Thinkin’bout Stuff

News Flash: Obama would keep troops in Iraq… although he doesn’t realize it just yet. 

Here’s my thinking on this:

From Reuters:

Obama said during the debate with Clinton that once he withdrew U.S. troops from Iraq, if al Qaeda were to form a base there, “then we will have to act in a way that secures the American homeland and our interests abroad.”

“I have some news,” McCain said. “Al Qaeda is in Iraq. It’s called Al Qaeda in Iraq. My friends, if we left, they wouldn’t be establishing a base, they’d be taking a country and I’m not going to allow that to happen.”

…  Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell, who told U.S. lawmakers Wednesday that Al Qaeda in Iraq had suffered major setbacks last year and although still “capable of mounting lethal attacks,” the group had suffered hundreds of members killed or captured.

<snip>

“I have some news for John McCain, and that is that there was no such thing as al Qaeda in Iraq until George Bush and John McCain decided to invade Iraq,” he said to cheers.

So let’s boil this down:   

1. As president, Obama would send troops into Iraq to fight al Qaeda
2. Obama concedes al Qaeda is in Iraq (although he blames Bush for their existence… which seems somewhat moot at the moment)
3. Therefore… Obama would need to keep troops in Iraq to fight al Qaeda

By the way, why is it bad that we have a place to fight al Qaeda that is not on US soil? Although I do not buy into the theory that al Qaeda was not in Iraq until the war, let’s assume that is true… isn’t that a good thing that our enemy was willing come to the place where we already had our troops in place to fight… seems like it’s working out pretty well. First choice should always be to not have a war, but if we are in a war, seems like it’s better to fight it over there instead of over here… even better than fighting in the mountains of Afghanistan.

Folks… this means a potentially hostile submarine surfaced within striking range of one of our carriers and we had no clue it was there.:

From UPI:- Senior NATO officials said that since the Chinese vessel surfaced in the middle of the recent military exercise, U.S. Navy officials have been shocked by the advanced technology used by their Chinese counterparts, The Daily Mail said Saturday.

One official said that based on the ease at which the submarine avoided 12 U.S. warships to surface near a 1,000-foot carrier, Navy officials are reconsidering the potential dangers posed by Chinese subs.

Appears we are once again reaping some of the bountiful harvest of the Clinton administration (bold highlights added by me):

From Seth Cropsey, Safeguarding Defense Technology, Enabling Commerce, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research - In 1994, China sold Pakistan parts of a missile with a payload of at least 1,100 pounds and minimum range of 185 miles, in violation of the Missile Technology Control Regime, an accord that Beijing promised to honor. The Clinton administration offered to forgive China if it would admit its violation; Beijing admitted nothing. When the PRC sold Iran C801/802 Silkworm antiship missiles—which could endanger U.S. Navy operations in the Persian Gulf—the Clinton State Department simply issued a démarche (a mild diplomatic protest called a “demarshmallow” in diplomatic circles), even though American machine tools and specialty furnaces sold to China had contributed to improving the capabilities of the Silkworm missiles that China sold Iran.

The United States was also slow to act when specialty steels that could only be used to make SCUD missiles went from China to North Korea and Syria. Titanium-stabilized duplex stainless steel has virtually no commercial applications; it can be, and is, used in the production of SCUD missiles and in the storage of their highly caustic propellants. Despite evidence that a third country was selling this highly specialized steel to China, it took the Clinton administration two years to place it on the list of materials whose export is proscribed by the Missile Technology Control Regime. In this as in the other issues raised by China’s stealthy effort to increase its military’s technological sophistication, the Clinton administration steadfastly refused to apply sanctions, to use its leverage to withhold other goods Beijing wanted, or to discourage China’s problematic behavior in any meaningful way.

Gee.. I wonder why….

With the outpouring of formerly restricted technology to China—and by extension, to its rogue-state clientele—development times for military hardware have been dramatically compressed. In December 1999, the Washington Times carried  reports that a Chinese submarine, the Type 094, would be operational around 2005. The sub will carry the Julang-2 (“Great Wave”) missile, an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching a target 7,400 miles away, which will permit Chinese submarines to threaten cities throughout the United States. Pentagon officials said that the Julang-2 would be armed with Chinese copies of the smallsize, large-power W-88 warhead—whose design had been stolen from the United States, as Bill Richardson, the Clinton administration’s Secretary of Energy, admitted in March 1999.

China’s enhanced ability to project nuclear force is noteworthy not merely for its threat to America but also because much of the Clinton administration’s decontrol of defense exports took place after 1995, when the administration first admitted that China may have stolen our W-88 warhead design. For example, the export to China of computers that could be used to test the performance of nuclear warheads continued even after the administration knew what had likely happened to the W-88 design. Similarly, the machine tools for the quiet submarine propellers were delivered in China after the administration realized the extent of Beijing’s success in appropriating our advanced nuclear weapons technology.

hmmm…   a submarine sneaks up on one of our carriers… we delivered machine tools to China to make quieter subs…  wonder if there could be any correlation…

This could only be worse if somehow the Chinese had access to the highest levels of the administration to influence technology release decisions.  Oh wait… they did…

NY Times February 16, 1998.. William Safire: In rare agreement, the counterintelligence arm of the F.B.I. and counterspies in the C.I.A. approved this statement to be issued by the Senate next week:

”There are indications that Chinese efforts in connection with the 1996 elections were undertaken or orchestrated, at least in part, by People’s Republic of China intelligence agencies.”

That agonizingly worked-over judgment by America’s intelligence establishment is a stunner. China’s spy network succeeded in penetrating the Clinton White House.

We are not dealing here merely with lobbying conducted covertly, unlawful though such secret activity is. As the language in the report the Senate worked out with the C.I.A., F.B.I. and N.S.A. makes clear: ”the PRC engaged in much more than simply ‘lobbying.’ ”

We are confronted by evidence of espionage. It was conducted by operatives assigned by Chinese intelligence to collect U.S. trade-policy and other official secrets, as well as by agents of influence directed by Beijing to buy changes in U.S. foreign policy.

”A variety of PRC entities were acting to influence U.S. elections,” the unclassified Senate report states. A top-secret appendix containing evidence to back up these conclusions is to be locked away in inaccessible archives for decades.

More (lots more) on John Huang (the subject of the Safire essay) from the NY Times here.

And yet, the Clinton-China connection continues to this day:

From the NY Daily News - The big bucks Hillary Clinton raised from Chinatown donors holding seemingly modest-paying jobs caused a political stir last month - and recent calls from the Justice Department.

Donor Hsiao Yen Wang said a Justice Department investigator asked her last week if she was coerced into giving money to the campaign and whether she knew of anybody else who may have been forced to contribute.

Wang said she gave willingly, but the campaign returned her $1,000 check out of an “abundance of caution.”

Yeah… no chance that money was being laundered in Chinatown before finding its way to Clinton (no pun intended).

From the LA Times and RedState - “A warrant was issued this morning for Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu, who failed to appear for a bail hearing on a 15-year-old grand theft charge.”

Hsu, a fugitive from justice since 1992, was jailed Friday after a judge ordered him to post $2 million bail. Hsu, turned himself in after first news accounts, then his lawyer, identified the Democratic fundraiser as a fugitive.

Back in 1992, before becoming one of the Democrats’ go to bag men, Hsu disappeared after pleading no contest and agreeing to serve up to three years in prison for defrauding investors in a Ponzi scheme.

This is all sounding strangely familiar. We have seen unusual Clinton campaign contribution scandals before. The 1996 scandal saw 120 people connected to the Clinton fundraising efforts either flee the country to avoid questioning or plead the Fifth Amendment.

Clinton campaigns need to be scrutinized closely. The 1996 Clinton campaign wasn’t and we had a situation which may have compromised American national security - the Chinese tried to influence our election.

