Interesting News From Around the Web - 12-18-07

The U.S. is providing intelligence to Turkey on the location of PKK targets in northern Iraq and Turkey is following that up with targeted strikes. This has Iraq’s Kurds screaming like stuck pigs, but it seems the only reasonable solution to what could otherwise prove a very destabilizing issue.

Our House of Representatives is still refusing to fund the war in Iraq. The President needs to refuse their proffered Budget until they do so. The House Democratic Leadership varies between insane (Pelosi), dementia (Murtha), and adolescence (Obey). They are the not so funny 3 Stooges who are determined to declare defeat in Iraq, irrespective of the national security consequences and wholly irrespective of the reality of our success in Iraq. They are al Qaeda in Iraq’s last best hope for victory.

$7.4 billion has been pledged for aid to "Palestine" at an international conference. The amount actually exceeds what the Palestinian government of Fatah was seeing in aid. It is not clear from the news story how much, if any, of these funds will be provided to Hamas. If there is a single dollar that goes to them, the U.S. should halt its portion of the funding. As to the rest, funding the Palestinians has been a black whole of corruption to this point. I wonder if the donors will start requiring accountability?

The Economist takes a look at Indonesia’s program for deradicalizing jihadists. And WaPo looks at a similar program in Saudi Arabia for recent guests of Guantanamo. And then there is a very successful program being run by our military for detainees in Iraq.

Right Truth has more on the infiltration of our CIA by people related to Hezbollah and the potential damage that could be severe.

Q&O looks at the insanity of our entitlement programs and the gap between what is promised and what our income streams look like. My own thought, we need an NIE that tells us this is no problem and that we can safely ignore it. And take a look at this.

Done with Mirrors has an interesting post on Glenn Greenwald and his mildly biased criticism from on high of Michael Totten.

Bastard. Since I blogged this when it occurred, I need to also blog it now. The conservative student at Princeton who claimed to have been beaten for his exercise of free speech has now admitted to having made it all up. See here.

A really good post the other day from Dr. Sanity: "When religion is rooted in human freedom, as it is in the Judeo-Christian tradition, then it is able to enhance human life and give meaning and purpose to that life. When it is perverted and used for secular political ends--by either the political left or right who want to impose or mandate some social policy or another on others, then it inevitably leads to oppression and cheapens or devalues human life. Even on his best day, a "good" communist, socialist, fascist etc. will never be any better than a really "bad" Christian."

And from TNOY, it’s a Muslim Rage Boy Christmas Caroling . . . .



Do visit their site. Its one of the best humor sites on the web.

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Give Us No Pork, We Give You No War Funding

I have to start a list of the most outrageous statements made by Democrats in regards to our nation's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the larger war on terror. Today, making an addition to that list has to be David Obey, who in a fit of pique that the White House will not sign a bill containing massive amounts of pork, has decided to get even by withholding funds to prosecute the wars in Iran and Afghanistan. As reported in the Washington Post, upon learning that the White House would not approve a bill with 11 billion dollars in domestic spending above what the President had requested, House Appropriations Chairman David Obey said. "I was willing to listen to the argument that we ought to at least add more for Afghanistan, but when the White House refuses to compromise, when the White House continues to stick it in our eye, I say to hell with it."

As our soldiers put their lives at risk in Iraq and Afghanistan, this is how the Democrats support our troops. This is beyond shameless.

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Interesting News From Around the Web

Cheat Seeking Missles is posting that the court case filed in France against former Sec. of Defense Don Rumsfeld, brought by the French-based International Federation of Human Rights Leagues (FIDH) and the U.S. Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), has been dismissed by the Paris prosecutor’s office on the grounds of official immunity. The suit claimed that Rumsfeld had authorized interrogation techniques that amounted to torture.

Interestingly, the FIDH that brought suit against Rumsfeld has received a significant portion of its funding from that grand experiment in socialism, the EU. The EU regularly uses NGO’s to further their own far left social agenda. The EU have also funded, among countless others, the American Bar Association to campaign against the death penalty in America.

