My niece, Katelyn, stationed at Baluud , Iraq was assigned, with others of her detachment, to be escort/guard/watcher for Martha Raddatz of ABC News as she covered John McCain’s recent trip to Iraq.
Katelyn and her Captain stood directly behind Raddatz as she queried GI’s walking past. They kept count of the GI’s and you should remember these numbers. She asked 60 GI’s who they planned to vote for in November. 54 said John McCain, 4 for Obama, and 2 for Hillary.
Katelyn called home and told her Mom and Dad to watch ABC news the next night because she was standing directly behind Raddatz and maybe they’d see her on TV. Mom and Dad of course, called and emailed all the kinfolk to watch the newscast and maybe see Katelyn.
Well, of course, we all watched and what we saw wasn’t a glimpse of Katelyn, but got a hell’uva view of skewed news. After a dissertation on McCain’s trip and speech, ABC showed 5 GI’s being asked by Raddatz how they were going to vote in November; 3 for Obama and 2 for Clinton .. No mention of the 54 for McCain.
Ah, the irony of American Patriots protecting the press from harm while the reporter prepares a completely misleading story about which candidate the soldiers prefer. The reporter obviously thought her escort was comprised of brainless morons who wouldn’t see what was going on in front of them. Wouldn’t be the first time a reporter in the MSM turned out to be the brainless moron.
Obama may have outdone himself with his king-sized flip-flop on Iraq. Even the one of the libs at the New York Times is wondering what Obama is doing:
Only an idiot would think or hope that a politician going through the crucible of a presidential campaign could hold fast to every position, steer clear of the stumbling blocks of nuance and never make a mistake. But Barack Obama went out of his way to create the impression that he was a new kind of political leader — more honest, less cynical and less relentlessly calculating than most.
You would be able to listen to him without worrying about what the meaning of “is” is. Read the rest of this entry »
Here’s a part of the definition of patriotism that Barack Obama seems to have forgotten in his speech the other day: Patriotism is celebrating the defeat of those who have killed and want to continue killing Americans and who want to destroy the American nation. But Barack shouldn’t really feel that bad; apparently most of the msm and the Democratic party as an entity have also forgotten.
As much as CNN tries to cover for the Obamessiah, even they acknowledge at the end of the report that is what he is doing. And while the story is couched in terms of “both candidates are changing,” the fact is McCain has not, and is not, changing.
Maybe Obama read this Washington Post editorial last week suggesting he would have to change his position on Iraq because (dammit) we are winning the freakin’ thing. Read the rest of this entry »
In terms of protecting the American people in the Global War on Terror, George W. Bush is pitching a no-hitter. We hear that our global enemy, al-Qaeda, has effectively been defeated and there is ample news that the war in Iraq is a smashing victory.
Less than a year after his agency warned of new threats from a resurgent al-Qaeda, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden now portrays the terrorist movement as essentially defeated in Iraq and Saudi Arabia and on the defensive throughout much of the rest of the world, including in its presumed haven along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Read the rest of this entry »
What do you do when you can’t get Marines to testify against each other, can’t get them to take a deal, and generally have no case? Why, up the ante, of course.
A federal grand jury is considering amending charges against a former Riverside police officer from manslaughter to murder for killings while he was a sergeant in Iraq, a defense attorney said.
Jose Luis Nazario Jr. is charged with voluntary manslaughter in U.S. District Court in Riverside — because he is no longer in the military. But prosecutors are now asking a grand jury in Riverside to change the charges to murder, said Kevin McDermott, one of the attorneys representing Nazario. Read the rest of this entry »
ANN ARBOR, MI – Military prosecutors are expected to call as their witness General James N. Mattis, a highly respected Marine officer and one of only a handful of four-star Marine generals, to testify in the court-martial hearing against LtCol Jeffrey Chessani on June 2, 2008, at Camp Pendleton, California.
Gen Mattis, recently given his fourth star, was the previous convening authority for the Haditha cases and the officer responsible for referring LtCol Chessani’s case to a general court-martial. Prosecutors are relying on him to rebut previous findings of the Military Judge that there is evidence of unlawful command influence.
