J's Cafe Nette

Archive for September 19th, 2007

“You can always tell when the Republicans are getting restless, because the Vice President’s motorcade pulls into the capital, and Darth Vader emerges,”…

…”I’m not invited to their meetings and I don’t know what he says or does,”…

…”But all the brave talk [about ending the war] just dissipates.”—Hillary Clinton

Courtesy of Politico.

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The President gave an interview to a few journalists Wednesday afternoon. There is a terrific overview of all the topics addressed at NRO.

I wish I would have been there to hear the President comment on Moveon.org’s ad pertaining to General Petraeus.

The president blasted MoveOn for their “Betray Us” ad in the New York Times and the Democratic silence in response to it. “I was incredulous at first and then became mad.” The president said, “It is one thing to attack me — which is fine.” But the president’s view the attack on Petraeus as “an attack on men and women in uniform.” He said pointedly: “I was looking for the voices from leadership on the Hill and I didn’t hear too many.” He said, “This is wrong” and added that the ad “was uncalled for…and so was the silence” from the Democrats on the Hill.

Mr. President, I don’t think there is any leadership on the Hill any longer, at least not the kind to which many of us were accustomed.

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It’s not the lawsuit I consider newsworthy, it’s a few of the claims which prompt me to post on this article from TVNEWSER:

Here’s a look at some of the claims in the 32-page lawsuit filed today by former CBS News Anchor Dan Rather against CBS and Viacom: (as excerpted from Jacques Steinberg’s NYTimes.com story)

• CBS committed fraud by commissioning a “biased” and incomplete investigation of the flawed story on Pres. Bush’s National Guard record

• CBS and its executives made him “a scapegoat” in an attempt “to pacify the White House”

Biased, flawed, scapegoat, pacify? Just sayin!

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Part III of Michael’s “Hunting Al Qaeda” has been dispatched. (Warning: graphic photography). The honesty incorporated into his pieces is something I wish we would see more often in the press and on television here at home.

Just before we dropped ramp again, I asked the Soldier sitting in front of me, “Why did that guy shoot into the palm grove?”

Anger flashed over his face as he stared at the soldier sitting to my left. “He’s sitting right beside you, why don’t you ask him?” I hadn’t realized he was sitting next to me.

“Why did you shoot?!” I asked accusatorily, as upset as the Soldiers were, but he just treated the event like it was a joke. He was laughing about it, talking about how he could get sent home. But he was the only one laughing.

When the ramp dropped, Soldiers from other Bradleys piled out and started yelling at him. They were still yelling at him as I started walking away in the scorching dust.

It must have seemed strange, like the heat had finally gotten to me. But after two days and two missions where mistakes were made, where some men died and others dropped from a heat so intense that it wavered and blurred the already fine line between friends and enemies, where new alliances between soldiers and former enemies were tested under the fire of combat, these soldiers were not so tired or so worn from the heat to let their standards flag: they were all over that Soldier who did.

Another terrific read from Mr. Yon

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It appears the “enemy combatants” held at Guantanamo Bay will not receive the right to be heard in US Federal Courts anytime soon.

A move to give terrorism suspects the right to challenge their detentions in federal court fell short in the Senate today, even though it had majority support.

Fifty-six senators voted to cut off debate, and move forward to a vote on the bill itself, a step known as cloture. But under Senate rules, 60 votes are needed to invoke cloture.

Some supporters of the bill said they might bring it up again, although it was not clear just when.

It is beyond me why anyone would believe that these individuals are entitled to the use of our courts to make a mockery of our system and of this country. These individuals are not US citizens, therefore not protected under our Constitution.

The names of those Republicans who voted for this measure should come as no surprise to anyone, but Joe Lieberman once again stepped to the plate and did not vote with the party he for so long called his own.

Besides Mr. Specter, five other Republican Senators supported the measure. They were Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, Gordon Smith of Oregon, Olympia J. Snowe of Maine and John E. Sununu of New Hampshire. Senator Bernard Sanders, independent of Vermont, also voted for it.

Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, who lists himself as an independent Democrat, was the only non-Republican to vote against it. Senator Saxby Chambliss, Republican of Georgia, did not vote.

I believe in civil rights, however, when it comes to those who are bent on the destruction of this country I draw the line and applaud the majority of Republican Senators for standing pat on this issue.

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Funny how you can read two articles back to back and one allows for a warm and prideful feeling while the other stirs a bit of anger and frustration.

Such was the case this morning as I first enjoyed this story from the Examiner.

We’re fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and debating them in Washington. Yesterday my oldest son left to join the Army.

In our circle of friends, it’s been the topic of lots of discussion and no small amount of criticism. This group is part of the information elite: people who live in coastal enclaves and get paid to move information around. They’re well-educated and well-traveled, have high incomes and typically view themselves as cosmopolitan in outlook.

Our kids are supposed to go to East Coast colleges and then to graduate or professional school, not join the military as enlisted men. In this circle, I count only one other family whose son went into the military. That’s two children out of maybe 50 or 60 families.

