What the Heck was I Thinking!?

Where’s Patterico when you need him?

From the LA Times: Army officers say Iran made bomb components - Los Angeles Times

Army officers say Iran made bomb components In the latest attempt to link the deadliest form of roadside bombs in Iraq to components manufactured in Iran, U.S. Army officers today displayed plastic explosives they said were made in Iran.

The latest “attempt!?” Don’t you mean the mounting evidence of Iranian involvement? Isn’t it a little biased to choose the word attempt? Sounds like you’re trying to make the Army appear desperate to draw a connection that can’t hold up.

So much for disguising your biases.

Source: Army officers say Iran made bomb components - Los Angeles Times

Nick Cohen of the WSJ.com online edition posts an article titled,

“An Upside-Down World The British far left makes common cause with Muslim reactionaries.”

He’s got the perfect title for the article contents.

LONDON–The other day Ken Livingstone, the mayor of my hometown of London, organized a conference on Islam and the West. It was a carefully rigged affair in which handpicked speaker after handpicked speaker stood up and announced that the democracies were to blame for the tidal wave of murder sweeping the world. To provide a spurious air of balance, the organizers invited a few people who dissented from the line of the Muslim Brotherhood and its British allies. Agnès Poirier, a French feminist, was one of them, but she pulled out because although there were no special facilities for Christians, Hindus and Jews, Mr. Livingstone had provided separate prayer rooms for Muslim men and Muslim women. (emphasis mine)

She wanted to know: Does Ken Livingstone’s idea of multiculturalism acknowledge and condone segregation? It clearly does, but what made this vignette of ethnic politics in a European city worth noting is that commentators for the BBC and nearly every newspaper here describe Mr. Livingstone as one of the most left-wing politicians in British public life. Hardly any of them notice the weirdness of an apparent socialist pandering to a reactionary strain of Islam, pushing its arguments and accepting its dictates.

I could practically quote the entire article, but Dr. Sanity has posted a very good analysis of the underlying rationale for a confirmed leftist cozying up to reactionary fundamentalists.

Source: OpinionJournal - Featured Article

In a piece that quotes from a press report by The Australian, Jules Crittenden notes that Dick Cheney is straightforward and unapologetic. This extends to his remarks recently about Nancy Pelosi: (from “Jules Crittenden » The Wondah Down Undah”)

“She accused me of questioning her patriotism,” Cheney said. “I didn’t question her patriotism. I questioned her judgment.”

“Al-Qaeda functions on the basis that they think they can break our will. That’s their fundamental underlying strategy: that if they can kill enough Americans or cause enough havoc, create enough chaos in Iraq, then we’ll quit and go home,” Cheney added. “And my statement was that if we adopt the Pelosi policy, that then we will validate the strategy of al-Qaeda. I said it, and I meant it.”

To me it isn’t that the Democrats “don’t get it.” They get it, they don’t want the argument to focus on facts and issues. They want to shift to emotions. Claiming that a criticism of the rationale or thinking associated with a position is actually a claim of treason is a red herring. It wasn’t the issue of Cheney’s comment, but it certainly enabled Nancy to shift focus to an emotional issue.

Source: Jules Crittenden » The Wondah Down Undah

Barely two months into the new session of Congress and we already have a picture of what kind of leaders the Democrats are. Senator Reid (Defeatist - Nevada), majority leader in the Senate, is proposing wording to withdraw the AUMF under which the president is operating in Iraq and Afghanistan:

Key lawmakers, backed by party leaders, are drafting legislation that would effectively revoke the broad authority granted to the president in the days Saddam Hussein was in power, and leave U.S. troops with a limited mission as they prepare to withdraw.

Mr. Reid intends to tangle this up in anti-terrorist legislation. Why this could be seen as legislation against terrorists, I don’t know. It sounds more like legislation that Aiman al Zawahiri (Democrat - N. Waziristan) would propose if he could make it to the session.

Nancy Pelosi (AQ - Left Coast) wants to use John “let’s choke them slowly to show we love them” Murtha’s plan to cut off funds and restrict movement of troops and deployment times to effect the same result - cutting and running from Iraq.

Not surprisingly:

Some Senate Democrats have been privately critical of that approach, saying it would have virtually no chance of passing and could easily backfire politically in the face of Republican arguments that it would deny reinforcements to troops already in the war zone.

The Investors’ Business Daily posted an editorial on Feb. 16th that was a little harsher than V.P. Cheney has been of late:

Jihad Jaara, a senior member of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, said before the 2006 vote: “Americans should vote Democratic,” adding that “it is time the American people support those who want to take them out of the Iraqi mud.” The statement could have come from Murtha, Kerry, Hillary or any number of Democrats.

We find it scary that the Democratic and terrorist game plans are indistinguishable.

To quote the Instapundit - indeed!

The IBD didn’t pull any punches:

It’s not that the Democrats think we’re losing or that the war is unwinnable. They simply don’t want to win it. (emphasis mine)

And finally,

They are working on the game plan of al-Qaida’s No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri. In October 2005, Zawahiri outlined al-Qaida’s plan in a letter to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, late head of al-Qaida in Iraq:

“The first stage: Expel the Americans from Iraq. The second stage: Establish an Islamic authority . . . over as much territory as you can spread its power in Iraq . . . in order to fill the void stemming from the departure of the Americans.”

John Murtha and his perfidious friends are working on creating that void and completing Zawahiri’s first stage. They are the appeasers Churchill warned about who hope that by feeding the Islamofascist tiger, it will eat us last. (emphasis mine)

Now we need to see some leadership from the Republicans. Without that, the fools on the left will drive this ship of state onto the rocks of appeasement - the killing fields won’t be limited to the Middle East if we fail this time.