So let me get this straight. When the defense asks for Mattis’ sworn deposition, they’re denied. Yet the prosecution can call him as a witness with no problems at all? And what will Mattis say? Well, of course he’ll say there was no undue command influence, and the judge will nod and say, “Oh, okay. Wow. Good thing you came on the stand and set that straight. Thanks, guys. Let’s all go get a brewski now.”
Am I the only one who thinks this fish smells worse than a two-dollar hooker? As it turns out, I’m not. Read the rest of this entry »
The Telegraph is reporting today the Mahdi Army used Iranian money to recruit unemployed men and pay them up to $300 (£150) a month to carry out attacks against British soldiers. The leaked report details activities of British troops under the command of Major Christopher Job, of the 2nd Lancashire Regiment, between November 2006 and March 2007.
In the report, Major Job discloses that in the course of five months his base was attacked 350 times. Old State Building, which is in the centre of Basra, is the most-attacked British base in recent history.
In an attempt to discover who was behind the attacks, the officer says he established a network of informers, who supplied him with detailed intelligence on the actions of the insurgents and who was behind their funding. Read the rest of this entry »
In the first insider account of Pentagon decision-making on Iraq, one of the key architects of the war blasts former secretary of state Colin Powell, the CIA, retired Gen. Tommy R. Franks and former Iraq occupation chief L. Paul Bremer for mishandling the run-up to the invasion and the subsequent occupation of the country.
Douglas J. Feith, in a massive score-settling work, portrays an intelligence community and a State Department that repeatedly undermined plans he developed as undersecretary of defense for policy and conspired to undercut President Bush’s policies.
Among the disclosures made by Feith in “War and Decision,” scheduled for release next month by HarperCollins, is Bush’s declaration, at a Dec. 18, 2002, National Security Council meeting, that “war is inevitable.” The statement came weeks before U.N. weapons inspectors reported their initial findings on Iraq and months before Bush delivered an ultimatum to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Feith, who says he took notes at the meeting, registered it as a “momentous comment.” Read the rest of this entry »
Anchor Wolf Blitzer asked: “Are you not worried, though, that all the gains that have been achieved over the past year might be lost?”
“There haven’t been gains, Wolf,” the speaker replied. “The gains have not produced the desired effect, which is the reconciliation of Iraq. This is a failure. This is a failure. The troops have succeeded, God bless them. We owe them the greatest debt of gratitude for their sacrifice, their patriotism, and for their courage and to their families as well.
“But they deserve better than the policy of a war without end, a war that could be 20 years or longer.
The left has been in a constant state of anxiety recently over their perceived notion that Bush is planning on permanent bases in Iraq.
The White House, responding to what it considers rumors being spread by MoveOn.org…, liberal blogs such as DailyKos.com… and Democratic lawmakers, this week tried to persuade key lawmakers that President Bush is not attempting to bind his successor to a long-term military presence in Iraq.
Senior White House officials have briefed Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat, and other congressional lawmakers about their negotiations with the Iraqi government and will continue to meet with other legislators next week.
“The argument that we seek permanent bases is a constant red herring of MoveOn.org… and other interest groups who want us to retreat from Iraq, with no regard for our national security interests or the fate of the Iraqi people,” White House press secretary Dana Perino said.
Later some would allege that this handful of words was critical to the decision that led the nation to war. Contemporaneous evidence doesn’t support that, but just try convincing people of that today.
Two women thought to suffer from Down’s syndrome may have been unwilling suicide bombers in twin blasts that killed up to 73 people at pet markets in Baghdad today.
The first bomber instantly killed 45 people at a packed pet market in Baghdad in the deadliest attack in the Iraqi capital in six months.
A separate attack shortly after killed 20 people and wounded scores at a bird market in southern Baghdad…
Can’t really say I’m shocked or surprised at the MSM’sreporting of the SOTU tonight.
For years, President Bush and his advisers expressed frustration that the White House received little credit for the nation’s strong economic performance because of public discontent about the Iraq war. Today, the president is getting little credit for improved security in Iraq, as the public increasingly focuses on a struggling U.S. economy.
That is the problem Bush faces as he prepares to deliver his seventh and probably final State of the Union address tonight. For the first time in four years, he will come before Congress able to report some progress in tamping down violence in Iraq. Yet the public appears to have moved on from the war — and possibly from Bush himself.
, a book by Kenneth Timmerman, is chock full of facts on how various people within our State Department and Intelligence agencies undermined the war. As I did with 
:
