Two Americas: One Where Kids Are Always Useful Political Props...

.. and that other America, where John Edwards has discontinued a scholarship program to send rural high school graduates to college, now that he is no longer running for President.

Presumably, he now needs that money for another kind of child support.

The Morning After

John McCain's latest ad comparing Barack Obama to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears didn't impress me that much, but appears to have made an impression on all the right people.

Why is such a simple association gaining traction, when far more troubling aspects of Obama's life being ignored or swept away?

People don't want to think about the fact that Barack Obama has no executive experience, that this legislative accomplishments are meager, and that his resume is thin. It scares them to look too deep into what he hasn't been able to accomplish... and so they don't.

People don't want to think about the fact that Obama is the first presidential candidate in our nation's history with direct ties to domestic terrorists, or radical, conspiracy-mongering clergy... and so they don't.

They look at the commanding stage presence. They bask in his oratory, carefully scripted not to offend, or to ask too much. They indulge themselves in his promise that he can be everything they need. They set aside reason. They set aside details. In a swoon, they think only about how he makes them feel now.

While followers of Obama have often been compared to religious zealots, the comparison is a false one. Zealots—true believers—can tell you from rote memory the articles of their faith, the details, the specifics that touch their core, often by chapter and verse.

Obamaphiles have been challenged time and again to answer what Obama believes in, to provide the substance behind their devotion, to explain what makes Obama "the One."

Most supporters offer a blank look when asked about his substance. Others get confused, then angry, though they don't even know why. Some rattle off a list of party-held positions or personally-held beliefs. Some, like the candidate himself, simply wave off such requests for substance as a "distraction."

Rachel Lucas and others come the closest in accurately describing Obama lust. It isn't a religious experience. It's beer goggling.

After almost eight years of frothing media pounding on the Bush Administration in particular and Republicans in general, and the addled mumblings and several years of toothless bravado of Democratic leadership, continuous campaign chasers, and plenty of cheap shots, we're all tipsy, tired, and ready to fall into the arms of the first attractive thing that comes along.

Barack Obama sweeps in wearing a pretty smile. He tells us we're beautiful. He utters sweet nothings in our ears, telling us we are the ones we've been waiting for.

He whispers, "It's different not because of me, but because of you. Because you are tired of being disappointed and tired of being let down. You're tired of hearing promises made and plans proposed in the heat of a campaign only to have nothing change."

And as he smiles that beautiful smile, and it all sorta make sense if we don't try to dig too deep. He's trying hard to charm our pants off, and we're inclined to believe him, because believing is easier.

He's pretty, and he's glitzy, and he's popular, and he's hoping you won't realize the trainwreck he is until the morning after the election.

Paris. Barack. Britney.

It resonates for a reason.

Choose The Facts You Want...

...as there seem to be plenty of "facts" to choose from.

James Hider in the UK TimesOnline is just one journalist of many rushing to tell the tragic story of a young Palestinian ruthlessly gunned down by an Israeli soldier:

Israeli soldiers shot dead a young Palestinian boy today during heated protests in a West Bank village close to Israel's huge separation barrier.

Hammad Hossam Mussa, believed to be around nine years old, was mortally wounded by an Israeli bullet as protestors threw rocks near the West Bank close to the village of Nilin.

[snip]

Salah Al Khawaja, a member of Nilin's Committee Against the Wall, said Israeli troops fired live rounds at a group of protesters who ran into Nilin after security forces dispersed demonstrators using rubber-coated bullets.

"Protesters arrived at the wall's construction site outside the village and the soldiers started to open fire with rubber bullets and tear gas. This pushed the protesters back into the village where the boy was hit by a live bullet in his chest," he said.

It doesn't much look like a chest wound.

Other news accounts offer variations of the basic story that roughly corroborate the image, though the L.A. Times reports that the boy was in a crowd; the New York Times claims he was resting under a tree. Also, the boy's age ranges from 9, to 10, to 11, to 12 depending on the news outlet.

It's very sloppy journalism, but symptomatic of reporting from the region.

Interestingly, according to the New York Times, the Israeli Army "had no knowledge of the shooting."

The IHT states that Palestinian officials refused an Israeli request for a joint autopsy, which may cause some raised eyebrows considering the Palestinian history of faking deaths even on video. The Palestinian autopsy states that the bullet that killed the boy came from an M16, a weapon both sides have.

It will be interesting to see the results of the Israeli investigation into this case, even though judgement has already been passed in the eyes of the word's media.

Summer Camp?

That is what Reuter's says this picture portrays.

The caption reads, "Palestinian youths attend a summer camp organised by the Islamic Jihad movement in Gaza City July 30, 2008."

The Islamic Jihad, of course, is a terrorist group established with the goal of wiping out the Jewish state of Israel and the establishment of an Islamic Palestinian state. Their interests include Qassam rocketry, suicide bombings, and martyr operations.

This isn't a "summer camp" as we would recognize it. This is the modern Hitler Youth.

Lynching, Lynching Everywhere...

Just when you thought the Huffington Post couldn't become any more self-parodying, someone comes along to make it even more laughable:

Despite his background as a comedian, Stephen Colbert is known by many of the authors who have appeared on his show as one of the toughest interviewers in the business. But on July 28, when country music superstar Toby Keith stepped on the set of the Colbert Report to promote his movie, Beer For My Horses, he was greeted by his host with nothing less than reverential admiration. After a jovial, back-slapping sit-down with Keith, Colbert turned the stage over to his guest for a performance of the song that inspired the title and theme of his forthcoming "Southern comedy."

While Keith belted out "Beer For My Horses," Colbert's studio audience clapped to the beat, blithely unaware that they were swaying to a racially tinged, explicitly pro-lynching anthem that calls for the vigilante-style hanging of car thieves, "gangsters doing dirty deeds...crime in the streets," and other assorted evildoers.

Or perhaps Colbert, his audience, and the millions of people who have heard this song since it first hit number 1 in 2003 are simply far more grounded in reality than Mr. Max Blumenthal, who apparently sees a chance to scream "oppression!" behind every rock, tree, and country-western movie and music lyric.

After listing the lyrics to what was until now the uncontroversial lyrics of a song
about a "thirst for justice," Blumenthal whines that:

During the days when Toby Keith's "Grandpappy" stalked the Jim Crow South, lynching was an institutional method of terror employed against blacks to maintain white supremacy.

Though it will doubtlessly come as a shock to Mr. Blumenthal, this song, co-written by Scotty Emerick, is not autobiographical, any more than Keith's "I Love This Bar" is an ode to an illicit man-on-mahogany affair.

The song is entirely fictional and rhetorically set in the Old West, as the imagery of horses, whiskey, saloons, gun smoke, outlaws, and the "long arm of the law" clearly evoked for anyone reasonably grounded in this reality.

Conveniently,Blumenthal glosses over that the lyrics of Keith's song include the all-important words "It's time the long arm of the law put a few more in the ground." This singularly expressed and culturally understood idea of the Old West deputized posse, led by sheriffs and marshalls operating under the color of law and made famous in hundreds of western movies and television shows over decades as part of our shared cultural heritage that Keith is drawing on utterly undermines Blumenthal's creation.

It is a delusion undone, revealing far more about Blumenthal's tortured psychology than Keith's lyrics, Colbert's insightfulness, or America's past.

Mr. Keith has every right to whimsically sing about whiskey for his men and beer for his horses, even as he might suggest that Mr. Blumenthal can (and probably should) take a nice tranquilizer with his merlot.

Perhaps for tomorrow's amusement Arianna Huffington can find a delusion even more spectacular than Blumental's latest—with Naomi Wolf lurking in the background, that is always a possibility—it's that prospect of ever more unintentionally funny, lethally-refined insanity that keep us coming back, time and again.

08/08/08 Update: Toby Keith himself hears about Blumenthal's moronic lynching claims, and tees off:

"It's about the old west and horses and sheriffs and posses and going and getting the bad guys. It's not a racist thing or about lynching. The song was a hit and the words lynch and racism has never come up until this moron wrote this blog."

Selective Outrage

Sunday's shootings at a Unitarian Universalist church in Knoxville, TN was a horrible tragedy caused by a man with a laundry list of psychological issues and naked hatred against anyone unlike him.

As horrible as these events were, the death toll at the church could have been far worse. Jim David Adkisson was armed with a semi-automatic 12-gauge shotgun and 76 cartridges, but only managed to fire three rounds before being overpowered by the congregation. I wrote about the string of small miracles that occurred at the church, a series of coincidences that kept an awful event from becoming even worse.

As innocuous as that post was to most normal people, online progressive activists and bloggers, wasting no time in trying to twist the tragedy to their political advantage, flooded my inbox and the comments section of that post with crude language and spittle-flecked, half-formed thoughts of rage.

Some claimed that by writing this post, I was "a lying fascist thug," apparently for merely pointing out that in addition to his stated hatred of gays and liberals, he targeted a church "after expressing beliefs to neighbors in the past that he had an abiding anger against Christianity, an anger that appears rooted in his childhood." It was later confirmed that Adkisson did have issues with religion dating back to his childhood, and that the specific church he targeted was one that was once attended by his ex-wife.

Another went off on a rant in another direction, hissing, "So if he had targeted a mosque, that would be OK because it wasn't a church, I presume. You know, them 'sand people' and all that..."

Rarely have I seen strawmen created and then slaughtered with such ferocity, especially by a political group so thoroughly untroubled by the thought of the slaughter most experts predicted would occur in Iraq if their calls for an immediate pullout in Iraq had been heeded in the past few years.

Another stated "your side launched a terrorist attack yesterday. Two innocent Americans died. Why does your side hate America so much?"

Indeed, the meme that the attack was domestic terrorism seems quite popular among some on the far left, and they have trotted out this tragedy as example of a specific kind of domestic terrorism, one that they've branded as "eliminationism."

They spare no bile or blame in asserting that Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and others in the conservative movement indirectly contributed to Adkisson's abbreviated rampage.

Give their newfound concern about domestic terrorism, and their stated disgust with those who would advocate threats of harm as a political tool via eliminationism, I find it the pinnacle of hypocrisy that they offer unswerving support and near-Messianic devotion to a political candidate who began his ascension up the political ladder with a fundraiser at the home of a well-known pair of domestic terrorists.

Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn belonged to a group that declared war against the United States, bombed the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, and other buildings, and attempted to blow up a dance of American soldiers and their dates, only to have the pipebombs prematurely detonate instead, taking only terrorist souls.

The leftwing political blogosphere has no tolerance for domestic terrorists at all...

...unless they're long-time friends of their Presidential candidate.

Small Miracles

There was a shooting at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, TN yesterday during a children's play. Two people have died, and seven more are recovering from injuries that resulted when an unemployed man with a long history of verbal hostility against Christians targeted this specific congregation because he also hated liberals and gays.

While many in the political blogosphere will no doubt focus on the fact that Adkisson said he hated liberals and gays, the fact of the matter is that the didn't target a gay club or local progressive political groups, he specifically targeted a church. He did so after expressing beliefs to neighbors in the past that he had an abiding anger against Christianity, an anger that appears rooted in his childhood. The church appears to have been targeted because it embodied at least three things this pathetic human being hated, not just the one or two things I know certain critics will single out as they view the world through their own warped prisms.

Adkisson had apparently planned to keep murdering church-goers until gunned down by police. He planned to keep killing innocents until he died in a hail of police bullets... suicide-by-cop. But he was instead tackled and restrained by church-goers just seconds into his attack as he attempted to reload after shooting his shotgun's magazine dry.

The two people that died were 60 and 61. Those wounded were 38, 41, 42, 68, 69, 71, and 76. Though Adkisson walked past an assembled group of children outside the sanctuary awaiting their stage call, he did not fire on them. No children were physically injured, and no parents of young children were killed, creating orphans. There is reason to be thankful for that.

Though he was found with 73 live 12-gauge shotgun cartridges, he was only able to fire 3 before being tackled while trying to reload. Most semi-automatic and pump shotguns hold 5 rounds of 12-gauge ammunition, unless plugged for bird-hunting. Those two additional shots would have taken less than a second to fire, and could have hurt several more people, at least. There is reason to be thankful that the previous owner of the gun was probably a bird hunter. There is reason to be thankful that Adkisson apparently didn't know enough to remove the plug.

Sunday was a horrible day for the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, and there will be terrible days ahead as they seek to recover, and to heal.

But most will heal, and a day that could have been far worse was not, thanks to small miracles.

Update: Apparently there are some people who want to go on a shrieking political bender about this tragedy (both right and left), but that isn't going to happen here. Comments off.

When Denied A Chance to Turn Wounded Troops Into A Photo Op, Obama Declined to Meet with Them at All

Why did Barack Obama cancel his visit to see wounded U.S. soldiers yesterday at Landstuhl Medical Center in Ramstein, Germany?

According to the Politico and the Chicago Sun-Times, the Obama campaign is blaming the military, claiming that the Obama campaign was told the visit "would look too political."

But according to MSNBC, Obama and his Senate staff could have visited wounded troops; he simply couldn't bring along his campaign staff and the media.

The campaign's response? They withdrew the request to visit the troops.

The official said "We didn't know why" the request to visit the wounded troops was withdrawn. "He (Obama) was more than welcome. We were all ready for him."

If he can't use them as props, it seems Barack Obama has little use for the military. Come to think if it, that is roughly how they factor into his feckless foreign policy plans as well.

Update: Spin away, fanboy. Greg Sargent tries to cover for Obama, citing what we already knew: that Obama's campaign staff (and the media) was prohibited from visiting the hospital. It's a particularly weak attempt at deception, as it overlooks—purposefully, it seems—that there was precisely nothing stopping Obama from bringing members of his Senate staff with him, or simply visiting the troops himself.

But Sargent also claims that Obama didn't bring his Senate staff with him.

Uh-oh.

So explain something to me, Obama fans: how can Obama go on his "look at me" tour of American bases with only his campaign staff, and not with any of his Senate staff, and still claim his trips were part of a congressional fact-finding delegation?

If he only brought his campaign staff, and no Senate staff as Sargent claims, then I'd like to know if American taxpayers picked up any of the costs associated with his multi-nation, round-the-world trip, or it was Obama's campaign alone that picked up the bill.

Update: HuffPo contributor Brandon Friedman also tries the dishonest route:

Barack Obama canceled a pre-planned visit to the troops in Germany yesterday after being told by the Pentagon that the trip would violate a Pentagon policy prohibiting campaign stops on military installations. No problem there.

No problem, of course, except for the fact that flatly isn't what the Pentagon said.

Let's type this slower so that Friedman, Sargent, and the Obamaphiles in the media can follow along:

Obama was never told he could not visit wounded soldiers. In fact, he was told they were prepared for his visit.

What he was told is that he could not bring his campaign staff and the mass media. He had to go as a Senator, not a president candidate.

Once Barack Obama found out he would have to visit wounded American soldiers alone—guarded only by his massive Secret Service and State Department security detail—he balked.

Let's make that a bit more clear:

Barack Obama withdrew his request to visit the troops.

He could have gone, but made the decision not to go on his own, without his campaign entourage.

It's so simply even a journalist could get it right... if they wanted to.

So Did Obama "Blow Off" Troops, Or Didn't He?

Writing in today's New York Daily News, James Gordon Meek states that U.S. Army officials have disputed an email sent out by an American serviceman stationed at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, where the author claims that Barack Obama disrespected American servicemen by refusing to meet with them.

The email was published here in full yesterday, and read:

Hello everyone,

As you know I am not a very political person. I just wanted to pass along that Senator Obama came to Bagram Afghanistan for about an hour on his visit to "The War Zone". I wanted to share with you what happened. He got off the plan[sic] and got into a bullet proof vehicle, got to the area to meet with the Major General (2 Star) who is the commander here at Bagram. As the Soldiers where lined up to shake his hand he blew them off and didn't say a word as he went into the conference room to meet the General. As he finished, the vehicles took him to the ClamShell (pretty much a big top tent that military personnel can play basketball or work out in with weights) so he could take his publicity pictures playing basketball. He again shunned the opportunity to talk to Soldiers to thank them for their service. So really he was just here to make a showing for the American's back home that he is their candidate for President. I think that if you are going to make an effort to come all the way over here you would thank those that are providing the freedom that they are providing for you. I swear we got more thanks from the NBA Basketball Players or the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders than from one of the Senators, who wants to be the President of the United States. I just don't understand how anyone would want him to be our Commander-and-Chief. It was almost that he was scared to be around those that provide the freedom for him and our great country.

If this is blunt and to the point I am sorry but I wanted you all to know what kind of caliber of person he really is. What you see in the news is all fake.

Meeks' article counters:

But angry Army brass debunked the Obama-bashing soldier's allegations, which went viral Thursday over the Web and on military blogs such as Blackfive.

The e-mail claims Obama repeatedly shunned soldiers on his way to the Clamshell - a recreation tent - to "take his publicity pictures playing basketball."

"These comments are inappropriate and factually incorrect," said Bagram spokesman Army Lt. Col. Rumi Nielson-Green, who added that such political commentary is barred for uniformed personnel.

Obama didn't play basketball at Bagram or visit the Clamshell, he said. Home-state troops were invited to meet him, but his arrival was kept secret for security reasons.

Meek's article provides another much needed perspective to the story of Obama's visit to Bagram, and makes what I think is a fair case that the officer who wrote the Bagram email was basing his email on his limited first-person perception of events, and that he wrote his post without the benefit of knowing all the facts.

It is vitally important for us to know that Barack Obama didn't play basketball in Afghanistan, nor did he visit a specific tent. We should be grateful that Meek ferreted out the truth and debunked those scurrilous allegations.

But LTC Nielson-Green's refutation of these two rather minor specific points does not at all address the most important allegation made in the viral email, the author's perception that soldiers on base were "blown off" by the junior Senator.

In fact, the PAO admits that Obama only met with selected soldiers. Only service-persons from Illinois were invited to meet him, and soldiers not from Illinois (the author of the email is from Utah) were indeed not met by the junior Senator. Though no doubt a touchy situation for the military, the key premise holds.

The same handful of faces are seen in all the pictures released to the media from Obama's visit. If you were not a soldier from Illinois or otherwise selected serviceman, you were not allowed to meet Obama. The question then arises whether the decision to limit contact with the troops was a decision made by the military brass, if that was a decision made by the Obama campaign, or by joint agreement.

The second email published, from someone at an air base as Obama swung through Iraq stated in part that Obama's visit was "A disgraceful PR stunt, using the troops as a platform for his ego and campaign."

To date the second email has gone unchallenged and a senior officer I interviewed confirmed on background that Obama's visit to Iraq was nothing more than a campaign stop masquerading congressional delegation visit.

Update: James Gordon Meek of the Daily News has posted an update in the comments, noting contact with the author of the email, and his dialing back of the now viral claim. It reads:

"I am writing this to ask that you delete my email and not forward it. After checking my sources, information that was put out in my email was wrong. This email was meant only for my family. Please respect my wishes and delete the email and if there are any blogs you have my email portrayed on I would ask if you would take it down too. Thanks for your understanding."

My military sources don't seem to agree with Meek's assertion that the email constituted a violation of military regulations barring political statements, as the email was sent only to family members. That the email was distributed beyond that was beyond his control.

It bears noting that the Iraq email has not be challenged by anyone, and Obama's refusal to meet with wounded GI's because his campaign staff and the media couldn't come with him is a far bigger story, and one that has done Obama far more damage.

G.I. In Afghanistan: Obama "Blew Them Off"

Blackfive posted this email yesterday and has another supporting account (added below in an update) from another member of the military who was also present during Obama's carefully scripted P.R. World Tour.

I think you should read it.

Hello everyone,

As you know I am not a very political person. I just wanted to pass along that Senator Obama came to Bagram Afghanistan for about an hour on his visit to "The War Zone". I wanted to share with you what happened. He got off the plan[sic] and got into a bullet proof vehicle, got to the area to meet with the Major General (2 Star) who is the commander here at Bagram. As the Soldiers where lined up to shake his hand he blew them off and didn't say a word as he went into the conference room to meet the General. As he finished, the vehicles took him to the ClamShell (pretty much a big top tent that military personnel can play basketball or work out in with weights) so he could take his publicity pictures playing basketball. He again shunned the opportunity to talk to Soldiers to thank them for their service. So really he was just here to make a showing for the American's back home that he is their candidate for President. I think that if you are going to make an effort to come all the way over here you would thank those that are providing the freedom that they are providing for you. I swear we got more thanks from the NBA Basketball Players or the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders than from one of the Senators, who wants to be the President of the United States. I just don't understand how anyone would want him to be our Commander-and-Chief. It was almost that he was scared to be around those that provide the freedom for him and our great country.

If this is blunt and to the point I am sorry but I wanted you all to know what kind of caliber of person he really is. What you see in the news is all fake.

I guess it should come as little surprise, then, that Obama has dropped meetings with U.S. soldiers stationed in Germany—including wounded soldiers from the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan— in favor of meeting with French and German civilians.

Priorities, you know.

Update:

The second email from a member of the military in Iraq , forwarded to me from Blackfive:

I had a first hand view of Barrack Obama's "fact finding" mission, when he passed through this base.

While I can't name it, it's one of the largest air bases in the region, with up to 8000 troops (depending on influxes and transients in mobilization/demobilization status), mostly Airmen and Soldiers, but some Marines, Sailors, Koreans, Japanese, Aussies, Brits, US Civil Service, contractors including KBR, Blackwater and Halliburton, among others in the news. The overwhelming majority of all of these are professional, courteous and disciplined.

Problems are rare.

Casualties are also rare. This base has a large hospital for evacuation—twenty plus beds. I have yet to see a casualty in one, though I am told there are about three evacuations a week through this region, of which two on average are things like sports injuries, vehicle accidents or duty related falls and such. You can tell from the news that the war is going well. The ghouls are now focusing on Afghanistan, since there is no blood to type with here.

This oped is of course subjective and limited, but I will try to present the facts as I saw them. I wasn't able to see much, which makes a point all by itself.

When his plane arrived (also containing Senators Reed and Hagel, but the news has hardly mentioned them), there was a "ramp freeze." This means if you are on the flight line, and not directly involved with the event in question, you stay where you are and don't move. For a combat flight arriving or departing, this takes about ten minutes, and involves the active runway and crossing taxiways only. For Obama's flight, this took 90 minutes, during which time a variety of military missions came grinding to a halt. Obviously, this visit was important, right?

95% of base wanted nothing to do with him. I have met three troops who support him, and literally hundreds who regard him as a buffoon, a charlatan, a hindrance to their mission or a flat out enemy of progress. Even when the rumors were publicly admitted, almost no one left their duty sections to try to see him, unless they were officers whose presence was officially required.

Mister Obama's motorcade drove up from the flight line and entered the dining hall toward the end of lunch time. Diners were chased out and told to make other arrangements for food, in the middle of the duty day.

Now, there are close to 8000 troops on the base and its nearby satellites. No one came up from the Army side (except perhaps a few ranking officers). The airbase resumed operation, once he cleared the flightline, as if nothing had happened. The dining hall holds about 300 people and was not full. The troops did not want to meet him and the feeling was apparently mutual. In attendance, besides the Official Entourage, were the base's senior officers, some support personnel, and a very few carefully vetted supporters who'd made special arrangements. No photos were allowed. No question and answer with the troops. No real acknowledgment that the troops existed.

Obama left around 1530, during the Muslim Call to Prayer, so he's not a practicing Muslim. He was in a convoy guarded by (so I'm told) both State Department and Secret Service Personnel.

Less than three hours…

Within 48 hours he was in Afghanistan. It takes most troops longer than that to in-process and get cleared on safety, threats, policies and such. Yet he somehow made a strategic summary by not talking to anyone and not seeing anything.

Twenty-four hours after that, he was in Kuwait, back here, and then home, so fast we didn't even know he arrived the second time at this base.

I can't imagine any officer of the few he met told him anything other than what they tell the troops, and what their own leadership at the Pentagon tell them—we're winning. Our troops are stomping the guts out of the insurgency. The surge worked and is working. If the insurgents have to divert to Afghanistan, it means they can't fight in Iraq anymore. We should not change the rules and retreat with the enemy on the ropes as we did in Vietnam. We should finish kicking their teeth in. The Iraqi government now controls 10 of 18 provinces, with US assistance in the rest. Let us win the war. 90% of the troops I know, even those opposed to the war, say that is the way to win. Victory comes from winning, not from "change." In fact, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is on record as opposing Obama's strategic theory.

Since he obviously knew in advance that's what they'd tell him, and since he didn't care to talk to the troops (we're told by the Left that the troops are horrified, shocked, forced to commit atrocities with tears in their eyes, distraught, burned out, fed up with losing, etc) and find out how they feel, and was barely in country long enough to need a shower and a change of clothes, we can only call this for what it is.

A disgraceful PR stunt, using the troops as a platform for his ego and campaign.

In comparison, I've seen four star generals and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on this base. They each held an all ranks call, met with and briefed the personnel, and took questions on every subject from tour length to uniform design to rules of engagement to weapon choice to long term policy, from the newest airmen to the senior NCO with TEN 120-180 day tours since Sep 11. It's very clear they want to know what the troops think, and to keep them informed of events. It's equally clear mister Obama does not.

From here we must move to my op part of the oped.

Obama clearly doesn't care about the troops, doesn't care about America, doesn't care about anything except hearing his own voice and the chance to sit at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue…From where he'll bring us the proven Democratic wartime leadership of Bosnia and the Balkans (US forces still there), Somalia (US forces prevailed despite being ill equipped by executive order, and taking heavy casualties), Haiti (what were we doing there again?), Desert One (oops?), Vietnam (where we snatched defeat from the jaws of victory), Korea (still there), WWI, and the fluke success of WWII won by such wonderful liberal notions as concentration camps for Japanese Americans, nukes, FBI investigations of waitresses who dated soldiers in case they were "morally corrupt" and the (valid) occupation of and continued presence in Italy, Japan and Germany for 60 years, which they are conveniently pretending won't happen with Iraq.

