Black GOLD

Yes, as oil prices are now past $120 a barrel, market watchers are now looking foward to $200 barrel oil, it’s causes and effects.

LINK

Maybe it’s because of all the Bush Derangement Syndrome rantings that have left my eyes in a near-permanent rolling motion, but I have to wonder:

If the Iraq War was all about oil [can I get a "NO BLOOD FOR OIL"?], then what will have the more devastating effect on oil prices next year: staying in Iraq and stabilizing the place, or retreating and letting it collapse?

Lord help me, but…I don’t see “Iraq” anywhere in this article.  Could it be [COULD IT BE?!] that the war in Iraq isn’t about oil?  Could Operation Iraqi Freedom be about Freedom?  I know, it’s crazy talk, but the coffee’s strong this morning, so I wonder, while the candidates are whining and pandering and bribing their way to nomination (abomination?), what idea addresses the cost of oil in 2009 best:

• a gas tax holiday
• a windfall profits tax on any company that makes too much money (oil companies to start with, computers to follow?)
• staying in Iraq to stabilize it
• retreating from Iraq and gambling on its collapse (if it does collapse post withdrawal, there is no doubt at all that a subsequent third invasion would be infinitely more costly in blood, treasure, and duration)
• Or perhaps something else?

What’s the best thing the next President can do to keep oil from reaching $200 barrel next year, and what’s the best course in Iraq given the prospect of $200barrel oil?

Additionally, what should the next President do in terms of Iran given the prospect of $200 barrel oil next year?

Hah! Check this out:

History News Network’s poll of 109 historians found that 61 percent of them rank Bush as “worst ever” among U.S. presidents. Bush’s key competition comes from Buchanan, apparently, and a further 2 percent of the sample puts Bush right behind Buchanan as runner-up for “worst ever.” 96 percent of the respondents place the Bush presidency in the bottom tier of American presidencies. And was his presidency (it’s a bit wishful to speak of his presidency in the past tense–after all there are several more months left to go) a success or failure? On that score the numbers are still more resounding: 98 percent label it a “failure.”

Read the rest of this entry »

For the past 2 years now, I’ve been saying that the Democratic Party never had a plan to end the war in Iraq; they just pandered to people to get their votes. They lied. They misled. They deliberately divided the nation in 2002, and in 2006 the Democratic Party made a concerted effort to secure the defeat of American forces in Iraq. On election night, DNC Chairman Howard Dean admitted there never was a plan, but the anti-war base of the party was so fired up they bought every excuse he presented in the subsequent two years.

Along comes the Presidential election of 2008. Democrats again unite under the umbrella of “end the war in Iraq!” Each candidate had their own nuanced and caveatted promises and faux plans, but only Congressman Dennis Kucinich was brave enough to actually vow to give the retreat order the day he takes office (’course, he had to quit the race because he five other Democrats were challenging him for his seat based on his lack of attention to his Congressional District-that, and a lack of support that totaled less than .1% of the popular vote in polls).

Where are Sen McCain, Sen Clinton, and Sen Obama? Well, Sen McCain proposed a surge of counterinsurgency forces back in 2004, and when implemented in 2007, it’s proven to be increasingly successful. Sen Clinton admitted in a NH debate last year that she’d keep the war going until 2013. Sen Obama has deliberately lied about Sen McCain’s position (suggesting that Sen McCain wanted to continue the war for 100years). Read the rest of this entry »

If there’s one thing readily apparent about the far left, it’s that they seen petroleum corporate cabals at the heart of most everything wrong in America, and Vice President Cheney is their Dr Evil.  As a means of pandering to that leftist base, Senator Obama has campaigned,

“I don’t take money from oil companies or Washington lobbyists, and I won’t let them block change anymore.”

Yet, he voted for the Cheney Energy Bill that gave tax cuts to oil companies at a time when their profits are at historic, record-setting highs.  Could it be that he voted to get more money for the evil oil cabal so that he could get some kickbacks?

Obama’s Oil Spill

I wonder if the left will rail against him as strongly as they do Vice President Cheney?  Yeah, I know.  Sorry to make you all snarf all over your monitors.

Have a good one

Iraq war protesters disrupt Chicago Mass

CHICAGO - Six Iraq war protesters disrupted an Easter Mass on Sunday, shouting and squirting fake blood on themselves and parishioners in a packed auditorium.Three men and three women startled the crowd during Cardinal Francis George’s homily, yelling “Even the Pope calls for peace” as they were removed from the Mass by security guards and ushers.

This is the face of the Democratic Party’s anti-war movement
March 23, 2008

HAPPY EASTER HOWARD DEAN

UPDATE: Read the rest of this entry »

Every day there seems to be yet another example of lazy journalism or slanted reporting on this latest Pentagon report about ties between Saddam’s regime and terrorists. This time, it’s Newsweek.

I hate to make a long post, but…sometimes it’s necessary.

“Saddam’s Files, They show terror plots, but raise new questions about some U.S. claims”

Let’s go to the woodshed…. Read the rest of this entry »

Foreign fighters leaving Iraq, military says

A growing number of foreign fighters are leaving or attempting to flee Iraq as U.S. and Iraqi forces have weakened al-Qaeda and forced its members from former strongholds, U.S. military officials say.

The trend reflects a broad disenchantment among foreign fighters, particularly since al-Qaeda has lost sanctuaries in parts of Baghdad and Anbar, a Sunni province west of the capital, U.S. military intelligence officials say. …

The departure of some fighters doesn’t mean al-Qaeda is quitting the fight, said Brig. Gen. Brian Keller, the chief intelligence officer for the U.S. command in Iraq. “We’re just starting to see more and more fissures in the morale and leadership of al-Qaeda in Iraq,” he said.

