I just saw a succinct quote from Belmont Club right up on the screen on FOX News.
It was something about Fallujah, Ramadi, and Syria's relationship to all the fuss. It might have been this one, which is from this post.
The last two weeks in Iraq have been characterized by almost continuous 'secret' combat, where quiet and low level operations have been continuously underway in Ramadi, Fallujah, on the outskirts of Najaf, in Kut and on the Syrian border.
Heh.
He is one of our best and brightest!
UPDATE
I saw it again. It was this, or at least the first bit of this:
Indeed, it is virtually certain that Al-Qaim, Ramadi and Fallujah and the road network from Baghdad constitute a single "front" centered on Syria, whose principal axis is the Euphrates itself. Operations in Fallujah cannot be understood without putting it in the context of the wider area.
We've still got 5 hours to go in the Spirit of America fundraiser. We're within shouting distance of the $50k goal, but we need a bit more, so dig deep! The Marines need you!
I've still got another copy of The Gabber with the "shoot Rumsfeld" ad up for auction. Buy some American political history! Who knows what it will fetch on eBay in 5 years?
And there are still lots of other auctions from the rest of the blogs. Go find one you like and bid!
Do it before 12 midnight Pacific Time!
We can do this thing!
Contrary to what a lot of folks are saying these days, I think the election in November will be a massive defeat for the Democrats (I explain why here).
I hope they do get beat, and not by a little, but by a whole awful lot. I'm hoping for a completely ignominous defeat, the worst defeat they have ever suffered as a Party.
Why? Certainly not Demo-hatred or schadenfreude. I was a Dem or Dem-leaning Independent my whole life - right up until I heard the Dem response to 9-11. But the important point is that I agree with Porphy when he says
I still want a revitalized, sincere liberalism, not because I would become one again myself, but the country is better off with two dynamic visions.
We need a healthy liberal party in the US. The Democrats used to be that, but right now they are neither healthy, nor liberal, nor an American political party - and by that last what I mean is they are not currently interested in what's best for America. To the contrary, the Democrats seem to have morphed into the Blame America First party. Or was that the Hate America First party? I forget.
We currently have one healthy political party in America and one bunch of goofs in tinfoil hats. In a two-party system like ours, this needs to get fixed.
If the Dems receive the thrashing they so richly deserve, then I hope that December will be devoted to soul-searching for the Democrats. In the first few months of 2005 they should devote themselves to a serious Spring Cleaning of the Party. They should kick out all the special-interest groups that are only losing them elections. Then for the remainder of the year I'd like to see them strive to once again become a viable political party for Americans.
I'm somewhat skeptical. It may be that the Democrats have to die as a party, and that we will need to invent a new liberal party in America.
Here are some of the reasons why, all just IMNSHO of course:
1) When push comes to shove, Americans usually vote for incumbents, and the more there is on the line, the more likely they are to vote the incumbent. During wartime, Americans are reluctant to change Presidents.
2) Kerry is simply not taken seriously by the Man In The Street. He is seen as a joke, and the butt of jokes. The overall effect reminds me of what it was like when Dukakis ran.
3) Kerry has no real positions and it shows. His proposals on what to do about Iraq (the ONLY issue in this campaign) are laughable. They seem to consist entirely of "Bring in the UN!"
The Oil-for-Bribes program, murder of our troops by "fellow" UN "peacekeepers", the fact that the UN bugged out of Iraq after one bomb, the hatred Iraqis have for the UN - none of these considerations appear to have made the slightest impression on Mr. Kerry. "Bring in the UN!" and all will be well.
Please. This is the best you can do? It's pathetic. If this is all you have to offer America on November 2nd, you can forget it. Who in their right mind is going to vote for that?
Note I don't say all that just because I'm a rightwing-warblogger-your-epithet-here. I say it because when I talk to folks at the watercooler, or on the street, this is the impression I get, that people see Kerry as a lightweight with no viable policy ideas. "Bring in the UN!" just gets derisive laughter and groans now.
4) I have seen many, many proclamations online from lifelong Democrats like me who have gone Republican because of the war. This is very unusual in and of itself, but couple it with the fact that there doesn't seem to be any appreciable traffic in the other direction. Yeah, it's a tiny data point, but I think it speaks volumes.