Source: Democrats move to limit Bush’s authority - Yahoo! News

and gets criticized by Pelosi for something he didn’t do.

Vice President Cheney, in Japan, spoke about the impact the Democrats’ plan to limit President Bush’s ability to wage war in Iraq. He indicated that this approach by the Democrats feeds the al Qaeda strategy:

I think if we were to do what Speaker Pelosi and Congressman Murtha are suggesting, all we will do is validate the al-Qaida strategy,” the vice president told ABC News. “The al-Qaida strategy is to break the will of the American people … try to persuade us to throw in the towel and come home, and then they win because we quit.

Nancy Pelosi, not one to focus on the real issue when a red herring is nearby, complained that Cheney was questioning Democrats’ patriotism.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (news, bio, voting record) fired back that Cheney was questioning critics’ patriotism.

“I hope the president will repudiate and distance himself from the vice president’s remarks,” Pelosi said. She said she tried to complain about Cheney to President Bush but could not reach him.

No, Nancy, he’s not saying you are deliberately aiding the enemy or willfully seeking the defeat of US forces in combat. It’s more likely he’s trying to get you to see what you aren’t paying attention to - that your actions unwittingly assist the enemy. I’m sure he thinks you are great, if somewhat dim, patriots for the US.

Source: Cheney slams Iraq plan advocated by Dems - Yahoo! News

The Do You Want the Terrorists to Win test is an interesting set of questions. I tried to be honest and not smart-assy - I score 0%, the best score on this test as a lower score is “better.”

Source: Jules Crittenden » Do You Want The Terrorists To Win?

No, not for Iraq! That would require long-term thinking, commitment, and the willingness to accept consequences. Not likely to happen soon with these people.

The strategy I see developing is this:

• Get the House to vote - all of the Dems in the House can then claim they took action to stop US involvement in the war.
• Bring the Joint Resolution, which requires both Houses to support, to the Senate, where the Dems know that enough of the Republican Senators will fight this cowardly act to stop it in its tracks.
• The Joint Resolution dies - no real action was taken by the Congress, so if supporting a defeatist resolution becomes an embarrassment (say, after the surge has been successful in increasing security in Iraq), it can be said with a straight face by all Dems that the Democrat-controlled Congress did not do anything to undermine the troops.

Quoting from the Washington Post on the web:

But the fate of the resolution is now very much in doubt. Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) announced after the vote that he would not bring up the resolution again. Both sides instead are girding for the next phase, a confrontation over war funding, with some Democrats determined to exercise the power of the purse to influence Iraq strategy. (emphasis mine, From Iraq Vote In Senate Blocked By GOP - washingtonpost.com )

This strategy would be predicated on the underlying goal of Democrats - victory! No, not victory in the war in Iraq, or in the wider war on Islamo-fascist terrorists and their sponsors! Victory at the next election. Having one’s hands on the levers of power is all that matters.

That end justifies these kinds of means.

Victoria Toensing, writing in the Washington Post, shows up Patrick Fitzgerald as a self-serving attention seeker who doesn’t pay attention to his prosecutorial responsibility or the facts.

There’s a reason why responsible prosecutors don’t bring perjury cases on mere “he said, he said” evidence. Without an underlying crime or tangible evidence of obstruction (think Martha Stewart trying to destroy phone logs), the trial becomes a mishmash of faulty memories in which witnesses can seem as guilty as the defendant. Any prosecutor knows that memories differ, even vividly, and each party can be convinced that his or her version is the truthful one.

If we accept Fitzgerald’s low threshold for bringing a criminal case, then why stop at Libby? This investigation has enough questionable motives and shadowy half-truths and flawed recollections to fill a court docket for months. So here are my own personal bills of indictment:

This column really calls into question the motives of Mr. Fitzgerald, the press in their self-serving, biased coverage of the events, and the utility of the special prosecutor’s office.

I can imagine that those attorneys in the Dept. of Justice who sidestepped this investigation must feel glad they’ve avoided the limelight on such a politically charged issue. What they haven’t thought about is how this miscarriage of justice has affected Libby, Cheney, and the president. This “case” without a basis has been used to flog the administration for years now.

Source: Trial in Error - washingtonpost.com

In her most recent post,

Dr. Sanity: VERY VERY HIGH ANXIETY , Dr. Sanity includes the following paragraph to help clarify why Liberals regularly use emotional arguments rather than logical debate on the issues of the day.

One way you can usually tell that an individual or group is using psychological displacement is that the emotion being displaced (e.g., anger) is all out of proportion  (emphasis mine) to the reality of the situation. The purpose of displacement is to avoid having to cope with the actual reality. Instead, by using displacement, an individual is able to still experience his or her anger or any other emotion, but it is directed at a less threatening target than the real cause. In this way, the individual does not have to be responsible for the consequences of his/her anger and feels more safe–even thought that is not the case. (emphasis in the original)

This disproportional emotionalism shows up in the global warming hysteria, the absolute derangement of the left regarding President Bush, and the schizophrenic “We love the troops. We hate what they’re doing,” nonsense.

Perhaps the Mahdi Army and the Iranian government are coordinating their strategy in response to the surge with the Democrats who want the US out of Iraq by 2009 regardless of - showing no regard for - victory or defeat.
This excerpt from the UK Guardian was taken from  Captain’s Quarters:

“The strategy is to lie low until the storm passes, and then let them return and fill the vacuum,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The Tehran authorities were “playing a waiting game” until the commanders could return to Baghdad and resume their activities. “All indications are that Moqtada is in Iran, but that is not really the point,” he added. (emphasis mine)

It seems that al Sadr and his Iranian backers are more realists than the Defeatocrats. He and his friends understand that a precipitous withdrawal by coalition forces would likely create a vacuum in parts of Iraq.

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