Hillary now says she is going to give some of Hsu’s tainted money to charity. But why only two percent?

And the beat goes on…

Makes me wish the only problem with another Clinton presidency would be higher taxes and socialized everything; unfortunately, that may be the least of our worries when our nation’s security is jeopardized by politicians willing to sell our knowledge and technology to the highest bidder.

Did you miss this article when it was published in the WSJ?  I did.

Clicked a historical link over at Bottom Line Up Front and found the link to the WSJ article which was written by a former high-ranking KGB agent. What he confirms s what many of us have long believed: our enemies use our mass media as a powerful conduit for their propaganda:

The communist effort to generate hatred for the American president began soon after President Truman set up NATO and propelled the three Western occupation forces to unite their zones to form a new West German nation. We were tasked to take advantage of the reawakened patriotic feelings stirring in the European countries that had been subjugated by the Nazis, in order to shift their hatred for Hitler over into hatred for Truman–the leader of the new “occupation power.” Western Europe was still grateful to the U.S. for having restored its freedom, but it had strong leftist movements that we secretly financed. They were like putty in our hands.

The European leftists, like any totalitarians, needed a tangible enemy, and we gave them one. In no time they began beating their drums decrying President Truman as the “butcher of Hiroshima.” We went on to spend many years and many billions of dollars disparaging subsequent presidents: Eisenhower as a war-mongering “shark” run by the military-industrial complex, Johnson as a mafia boss who had bumped off his predecessor, Nixon as a petty tyrant, Ford as a dimwitted football player and Jimmy Carter as a bumbling peanut farmer. In 1978, when I left Romania for good, the bloc intelligence community had already collected 700 million signatures on a “Yankees-Go-Home” petition, at the same time launching the slogan “Europe for the Europeans.”

During the Vietnam War we spread vitriolic stories around the world, pretending that America’s presidents sent Genghis Khan-style barbarian soldiers to Vietnam who raped at random, taped electrical wires to human genitals, cut off limbs, blew up bodies and razed entire villages. Those weren’t facts. They were our tales, but some seven million Americans ended up being convinced their own president, not communism, was the enemy. As Yuri Andropov, who conceived this dezinformatsiya war against the U.S., used to tell me, people are more willing to believe smut than holiness.

The final goal of our anti-American offensive was to discourage the U.S. from protecting the world against communist terrorism and expansion. Sadly, we succeeded. After U.S. forces precipitously pulled out of Vietnam, the victorious communists massacred some two million people in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Another million tried to escape, but many died in the attempt. This tragedy also created a credibility gap between America and the rest of the world, damaged the cohesion of American foreign policy, and poisoned domestic debate in the U.S.

Unfortunately, partisans today have taken a page from the old Soviet playbook. At the 2004 Democratic National Convention, for example, Bush critics continued our mud-slinging at America’s commander in chief. One speaker, Martin O’Malley, now governor of Maryland, had earlier in the summer stated he was more worried about the actions of the Bush administration than about al Qaeda. On another occasion, retired four-star general Wesley Clark gave Michael Moore a platform to denounce the American commander in chief as a “deserter.” And visitors to the national chairman of the Democratic Party had to step across a doormat depicting the American president surrounded by the words, “Give Bush the Boot.”

<snip>

Now we are again at war. It is not the president’s war. It is America’s war, authorized by 296 House members and 76 senators. I do not intend to join the armchair experts on the Iraq war. I do not know how we should handle this war, and they don’t know either. But I do know that if America’s political leaders, Democrat and Republican, join together as they did during World War II, America will win. Otherwise, terrorism will win. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi predicted just before being killed: “We fight today in Iraq, tomorrow in the land of the Holy Places, and after there in the West.”

Exactly!  Unfortunately, all that matters is who wins the Whitehouse and Congress… not who wins the war.

Soccer season is over. Work is calming down a bit. I find myself Thinkin’bout Stuff again.

