REID: ANTI-MOTIVATIONAL SPEAKER

By Michelle Malkin

Rodger at Are We Lumberjacks? sends some Photoshopped posters for Harry Reid's Surrender Now campaign:

***
Previous:

Lieberman slaps Reid: "We should not surrender in the face of barbarism"
Raising The White Flag
More letters for Harry "Lost It" Reid
An invitation for our troops: Letters to Harry Reid

LIEBERMAN SLAPS REID: "WE SHOULD NOT SURRENDER IN THE FACE OF BARBARISM"

By Michelle Malkin

Statement from Sen. Joe Lieberman:

WASHINGTON - Senator Joe Lieberman (ID-CT) today made the following statement in response to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's comment that the Iraq War is "lost:"

"This week witnessed horrific terrorist attacks by Islamist extremists in Iraq, killing hundreds of innocent civilians and leading Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to declare that the war is 'lost.'

With all due respect, I strongly disagree. Senator Reid's statement is not based on military facts on the ground in Iraq and does not advance our cause there.

Al Qaeda's strategy for victory in Iraq is clear. They are trying to murder as many innocent civilians as possible in an effort to reignite sectarian fighting and drive us to retreat from Iraq.

The question now before us is whether we respond to these terrorist attacks by running away as Al Qaeda hopes - abandoning the future of Iraq, the Middle East, and ultimately our own security to the very same people responsible for this week's atrocities - or whether we stand united to fight them.

This is exactly the wrong time to conclude that we have lost the war in Iraq, or that our new strategy has failed. Instead, we should provide General Petraeus and his troops with the time and the resources to succeed. We should not surrender in the face of barbarism."

***

Now, get a load of Reid's response to Lieberman. Make sure you are not drinking or eathing anything. And if you have high blood pressure, do not read any further:

Friday, after Lieberman made his remarks, Reid struck again.

"The longer we continue down the President's path," the majority leader told colleagues in a Senate floor speech, "the further we will be from success."

He also pointed out that Democrats generally agree with him.

"In an effort to shift attention from this Administration's failed polities – and I say that in the plural – the President and his allies have repeatedly questioned whether I and my fellow Democrats support our troops," the majority leader told fellow senators. "No one wants us to succeed in Iraq more than the Democrats. We've proven that time and time again since this war started more than four years ago. We take a back seat to no one in supporting our troops, and we will never abandon our troops in a time of war."

***

David Lunde sends a most appropriate Photoshop of Harry "supporting" the troops:

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Previous:

Raising The White Flag
More letters for Harry "Lost It" Reid
An invitation for our troops: Letters to Harry Reid

IT'S TIME TO GIVE PELOSI THE BOOT

Question: Will Republicans chicken out and allow Nancy Pelosi to get away with prancing off to Syria and conspiring with Syria's leader Bashar al-Assad, a supporter of terrorism?

Answer: Only if you and I fail to do something about it -- and MIGHTY QUICK!

For months, Pelosi has been strutting around the country... waving a white flag... savaging the President... demanding our UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER ON THE WAR ON TERROR. In fact, if she had her way, the United States would skulk out of Iraq like whipped dogs, letting a bunch of rag-tag Islamic Fascists run the world.

And that's her privilege -- not as Speaker of the House -- but as a U.S. citizen whose right of free speech is protected by the First Amendment.

But Pelosi arguably committed a FELONY when she traveled to Syria and whispered behind closed doors with Bashar al-Assad, Syria's terrorist-loving leader.

First, the U.S. Constitution implicitly gives the President the authority to conduct foreign policy.

In order to make that responsibility explicit, in 1798 President John Adams initiated the Logan Act, which forbids any American -- "without authority of the United States" -- to communicate with a foreign government with the intent of influencing that government's actions in any "disputes or controversies with the United States."

VIOLATION OF THE LOGAN ACT IS A FELONY. Upon conviction, an offender can be sentenced to prison for up to three years.

If she was just a regular person like you, Nancy Pelosi would be a prime candidate for a prison cell.

Why should Speaker Pelosi -- third in the line of Presidential succession -- get away with blatantly undermining U.S. foreign policy by meeting with the leader of a country that supports terrorism? Why aren't our conservative leaders calling for a full investigation of her actions, or censure or even impeachment?

The U.S. broke off diplomatic relations with Syria in 2005, so no communication with that country's government could possibly occur "with the authority of the United States."

Pelosi's flagrant and shameless strutting on the world's stage... her cavorting with supporters of terrorism... constitutes a declaration of war against the Executive Branch of our government.

But more than that... She basically gave every terrorist around the world a GREEN LIGHT!

She sent a clear and unmistakable message to terrorists and terrorist sponsors around the world that the United States is divided and weak... That we don't have the will to fight an enemy that has shown itself to be ruthless and not beyond killing innocent Americans at home and abroad.

Pelosi's actions aren't simply foolish -- they're dangerous. But what is even more of a danger is the "ho-hum" reaction of our so-called conservative leaders in Congress.

It's time for our conservative leaders in Congress to stop behaving like Little Goody Two-Shoes and start defending the President, the rule of law, U.S. troops in Iraq and those Pelosi went to the Middle East to betray.

It's time for our conservative leaders in Congress to send the RIGHT MESSAGE to terrorists and terrorist supporters like Bashar al-Assad!