That's not "change." That's "failure we can do without."

Update: Second-day coverage continues here.

On The Surge: McCain Was Sorta Right, Obama Was Dead Never Wrong

It is rather amusing watching the media and lefty bloggers chase after John McCain for the candidate's continued insistence that the surge set the stage for the Sahawah or Awakening movement. McCain may be using questionable terminology when claiming that the surge predated the awakening, but only if we're talking about the increase in troop strength, which alone would have accomplished nothing.

What made the surge successful—and what McCain can quite fairly argue—is that the counterinsurgency doctrine that began prior to the formation of the Sahawah movement and capitalized on the growing Sunni discontent with al Qaeda is part of or are at least a precursor to the official surge of additional U.S. troops into Iraq.

Critics in the media and blogosphere somehow seem to be under the delusion that merely an increase in troop strength was the reason for the surge succeeding, but it was changes in strategy and tactics used by the greater number of soldiers that made the difference. Of course, how are liberals supposed to get their facts straight when even their experts can't?

McCain was right to go after Barack Obama's confused history of the surge the Sahawah movement, the decline of Shia militias, and the influence political and military movement by U.S. forces had in making each possible.

American forces provided support, funding, material, and often carried out raids on behalf of the Sunni tribes battling al Qaeda. Perhaps the Sunni tribes could have eradicated al Qaeda in time on their own—they had the home field advantage—, but it is a incontrovertible historical fact that they did not achieve their success without substantial U.S. assistance. Did the Sunni Awakening movement officially begin before the official start of the surge? Yes. Did it begin without any U.S. involvement? No. Could it have succeeded? We'll never know. It should worry the American people that Barack Obama does not seem to understand any of this.

Likewise, the more recent decline of Shia militias occurred because U.S. force trained and equipped the Iraqi the IA forces that stormed Barsa and Sadr City, we provided air and ground support during those raids, and of course, were securing other areas which freed up Iraqi forces to take the lead in these assaults which seem to have largely broken the Madhi Army and related Shia gangs. The success of Iraqi security forces over Shia militias did not happen in a vacuum, but because of substantial U.S. involvement. Barack Obama does not seem to understand this.

The security gains made in Iraq simply would not have occurred as quickly or as successfully as they did without U.S. forces. That Barack Obama would try to minimize that is understandable, as it to admit American forces were vital to the current state of affairs in Iraq would be an admission that he was wrong about the surge, and as we all know, Barack Obama is never wrong.

And so Barack Obama wasn't wrong about standing against the surge. He was not wrong for advocating the abandonment of the Iraqi people when things got tough. Barack Obama is never wrong.

And just pray the freshman senator isn't elected to a position where he'll "never be wrong" about issues affecting your life.

A Russian "Greenlight" to Attack Iran?

That is one intriguing interpretation of today's disclosure that Iran would be getting the long range Russian surface-to-air missile system known as the S-300PMU-1 (SA-20), and that the system would be deployable in as soon as six months from their expected September arrival.

The Russians no doubt relish the contortions the West is going through over Iran's nuclear program, but at the same time, their intelligence organizations are telling them that Iran is working on developing nuclear weapons and missile technologies that can also threaten Russian interests.

By selling the Iranians advanced weapons systems and then disclosing their most likely deployment dates, the Russians are trying to have their cake and eat it too.

They've outlined the outside window of Iran's greatest vulnerability to an air assault on its nuclear program and command and control facilities. It only remains to be seen now whether or not American and Israeli leaders will strike with enough force to irreparably destroy key elements of the Iranian nuclear program, or if they will make the deadly mistake of trying to avert a nuclear war "on the cheap."

The Sunshine Patriot

Grim at Blackfive tears Obama a new one:

They say "victory has a thousand fathers," but to Sen. Obama, the Surge is a bastard.

Grim is responding, at least in part, to Joe Klein's meltdown, in which the panicking journalist attacked John McCain for pointing out that McCain is willing to lose the election in order to win the Iraq War, while Obama has been committed to losing the Iraq War as a plank of his political platform since 2006.

Obama's shift was a calculated appeal to the far left progressive base, a move which eventually helped him lock-up the Democratic nomination. He has stuck to that commitment. Even now, as Obama made clear to Couric, he would not have supported the surge.

His record of statements related to the war on Iraq is extensive and well-documented. He was opposed to the war from the start as noted in his over-hyped 2002 speech, adopted the position in 2004 that a withdrawal without victory " would be a betrayal of the promise that we made to the Iraqi people, and it would be hugely destabilizing from a national security perspective" and a dishonoring of the sacrifice of American soldiers.

By 2005-2006, Obama had made his final evolution, changing positions again and committing to unconditional withdrawal for his presidential run; victory was no longer on his agenda.

On October 22, 2006, Obama proclaimed the urgent necessity for "all the leadership in Washington to execute a serious change of course in Iraq." That change was decidedly not in the direction of stepping up our war effort by sending additional troops—a shift advocated by some conservative critics of administration policy and at that point being seriously considered by the White House and the Pentagon. Quite the contrary: the change Obama had in mind was to initiate, as quickly as possible, a "phased withdrawal" from Iraq. There was to be no more talk from him about leaving a "stabilized" situation. Nor, for Obama, was the issue debatable. His latest predictive judgment was that "We cannot, through putting in more troops or maintaining the presence that we have, expect that somehow the situation is going to improve."

It is clear that since 2006, Obama had far less interest in winning the Iraq war than he did withdrawing American troops. Getting out was Barack Obama's primary concern. Winning was not. John McCain's charge that "I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war. It seems to me that Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign" is deadly accurate.

Joe Klein can shriek all he wants that McCain's line of attack is "scurrilous" and "smacks of desperation," but the simple fact remains that Obama's record, scant as it is, betrays his character. It shows him to be what Thomas Paine described during our own nation's founding war as a sunshine patriot:

THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.

When times in Iraq became toughest, Barack Obama wilted. When tyranny threatened, he committed to conceding the field. Being a politician, and a liberal at that, he proudly made his desire to run away from conflict and abandon the Iraqi people to whatever fate befell them part of the central core of his campaign.

"Vote for me. I shirk from difficulty. " he seemed to be saying. "Vote for me. I will not require sacrifice. Vote for me. I promise safety. Vote for me. I will bend to your will."

And such is the core of his appeal.

The Iraq We'd Have If We'd Heeded Obama

Why, I agree with every word.

Obama: Surge Was An Unnecessary Success

Katie Couric—well known for creampuff interviews—nonetheless presses a befuddled Barack Obama into admitting that even with today's perfect 20/20 hindsight, he'd still reject the surge.

Couric: But talking microcosmically, did the surge, the addition of 30,000 additional troops ... help the situation in Iraq?

Obama: Katie, as … you've asked me three different times, and I have said repeatedly that there is no doubt that our troops helped to reduce violence. There's no doubt.

Couric: But yet you're saying … given what you know now, you still wouldn't support it … so I'm just trying to understand this.

Obama: Because … it's pretty straightforward. By us putting $10 billion to $12 billion a month, $200 billion, that's money that could have gone into Afghanistan. Those additional troops could have gone into Afghanistan. That money also could have been used to shore up a declining economic situation in the United States. That money could have been applied to having a serious energy security plan so that we were reducing our demand on oil, which is helping to fund the insurgents in many countries. So those are all factors that would be taken into consideration in my decision-- to deal with a specific tactic or strategy inside of Iraq.

Couric: And I really don't mean to belabor this, Senator, because I'm really, I'm trying … to figure out your position. Do you think the level of security in Iraq …

Obama: Yes.

Couric … would exist today without the surge?

Obama: Katie, I have no idea what would have happened had we applied my approach, which was to put more pressure on the Iraqis to arrive at a political reconciliation. So this is all hypotheticals. What I can say is that there's no doubt that our U.S. troops have contributed to a reduction of violence in Iraq. I said that, not just today, not just yesterday, but I've said that previously. What that doesn't change is that we've got to have a different strategic approach if we're going to make America as safe as possible.

What character... admitting to 25 million Iraqis that their lives are nothing more than marks to be counted against in a ledger, chits with a firm price. Gives you pause when considering what he'll do if allowed into office to socialize your healthcare, doesn't it?

Mac & P.C.

"Hi. I'm P.C."

"And I'm—wait a second, don't I get to go first?"

"Not as long as there is a New York Times."

"Color me surprised."

"So now you're going to drag race into this? I had hoped we could keep our discourse on a higher level."

"Race? That's a figure of speech, and one that has been around for years."

"I will not stoop to answer your suggestion that as an African-American, I do not understand 'white' English."

"Who said anything about race, or English... and why would you care about English, anyway? You want everyone to speak Spanish—even though you don't."

"I find your semantic arguments a tiresome distraction from the business of changing America"

"Do you now?"

"America needs Change. It needs Hope. And I can bring that. You? You are old."

"So's the AARP, and they vote."

"And a wonderful, proud organization they are. Fighting for civil rights for decades—"

"Uh, they're old people."

"Not all of them, and I resent the implication that the struggle for equality for all races is somehow an antiquated—"

"No, I mean they're old people—the American Association of Retired Persons?"

"Oh, snap."

"Indeed."

"Once again Senator McCain, you keep trying to return to politics as usual."

"I'm just trying to make sure you understand what you're talking about."

"Oh really? Are you not the same Senator McCain, that—in his old age—suggested that there would be a battle against terrorism on the 'Iraq/Pakistan border,' Senator? Hmmmmm?"

"Perhaps you should show up for your committee meetings more often, Senator Obama."

"And why is that, Senator McCain? Did they redraw the maps? Did they move continents? Just because you were born in Pangea—"

"Panama."

"Whatever. You're obviously starting to 'lose it' just a little bit, eh, Senator Hagel?"

"My last name is McCain."

"I know that. I was just checking to make sure you did."

"How very cute."

"Quit trying to distract us, Senator. How do you explain away your comments about the 'Iraq/Pakistan border"?"

"Israel."

"Israel? I'm sorry Senator, you lost me."

"Hardly surprising..."

"You're dodging the issue."

"You won't shut up long enough for me to answer."

"Well, I never—"

"Of course you haven't. You haven't been in office long enough too. Now will you let me answer the question?"

"By all means, Senator McCain. Please explain how 'Israel' explains your comment—your gaffe—about how 'Israel' has anything to do with the Iraq/Pakistan border."

"Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb bomb, Iran..."

"What?!?!"

"Go big, or go home."

"What?!?!"

"Of course, that will make your face to face discussions with 'I'm-a-madman-in-jihad' a bit harder."

" The President's name is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and he deserves to have his views heard."

"Oh, they were heard all right. Every time he stated his desire to 'wipe Israel off the map' they heard him loud and clear. And while I know it may come as a shock, they actually think he means what he says."

"But no politician ever means..."

"You were saying?"

"Distractions!"

"I'm sure they are. International politics is hard when your'e just getting started, huh?"

"Distractions!"

"Yes, I think we heard that."

"This does not help my children!"

"Neither did that church."

"Just stop it."

"You're only angry because you're old, and I'm new and exciting, and I offer—"

"'Change' and 'Hope'?"

"No, 'Hope' and—"

"Waffles'?"

"Stop that. I don't like distractions."

"So we've noticed. And the pressure?"

"It's not... Look. I offer 'Home' and 'Change.'"

"You mean 'Hope'?"

"'Hope.' And 'Change.' And I'm new and exciting, and I promise lots of new government programs, and enhanced features... I'm like Windows Vista. You? You're old Senator McCain."

"From Pangea, as I recall."

"Precisely. You're old—like eunuches, or something."

"You mean 'Unix.'"

"That's what I said."

"Not quite. But you may have something with the Vista comparison."

"See? You even admit it. I'm unstoppable. And you, you're old. Like eunuches."

"Unix. Which runs Macs. But that's okay, Senator Obama...you're certainly more P.C."

"Thank you."

"And I wish you all the success of Microsoft's Bob."

"Well, I'm not in it for the personal fortune , but thank you, Senator McCain. But I thought his first name was Bill?"

"Indeed."

Why Are Snub-Nosed Revolvers Suggested for New Shooters?

One of the co-bloggers at Ace-of-Spades has asked for advice on a handgun for CCH carry, and as a quick click over there will attest, there is no shortage of advice. Some of the advice provided so far is solid, most of it fell into the moderately helpful category, and some of it is simply ignorant or irrelevant to the question asked.

What was fascinating about the suggestions made was the overwhelming "conventional wisdom" recommendation of a short-barreled .38 Special/.357 Magnum revolver offered by many of those who responded.

A snub-nosed .38 revolver can be an excellent concealed carry gun—I currently have one in my possession that I've carried recently— but I don't know that I agree with some of the reasoning offered by those suggesting such a revolver for a new shooter with "little girly hands."

