While we’re at it, here’s a link to all of Scott’s books as Scott Malensek… plus those as Sam Pender.

You’re just a literary machine, guy!

BTW, always wanted to ask you the origin of your particular spelling of “al Qaeda” as “al Queda”.

Since 2003 when I wrote, Iraq’s Smoking Gun, I’ve been obsessed with trying to understand the “peace movement”. It’s not a peace movement at all. It’s a group of people deliberately misleading some of America’s finest, most active, most caring people. The entire theme they present is based on a lie that somehow an invasion of Iraq wasn’t necessary/that Saddam wasn’t a threat and if he was he could be removed peacefully.

It was necessary; it was the last resort after a decade plus of trying to use surrogates to remove him

He was a threat as post-war investigations have found, and as he himself admitted

Lastly, if the “peace movement” really wanted to remove him peacefully, they’d have marched by the millions demanding invasion so as to provide a credible threat of force (deterrence). Instead, they marched against the threat of invasion, and EVERY investigation (again, including Saddam’s own interrogation as well as that of his inner circle) all show that he never believed he was gonna be invaded until it was too late. The “peace movement” convinced him he wasn’t going to be invaded. They removed the only chance at peacefully compelling him to come clean on WMD, to end his ties to AQ, and to open the doors to a Democratic Iraq.

Why’d the “peace movement” do it? Because they’d been misled by professional politicians seeking the White House. I mean, seriously, are we to believe that the Maple Syrup King of Vermont, Dr/Gov Dean, somehow had access to intelligence secrets that no Democrat on the intel committee or even Hillary and Bill Clinton had? Hell no. That guy marketed the idea that invasion wasn’t necessary based on nothing more than his calculated political play to get support for his run for President. The same is true with a dozen other Democrats who ran for President at the time. It’s no accident that on the eve of the invasion, Democrats came out of the woodwork to announce they were running for President on anti-war themes (Yeah, that helped deter Saddam into compliance SOOOOOO much).

If the “peace movement” really wanted to make a difference and make Saddam comply peacefully, they’d have gone by the millions to Iraq to be human shields. Or they’d have gone to Iraq to march in the streets in support of Saddam rather than in the safety of the streets of London, NYC, etc.

Instead, led by politicians who saw a political marketing opportunity to sell out their nation’s interests in favor of their own, millions of people have been deliberately and grossly misled.

btw 550 tons of yellowcake uranium were secretly removed from Iraq last weekend and shipped to Canada where it will be used for peaceful purposes. It had been enriched in Saddam’s Iraq to make bombs, but the IAEA put it in a shed w a padlock and a tag to secure it rather than remove it. Not weapons grade stuff, but the clearest example that he intended to secretly restart his wmd programs and that the 10/2/2002 NIE was correct, if left alone, Saddam could have had a bomb by 2007. Also, this is 550 tons of stuff that coulda been loaded into empty artillery shells or suicide bombs, or backpack bombs to make dirty bombs. A few ounces per bomb=how many bombs from 550 tons?

Yeah yeah, I know….the UN already knew about it (like they knew about lots of WMD according to their 3/6/03 Unresolved Disarmament Issues report just days before the invasion), and they had it “secure” w a padlock and sticker.

Saddam was a tyrannical dictator w ties to Al Queda leadership and operational ties to Al Queda groups as well as a WMD rapid restart (”breakout capability” to quote the ISG report), and he couldn’t be removed peacefully. The invasion was the last resort.

At this point, anyone who believes otherwise is just parroting Bush Derangement Syndrome talking points from intelligence experts like the Maple Syrup King of Vermont/DNC Chairman Dean.

I decided to take a poke over at Code Pink HQ. I don’t expect to sway any of them; but for any of their visiting readership who aren’t fully brainwashed yet, perhaps if I sound reasoned and level-headed enough in my argument, I’ll make some readers think and reflect.

Okay, Wordsmith… but you invite ‘em over, you entertain ‘em! LOL

This is a bunch I have little patience for. I think having a baby in a Naval hospital, right when Kerry was testifying about my “baby killer” friends, must have short circuited something in my “patience” brain circuitry for that mentality.

They told us Saddam had not ties to Al Queda, but the Clinton Admin started the claim w the 1998 indictment of UBL, hundreds of captured regime members confessed to working w AQ, captured AQ guys in both Iraq and elsewhere have confessed to working w Iraq, and documents which were captured and authenticated show clearly and unequivocably that Saddam’s regime worked closely w Al Queda groups and Al Queda leadership even before the invasion

They told us the war was about oil, but it’s 210% higher now than it was before

They told us it was about some sort of daddy complex on GWB’s part (as if Congress and a dozen Democratic Presidential candidates didn’t look into that before authorizing the invasion)

They told us Congress didn’t see the same intel as the President, but they ignore the fact that many in Congress actually saw more.

They told us the intel was pressured, manipulated, a lie, a forgery, etc., but a dozen investigations have shown that wasn’t the case at all

They told us neocons like Doug Feith and his office tricked the entire government into war, but his office’s presentation was followed 48hrs later by a CIA presentation that cleared up any misconceptions.