Interesting how little has changed since my last post. For example, I found this snippet that I never got around to completing and posting from May 2007:

Anyone else getting tired of the Democrats wasting time and money on this investigation into why federal prosecutors were fired? Besides a political witch hunt, what is the goal here? What critical national need are they filling? What major crises are they solving? Assuming Gonzales were forced to resign, how will that make life better for you and me? Who really cares why they were fired when they can be fired without a reason anyway.. just as has happened in every other administration prior to this one?

The focus of this session of Congress seems to be revenge for having lost past elections. It’s all about playing gotcha and gimmee. What have they accomplished beyond empty political statements, like sending bills to the president they know will be vetoed effectively delaying the funding of the troops so that they can make a point. Who cares about your damn point! Stop making points! We get your point! Now go do your damn job!

You want to fire someone? Fire Reid, Pelosi and all of these renegade committee chairs who believe it is the role of Congress to spend hours grilling administration officials even when the evidence clearly indicates no wrong doing; who believe that anyone who the president believes is qualified for any position in the administration is, by definition, not qualified, and that reading and passing legislation is more of a hobby to be done in whatever spare time that is available after the inquisitions have ended for the day.

You want to talk about “worst” lists… so far this Congress is on a path to be the worst in history.  Don’t agree? What have they accomplished? Any bills out there to reduce dependency of foreign oil? Anything to encourage an increase in refinery capacity? Any real legislation to secure our borders? Any action to protect the tax cuts that will expire so that the economy can continue to grow? Let’s make the question open ended… what have they accomplished?

That was May 2007…  

Well, since then, the approval rating for this Congress plunged to a tie for the all time low of 18% in August (compare that to 45% in February 2005) and currently polls in the low to mid 20’s.   Interesting side note… in an ABC News/Washington Post poll, the majority of those polled believe Congress has not accomplished anything and only 25% blame the Democrats…  they do realize the Dems control both Houses, right? (It has to be bugging Reid and Pelosi that President Bush has been polling better than the Dem controlled Congress).

So here we are, 6 months later and this Congress has still accomplished virtually nothing of note.  We are still having ridiculous hearings, arguing over whether the President has the right to fire federal prosecutors.  Congress is still crying that they aren’t being treated as the “co-equal” branch of the government that they are, simply because the President has exercised his veto authority.  And now they came this close ((  )) to blocking the confirmation of a new Attorney General who was hand picked for nomination by Senator Charles Schumer, who apparently has decided to hold his nose and vote for his own candidate for the job.

And why is there so much gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands in the hallowed halls of Congress these days? Nominee Mukasey has refused to declare waterboarding to be a form of torture without having the opportunity to review classified documentation that will not be available to him until he is confirmed. 

Leaky Leahy and Diver Dan Kennedy are incensed since they have already declared that waterboarding is torture and is illegal.  Unfortunately for them, the lawmaking body which views them as <cough> leaders and who actually could make waterboarding illegal, have politely declined to do so,  preferring to carp about Mukasey instead of acting upon there own supposed consciences.

But the fun continues.  Senator Obama chides Senator Clinton for backing a resolution labeling Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization, presumably opening the door for President Bush to attack Iran.  Senator Clinton fires back that the resolution does not give the president the authority to attack Iran and if Senator Obama felt this was so important, wonders why he didn’t bother to show up and vote against it.  Senator Obama counters with his own resolution to tell the President he can not attack Iran without going to Congress first (which, by the way, is not true), Senator Clinton says the resolution is a waste of time because the first resolution did not give the President authority to attack, but then sends a letter (with 28 other senators… drafted by Senator Pistol Packin’ Jim Webb) to the President to let him know he doesn’t have authority to attack, but Obama does not sign the letter….  following all of this?  I’m not…

If Iran is providing terrorists with weapons to attack our troops in Iraq, and if the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is a terrorist organization, and if we are in a war against Islamic terrorism….  why would we not want to have the option to…  um…  I don’t know…  attack the terrorists?