The basic snub-nosed revolver has great reliability, is uncomplicated, and in the ever-popular .38 Special, has decent stopping power when paired with modern defensive ammunition. That said the downsides are that it is thick through the cylinder (which can make it harder to conceal), and the short sight radius and heavy double-action trigger pull on most of those coming from the factory can make it difficult to shoot well, particularly for people with "little girly hands."

[FYI, my standard for "shooting well" is roughly defined as being able to put 5 shots in 9-inch paper-plate at 5 yards in less than 4 seconds from low-ready or a retention position, which isn't a very high standard, but is defensively adequate. Many people can do that in half the time.]

In contrast, good DAO semi-automatic subcompact pistols abound, and they can be far easier to learn to shoot to our "shoot well" standard, and often in a shorter amount of training time.

Whether you want to plug the merits of a Kahr, Springfield Armory XD, Glock, Smith & Wesson M&P, Kel-tec or something else is irrelevant to me, but the design philosophy behind these pistols seem to have resulted in numerous advantages over similarly-sized snub-nosed revolvers.

Most of these pistols are thinner than revolvers (at their thickest points), have a longer sight radius, a more manageable (typically longer and lighter) trigger pull, and a greater choice of ammunition (I'm thinking 9mm and .40 S&W in particular)that is less expensive and has a better reputation for stopping fights than the .38, without kicking as hard or with the blinding flash of a .357 Magnum. Semi-autos also offer a distinct advantage in reloading times and capacity, but as most shootings average 3-4 shots, this shouldn't be a deciding factor.

So tell me: why are snub-nosed revolvers so repeated recommended for new shooters, even by people who prefer semi-autos for their own use?

Lost in Translation

I was out of town and missed the Maliki withdrawal kerfluffle over the weekend, but it looks like it was likely much ado about nothing anyway, and perhaps nothing more than a translation error, even according to the Obama-backing Times.

Frankly, I'm just glad we're at a point where Iraq is beginning to stabilize enough that we can realistically begin to discuss drawing down American assets in Iraq in victory—quite a bit different circumstance than the long-held Democratic Party position, which was (and still is) for a reckless withdrawal with all possible speed, regardless of what that withdrawal with mean to Iraqi civilians or to the region.

Obama Overflies Iraqi Mass Graves

Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama overflew the Iraqi cities of Baghdad and Najaf today, where the mass graves for an estimated 240,000 victims of sectarian violence killed since 2007 were visible even from altitude.

Senator Obama was on his way to meet with American soldiers completing the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq in Kuwaiti ports, while miles away Iranian and Saudi delegations were meeting in an emergency summit in Kuwait City in an effort to keep the Iraqi Civil War from boiling over into open regional conflict. Both sides have accused the other of providing advanced weaponry and training, while faulting American leaders for the bloody collapse of the Iraqi state.

Except, of course, none of that really happened.

Barack Obama is in Baghdad today for one reason and one reason only: the current President wisely ignored the first-term Senator's repeated calls to abandon the Iraqi people, and instead listened to advice to change commanders, strategy, and tactics in Iraq. The resulting COIN doctrine implemented by American forces under General David Petraeus and a surge of American forces into Iraq coincided with a popular Sunni revolt against the al Qaeda-led insurgency known as the Awakening movement, which was followed by the fracturing of the Shia Madhi Army and other militant groups.

If we had listened to Barack Obama in 2002, Saddam Hussein (or his murderous son Qusay) would still be brutally repressing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Shiites and Kurds, and some of the world's most accomplished terrorists (such as Abu Abbas, 1993 WTC bomber Abdul Rahman Yasin, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi) would still be calling Iraq home. I doubt Obama would be flying to Baghdad.

If we had listened to him in 2005-2006 when things were at their worst, then the nightmare scenario of an open Iraqi civil war fought with the backing of Saudi Arabia and Iran and verging on a wider regional war would possibly be playing out. I doubt Obama would be flying to Baghdad.

So by all means, let the journalists of the New York Times paint his visit as an accomplishment of some sort.

Just keep in mind that if we had followed the starter Senator's judgment at any point during his political career, Iraq could have been too dangerous a place for his flight to even consider touching down.

Still No Good Explanation for Obama's Plan For A State Security Apparatus

Our good friends on the far left have plenty of snark to drop in this post, suddenly finding an aversion to Third Reich analogies after seven years of BushHilter and comparisons of the RNC to Nazis.

What they have not done, nor even seriously attempted, was to explain the comments the media so carefully edited-out of a speech that Obama recently gave, where he advocated a "civilian national security force" that is "just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded" as the nation's military.

As I noted in my last comment to that post, "national" means United States, or domestic in nature, not a international force. Security means "police."

Unless Obama was uttering "just words," he was advocating domestic state security. That he would make plain his intentions to make his SS "just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded" as the strongest military in the history of Planet Earth should be a cause for concern for everyone, and not just because he's talking of creating another massive bureaucracy and colossal tax burden.

Why does a free nation that already has the FBI, ATF, and DHS on the federal level, SBIs, state police, and highway patrols on the state level, in conjunction with local sheriffs and police agencies, with the backing the Army and Air Force National Guard and Coast Guard units for the most extreme emergencies, need an additional national domestic security apparatus dwarfing all current federal law enforcement agencies, equal in power and scope to the military?

How does the Democratic frontrunner make a call for such an alarming organization, and the media not report it. Worse, how do they get a way with erasing those words from transcripts of the speech?

I'm getting a lot of snark from those on the political left for stating that I didn't like Obama's plan any better in the original German, but precious few explanations of why a free nation would need such an imposing force, one only useful against it's own citizenry.

Update: closing comments due to surge in comment spam.

SHOCKER: Media Gives Up On Losing Iraq; Transitions to Plan to Lose Afghanistan In Its Stead

We always knew they were unable to accept victory, so it perhaps shouldn't come as much of a surprise that a U.S. media unable to secure defeat in Iraq has given up on betraying that democracy, and is instead executing a pivot, beginning an attempt to lose the Afghan war instead.

The latest ABC News/Washington Post poll found that a startling 45 percent of Americans said they do not think the war in Afghanistan is worth fighting, despite the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which provoked the war in the first place.

The growing disenchantment with the Afghan deployment hasn't reached the level of national frustration with the Iraq war, but after more than six years with U.S. troops stationed in Afghanistan and violence on the rise, Americans are becoming increasingly wary about the country's involvement.

As mentioned just yesterday, many of today's top writers, anchors, columnists, editors, producers and publishers cut their journalistic teeth during the Vietnam War era, and have never been able—nor is there evidence there there ever been a serious attempt—to shift away from covering wars through a Vietnam-era lens.

For them, wars are never worth fighting. Their editorial focus will always be:

• a push for withdrawal instead of resolving a conflict through victory;
• playing up U.S. casualties, while downplaying or ignoring enemy casualties;
• dramatic emphasis on unexpected U.S. setbacks, with a minimization of tactical and strategic successes;
• a one-sided focus on U.S. military-attributed civilian combat casualties, while largely ignoring civilian casualties caused by opposing military forces;
• an emphasis on finding Americans tired of or opposed to the conflict suffering low morale, with no attempt to present opposing populations as anything other than a stoic, unyielding monolith whose primitive will cannot be broken(so we might as well go home);
• a one-sided focus on indirect traumas suffered by the civilian population, while ignoring the poverty, healthcare, and human rights concerns caused by the opposing forces;
• an over-reliance and benefit of the doubt given to those alleging accounts detrimental to U.S. interests, where that means giving credence to allegations of civilians harmed by U.S. military operations without evidence of such harm (already commonplace in Afghan War reporting, where it seems U.S. bombs consistently hit only wedding parties made up of innocent women and children) while often ignoring direct atrocities performed by the opposing force against civilians;
• attempted moral equivalence—masked as "objectivity"— between U.S. forces and political and/or ideological movements famous for cruelty.

Journalists have been conditioned to report through such a distorted perspective that it is little wonder at all that even the "good" and "just" response of a war against the Taliban for their role in the attacks of 9/11 must now be twisted in such a way that it can be reported from the only perspective the media knows (or more accurately, cares to know) in viewing and covering wars fought by Americans. While the U.S. military has adapted to fighting new kinds of conflicts, the media is still using corrosive and corroded story templates older than much of their target audience.

"Modern" war coverage is an utterly self-defeating, self-loathing enterprise, and we bear much of the blame for what we see, for we still accept and still consume a defective news product. What motive do the media have to change, if we, the news consumers, don't clearly articulate to the industry why we are no longer buying failing newspapers, or believing that news outlets are acting without preconceived biases? We have let them stick to what is for them, a comfortable agenda.

ABC News is in no way alone in their tonal shift in Afghan coverage, as other outlets doubtlessly came before them, and certainly more news outlets will follow. They are still fighting the last war using the tactics and strategies they are most comfortable with. They are fighting to lose.

Will we let them?

Worst House Speaker in History Labels Bush a Total Failure

Legislators fear for their lives, simply because they come to work. Some have been assassinated by car bombs, others by gunfire, while simply going out among their constituents. During their legislative meetings there is always the (increasingly) slight risk of a mortar attack or a suicide bomber. And yet a fractious Iraqi Parliament just learning democracy has still accomplished far more than the U.S. House of Representatives under Nancy Pelosi.

Her horrid leadership has managed to drag Congress to the lowest approval ratings in history. Pelosi's Congress is polling nine points lower than Nixon's just ten days before he resigned.

So Nancy... dear... I think you might have a wee bit of a projection issue going on.

Herr Obama's Security Service

Barack Obama's recent call for "civilian national security force" that is "just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded" as the nation's military didn't sound any better than it did in the original German.

Does that perhaps explain why those comments are being suppressed by a compliant media?

Update: Anyone know what a "conbatant" is?

Snark at excitable Andy's spelling error aside, his defense of Obama is an original one, essentially, "Bush is Hitler, Obama is only Himmler."

Why, that's just far more reassuring isn't it?

[Comments closed due to spammers]

Is The U.S. Media Ready to Concede an Iraqi Victory? Can the Democrats?

I don't think it is an exaggeration to claim that Michael Yon has spent more front-line time with combat forces in Iraq than any journalist for any media organization, so it bears noting when he claims that "...the Iraq War is over. We won."

When another well-traveled independent, Michael Totten, pens a post stating that he is "reluctant" to claim that the war is over—noting that insurgencies don't have official end points such as surrenders—but then provides evidence that it is certainly trending in that direction, it is time to pay attention.

Both Yon and Totten make very well be correct; what remains in Iraq is not a military action best described as a "war" in a conventional sense, and with violence continuing to abate and various militant factions increasingly unable to mount sustained operations of any intensity or duration, calling it even an unconventional war is something a stretch.

Whatever conflict remains it is not a "war," and we can let others quibble over whether the best description of what now remains is a peace-keeping mission, a police action, or something else.

The Sunni insurgency is finished. The sectarian civil war is over. The conflict against al Qaeda in Iraq has been reduced to intelligence-gathering and SWAT-like raids against surviving stragglers and fractured terrorists cells. The Madhi Army has been broken, its leaders killed, captured, or forced to flee to Iran, while the rank and file have faded away as their fellow Shia turned over their weapons caches and turned in militiamen that were often merely criminal thugs. Attrition among Iranian-backed "special groups" has also rendered them incapable of sustaining more than random attacks.

Barring an unforeseen and at this point unlikely and dramatic reversal, the Iraq War is over, and we—and more importantly, the Iraqi's—won.

The U.S. media is beginning to begrudgingly concede to a new reality, but only obliquely. CNN (and Fox News) ran an AP article this morning about bored young soldiers in Iraq seeking action in "the real war in Afghanistan," because they are not seeing any combat in Iraq. It isn't however, a concession of what should be increasingly obvious.

It will be hard—and for some U.S. media outlets that took an extreme position based more upon attempts to shape the politics of the war instead of reporting the news of the conflict, almost impossible—for the U.S. media to admit that the Iraq War ended in victory. The New York Times is one of these outlets that will have a very tough time, as will the McClatchy chain of newspapers, various magazines including TIME and Newsweek, cable news channel MSNBC, and all three networks. Various fringe outlets, particularly those with strong left-leaning politics such as The Nation or Mother Jones, or online outlets such as the Huffington Post or other liberal blogs, may attempt to somehow "redefine" their way into a "loss" by changing the definition of victory, or they may simply decide to never address the subject at all, and hope instead it fades away while they draw their readers elswhere.

For those outlets that made the conflict in Iraqi an editorial attempt to "fight the last war," it will be a bitter defeat. Many of today's top writers, anchors, columnists, editors, producers and publishers cut their editorial teeth and felt at the height of their power at a time when the media shaped a narrative that ended a war and brought down a president that indeed, was a crook. But despite five years of attempts to frame it as such, Iraq was never Vietnam in the desert. The U.S. media was never able to break out of that mindset to any degree, and indeed, relished in the comparisons.