They told us the war’s cost $3trillion dollars, but the DNC only recently admitted in its ads that it’s been $500bn over 5yrs….not expensive at all in terms of military operational costs. In fact, the cost of the Clinton wars was almost $400bn over 8yrs.

They told us that American Marines in Haditha were mass murdering psychos, then never apologized when the truth came out

They admit to their crowds that the DNC opposition to the war and the promise in 2006 to end it was a lie just to get the Democrats back in power

They claim that there was never any wmd in Iraq, but can’t tell us where the stuff that Pres Clinton said was there went, and they can’t even show any contaminated sand.

They tell us that no WMD warehouses were found, but it doesn’t take a warehouse. It takes a suitcase, and post-war investigations have shown that YES there was a WMD threat just not in the form of stockpiles.

They tell us it’s Bush’s war, and expect us to ignore that Democrats promoted it, saw more intel than the President, authorized the invasion, supported the war, funded the war, and continue to fund the war all the while calling it a lost cause and advocating appeasement or surrender to the enemy’s objective rather than America’s.

The peace movement has failed because it has revealed itself to be nothing more than a pipedream fueled for politial expediency by the DNC, fed on unimaginable distortions and deliberate lies….

….and now they wonder why it failed?

Maybe if “open minded” people dared to question their leaders rather than just follow them like lemmings, America would truly CHANGE, and be united instead of deliberately divided for the personal powerquest of professional politicians who want to keep their jobs or get more powerful ones.

I decided to take a poke over at Code Pink HQ. I don’t expect to sway any of them; but for any of their visiting readership who aren’t fully brainwashed yet, perhaps if I sound reasoned and level-headed enough in my argument, I’ll make some readers think and reflect.

Cross posted this to MidnightBlue, the peaceful folk of the CCPM love to read my blog. I’m sure this will get blood pressure rising.

Guys go to the rallies because hippy chicks are easy, and hippie chicks go to the rallies because, well, they’re easy.

They are about blaming America for the world’s problems, sometimes reaching to absurd lengths. But the cognitive dissonance eventually becomes overwhelming. More than anything else, this was not a movement because it offered no solution, no alternative, and no action item. You can’t just declare “peace.”

Also, the creeps behind the bogus protests overplayed their hands when people like Ward Churchill and Ted Rall and all the others blamed and mocked the victims of the 9/11 attacks and the brave soldiers who gave their lives to fight the very fascism that the loony left constantly claims eminate from the Bush White House. As a nation in terrorists’ crosshairs, our BS detector is set to “11.”

All wars go through evolutions, and it is unrealistic to expect no missteps. In this case, however, they are cited most frequently not as arguments to improve the war effort, but as excuses for abandonment. The Bush administration has made good at last with a counterinsurgency strategy that has hobbled Al Qaeda in Iraq and has the Shiite militias in a box. Iraqi military capabilities are improving, and the next president appears likely to inherit a somewhat pacified, reconciled Iraq; an enhanced American position of influence in the Middle East; opposing terrorist organizations that are sharply compromised; and a string of nascent democracies. At considerable cost of American blood and treasure, the United States is now in a position of marked if precarious influence in the most dangerous part of the world. The new president will have to consider how much of that he or she wants to throw away or build upon.

The antiwar camp and their candidates hold a childish hope that our problems will just go away if we withdraw. They argue that Iraq was an artificial cause, that our presence fuels violence and our departure will end it, that Iran can be a helpful partner in this process, and that al Qaeda can be fought from afar. They desire nothing but a return to the innocence we enjoyed before September 11, 2001, ignoring the fact that our enemies had been emboldened by decades of American demurring, disengagement, and half measures.

The American people have been allowed to believe that getting out of Vietnam was the best thing we did there, and that there was no penalty for cutting our losses. It should not be surprising that so many believe the same of Iraq. Looking past the immediate victims of that historic abandonment, the Soviet Union was emboldened by our show of weakness, invading Afghanistan and triggering a fateful string of events. Iran, seized by Islamic zealots, staged the 1979 hostage crisis to kick off three decades of support for terrorism and a bid for regional domination. In both cases, the belligerents knew we would do nothing about it. Figures like Osama bin Laden, among others, noted this void, and created the circumstances we are currently compelled to address.

The United States has commitments to Iraq and the larger region and a pressing interest in the defense of free and open societies. If we avoid our responsibilities we simply plant the seeds of further conflict. The pressing question of the 2008 presidential campaign is whether the part of this global war that began five years ago will be prosecuted to a satisfactory conclusion, or whether the effort to end the Iraq war will be marked by a different kind of waffling, whining noise than that one I heard at dawn five years ago, followed by more devastating explosions.

I finally took the time to click on the photos. I knew those photos would raise my blood pressure! And to think all of that occurred in my neck of the woods while I was out watching my friend’s daughter at her gymnastics meet.