Oh.. by the way.  None of these resolutions or letters does a damn thing, they are non-binding… kind of like a letter to the editor… gets them on the record, let’s them get it off their chest, but doesn’t really change anything.    And Congress still hasn’t approved any of the annual spending bills for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, but they have time for all of this stuff.

Speaking of Senators Obama and Clinton, when last we left Senator Obama, he was considering the option of invading Pakistan.  Today we learned that, unlike the proposed resolution to our differences with Pakistan, Senator Obama would solve the minor differences we have with Iran by offering them membership in the WTO and by having direct one-on-one diplomatic negotiations with Adolf Ahmadinejad. On the other hand, we learned that Senator Clinton supports New York Governor Spitzer’s unilateral decision to provide drivers licenses to illegal aliens, unless of course she opposes the idea, but if given the option, she would pretty much just ask that we not ask such hard questions…. after all, it’s not nice to pick on girls.

I sincerely hope that, should the country go insane and elect HRC president, she not pull this weak everyone-is-picking-on-me crap when dealing with the leaders of other countries, friend and foe alike… they’ll eat her (and us) alive.

Seriously?

Going into Iraq to find terrorists… bad?

Going into Pakistan, an ally in the terror war whose president has risked his life to support the United States… good?

Barack Hussein Obama (BHO) on getting tough with terrorists:

From AP: Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Wednesday that he would send troops into Pakistan to hunt down terrorists even without local permission if warranted — an attempt to show strength when his chief rival has described his foreign policy skills as naive.

Hmmm.. maybe Hillary Rodham Clinton is right. What exactly warrants sending troops across the border of an allied country without permission?

The Illinois senator warned Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf that he must do more to shut down terrorist operations in his country and evict foreign fighters under an Obama presidency, or Pakistan will risk a U.S. troop invasion and losing hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid.

Canada better pay attention here… there are known terrorist cells in Canada and Obama might just have to get tough on our neighbors to the north and send in the troops.

“Let me make this clear,” Obama said in a speech at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. “There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al-Qaida leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will.”

If only we could get those terrorist holed up in those mountains, we could end this whole thing.  After all, the rest of the terrorists in the world would cease to exist if we get rid of the hole-in-the-wall gang of terrorists.  I guess it’s kind of like vampires.  If you can kill the head vampire, the others lose all their powers and just evaporate, or whatever it is vampires do when they stop being undead.

I guess Pakistan president Musharraf won’t be on the invite list to the White House along with Kim Jung Il and Ahmadinejad when he has his little get together with the world’s terrorism sponsors.

For the record now…

BHO was against invading Iraq, a major sponsor of terrorism with a leader who was threatening the use of chemical and biological weapons and who was trying to obtain the necessary ingredients to develop a nuclear device, and OBO proudly wears this position (not a vote, action or even a tough decision for him since he was not even in Congress to vote on the topic) on his sleeve.

However, he is now on record as saying he would have no problem with INVADING AN ALLIED NATION!

Yep.. finally found something HRC and I agree on…

More thoughts in the blogosphere on the topic:  DeMediacratic Nation, Michelle Malkin, Wake up America, Texas Rainmaker

What if… the United States leaves Iraq victorious instead of in retreat… 

What if… the “surge” works… 

What if… well… what if President Bush leads us to a victory in spite of those in Congress who throw up roadblocks and nonsensical distractions at every turn and seem resigned to a defeat that will lead to victory for them in the polls… 

What if you loved your country so much that you want us to win in Iraq but you love to hate George Bush so much you are ready retreat in shame to prove he is wrong? 

The irrational hatred of George Bush appears to be blinding many and making it nearly impossible to cut through the rhetoric to see the reality.  