So sure were they of a U.S. defeat that they even made using local propagandists as journalists and sources part of their standard reporting, with little or any probing, vetting, or serious questions asked. From repeatedly seeking comment from an Association of Muslim Scholars openly aligned with the Sunni insurgency (typically without disclosing those insurgent ties), to regularly citing phoned-in reports from anonymous police and military sources miles or even provinces away as they called in one fake massacre after another with reckless abandon, wire services ran fake news without an attempt to vet the stories, because it fit the narrative. It didn't matter that mosques weren't burned with people inside. It didn't matter that dozens of beheaded bodies reported in sectarian violence simply didn't exist. Such stories, real or fake, portrayed the war they wanted.

Reporters and editors who ran such stories were not only not fired by their news agencies for their continued incompetence. Some were instead promoted. There was no penalty for faked or exaggerated news, because it was the extreme, the diabolical, and the hopeless that these news agencies wanted to print, and they weren't all that concerned about where the stories came from.

Now, without another defeat to place on the mantle, U.S. media outlets are unsure of how to act. While even British and Australian newspapers were declaring victory almost a year ago, American outlets simply can't make the admission that they fought the last war, and that a Congress they pushed to help lose the war was unable to hand them the defeat they think we deserved.

Ah, Congress.

Though Democrats have controlled the House and Senate, had public option on their side (thanks to the cooperative shaping of the news), and fiercely antiwar leaders such as Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, Congressional Democrats were shot down over 40 times (was it over 50? I lost count) in attempts to lose the war by defunding or underfunding it.

And while the media's own attempts to frame a lost war were horrific, it was duly elected Congressmen and Senators who attacked the Presidential Administration, the military commanders, and even the solders on the front lines with the most viciousness. To this day, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Harry Reid refuse to admit that the war in Iraq is not lost, and is instead very close to being (or is already) won. John Murtha has not apologized to Marines he accused of cold-blooded murder, even as charges against all but one have been dismissed (the last has yet to come to trial).

And then there is Barack Obama.

A gifted speaker with the hardest of hard-left roots, the political neophyte and presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee has refused to admit he was wrong on the war, and though unassailable facts overran his narrative of defeat, he clung and (continues to cling) to a plan for a panicked retreat designed to create a security vacuum and lose a war he thought should never have been fought.

The media, enamored with their Obama as their last best hope for defeat, will follow him in fawning praise as he make a superficial swing through the region to "talk" to military commanders—be assured, he has no intention of actually listening—about the war in Iraq. In the end, will no doubt still return with Dubya's bulldog tenacity to his predetermined plan of defeat. His storied, heavily self-promoted anti-war wishes and a determined cry abandon the conflict at all costs has been the root cause and defining issue his campaign. Obama will cling to it with the grim, fatalistic determination of a suicide bomber.

The U.S. media has pinned their hopes on Obama as their best and perhaps only hope of bringing about an end to the Iraq war that they can cast as a defeat. Are they ready to concede that the Iraq War was won?

Not as long as they have any hope at all that Democrats can salvage a defeat.

Update: Rick Moran has related thoughts on Obama's strange redefinition of "victory" through surrender at Right Wing Nut House.

Having issues with spammers. Comments closed.

Flapjack's Gone Daft

We never could have anticipated that Barack Obama would be so un-schooled as to think that the nuclear genie can be be put back in the proverbial bottle, that military or dual-use technology can be selectively unlearned, but there he goes.

"As long as nuclear weapons exist, we'll retain a strong deterrent. But we will make the goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons a central element in our nuclear policy," Obama said.

He added, "The danger ... is that we are constantly fighting the last war, responding to the threats that have come to fruition, instead of staying one step ahead of the threats of the 21st century."

How can Obama claim he will stay "one step ahead of threats of the 21st century," by pretending 20th century technologies can be selectively recaptured and caged?

How can he claim to be ahead of 21st century threats, when he won't face the problems generated by 6th century ideologies?

And does anyone believe that his naive pacifism will be reciprocated by tyrants and dictators?

Obama's speech is filled with platitudes, but we're electing a President, not a bubble-headed pageant winner, and the first-term senator is proving yet again that he simply doesn't have the judgment for the job.

While the Media Slept...

...another province, Diwaniyah, was handed over to Iraqi government control.

This means that for the first time, a democratically-elected Iraqi government is in charge of a majority of the country (10 of 18 provinces). The largest province and former home of the Sunni insurgency, al Anbar, is on the cusp of being handed over as well.

You would think that turning point such as the Iraqis taking over the control of the majority of their country would be a moment that editorial writers, always looking for moments pregnant with symbolism, would gush over.

Alas, Iraq isn't as newsworthy with victory so near at hand (and with the anointed candidate faltering so badly), and so this milestone goes all but unreported.

Ya-hooey!

Remember this picture from yesterday?

It is still on Yahoo's photostream with the (still active) caption:

US soldiers secure the area at a newly installed check-point at the Babadag training facility in Tulcea, Iraq. A string of suicide attacks against Iraqi security forces killed at least 37 people on Tuesday, including 28 when two suicide bombers blew themselves up among a crowd of army recruits, security officials said. (AFP/Daniel Mihailescu)

Sharp-eyed CY reader BohicaTwentyTwo pointed out the obvious visual clues that the photo and caption quite simply doesn't match up.

The soldiers in the photos were wearing MILES (Multiple Integrated Laser Engagement System) training equipment, and the blank-firing adapters on the end of each weapon (more obvious on the bright red adapter on the M4 in the foreground, though the pull-ring on the MG's black-firing adapter in the turret in the background was also clearly visible).

As blank-firing MILES training gear makes it impossible to "secure" anything, it was obvious that the photo was mis-captioned. A second look at the photo also revealed that an obsolete BDU woodland camo pattern was mixed with the new ACU camo pattern used by the Army, and the HMMWV in the photo was an unarmored version also painted in woodland, whereas the HMMWV presently deployed to Iraq is the desert tan up-armored version. Even the foliage in the background seemed suspect. A quick scan of photographer Daniel Mihailescu's work also placed him in Romania less than five days earlier. How did he get to an obscure corner of Iraq so quickly?

I was quick to blame the AFP for this error (considering their history of photo captioning errors, it was a reasonable assumption), but as slublog first noted in the comments at Hot Air, the caption above was not the caption that ran with the original photo.

This was (click here for larger).

The caption sent out by AFP (as was the screen cap sent by AFP above as evidence) read:

ROMANIA, BABADAG : US soldiers secure the area at a new installed check-point at Babadag training facility in the county of Tulcea, during a joint task force-east rotation 2008 training exercise, on July 14, 2008. Over 900 US military personnel participates at the training exercise meant to train US and Romanian soldiers in simulated combat situations as well as improving the mixt [sic]team working capabilities on the war fields like Iraq and Afganistan. AFP PHOTO / DANIEL MIHAILESCU

The photo in question had nothing to do with the events in Iraq. As noted above, the Babadag training facility in the county of Tulcea is in the country of Romania.

This photo:

1. Was recaptioned by Yahoo;
2. Was recaptioned to associate it with events that occurred roughly 1,500 miles away, and a day later;
3. Did not be long in Yahoo's "Iraq" photostream at all.

We knew before that the originators and publishers/end users can fake photos and/or captions to create fauxtography.

Thanks to Yahoo's caption manipulation, we now know we have to worry about the middlemen as well.

O'Hanlon: Flapjack's Position on Iraq "Height of Absurdity," Hints ObamaMessiah Is Too Incompetent for Presidency

Michael, tell us how you really feel:

Michael E. O'Hanlon, a Democratic defense analyst at the Brookings Institution who has been an outspoken supporter of the war in Iraq, said he could not believe that Obama would put such a definitive timeline into print before a trip to Iraq, where he is to consult with Iraqi leaders and U.S. commanders.

"To say you're going to get out on a certain schedule -- regardless of what the Iraqis do, regardless of what our enemies do, regardless of what is happening on the ground -- is the height of absurdity," said O'Hanlon, who described himself as "livid." "I'm not going to go to the next level of invective and say he shouldn't be president. I'll leave that to someone else."

Actually, that is exactly what he is intoning, he just doesn't want to be blamed for suggesting it: Barack Obama shouldn't be president.

The presidency doesn't come with training wheels, which O'Hanlon, most conservatives, many moderates and independents, and an increasing number of Democrats (to their horror) are starting to realize as they weigh the candidate's possibility of success.

Obama lacks executive experience, leadership experience, has no record of bipartisanship or significant legislative accomplishments, and has padded his resume to a shameless degree. With zero governing and wafer-thin legislative experience, he is running his campaign entirely on personal charisma and vague promises.

But Obama's storied charisma is wearing thin, and his gimmicks—such as labeling every unfavorable eventuality or troubling flaw in his hoped-for ascendancy a "distraction"—are starting to be picked up on, and picked apart.

His speeches, like the one he gave today, incorporate not just the nuance and shading of truth we expect from politicians, but outright, direct and unambiguous falsehoods based upon how he wishes the world was, not how it is.

Obama claimed in his speech today:

Iraq's leaders have not made the political progress that was the purpose of the surge.

That is a direct lie. Iraqi has made significant progress in 15 of 18 fronts, according to the U.S. embassy. I'd note that this is far more progress than the U.S. Congress has made during a comparable time period. Obama isn't part of the solution for Iraq's government. He's part of the problem in America's.

They have not invested tens of billions of dollars in oil revenues to rebuild their country.

Really?

Try Solar powered infrastructure improvements, at that.

You'd think that a Democrat would like the fact that Iraq is "going green" as it reinvests in it's infrastructure. Instead, he, like his fellow elected Democrats, dally in Congress as they have for decades, philosophizing about energy sources that might be at some point in the distant future, while ignoring practical solutions to our current energy needs. We'd all love to live in world of cute fuzzy bunnies and unicorns where utterly clean energy sources existed, but that mythical source doesn't yet exist, and isn't powering the machines at the local neonatal intensive care unit, keeping our little miracles alive.

Most Americans understand that and deal with those practicalities. Congressional Democrats such as Barack Obama don't.

They have not resolved their differences or shaped a new political compact.

That too, is a lie, as the passing of amnesty laws and the releasing of hundreds prisoners (including Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein) was one of those key sticking points of a new government including Iraqi Sunnis that sat out the country's formation.

Nor did Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ever call for a timeline for withdrawal; his statements were misinterpreted, and were literally lost in translation. This a fact Obama doubtlessly knew before claiming Maliki said this in his speech, but it was convenient lie for Obama, and one he desperately wishes were true. He needs it to be true. He'll pretend it is true.

But it isn't.

Betraying a radical politicized worldview that is more cult theology than a practical governing philosophy, Barack Obama is beginning to scare his political enemies and most ardent supporters alike.

Framing Obama

Matthew Yglesias wants to get into a framing discussion and attempts to argue than an ABC poll was unfair to his man-crush/candidate.

Without nailing down the dishonesties in Yglesias' attempts to recast McCain's position, let's get into the specifics of what will be lost by Obama's 16-month withdrawal plan.

Logistically, it is deemed quite improbable, verging on impossible, for U.S. combat forces to perform an orderly withdrawal in 16 months. A withdrawal of personnel is possible, but at the cost of leaving behind hundreds of millions (if not billions) of dollars in taxpayer-purchased equipment that would have to be repurchased stateside, increasing future government debt, promising us yet another tax increase courtesy of Obama.

A commenter of his (Allan) claims that "Obama supports removing our troops from Iraq in an orderly process," but that is the height of fantasy; those who work in logistics have noted that his plan would promote chaos and unnecessary stresses on the supply chain and limited port facilities that have to process, decontaminate, pack, and ship outbound equipment and supplies.

This is simply the logistical argument, ignoring the dangers of a too-quick handover in provinces where Iraqi forces are still not deemed capable of taking the lead. Considering the stellar progress and trajectory of security gains and government progress in the last year, it is possible that in 16 months that the Iraqi security forces can take the lead in the eight remaining provinces where the U.S. is in charge of security, but it would be foolish and counterproductive to predetermine the removal of the safety net U.S. forces would still provide as Iraqi forces become more competent and confident.

Unless, of course, you have some vested interest in defeat.

Then there is the simple common-sense matter of which troops Obama wants to remove (combat forces). As a Iraqi war soldier or Marine (I forget which) remarked last week, who's going to be left in Obama's Army in Iraq, cooks and truck drivers?

Who is going to protect our remaining troops and positions and backstop the Iraqis if Obama pulls out our combat troops? Supply clerks? Dental hygienists?

Obama's plans for Iraq, like all of his other plans, are formulated with the impulsiveness and lack of concern for the unintended consequences of international affairs we'd expect from a neophyte government official not even one term removed from an inconsequential and lackluster state government stint, and a responsibility-free community organizer job before it.

Like so many things attached to the name Obama, his withdrawal plan for Iraqi is based upon irresponsible promises divorced from what he can actually deliver without causing far more hurt, a truism of his campign that can just as readily be applied to his domestic and foreign policy perscriptions.

AFP Blows it Again Maybe Not This Time [Updated]

[See the final update at the bottom -- ed.]