Reagrdless of the authors politics, anything which speaks to a parents fears for their child, moves the reader beyond disagreement. You tend to ignore the ” political statements” the writer incorporates and remember this:

Being a parent seems to be a series of those moments, of watching your children pulling away and stepping out into a wider and wider world of responsibility and risk. And after yesterday, my son will be in the widest and riskiest world there is.

I fed him and paid his tuition. He’s taken those materials, and now the man he’s used them to become has set out to navigate that wide, risky world. I watched his back again as he walked down our driveway last night.

HT: Lorie Byrd

Unfortunately, I moved immediately from Mr. Danzinger’s piece to one published in “The Recorder.”

The opinions of Ryan Yeomans move beyond critical thinking and thought provoking material to nothing more than a question in my mind of his understanding of world events and the serious threats we face today.

As of late, if you were to bring up the president in a discussion you would find that many Americans disapprove of the decisions he has made. At the same time, Osama bin Laden presents many good arguments against the president and many of his reasons for disapproving of Bush are similar to those of anti-Bush Americans. Would it be wrong to assume that there is some kind of connection between feelings of the American people and those of Osama bin Laden? As I would love to make this connection, I ultimately cannot because of the actions of our president. If I were to say I agree with bin Laden, that would mean that I agree with a terrorist; under the Patriot Act, I could be labeled a potential terrorist and my phone could be tapped, and every move I make could be watched and analyzed.

In finding myself in this predicament, I questioned myself as to who the lesser evil actually is. I ask, “Who has done more damage to the lives of the American people?” Personally, I worry more about the next bad decision Bush is going to make than I worry about a potential Osama bin Laden organized terrorist attack.

I originally said this moved me to anger but in re-reading, I almost feel sorry for the author. There is a sense of BDS here which has moved him beyond reality if he is more frightened of his own government than he is of the capabilities of those who would kill him in an instant.

Fortunately there are those like Mr. Danzinger’s son and many, many others willing to take on the real enemy to preserve Mr. Yeoman’s right to express his views.

HT: Drudge

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If you want to read the unfiltered truth about what is going on in Iraq you should be a regular reader of Michael Yon and Michael Totten, along with the other milbloggers.

These men are actually in Iraq and in the middle of the battles. They tell it the way it is and not what some newspaper wants you to think.

From Michael Totten’s Anbar Awakens Part I:

Some in the United States are unconvinced that Al Qaeda was really at the center of the conflict in Anbar. So I asked Colonel John Charlton how the Army knows Al Qaeda is really who they have been dealing with. He was supremely annoyed by the question.

“We know it’s Al Qaeda,” he said. There is no controversy whatsoever about this in Iraq. My question seemed to him as if it had come from another planet. “They self-identify as Al Qaeda. We didn’t give them that name. That’s what they call themselves. We have their propaganda CDs which have Al Qaeda written all over them.”

It’s not a dumb question, though, if a substantial number of Americans aren’t sure what’s going on in a bottomlessly complicated country eight or more times zones away. And not everyone who underestimated Al Qaeda’s presence is a fool.

I briefly met Army Reserve Lieutenant Colonel Eric Holmes from Dallas, Texas, while he was on his way home after volunteering to serve in Ramadi for six months. “I didn’t realize until I got here that the problem in Anbar Province was 100 percent Al Qaeda,” he said. “The old Baath Party insurgency here is completely finished. That war was won and Americans, including me, had no idea it even happened.”

Part II is here.

Here’s a quote from Part II which explains more than I can why I trust his dispatches more than the major newspapers’ or networks’ reporting:

Violence has declined so sharply in Ramadi that few journalists bother to visit these days. It’s “boring,” most say, and it’s hard to get a story out there – especially for daily news reporters who need fresh scoops every day. Unlike most journalists, I am not a slave to the daily news grind and took the time to embed with the Army and Marines in late summer.

I encourage you to read his dispatches, and if, as someone has said, they don’t care if all of them get killed then look at the photos of the beautiful children and tell me that.

If you want independent journalism about what’s going on in Iraq, including mistakes we have made in the past, you can’t go wrong reading either of these two bloggers or the milbloggers.

They have no political agenda the way the major news operations do and you get the honest truth.

Not only do I encourage you to read the dispatches, but if you are a skeptic I dare you to read them and come back and tell me it’s all sugar-coated.

Look at the photos and say you don’t care if these people die. If you can still say that after reading the dispatches and seeing the photos you must have a cold heart indeed.

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Fred Thompson’s reply to Hillarycare.
Short, sweet and to the point.

HT:Instapundit

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Hillary Clinton says her healthcare plan does not have anything punitive in it as of now, but at some point she can see showing proof of insurance in order to get a job.

“At this point, we don’t have anything punitive that we have proposed,” the presidential candidate said in an interview with The Associated Press. “We’re providing incentives and tax credits which we think will be very attractive to the vast majority of Americans.”

She said she could envision a day when “you have to show proof to your employer that you’re insured as a part of the job interview — like when your kid goes to school and has to show proof of vaccination,” but said such details would be worked out through negotiations with Congress.

The ads she is running in Iowa and New Hampshire are glossing over the mandatory part of her healthcare plan. I wonder why?