This is just another instance that shows that the EU and a vocal portion of Europe living in their own “irrational” world, as discussed in this piece from The Van Der Galiën Gazette. Actually, I wonder how much of that irrationality flows down to the “street” now days as opposed to the chattering classes. Everything that I read in UK suggests that there is a growing disconnect between the governed and the governing class who own the media and are making skillful use of it not so much as to stifle free speech as to drown it.

Big Lizards has an exceptional post on the Second Amendment issues and how it will impact in the political realm. It’s a very thoughtful post, though I do not share his confidence that the Court will find an individual right to bear arms. My concern is that there are too many activist judges on the Court. It was only two years ago that the activist wing of the Court rewrote the 5th Amendment in Kelo to enhance the power of government. If they can do that, they can certainly find some penumbra somewhere that will allow them to find that the Second Amendment only creates a collective right that can be wholly regulated by the states.

The Glittering Eye considers it a sure sign of the coming apocalypse that he finds himself in complete agreement with Maureen Dowd on Hillary Clinton. The Eye and Ms. Dowd both think Hillary's experience qualifies her to be President about as much as I think Obama’s foreign affairs experience qualifies him for the job. Scott Ott has documented that President Bush, in fact, has the correct slant on Hillary’s qualifications to be the Democratic nominee for President.

The Education Wonks suspects that the Bohemian San Fran’s leftist political leaders – they can be found permanently perched high atop the moral highground – might be secretly motivated by nihilism and a desire to exert ever more restrictive control over the city’s inhabitants. That might be a little bit of stating the obvious, though I am not complaining. When it comes to our neo-liberal, post modernist left, the obvious bears repeating, often and loudly.

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Pelosi & Murtha Still Seeking To Declare Defeat in Iraq

This is difficult to believe, but Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, has scheduled a vote on a bill to force U.S. to cease combat operations by December and begin a withdrawal from Iraq. Jack Murtha has stated that the only way he will allow a funding bill for the Iraq War out of his committee is if the President agrees to begin withdrawing troops per this new bill. And to top it off, in an apparent burst of what passes for patriotism among the neo-liberals of today’s Democratic Party, Pelosi has scheduled the vote for Veteran’s Day.

The Democratic leadership lacks any semblance of principal and is motivated by nothing more than the desire for power. Iraq is of course still problematic and its future uncertain, yet the news coming out of Iraq now is very positive. Al Qaeda, who chose to make their central stand against the US in Iraq, has been all but defeated. The casualty figures are dropping significantly, displaced Iraqis are returning to Baghdad, and there is a return to normalcy in many parts of Iraq. This is not to minimize the problems Iraq still faces, but the Democrats’ ostensible justifications for leaving Iraq – that Iraq is a “quagmire” and a “civil war” – have clearly been invalidated.

But that does not stop the leadership of the Democratic Party from trying to snatch a defeat from what is looking more and more like the jaws of victory. They are fully invested in defeat.

As Alan Dershowitz wrote in the WSJ a few days ago, that could be a major problem for his party:

. . . Most of the Democratic presidential candidates are seeking partisan advantage from what many Americans see as the Bush failures in the war against terrorism and especially its extension to Iraq and possibly, in the future, to Iran.

This pacifistic stance appeals to the left wing of the democratic electorate, which may have some influence on the outcome of democratic primaries, but which is far less likely to determine the outcome of the general election. Most Americans--Democrats, Republicans, independents or undecided--want a president who will be strong, as well as smart, on national security, and who will do everything in his or her lawful power to prevent further acts of terrorism.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans may watch Michael Moore's movies or cheer Cindy Sheehan's demonstrations, but tens of millions want the Moores and Sheehans of our nation as far away as possible from influencing national security policy . . ..

. . . Unless the Democratic Party--and particularly their eventual candidate for president--is perceived as strong and smart on national defense and prevention of terrorism, the Bush White House may be proved to have made a clever partisan decision by refusing to make the war against terrorism a bipartisan issue. The Democrats may lose the presidency if they are seen as the party of MoveOn.org, Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan, Dennis Kucinich and those senators who voted against Judge Mukasey because he refused to posture on a difficult issue relating to national security.

Update: There is a good article on the absurdity of the Pelosi / Murtha surge towards defeat against all odds in the NY Post.

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