So I'd like AFP to explain one simple thing to me about this photo:

US soldiers secure the area at a newly installed check-point at the Babadag training facility in Tulcea, Iraq. At least 28 people were killed when two suicide bombers blew themselves up in a crowd of recruits on an Iraqi army base in an area known to be a stronghold of Al-Qaeda fighters. (AFP/Daniel Mihailescu)

Just how is it possible that U.S. combat forces are protecting the site of the Babadag training facility in Tulcea, Iraq when equipped with non-lethal MILES gear that fires nothing but blanks?

And do we even train with MILES gear in Iraq?

I call shenanigans.

Update: The vehicle in the photo a non-up-armored HMMWV, painted in an obsolete woodland camo pattern (as are the vests of both soldiers, and helmet cover of the solder in the HMMWV), a pattern no longer used by U.S. forces in Iraq.

This picture is probably several years old, and is probably taken somewhere other than Iraq.

The photographer, Daniel Mihailescu, was theoretically in Bucharest, Romania, just five days ago, in order to take this picture. Is it even a practical possibility that the sports photographer even get from Bucharest to Iraq in less than five days?

They have the details of the event completely wrong.. did AFP they credit the wrong photographer as well?

Update: Wrong Date, Wrong Country, Wrong Event. They did, however, credit the correct photographer. Thanks to slublog in the comments at Hot Air.

Final Update: After continued digging involving the help of the U.S miltary and AFP itself, the source of this screw-up has been confirmed, and it isn't the AFP.

Surprise!

Details tomorrow; even bloggers have to sleep.

(h/t CY-reader BohicaTwentyTwo)

Just Following Orders?

Does knowing of serious crimes being covered up by your superiors compel a moral obligation to expose the crimes, even if it potentially costs you your career to blow the whistle?

More than substantiated 300 Vietnam-era war crimes, and more than 200 possible war criminals were never prosecuted, even though those in charge had the opportunity to seek justice for rape, murder, torture, and other atrocities... so who is to blame?

Flapjack: Let's Not Talk About The War in Iraq

Flapjack^* pens an op-ed in the New York Times entitled "My Plan for Iraq" which is fascinating in that:

1. his overly vague rhetoric proves he has no actual plans, only vacuous suggestions;
2. it skates by the proven fact that his judgment on the surge was dead wrong, making the reader wonder about his judgment yet again; what kind of man brings up one of his greatest weaknesses, unsolicited?
3. it reminds readers that had Obama's long-called-for headlong retreat be actualized, Iraq would have already been lost to chaos, billions in dollars of American military equipment would have been abandoned, and every casualty's sacrifice would have been in vain;
4. the security vacuum he would have created (and still desires to create) would have likely triggered a genocide followed by a regional war that would make $10/gallon gas look reasonable.

As he makes clear by his own hand, Barack Obama has no plans for success in Iraq, only plans for retreat.

^* Flapjack. Nickname for Barack Obama, coined by an eight-year-old. Obama starts on one side (the far left) until an issue gets hot, and then as the political heat becomes to great, he then flips his position.

About That New Yorker Cover...

It looks like the political firestorm to start out the week is going to be the cover art on the latest edition of the New Yorker, which shows caricatures of Barack and Michelle Obama.

The freshman Senator is shown dressed in traditional African apparel, "fist-bumping" Mrs. Obama, who is portrayed with a wild afro in a black shirt, combat boots, and camo fatigues with a AK-47 slung across her back, while an American flag burns in the fireplace and a portrait of Osama bin Laden hangs on the wall in what is apparently the Oval Office.

Mike Allen of The Politico notes that the Obama Campaign is not amused:

The Obama campaign quickly condemned the rendering. Spokesman Bill Burton said in a statement: "The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Senator Obama's right-wing critics have tried to create. But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree."

It is tasteless and offensive, but then, much of the content of the New Yorker falls into that category if you live outside the neo-Copernican worldview of a magazine that sees Manhattan as the center of the universe. Those of us outside of that self-involved hemorrhage of land between the Hudson and East Rivers are simply part of a bitter and clingy "not us" to the magazine's erudite familiars.

It is perhaps this great unknowing of life to the left of the West Side Highway that causes even the caricatures of the Obama family to be wildly inaccurate. A lampoon is only effective when it contains truth, and certain elements of the imagery fall apart under even passing review.

There is precious little truth, for example, in the casting of Michelle Obama as an apparent black nationalist. When mentioned by her detractors, Mrs. Obama is more likely to be mocked as a Hyde Park Eeyore than a militant disciple of Bobby Seale. Depictions of her as an Affirmative Action-enabled whiner with dubious patriotism are not uncommon, but she has never been portrayed as being violent.

In that vein, there has never been any suggestion that either one of the Obama's would come within spitting distance of a firearm, much less actually touch (or wear) one. While his record on firearms is as anorexic as the rest of his resume, Barack clearly stated his intentions to outlaw all handguns of any kind, and semi-automatic rifles and shotguns as well during his short turn in state government. A parsing of his web site betrays that the first-term Senator does not recognize the right of self defense in any form, and contains only a vague nod towards hunting and target shooting, as if the Founders though that the taking of a pheasant was of such importance that it must be enshrined in the Bill of Rights.

Other parts of the caricature were sadly more on target in displaying common attacks directed against Obama.

Barack Obama does have a multi-level "Muslim problem."

Militant Islamists want him to be president—Hamas even has phone banks in Gaza touting his candidacy—because they see a "soft" candidate that will allow them breathing room to operate. Dictatorships (including belligerent Islamic nations) look at Obama's pledge to abandon Iraq at any human cost as a sign of weakness, cowardice, and foolishness, and foresee an "all-talk" Neville Chamberlain in the White House that will allow them their localized brutalities with no interference.

American Muslims see a candidate that shuns them, and even forces them off camera.

Add in the fact that Obama's Muslim half-brother Abongo is militantly-Anti-European, and the junior Senator certainly has an image problem. The rumors that Obama is a secret Muslim trained in Islamic madrassas in his youth, when combined with real photos of Obama in traditional African dress, help portray as Obama as an insider not to be trusted.

Even his surname—Ted Kennedy once famously mangled it—is a problem, sounding too much like that of al Qaeda's infamous leader. His middle name of "Hussein" has also been turned into a smear by some, encouraging some dim-witted but well-meaning supporters to interject it as their own in hopes of diluting its impact on xenophobes.

As for the flag burning in the Oval Office fireplace in the image, it is obviously meant as an attack on the patriotism of both the candidate and his wife for numerous deeds, statements, and dubious entanglements with radicals.

Obama's political career is based entirely upon relationships he developed with far left radicals in Chicago, from race-hustling ministers, to old Marxists and communists, to the infamous domestic terrorists in whose home he started his improbable political run.

The caricature based upon rumors associated with Barack Obama in the New Yorker is distasteful. A picture based upon just the facts would even more inflammatory.

Update: Michelle Malkin shows far worse examples of political art, and suggests the improbable.

Tony Snow, Dead at 53

A charming press secretary for President Bush, conservative pundit, and Fox News anchor, Tony Snow has lost a long battle with cancer. Ed Morrissey offers a personal reflection of a genuinely nice man at Hot Air.

More reflections will no doubt be captured throughout the day at Memeorandum.com.

Our prayers go out in support of his family.

AT PJM: D.C.'s Handgun Restrictions

Go ahead. Make my day.

Obama goes After NASCAR Crowd

Brilliant.

Unfortunately for the driver, he intends to send the pit crew home halfway through the race and then blame the inevitable loss on the previous sponsor.

Update: Michelle Malkin has more.

U.S. Commanders: Flapjack's 16-Month Withdrawal Plan Nearly Impossible

We've known this, of course, even strictly for a logical standpoint, much less the moral view. To do as Obama has pledged to the Copperheads would mean the abandonment of hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer-purchased U.S. equipment, and is not just an abandonment of the Iraqi people and an affront to those who have sacrificed so much to get Iraq where it is today.

Still, it's nice to see his hollow, defeatist-placating rhetoric exposed as being "very dangerous."

PZ Myers: Save Me From Their Freedom of Speech

So here is a philosophical question for you.

A university employee—an associate biology professor, if that matters— has gone out of his way to publicly pronounce his intention to desecrate a core religious symbol of a well-established religion, and promises to post pictures of that desecration to a personal web site.

Should that associate professor be surprised if outraged followers of that religion—or people of other religions, or no religion at all—find that his pledge of desecration is offensive? Should he be amazed that a common response to his intentional affront be a call to have his position with the university terminated? Should his position be terminated?

Such is the situation for PZ Myers of the University of Minnesota-Morris, who went well out of his way in protesting a college student's misuse of an Eucharist (consecrated communion wafer) by blasting the Catholic faith in particular (and Christians in general), asking readers to steal and send him a Eucharist, which he would then desecrate:

Can anyone out there score me some consecrated communion wafers? There's no way I can personally get them — my local churches have stakes prepared for me, I'm sure — but if any of you would be willing to do what it takes to get me some, or even one, and mail it to me, I'll show you sacrilege, gladly, and with much fanfare. ...

...[I] will instead treat it with profound disrespect and heinous cracker abuse, all photographed and presented here on the web. I shall do so joyfully and with laughter in my heart...

I know this probably comes as a shock to many of you, but Myers' intolerance and contempt has him in a bit of hot water. He is receiving threats, and University President Robert Bruininks (email) has been getting messages calling for Myers to be terminated.

In an attempt to rally a defense of his actions, Myers is hoping to inspire a letter-writing campaign of his own in an attempt to save his job.

It's all quite interesting.

Apparently Myers thinks freedom of speech is the freedom to use that speech to abuse others and call for their beliefs to be mocked and violated, without any consequences.

Vox Day has an amusing take on the matter, while a smattering of liberal blogs (including a generally reasonable post by Jeff Fecke) have lept to Myers' defense.

My own response to Mr. Myers would be that while he does have the freedom of speech, he is not free from responsibility for his speech. He has the right to say what he wants (with all the usual caveats), but others also have the right to express their opinions in response, including calling for his firing.

Advantage: Charles Johnson

First Dan Rather, Now Iran.

Nicely done, Charles.

Update: You Dishonest Hacks

Early this morning, I left a comment at the Lede noting that Charles was not only the person who exposed this fraud, but Dan Rather's faked TANG documents as well.

Nine hours later, the comment has yet to clear moderation. Mike Nizza and Patrick Witty apparently don't feel like sharing their stolen credit with the person who actually exposed this fraud.

Find 'Em First

Jesse Jackson is as offended as the rest of us over how Barack Obama regards his fellow Americans with disdain, but goes the extra yard and suggests rather crudely that the first-term Senator from Illinois should be castrated.

After watching Obama flip and flop on every issue, pandering first to one special interest group, then reversing course to pander to another, what makes the good Reverend so sure Flapjack has a pair to begin with?

Never Too Late to Spread a Little Fear

You have to give credit where credit is due: the Washington Post isn't quite ready to surrender to victory in Iraq, and they're not above hyping a desperate bid for relevance by waning Shia militias as a significant tactical adaptation.

U.S. Troops in Iraq Face A Powerful New Weapon by Ernesto Londoño of the Washington Post Foreign Service was a much better article the first time I read it over a month ago in Bill Roggio's far more useful Long War Journal article, which the Post mentions but doesn't link. I can only assume that the Post failed to link Roggio's article because is so much more competently written.

While Londoño seems intent on describing a weapon system that is a an improvement over past improvised devices in describing a weapon that has killed at least 21 people, he buries the fact that 18 of those 21 (16 civilians, two Madhi Army militiamen) were killed as a result of the jury-rigged bombs failing, and detonating in their launchers.

The so-called IRAM is a crude, desperate weapon apparently designed by the Judean People's Front.

I'm not surprised that the Post would try to hype potential bad news in Iraq, but a crude weapon that has killed six times more people on the launching end than the receiving end seems more ripe for mocking than fear.

Reuters Health and Science Editor Cites Well Known Gun Fraud in Heller Hit Piece

How incompetent can Reuter's Health and Science Editor Maggie Fox be that she would cite Arthur Kellerman in a story about firearms?

She quotes Kellerman saying:

"A number of scientific studies, published in the world's most rigorous, peer-reviewed journals, show the risks of keeping a loaded gun in the home outweigh the potential benefits," Dr. Arthur Kellerman, an emergency physician at Emory University in Atlanta, wrote in The Washington Post.

Kellerman, a radically anti-gun doctor, has been discredited since 1986, when an article he co-authored with Donald T. Reay, "Protection or Peril?: An Analysis of Firearm-Related Deaths in the Home" in the New England Journal of Medicine, created the oft-repeated fallacy that a person with a gun in the home is 43 times as likely to shoot someone in the family as to shoot a criminal. The authors arrived at the 43-1 figure by including 333 suicides in their total sample size of 389 firearms deaths.

Any competent person writing about firearms, public health and gun control should know about Kellerman's shoddy research and deservedly tattered reputation—Google certainly does—so why doesn't Reuters?