Use the hyperlink below now to go to our secure server and send your urgent Blast Fax Messages to President George Bush and the Republican leadership of the United States Senate and United States House of Representatives. Tell our conservative leaders to shed their "wimphood" just this once.

Demand that Nancy Pelosi be investigated with the same zeal and tenacity Patrick Fitzgerald showed when he set a perjury trap for Scooter Libby. Demand that they show the same zeal and tenacity that liberals are now showing as they go after President Bush and the Attorney General over the totally legal firings of U.S. District Attorneys.

http://www.cfiflistmanager.org/pelosibe.html

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HARRY REID, LOSER

by Jed Babbin

The Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, believes the war in Iraq is lost. There is nothing about that conclusion that bothers Reid: He is as blasé as he is certain, as resolute in pursuit of defeat as Churchill was in pursuit of victory. Last November, the Democrats seized control of Congress on the pretense that they wanted to change our policy to Iraq but not -- as they, to a man (and a woman) insisted -- to merely cut and run. We knew they weren’t being truthful then, but too many people were taken in. Now all pretense is dispensed with: we can see the man behind the curtain.

On Thursday, Reid said: "I believe ... that this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything, as is shown by the extreme violence in Iraq this week." He said that in the middle of a week when some 146,000 Americans are serving in Iraq, and at least 6 have died. He said that at a time when the troop surge announced by President Bush has only managed to deliver three of five brigades -- about 60% of the planned 21,000 additional troops -- to Iraq. The fact that the surge hasn’t had a chance to work is much less important to Reid and the Dems than the political mileage they may gain from declaring it a failure.

How many times have we heard the Dems insist that they support the troops? It’s one of their mantras. If something isn’t “for the children”, it’s to “support the troops.” But it’s false, just as their insistence last fall that they wouldn’t cut and run was. All of that pales in comparison to one single fact: Reid and the rest of the Democrats do not condemn defeat. They do not say they would have done better to win, because the words “win” and “victory” never pass their lips. They never propose an idea that might lead to quicker, more decisive victory in Iraq, or Afghanistan, or the Horn of Africa, or Lebanon, or anywhere else. No. The Democratic pathology is the same now as it was forty years ago.

During the Vietnam War, Democrats were able to rally Americans around their anti-war banner because the draft brought the dangers of the war home to most families. But Vietnam was – in their terms -- a “war of choice”: America didn’t have to fight in Vietnam to preserve itself. Iraq – and the rest: don’t forget the rest -- are different on two counts.

First, President Bush began the counter-attack after 9-11 in Afghanistan against the regime that had harbored and aided bin Laden in the 9-11 attacks. No one (no serious person, at least, which eliminates every Dem with the exception of Joe Lieberman) thought that the war could -- or would -- end there. The objective then, of which we have long since lost sight, was to end state sponsorship of terrorism.

Military analysts were uncertain whether the campaign to follow – against the other state sponsors of Islamic terrorism -- should begin in Iraq or Iran or Syria. President Bush chose Iraq. Iraq is not a war of choice: it was, inarguably, a state sponsor of terrorism. Yes, Iraq wasn’t involved in 9-11: but it was involved in terrorism in a very big way. The only argument against Iraq was that it was not the next most urgent campaign. Had Iran been first, Iraq might have not been necessary.

Second, whether Iraq should have been invaded is not the issue. The war against Islamic terrorism and the nations that sponsor it cannot be won there, but it can be lost. If we lost it -- unlike the Vietnam War -- we lose America. Vietnam wasn’t an existential war: this war is. And it is a great mistake to say this is “the war in Iraq.”

President Bush has failed in some ways, but his most important failure is in the leadership in the prosecution of this war. He hasn’t – since that memorable speech a week after 9-11 -- performed the role of a war president. He hasn’t defined the enemy, how he must be defeated, and how we will even know if we have won.

Let’s be plain: we are at war with those who adhere to radical Islam. It is an ideology, not a religion. Our goal is not -- cannot -- be to implant democracy in the Middle East. Democracy is a system of government not, as the neocons say, a weapon. We must defeat the enemy by defeating his ideology and compelling -- by violent means as may be necessary -- those nations who support the terrorist to stop doing so. When that task is done, the war is won. And not one moment before.

What, then, is the import of what Sen. Reid said? First, Reid and his ilk do not support the troops. When Reid says the war is lost, the troops hear. They understand that they are still risking their lives every day for a war the Democrats are content to lose. There can be no more destructive assault on their morale. It is only because of their inherent quality -- much higher than the draftees of Vietnam -- that they don’t abandon the field.

On April 23, 1971 John Kerry told a Senate Committee, “We are asking Americans to think about that because how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?” In those years, the morale of our troops was destroyed piecemeal by Kerry and his cohorts. Reid is merely a new manifestation of the Democrats’ pathology. He, like the rest, don’t give a damn about our troops. They care only about their path to greater political power.

Harry Reid’s statement compels one more conclusion: that the Democrats are incapable of leading this nation to victory against this existential threat.

Conservatives have begun to think that the import of the 2008 presidential election is that the winner will decide how the Supreme Court’s balance will tilt for the next two decades. True enough. But more important, by far, is how the next president will prosecute the war.

The fate of democracy in Iraq will not be determinative of victory or defeat in the larger, long war. Will some Republican pursue real victory? Or will the Democrats just declare defeat and come home, bringing defeat with them?