Hot Air has a good roundup of the latest distancing between the opinion of the American people and the Democratic Party’s pandering Presidential potentials

John C. Bersia won a Pulitzer Prize in 2000. What happened since then? Eight years later the man apparently can’t even do a Google search let alone deep research. This week he joins the ranks of old media ignorants who wrote about the Pentagon’s investigation into documents and tapes captured from Saddam’s regime. Like so many others, he chose to write about it without ever having even seen the report. At least he put his thoughts into the OPINION section instead of a NEWS section, but that suggests he knew he wasn’t writing about the report at all. He was writing his opinion of a report he’d never seen or investigated. The world wonders if anyone in the old media is actually interested in reported unbiased news, and thus interested in this report, OR if they’re all interested in voicing their uninformed, incorrect, and otherwise false opinions instead. So far the trend is the latter.

Let’s take a closer look…. Read the rest of this entry »

Well, AP has done it again. They’ve clearly ignored the latest investigation into ties between Saddam’s regime and the Al Queda network of terrorist groups. Even their own article tries to play both sides of the coin (a writing tactic used primarily by High School students to write book reports on texts they’ve never seen).

“Fact Check: Bush on Al Qaida, Iraqis”
By JENNIFER LOVEN

…That’s about as factual as the article gets. Beyond that, it’s filled with contradictions that try in vain to spin the documented findings to bolster their historically flawed position on the issue; that there were never and could never be any ties between Saddam’s regime and the Al Queda network. Read the rest of this entry »

“I have failed to liberate Iraq, and transform its society into an Islamic society.”

– Moqtada al-Sadr, Asharq Al Awsat newspaper, March 8, 2008 Moqtada al-Sadr — the radical cleric dubbed “The Most Dangerous Man in Iraq” by a Newsweek cover story in December 2006 — has just unilaterally extended the ceasefire he imposed on his Mahdi Army militia last summer. And on the eve of the Iraq War’s fifth anniversary, Sadr also issued a somber but dramatic statement. He not only declared that he had failed to transform Iraq, but also lamented the new debates and divisions within his own movement. Explaining his marginalization, Sadr all but confessed his growing isolation: “One hand cannot clap alone.”What happened? Over the past five years, Sadr has been one of the most persistent and insurmountable challenges for the U.S. Leveraging his family’s prestige among the disaffected Shiite underclass, he asserted his power by violently intimidating rival clerics, agitating against the U.S. occupation, and using force to establish de facto control over Baghdad’s Sadr City (named after his father, and home to two million Shiites on the east bank of the Tigris) and large swaths of southern Iraq.
LINK

Exit question, what compelled Sadr to make this realization? :

Was it the indefatigable resolve of the Bush Administration’s commitment to prevent Iraqi society into an Sadr’s “Islamic society,” or was it the threat of American retreat presented by the Democrats’ Congress and their Presidential candidates?

Thoughts?

Iraq poll: Improvements across the board

We’ve seen success in Iraq for over a year now; military success, economic success, and yes…political success. Now we’re seeing popular success. The number of Iraqis who want Americans to stay in Iraq is on the increase, so is the number of Iraqis who believe the invasion was a good thing.

As many as 80% want the US to remain engaged in Iraq for other purposes, such as fighting terrorists, especially al-Qaeda, military training, and keeping Iran and Turkey at bay.

That’s a hard number for Democrats to address, and it’ll be even harder when General Petreaus addresses Congress in the next few weeks.

Cartoon courtesy

What is the “peace movement” doing wrong?

• It failed to prevent the war in Afghanistan.
• It failed to prevent the war in Iraq.
• It failed to change power in the executive branch.
• It failed to end the war in Iraq.
• It was duped by Democrats in 2006 who promised “A New Direction In Iraq” without ever having even formed a committee to brainstorm ideas until 2 months after being elected.
• It failed to prevent The Surge offensive.
• It failed to stop cannibals in the Congo [and was silent while 4-6million died as UN peacekeepers raped and sold children en masse].
• It failed to stop the bloodshed in Darfur.
• It speaks out against the efforts (war) of US forces to protect people from terror.
• It speaks the same rhetoric as the enemy’s propaganda. It is silent in response to terrorist attacks.
• It is openly embraced by Islamic holy warriors.

What is the “peace movement” doing wrong? Read the rest of this entry »

Mark Eichenlaub has an outstanding overview of the recent Old Media reporting on the latest investigation into the depth of ties between Saddam Hussein’s regime and the Al Queda network of terrorist groups. His article highlights in perfectly plain sight just how a single, biased writer will bite on a rumor from a single anonymous source about a report that hadn’t even been revealed, and then a total falsehood becomes propagated by the Old Media. When the actual report came out, anyone and everyone reading it could see that it listed innumerable documented and confirmed connections between Saddam’s regime and the network of terror groups called, Al Queda. Read the rest of this entry »

This week opponents of the war were given a treat. They were told-in a single article-based on a single anonymous source-that a report which hadn’t been released said there was never any ties between Saddam Hussein’s regime and the al-Qaida network of terrorist groups. Millions of the war’s opponents were instantly elated with glee at the idea that the invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with the war against the al-Qaida terrorist network; that the invasion was completely disconnected from any threat to the United States.

Disregarding the misplaced glee for a moment, let’s face some facts. The report described in the article was finally released to the public, and its contents are almost completely contrary to the leaked “article” that described it beforehand.

In fact, if anything this new study should finally put to rest the false perception that Saddam’s regime was too secular to work with radical Islamic holy warriors, and it should be a genuine wake up call for people who continue to ignore the threat posed by state-sponsors of terror like Saddam Hussein once was.

Let’s take a closer look at this “article.” Read the rest of this entry »