(h/t Hot Air)

Stop the Smears

Like you, from time to time I'm forwarded chain emails, and because of what I choose to blog about, invariably quite a few of those are political in nature.

One I got this evening regarded a Navy pilot shot down in Vietnam in 1967 by the name of Mike Christian, the Pledge of Allegiance, and a flag sewn from scraps of cloth with a bamboo needle.

According to the good folks at Snopes, the story is absolutely true.

What got me, though, was the picture that accompanied Christian's story in the email, and the caption under it.

The man in the photo, Barack Obama, is accused of not placing his hand over his heart during the Pledge of Allegiance.

I am glad to say this is absolutely false.

It was the National Anthem.

Now don't you feel better?

An ABC News Poll They Don't Want You to See

It looks like the Messiah isn't doing so well with a certain demographic.

Iraqi Government Considers Timetable for U.S. Withdrawal

They aren't quite ready for coalition forces to leave just yet, but the dramatic gains in terms of security and political successes now have the Iraqi government suggesting a possible U.S. withdrawal.

The Iraqis are confident in their ability to handle their own affairs, and I can certainly understand them wanting Iraq fully back in Iraqi hands. They're hoping for a pull-out in the 2011-13 timeframe and would like to try to establish a deadline based upon "conditions and circumstances" on the ground.

Considering the present situation in Iraq, I certainly think that a pullout in that 3-5 year window is certainly possible, though I can understand why some in Washington may be leery committing to date-based withdrawal schedule, just as I can understand why Iraqis would like to have a specific date to look forward to. As the Iraqi government and coalition forces negotiate, perhaps the best option—and to my mind, the most logical—would be a compromise agreement, that says by X date, Y forces should withdraw if Z conditions have been met, and if not by that date, as soon as those conditions are met.

This would give Iraqis not just a date to look forward to, but give them more incentive to make sure that security and political needs of their citizens are being addressed.

What would be hilarious in watching these developments—if it wasn't so pathetic—are progressive Democrats crowing about this recent decision by Iraqi officials, insisting that a timeline for withdrawal is exactly what they've been asking for all along.

Not so fast.

Some progressives have been pushing for a withdrawal since before the first bomb dropped on Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Some are genuinely opposed to the idea of all wars for any reason, some were opposed to a war launched for reasons they disagreed with by a government they disagreed with, and some fickle souls began pushing for withdrawal only once the conflict became more bloody, expensive, and protracted than they assumed it would be.

However they got to that position, they got there by the worst days of the war in 2006, when Sunni and Shia militias were locked in a deadly sectarian conflict verging on open civil war, and coalition forces were taking heavy casualties. At the time John Murtha, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and other Congressional Democrats were calling the loudest for a timeline for withdrawing American forces in Iraq, the safety and security of the Iraqi people and the success of their nation was the last thing on their minds.

Democrats wanted American troops pulled out of Iraq as soon as logistically possible, without preconditions, even if it plunged that nation into open an civil war that could cost tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent lives, even if such a headlong withdrawal led to genocide, even if such a morally bankrupt decision led to a widespread regional war.

It was and is a craven, reprehensible act of cowardice, mirroring the shameful behavior of the Copperhead Democrats 140 years earlier who wanted to abandon Blacks to slavery in the South to sue for peace in the U.S. Civil War.

The Copperheads of today's Democratic Party color themselves "progressives" for championing the abandonment of a group of people (slightly lighter in skin tone than the last time) to a fate potentially as bad or worse than the slaves of antebellum, and make no mistake: the modern Copperheads care no more about "liberty and justice for all" than did their forebearers.

Then as now, it was about their selfish personal desires, hopes of amassing political power, and disdain for a stubborn Republican President. Then as now, they could rely upon their friends in the media to carry forth a call for appeasement and abandonment.

But the situation now in Iraq is far different now than it was when progressive Democrats began advocating the abandonment Iraqi civilians to a bloody fate.

Now, it is an increasingly competent and confident Iraqi government itself that builds hope of a U.S. withdrawal, based upon their growing strength and the continuing vanquishment of terrorists, criminal militias, and common gangs.

A timeline for withdrawal based upon Iraqi and coalition successes is to be commended as a beacon of hope for a brighter future for a new and sovereign democracy in the Middle East, just as the timeline of abandonment and defeat advocated by progressive Democrats should be regarded by history as a mark of shame.

Update: A bit dog barks.

Homegrown Terrorists Killed Outside U.S. Consulate in Istanbul

Three gunmen ambushed Turkish police outside the U.S. consulate in Instanbul, Turkey today, in an attack that left all three attackers and three Turkish police officers dead, but not before the police killed their assailants.

The attack was carried out with handguns and a pump shotgun, indicating this was not the work of an organized terrorist organization such as al Qaeda or Hezbollah. These groups have a well-documented history of using large vehicle-borne explosives to carry out attacks against fortified positions such as embassies and consulates. Using such short-range weaponry in such a poorly executed and apparently ad hoc assault, the attack had virtually no chance of success, and no one was apparently injured inside the consulate.

A fourth man seen with the three attackers never left a gray car seen at a nearby carwash moments before the ambush, and escaped after his compatriots were killed.

Map Quest

"...a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing."

Such were the famous words of Shakespeare's MacBeth, though they apply equally well to empty Iranian threats against U.S. Naval vessels in the Persian Gulf in case of conflict between our nations.

The simple fact of the matter is that should tensions escalate, U.S. capital ships have no need to be in the Persian Gulf to control the Iranian shoreline and the Straits of Hormuz.

The image above, pulled from Google Maps, shows, small body of water on the left is the Persian Gulf. The large body on the right is the Gulf of Oman, outlet to the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean (larger map).

U.S. carriers, amphibious assault ships, and larger surface ships can easily leave the Persian Gulf via the Straits of Hormuz if a strike on Iran is imminent, far removing them from the range of Iranian surface ships, aircraft, and radar stations. This negates the threat of Iranian anti-ship missiles, and turns the threat of blindly-fired ballistic missiles into irrelevancies splashing down in empty seas.

Iran would retain the ability to strike Israel, and could no doubt stir up trouble in Iraq via it's terror cells there, or even an open but suicidal direct assault against American forces in Iraq and elsewhere on land throughout the Gulf region, but the threats of a Iranian counterstrike against U.S. Naval forces is little more than bluster.

I'd Look Forward to Seeing This Headline Again in the Future...

... they've now run it twice, just to make sure you know where they stand—but rather doubt David Broder and the editors of the Washington Post will have the integrity to attach similar language to the epitaph of the senior Senator from West Virginia when the time comes for his remembrance.

I'm sorry, West Virginia, but it's an embarrassment that the Kleagle is still the state Byrd.

Guilt by Association

CNN Associate Political Editor Rebecca Sinderbrand made her progressive "bones" June 30 (if she didn't have then already)in a post that for some reason is just getting some attention from the blogosphere for her mis-characterization of Colonel Bud Day (USAF-Ret.) in this CNN blog post.

Here is Sinderbrand's description of Day in her lede:

One of the members of John McCain's new Truth Squad — which his campaign says was launched to respond to unfair attacks on his record of military service –- was a member of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, and appeared in an attack ad for the group in 2004.

Sinderbrand is displaying one of two things here, either profound ignorance, or a level of political bias that undermines her professional credibility. Michelle Malkin, active duty soldier Greyhawk, and Scott Johnson among those hoping to raise some issue here, with Malkin asking her readers to ask for a correction in the comments to Sinderbrand's blog entry, which is now closed.

Progressive blogger Jesse Taylor at Pandagon seems to think Sinderbrand's description of Day was "accurate."

As I responded in the comments:

The reason Greyhawk and other servicemen are angry at CNN's description of Col. Day is that it does not accurately describe who he is. They aren't asking for his bio to be read, but for an accurate description of who he is and what he has accomplished.

Day is not a Swift Boat vet (Navy) but an Air Force vet. His involvement with SBVFT had nothing to do with Kerry's service in Vietnam, and Day never commented on Kerry's service in Vietnam. He testified only against Kerry's Winter Soldier testimony (made in front of Congress), which Day felt was biased and dishonest in it’s characterization of American servicemen in that conflict.

Is he not entitled to his freedom of speech?

Day is not primarily known as a member of SBVFT, but as one of America's most celebrated and decorated war heroes, in a very rare class reserved for men such as Audie Murphy or Alvin York. He would next be known as John McCain's cellmate in the Hanoi Hilton. After that, he is most famous for filing a class-action lawsuit against the Clinton-era Air Force for stripping veterans of their medical care. Limiting his description to merely being "a member of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" is to ignore the vast majority of his accomplishments in order to attempt to undermine his credibility for things he never said or did.

CNN avoided Day's life's work and his most famous accomplishment in order to dismiss him for being part of a group that merged with SBVFT.

Apply a simple test to see if this is fair.

Imagine a media organization took one of your heroes, ignored his most notable 3-4 top accomplishments, and attempted to undercut his credibility by only mentioning that he made remarks or shared his opinion in front of a group your political opponents find loathsome.

Would a news story remembering Martin Luther King for his association with openly gay Communist Party member USA Bayard Rustin at the exclusion of everything else he accomplished in his life be "fair?"

King is of course far more famous for all the other things he did with his life, but according to Jesse, that is apparently all just irrelevant biographical information. Simply calling King an associate of a gay Communist, and giving him no credit for the things he is best remembered for, would be "accurate."

King of course, is known far better for his other more notable accomplishments. So is Col. Day.

He responded:

See, heres the problem with that.

Suppose you were doing a story about Bayard Rustin. As a part of it, you mentioned that he was friends with MLK. By this standard, we must include all biographical information about King for it to be "fair", which makes no sense.

If I mention that Matt Damon was at an Arby's, do I need to include both the entire plot synopsis of the Bourne Trilogy and the history of roast beef?

Taylor's response was tellingly illogical and weak.

Day, of course, was the explicit focus of Sinderbrand's blog entry.

To use Taylor's own examples correctly (he did not, or could not, I'm not sure which), if we were reading an article about Rustin or Damon, we would expect the author to get the key details of their lives correct. We would not expect the author to delve into the details of King's life in an article where Bayard Rustin is the subject because—and see if you can follow along—Bayard Rustin is the subject. He (Rustin), is the focal point of the article. Likewise, an article that has Matt Damon as the subject should focus on the key details about Damon, not a character he has played, nor the history of a menu item at a restaurant. This is simple enough of a concept that my eight-year-old understands it, but apparently Jesse's education is such that he or she is having trouble following along.

Rebecca Sinderbrand may no effort at all to accurately describe the man who was the subject of this blog entry, and instead chose the route of a cheap smear. The sad thing is that her bosses at CNN have a history of allowing such behavior, and that there are people out there like Jesse that will defend such obvious dishonestly.

Obama vs. Obama

According to BarackObama.com, Barack Obama "put his political career on the line" campaigning as "a candidate for the United States Senate in 2002" when he opposed going to war in Iraq.

They phrase it like this:

Now, I am not an Obama fan by any stretch and I didn't pay a lot of attention to him until he began running for President, but wasn't he just an Illinois state senator, speaking on the undercard of a Jesse Jackson speech on October, 2 2002?

Obama didn't announce his 2004 U.S. Senate bid until January of 2003.

His speech in Chicago would have long ago disappeared, lost in time like any other speech by any other unknown state legislator, had he not made it a focal point of his following campaigns.

Claiming that he "put his career on the line" by making a then obscure speech in front of a handful of agreeing Marxists organized by former Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) radicals Marilyn Katz and Carl Davidson is a significant exaggeration.

Words are Nice. Actions Are Better.

Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama is on a tour across America designed to rehabilitate his reputation, after a CNN poll conducted on June 26-29 revealed that a surprising number of Americans—Democrats (10%), Independents (29%), and Republicans (40%), or 25% overall—say that the candidate lacks patriotism.

I must wonder how much a string of speeches will do to convince people that Obama loves America. They are, after all, "just words."

He certainly loves parts of America. San Francisco. Chicago. New York. D.C. University towns and union enclaves. Where left wing ideologies and identity politics hold sway, you'll find a part of America that Obama likes and understands.

The rest of the nation may as well be another world for the freshman Senator, as remote to him as the Indonesian schools of his youth are to the rest of us.

He doesn't seem to understand that the America outside of his comfort zone doesn't associate the sincerity or depth of love with this nation with fealty to the political party in charge at the time. He's used to seeing feckless American liberals threaten to leave the country if a Republican wins an election—though regrettably, few of these fickle souls live up to their word—and associates that as a normal behavior. Instead of "My country, right or wrong," his life story is a tale replete with a string of associates and mentors that boldly proclaim "my country, my way, or God damn you all."

Speeches are nice, and he certainly plays a teleprompter as lyrically as a human being can.

But Barack Obama has lived his life in the counterculture of America. He counts among his greatest influences a communist poet, a lynching advocate priest, a crackpot conspiracy-mongering reverend, and the detritus remnants of the last great experiment in American self-loathing.