5) All the above is just where we are today. The Great Rove-Republican Attack Machine hasn't even really gotten started, and won't start for some time yet. Which would be bad enough for the Dems, given their current numbers, if Karl didn't have any real ammunition. But he does. Kerry's public career has given Karl Rove more ammunition than there is in Saddam's stockpiles.
6) Bush is a master poker player and political campaigner. He hasn't really gotten started yet and won't for some time. Kerry doesn't even know what's going to hit him, is my guess.
7) Senator Kerry's almost record-setting anti-Defense voting in the Senate.
8) Senator Kerry's comments and actions on returning from Vietnam. We saw a taste of that this week.
9) Senator Kerry's addiction to kowtowing to the UN and the Axis of Weasels.
10) Senator Kerry's close association with those who were plotting, however tentatively and feebly, to assassinate US leaders.
11) Senator Kerry's comments during the campaign, where he had to go along with Dean's anti-war rhetoric.
12) The media has pulled out all the stops in trying to influence this election. They're never tried this hard before, not even during Reagan, not even during Vietnam. And it doesn't seem to be working all that well. The polls move a few points at the peak of some PR campaign, and that's it. In their frenzy they don't know when to quit and have gone well too far, alienating the Great Middle. Witness the reactions to the grandstanding of Clarke, and then the 9-11 Commission. Most folks seem to have completely written them off, and turned the page. We don't care about the report anymore, because it's become obvious that it's been prepared by partisan (and compromised, in the case of Gorelick) political hacks.
So, I think we can predict that as Bush's numbers hold up, the media will froth more and more and the whole thing will backfire on them, driving people away from the Dems.
13) The Dems have no strategy, no policy, and no platform. Yeah, that may seem unfair or premature given that they haven't had their convention yet, but I doubt there will be much more substance post-convention. The current "alliance of a bunch of little special interest groups" organization of the Democratic insider base means that the platform will be a combination of vague platitudes and specific bones thrown to the special-interest groups. Indeed, right now the Dems just seem like little kids, gain-saying whatever Bush says. "Are Not! Is Too!"
While folks might be willing to take a chance on such in normal times, during wartime this won't cut it.
14) At the end of the day, when the Undecideds are standing there in the voting booth making up their minds, they're just not going to be able to bring themselves to vote for Kerry. The guy is too much of an obvious joke, and an obvious loser. Not a serious person. Already, even now, Americans don't respect him. Yeah, a lot of people are mad at Bush, but when the time comes they're just not going to be able to bring themselves to actually vote FOR John F. Kerry. They will hold their noses and vote for Bush, or Nader if he's still around.
Hence I conclude that Bush is going to win very big. much bigger than the pundits think right now.
A fascinating report today that the Sudanese government has ordered the removal of all Syrian ballistic missiles and chemical WMD from their country.
Arab diplomatic and Sudanese government sources said the regime of Sudanese President Omar Bashir has ordered that Syria remove its Scud C and Scud D medium-range ballistic missiles as well as components for chemical weapons stored in warehouses in Khartoum.
What the heck? Since when is that stuff in Sudan? And where did Syria happen to get all these ballistic missiles and chemical WMD? And did any happen to go missing in Sudan and accidentally get passed to Al Qaeda, who have a very strong presence there?
Yeesh.
But wait, there's more.
The sources said the Sudanese demand was issued after the Defense Ministry and Interior Ministry confirmed a report published earlier this month that Syria has been secretly flying Scud-class missiles and WMD components to Khartoum.
Secretly? You're telling me Syria is smuggling ballistic missiles and WMD into Sudan? Why would they do that? Maybe because they don't want people to know just what the weapons are or where they came from...like Iraq, maybe? Or maybe because they intend further transfer, like to Al Qaeda?
The sources said the Bashir regime has been alarmed over the prospect that the United States would discover the Syrian arsenal and conclude that Damascus and Khartoum were cooperating in the area of missiles and WMD. They said this would have delayed or dashed U.S. plans to lift sanctions from Sudan.