But the facts on the ground are indisputable and will, hopefully, seep into the mainstream thinking of the American psyche so that perhaps we can move beyond the irrational doom and gloom surrounding the news about Iraq which is tainting the morale of a country, whose recovery from 9/11 is nothing short of miraculous, and allow us to feel good about our future, even if it does mean a few less votes for the liberal naysayers whose power continuance is so dependent on us feeling like all hope is lost. 

Thanks to Gina Cobb for highlighting a good op-ed in the NY Times that might just serve as a stepping stone to pulling ourselves out of a somewhat self-induced nightmare that is being fed by liberal hypnotists constantly reminding us how bad our lives are today. 

Only excerpting a small piece to pique your interest, but Gina has more or you can visit the NY Times via the link above: 

(By MICHAEL E. O’HANLON and KENNETH M. POLLACK) VIEWED from Iraq, where we just spent eight days meeting with American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel, the political debate in Washington is surreal. The Bush administration has over four years lost essentially all credibility. Yet now the administration’s critics, in part as a result, seem unaware of the significant changes taking place. 

Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with. 

(snip)

Today, morale is high. The soldiers and marines told us they feel that they now have a superb commander in Gen. David Petraeus; they are confident in his strategy, they see real results, and they feel now they have the numbers needed to make a real difference. 

Everywhere, Army and Marine units were focused on securing the Iraqi population, working with Iraqi security units, creating new political and economic arrangements at the local level and providing basic services — electricity, fuel, clean water and sanitation — to the people. Yet in each place, operations had been appropriately tailored to the specific needs of the community. 

(snip)

How much longer should American troops keep fighting and dying to build a new Iraq while Iraqi leaders fail to do their part? And how much longer can we wear down our forces in this mission? These haunting questions underscore the reality that the surge cannot go on forever. But there is enough good happening on the battlefields of Iraq today that Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into 2008. 

While not exactly pointing to a stroll in the park that will lead to victory without set backs, this op-ed in the NY Times, no right-wing rag, does indicate we are moving in a better direction. I know I’m rooting for us.

Even if you love hating George Bush, I hope you love your country more. 

Update: Spree over at Wake up America drives home the point… some folks have put all there chips on the US to lose and winning will cost them too much. Just like in sports, if you bet on the other team, the temptation is strong to throw the game.

Who cares how they got there or why they are there?  Al Qaeda is in Iraq, we are in Iraq, nearly seven years ago this nation woke up to a terror war that had been waged as we slept for nearly a decade and vowed to destroy an enemy whose stated objective is to destroy us, so what’s the issue here? It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure this out. If we leave Iraq everyone doesn’t shake hands and go to neutral corners, they just take the ground we surrender and move the front closer to our home.

Then again, there is never-President John Kerry’s view:

From AP: In Washington, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., said Bush “is trying to scare the American people into believing that al Qaida is the rationale for continuing the war in Iraq.” But Kerry said Bush presented no new evidence to back that up, and added: “The president is picking the wrong rationale for this war. Al-Qaida is not the principal killer of American forces in Iraq.”

Um… so we should only stay if Al Qaeda kills more American soldiers? I don’t understand his point, but I do know that Al-Qaeda was the principal killer of thousands of Americans on 9/11, so tell us senator, is that rationale enough for us to stay and fight Al-Qaeda in Iraq?

This whole argument over whether Al Qaeda was there before the Iraq war or came to Iraq as a result of the Iraq war is pointless, don’t you think? 

More from AP:

Al-Qaida had no active cells in Iraq when the U.S. invaded in March 2003, and its operation there is much larger now than before the war, U.S. intelligence officers say. The war itself has turned into a valuable recruiting tool for al-Qaida, senior intelligence officials concede. Bush denied that the war triggered al-Qaida’s operations in Iraq.

Who the hell cares how they got there?! This is great news! We found the enemy… go kill them!

As far as Iraq serving as a recruiting tool, aren’t most wars valuable recruiting tools for both sides? I suppose if we surrender to Al-Qaeda there wouldn’t be much reason for them to continue recruiting… we’d all be Muslims or we’d all be dead.