I read somewhere today, but forgot to save the link, saying she hasn’t made a decision as to whether or not the illegal immigrants would be covered. My bet is they would.

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It’s once again the time of year when the despots of the world gather at the U.N. to denounce the United States and call our president Satan.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is scheduled to leave for New York on Sunday for a speech on Thursday, departing our country on Saturday.

I guess he needs the extra time to scope out what he wants to bomb first if given the chance.

But the Jewish community is going to protest his presence, as is their right.

A major drama is shaping up over the planned appearance at the United Nations next week of the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with the Jewish community scheduling a protest rally, Mitt Romney calling on the world body to ban the tyrant, and the U.N. Security Council set to consider whether to increase sanctions against the mullahs for their uranium enrichment program.

In Vienna, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, is emerging as the top defender of Iran, arguing at the IAEA’s annual assembly yesterday that just as no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, Iran does not present a nuclear menace now. He has been raging against any punitive measures, signing secret pacts with Tehran, and directly confronting not only America, Britain, and Germany but also France, where the Quai D’Orsay is warning of war.

But here in New York, the mood at Turtle Bay is less predictable than in the past, in part because, in sharp contrast to a former U.N. chief, Kofi Annan, Secretary-General Ban has signaled he may side with the West this time. And a Jewish community leadership, animated in part by the success Mr. Ahmadinejad has had in finding allies within the political debate in America, has scheduled a rally on Monday in front of the United Nations.

“It’s a message to the world leaders about their responsibility,” a vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Malcolm Hoenlein, said. “This is somebody who violated the United Nations charter and should not be given that platform.”

Mr. Ahmadinejad is scheduled to speak at the U.N. General Assembly next week as the U.N. Security Council considers whether to increase sanctions against Iran for its uranium enrichment program

ElBaradei, defender of all rogue regimes with nuclear capabilities. And with the members on the Security Council we could say that group is as useless as a drone in a beehive.

New York City Police Department officials said yesterday that the city would deploy thousands of its officers to protect Mr. Ahmadinejad, along with the leaders of Iraq and Afghanistan and other countries as they gather for the 62nd session of the General Assembly, which technically opens today. Streets will be blocked off to protect the dignitaries as they move through the city and also to accommodate dozens of protests. …

…The prospect of Mr. Ahmadinejad visiting the city recalled the famous reaction of Theodore Roosevelt to the visit of a German anti-Semite to the city back in the days when Roosevelt was police commissioner. In his autobiography, published in 1913, Roosevelt wrote about how he assigned to the anti-Semite an all-Jewish security detail.

“The proper thing to do was to make him ridiculous,” Roosevelt wrote. “It was the most effective possible answer; and incidentally it was an object lesson to our people, whose greatest need is to learn that there must be no division by class hatred.”

Now that would be sweet revenge indeed!

Next up, the beloved Hugo Chavez, bearer of the torch of communism passed on by the almost late Fidel Castro.

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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has decided the Senate Democrats will not temper their approach to Iraq legislation in an effort to gain Republican support.

Apparently 54% of Americans polled by Pew have said they want to bring the troops home as soon as possible. That number, if accurate, is dropping lately. The question is are the people who are being polled actual voters or just the average man or woman on the street?

The Democratic leader said he will call for a vote this month on several anti-war proposals, including one by Sen. Carl Levin that would insist President Bush end U.S. combat next summer. The proposals would be mandatory and not leave Bush wiggle room, said Reid, D-Nev.

“There (are) no goals. It’s all definite timelines,” he told reporters of the planned legislation.

Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Monday night he would have agreed to turn his summer deadline into a nonbinding goal if doing so meant attracting enough votes to pass. Several Republicans have said they are uneasy about Bush’s war strategy but do not like the idea of setting a firm timetable on troop withdrawals.

Reid’s hardline stance, announced after the party’s weekly policy lunch on Tuesday, reflects a calculation by Democrats that Levin’s proposal probably would have failed either way.

Maybe it’s bad legislation.

Most Republicans say they are willing to give Petraeus’ strategy more time to work.

“We either allow this strategy to succeed … or we don’t,” said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the top Republican on the Armed Services Committee and a GOP presidential hopeful. “And that’s why you see compromise after compromise failing to get a significant amount of support, because we are faced with basically two stark choices, and it’s very difficult to split the baby.”

Levin’s legislation would require that the U.S. begin withdrawing some troops from Iraq within 90 days, which Bush has already said he plans to do. It also would require that the U.S. hand off the combat mission to the Iraqis within nine months and restrict U.S. troops to such tasks as fighting terrorists and training the Iraqi security force.

Reid said the bill will be considered as an amendment to a defense policy bill on the floor, along with a proposal by Feingold that would cut off money for combat operations next year and one by Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., limiting combat tours.

McCain blasted Webb’s amendment as “unconstitutional.”

“The Congress of the United States has the right to declare war and to fund armies and navies. It says nothing about setting tours of duties,” he said.

Another effort in futility, which reminds me of someone banging his head against the wall until the skin is nothing but pulp and his brain nothing but mush.

“But we must be loyal to the MoveOn base or we won’t get re-elected, regardless of how stupid it makes us look,” must be their thinking.

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