That Bush, he never tries to use diplomacy to get results. And there's no connection between the war in Iraq and how the Sudanese government feels about things, or to the War on Terror.
Remember all those reports that a whole lot of container truck convoys were heading over the border from Iraq to Syria before and during the war? And the word was that they had WMD and other prohibited items?
Hmmmmm......
Hat Tip: I saw this first someplace in the blogosphere today but I lost the link. If I find it again I'll give 'em credit.
I posted this as an offhand response over at Joe Gandelman's, but when I read back over it I thought it was something I should also post here. So here goes.
------------
Y'know, it's not so much that I'm a "Bush supporter" as that my jaw dropped as far or farther, and a lot longer ago, at the way the Dems were acting.
After the shameless Republican burning-at-the-stake with Clinton I swore I would never vote for a Republican again so long as I live. I thought their conduct throughout was reprehensible. I also think Clinton, for all his flaws, was a pretty decent President, and middlin' moral and honest for the breed. The point of mentioning that is not to drag up that tired old argument again (DWL, as SDB would say), but just to show where I started in all this. And it probably reveals I'm a hothead, but that showed already, right? :)
The Democratic non-response, indeed what I see as willful fantasm, to the War on America is far worse than what the Republicans did, and far more dangerous to the country. That's what made my jaw drop, their foolishness and willful blindness. Their willingness, even eagerness, to sell out America in the interests of their ideology. "We are the World" didn't work and they can't face it.
Further, this whole business has made me reexamine just about everything I think and believe, like a lot of folks, I suspect. A whole lot of my core beliefs came up wanting when they were really pulled out into the sun and examined. Most of them were formed in callowish youthness and had lain, musty and unexamined, for a long, long time. I threw a lot of them out, and changed others as required, and that's a process that is very much continuing. Maybe I've changed my mind because I've learned something in 50 years, or maybe I'm getting early senility. But at this point I've seen, and lived, a whole lot of the agenda the Left is pushing. In retrospect, it has mostly come up very wanting.
I was wrong.
I'm sure you remember the big story of a couple of weeks ago about how the St. Petersburg Democratic Club took out a full-page display ad in a local paper, saying
And then there's Rumsfeld who said of Iraq "We have our good days and our bad days". We should put this S.O.B. up against the wall and say "This is one of our bad days," and pull the trigger.
By now just about everyone has heard the story, and many have seen a scan of the infamous advertisement.
But have you seen the ad in person? Have you held it in your hands, smelled the sulfurous smoke curling up from... no, wait, it's not like that. It's just on normal newsprint. But it is a mildly interesting piece of American nutball political history.
Copies of this paper are, I would imagine, pretty rare. It's not a very large circulation paper, and by the time the scandal hit, the edition in question was just about elapsed. I drove over to Gulfport that same day and picked up several brandy-new copies.
But now YOU CAN HAVE YOUR OWN ORIGINAL COPY of the ENTIRE ISSUE of The Gabber that contains the now-famous ad, complete with incitement.
Guaranteed 100% Original and Complete!
Suitable for framing!
Amuse your conservative friends!
Shame unrepentant Leftists!
Wrap fish!
Line birdcages!
1001 uses, endless fun for the entire family!
How, HOW you say? How can you get one of these rare, prized collectibles?
It's very simple. Just be the HIGHEST BIDDER in the comments for this post by 10:00 PM EDT, Tuesday, 4/27/04.
The winning bidder agrees to DONATE the amount of their bid to Spirit of America via the Liberty Alliance link, prior to 12:01 AM PDT Thursday, 4/29/04, and I will thenceforth send that lucky and GENEROUS (hint! hint!) person their Very Own Copy of the infamous Gabber issue, carefully wrapped and packed.
Help the troops and get a nifty political fish-wrap...um, souvenir.
Bid early, bid often!
UPDATE! UPDATE!
As you've probably heard, the three teams in the challenge have agreed to coordinate efforts and try to break $50k total. Accordingly, I'm going to offer ANOTHER copy of The Gabber with the infamous ad. Place your bid below! The last one went for $25 (Thanks NJ!). Will you top that? Well, will ya? It's for the Marines! Shell out!