The majority of Americans have been raised with a nearly instinctual love of this nation that is not tied to who resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and that doesn't associate pride or shame in their nation of birth solely on the policies and actions of elected officials that will blow away on an electoral wind.

The freshman Senator from Illinois is surprisingly insulated from the American experience, even as he claims to credit America for his success. He claims to believe in the America, but every policy he outlines, every dream he frames, is nailed to an ever-engorging government. A program for this. A policy for that. Restrictions here, entitlements all around, and a tax on both your houses to pay for it all.

Barack Obama is in love with the possibilities of American government. It's too bad he has so little trust in the American people.

Liberal Blogger Shot During Mugging In D.C.

Liberal blogger Brian Beutler was shot three times during a mugging last night in Washington, D.C., apparently over a cell phone.

Let's hope that he has a full and speedy recovery.

Durham Democratic Party/Satanic Cult Shuts Down Web Site After Second Official Arrested

Demonic Change we Can Believe In?

Diana Palmer, 44, of Cottage Woods Court, surrendered to police Wednesday afternoon. She was charged with being an accessory after the fact of assault with a deadly weapon and was being held in the Durham County Jail under a $95,000 bond.

[snip]

Palmer is first vice chair of the Durham County Democratic Party. Johnson resigned her positions as third vice-chair of the Durham County Democratic Party and vice-chair of the Young Democrats following her arrest.

The county party disabled its Web site Wednesday afternoon.

www.durhamdemocrats.org/ is indeed offine, but their backup site is functioning.

"We're Bringing a Pitiful, Helpless Giant to Its Knees."

Mr. Obama, perhaps you should worry less about disassociating yourself from law-abiding American Muslims, and spend more time running away from your long-time terrorist friends.

Insert "Loan Ranger" Puns Here

Is anyone actually surprised?

I can't feign outrage over Barack Obama using his position as a new U.S. Senator to help secure a lower rate on a loan for The Home That Resko Built Helped Cut a Deal On.

Obama had no prior relationship with the lender, was taking out a $1.32 million loan below market rates, without paying the customary fees. So what?

This is politics folks, and this a typical example of why people go into a line of work that exposes them to constant ridicule and scorn. It's about amassing power and prestige for the payoff of parlaying that influence into personal gains, be they monetary, or the advancement of philosophical beliefs.

Barack Obama did precisely what every other politician does, and nothing more.

The only reason this story merits any attention is that Obama's campaign has created a mythology around him that casts him as a reformer.

It is an excellent marketing gimmick, and he'll ride it as long as it is effective and helps the brand he is creating, but make no mistake; like all other politicians operating at this level, Barack Obama holds one conviction, and one conviction only: I'm going to get mine.

And he did.

Reporting What They Want You to Hear

I've criticized ABC News on numerous occasions for their coverage of gun-related stories, but their coverage of the Joe Horn shooting incident in Pasadena, Texas is one of the more irresponsible stories they've posted since ... well, since the last one I saw in late April.

Perhaps equally unsurprising is that the Associated Press made the same crucial omission in a story that has gained national attention.

Joe Horn faced the possibility of being charged by a Texas grand jury after he shot and killed two men who had broken into the home next door. Horn had called 911, told the dispatcher he though they were going to get away, and despite repeated pleas by the dispatcher to stay inside his own home, decided to step outside with a shotgun after declaring his intention to kill them.

He did.

The shhoting seven months ago has inflamed ethnic tensions in the area, and raised questions regarding the ethical use of deadly force to defend property. There are all sorts of opinions on the story, but a key detail that may have significantly influenced the grand jury's decision not to press charges was completely ignored by ABC News and the Associated Press.

As noted in passing by some news outlets including the L.A. Times, plainclothes police officer responding to Horn's 911 call witnessed the shooting:

Ballistics tests suggested that at least one of the men had been shot in the back, raising questions about Horn's story.

But a plainclothes detective who witnessed some of what took place later told investigators that the men did not stop when a visibly nervous Horn pointed a shotgun in their direction, and that at least one man appeared to be moving toward Horn when Horn fired.

The Houston Chronicle likewise noted the presence of the detective:

Pasadena police have said a detective in plainclothes had parked in front of Horn's house in response to the 911 call, and saw the two men before they crossed into Horn's front yard.

Police believe that neither Horn nor the burglars knew an officer was present.

When Horn confronted the men in his yard, he raised his shotgun to his shoulder, police have said. However, the men ignored his order to freeze.

Authorities have said one man ran toward Horn but had angled away toward the street when he was shot in the back just before reaching the curb.

The tape of Horn's 911 call, testimony from Horn, and forensics were no doubt key pieces of evidence weighed by the grand jury, but it is reasonable to suspect that the testimony of the detective that witnessed the shooting—a very rare occurrence in cases involving the use of deadly force—was among the most influential evidence heard by the grand jury.

Why, then, was the mention of the detective's eye-witnessing these events and no doubt providing key testimony that influenced the grand jury's decision not to bring charges whitewashed by the these news organizations?

Where Do We Go From Heller

By a disturbingly narrow 5-4 decision, the learned minds on the Supreme Court determined last week that the Second Amendment means what it says:

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

The Founders were quite clear on what this Amendment meant, with Thomas Jefferson unequivocally stating, "No Free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." James Madison stated likewise:

"The right of the people to keep and bear...arms shall not be infringed. A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country..."

The Founders were clear: the body of the citizenry—even those not formally enrolled—helps comprise the militia, and so it is codified into federal law.

As the citizenry is the militia, and in light of the Heller decision, two details of existing U.S. federal gun laws should be re-examined.

The Hughes Amendment

The Hughes Amendment was interjected into the Firearm Owners Protection Act (FOPA) of 1986 by Rep. William J. Hughes (D-N.J.), late in the debate and literally in the dead of night. The provision banned the civilian ownership or transfer of any fully-automatic weapon which was not manufactured before May 19, 1986. Though witnesses claim the amendment failed in a voice vote (even though many opponents were absent an empty House), gun control proponent Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) was presiding over the House at the time, and declared the amendment approved. FOPA as a whole subsequently passed House and Senate votes and was signed into law.

Though it will come as a surprise to some, fully-automatic weapons are not illegal for U.S. citizens to own, be they submachine guns, selective-fire assault rifles, or crew-served, belt-fed machine guns. According to the BATF, there are at least 240,000 machine guns in civilian hands (PDF) in the United States as of 1995, with roughly half of those belonging to government agencies, and the other half belonging to individuals.

The Hughes Amendment cannot claim to have had any impact on gun deaths; there have been only two known deaths attributed to legally-owned machine guns singe 1934. One of those was at the hands of Dayton, OH Police Officer Roger Waller, who used a department-issue MAC-11 submachine gun to murder a police informant, 52-year-old Lawrence Hileman in 1988. FOPA, by the way, does not apply to police agencies, meaning it was utterly irrelevant in this case.

A second MAC-11 was used (PDF) by Dr. Shou Chao Ho in the murder of Dr. Carmelito Olaes in 1992 may be the only murder committed with a legally-owned, BATF-registered machine gun since the National Firearms Act (NFA) of 1934 began requiring registration 74 years ago.

So if it hasn't hand any impact on saving lives, what has the Hughes Amendment accomplished?

It has raised the price of those firearms among the most suitable for militia use in these modern times to exorbitant levels. A basic, no-frills M-16A2 selective fire as issued to all U.S. military forces (and therefore, perhaps the most directly applicable firearm for militia use) has a replacement cost for the military of just $586. Factor in the $200 NFA transfer tax and a gun dealer's profit, and such weapon should still cost an American citizen who has passed the requisite (and extensive) background checks no more than $1500-$2000.

Because of the middle-of-the-night Hughes Amendment banning individual civilian ownership fully automatic weapons manufactured after May 19, 1986, prices for existing machine guns are exceedingly expensive, as transferable machine guns have become collectors items. The greatest impact of the Hughes Amendment is to make gun collectors, speculators and certain dealers wealthy, at the expense of the intent of this nation's Founders when they imagined the purpose of the militia.

Overturning the Hughes Amendment need not be any more telegraphed nor debated than the original Amendment itself. Simply amending language to overturn the constitutionally-dubious ban to an appropriate bill before the House should return use to a more appropriate NFA-ruled state of affairs that has served this country so well these many years, though that federal law as well could use some updating as well.

Updating the National Firearms Act of 1934

Without question, the National Firearms Act (NFA) of 1934 is what most Americans would consider "reasonable" gun control.

It was passed at a time in American history when criminals engaged in high-profile shootouts with the police during the "Public Enemy"" era of 1931-35, and in the year where Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd, Bonnie and Clyde, and John Dillinger were all killed in shootouts with authorities.

The NFA was a $200 dollar transfer tax on automatic weapons, short-barreled rifles and shotguns, silencers, "destructive devices" in two categories, and "any other weapon," a category to regulate other weapons not necessarily covered in other classifications, but deemed worthy of taxation and regulation. It was designed to be used a another law enforcement tool against criminals unlikely to pay a transfer tax the equivalent of roughly five months salary at the time.

As a law enforcement tool NFA has been and continued to be an effective tool but is perhaps unduly cumbersome for those civilians who desire to own firearms or firearm components regulated by the law.

As noted in Wikipedia:

Individual owners do not need any license under the NFA to buy Title II weapons. However, the purchase and sale of NFA weapons is heavily taxed and regulated, as follows.

All NFA items must be registered with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). Private owners wishing to purchase an NFA item must obtain permission from the ATF, obtain a signature from the county sheriff or city or town chief of police (not necessarily permission), pass an extensive background check to include submitting a photograph and finger prints, fully register the firearm, receive ATF written permission before moving the firearm across state lines, and pay a tax. The request to transfer ownership of an NFA item is made on an ATF Form 4.

Most Americans have little problem with such restrictions being placed upon NFA-defined "destructive devices" that includes explosives, non-blackpowder rifles greater than .50-caliber, or machine guns, but it is perhaps time to reconsider whether or not the short barrel rifle and silencer provisions of NFA are due to be removed.

Short-Barreled rifles (SBRs)
Short-Barreled Rifles (SBRs) are those firearms with a stock that have either a barrel of less than 16-inches, or a total length of less than 26 inches. For firearms with folding or detachable stocks, measurements are taken with the stock fully extended.

SBRs are imminently practical firearms. Most (not all) SBRs currently in production are short-barreled versions of common assault rifles, and are chambered for either intermediate-power assault weapons, or comparatively low-powered pistol cartridges.

A specific subclass of SBRs, called PDWs (personal defense weapons) has emerged in recent years, designed to bridge the gap between full-size rifles and handguns for military personnel who do not carry a weapon as their primary job function, but who may still be called upon to defend themselves. Different from previous carbines or long-barreled pistols pressed into the role, PDWs are typically chambered with special ammunition that give them greater range and accuracy than pistol caliber bullets common to submachine guns and many carbines, and in military and police guises, often use armor piercing ammunition and are selective-fire.

SBRs are popular among military units and police units because they provide rifle-grade accuracy in a stocked firearm nimble enough for close-quarters use inside buildings. SBR's chambered in .223 Remington/5.56 NATO are particularly useful and safer alternatives to shotguns, pistols, and larger caliber rifles because the .5.56 bullet, having much less mass than even the lightest typical centerfire pistol bullets, provides adequate stopping power, enhanced accuracy, and far less risk of over-penetration compared to other weapons.

As a public health issue, it would be worthwhile for Congress to weigh the pros and cons of amending the NFA to make at least some SBRs more accessible to the general public.

Doing so may:

• reduce the need to discharge a weapon at all in legally-justified defensive shooting situations, due to a significant intimidation factor/deterrent effect;
• reduce the number of shots fired, as SBRs have more practical accuracy than pistols
• specifically in the case of the 5.56-chambered SBRs, reduce the risk of collateral damage due to over-penetration;
• be a more palatable option for communities that still desire to minimize the number of handguns available to the criminal population, while still providing law-abiding citizens an extremely effective home defense tool.

It is also worth noting that the existing SBR provisions of the 1934-passed NFA have largely been antiquated by technology, with legal pistol variants of both AK-47 and AR-patterned rifles available for sale with only the restrictions placed upon normal handgun sales.

It would make sense to provide the public with this viable alternative firearm for all the reasons noted above, plus the obvious applicability for SBRs as a firearm well-suited for militia use.

The Heller decisions, including both the majority and minority opinions, has opened a conversation on the role of firearms in American law and society. The usefulness of the Hughes Amendment and the updating of the National Firearms Act are but two small steps we should take to help create and maintain the kind of free society that Jefferson, Madison, and the other Founders intended.

Obama's Bus List. Now With More Carnage!

Updated with suggestions from the previous post and recent events.

It's a good thing the Freshman Senator has a new ride.

At PJM: "Performance-Based" Gun Regulation

Should brewers be responsible for lowering the number of drunk driving fatalities? Should pharmaceutical companies be held responsible for reducing the number of deaths due to the abuse of prescription drugs? Should paint companies be responsible for reducing graffiti?

Of course not.

And the suggestion is even more unhinged when applied to products we have a Constitutional right to own.