AP's Terror Operative Freed but Not Cleared.

Please spay or neuter your pet insurgents.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:07 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Let me pass along a wee little bit of advice regarding equivalence.

There is no equivalence between your friend of many years William Ayers, his terrorist group's killing of police officers during an armored car robbery, their craven targeting of a non-commissioned officers dance (think Army prom) and other bombings they conducted for "peace," and your attempt to make those terrorist murders equivalent to Senator Coburn's hypothetical statement about a legal interpretation.

In your attempt at moral equivalence, you try to make actual murders and attempted murders the same as hyperbole.

Of course, it's all "just words" in a grand game, isn't it?

Perhaps Ayers—whom you try to explain away as "a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English in Chicago"—can better explain what these words may mean to others the next time you attend a political fundraiser in his home.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 02:13 PM | Comments (34) | Add Comment
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So Editor & Publisher/Huffington Post luminary (in the something-burning-in-a-bag sense) Greg Mitchell thinks that last night's Democratic debate—one where the moderators asked the questions real people have been buzzing over, in as much as they care about politics—was A Shameful Night for the U.S. Media:

In perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a major presidential debate in years, ABC News hosts Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos focused mainly on trivial issues as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama faced off in Philadelphia. They, and their network, should hang their collective heads in shame.

You should listen. When it comes to shameful behavior in the media, Mitchell is an expert.

This is the same man who urged the media to help overthrown the government, who admitted to simply making up stories at the beginning of his career, and who attempted to rewrite his way out of that inconvenient truth when it became embarrassing.

Of course, Greg Mitchell is a newscrafter and partisan advocate, not a journalist, so perhaps it is unsurprising that he would take Gibson and Stephanopoulos to task for asking difficult questions that reflect poorly upon his chosen candidate.

Asking Democrats hard questions?

Shameful.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:37 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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ABC News reports that Barack Obama has collected the endorsement of a guns rights group, the American Hunters and Shooters Association:

"Sen. Obama will be a strong voice an unabashed voice for America's hunters and shooters and it is with great pleasure that we endorse his candidacy," President of the Association Ray Schoenke said, citing Obama's commitment to the traditions of gun ownership.

Schoenke said they had reached out to the Obama campaign several weeks ago to offer their support – but the announcement wasn't made public until today. Schoenke added that the timing amid the controversy was important.

"We believe recent attacks on Sen. Obama's stand on the 2nd amendment and his commitment to the hunting and shooting heritages are unfair."

Actually, it is Obama's record on firearms that is unfair to Americans, but don't expect Ray Schoenke to know much about gun rights, even if the Daily Kos diarist is the President of the American Hunters and Shooters Association (AHSA).

Schoenke, a failed Democratic candidate for governor of Maryland, has donated thousands to Handgun Control, Inc, a virulent anti-gun organization that was the forerunner of Brady Campaign To Prevent Gun Violence. He has donated tens of thousands more to anti-gun Democratic politicians including Ted Kennedy.

AHSA executive director Robert Ricker has testified as a paid witness against the gun industry and consults for several anti-gun groups, and John Rosenthal, President of the AHSA Foundation, is a former member of Sarah Brady's Handgun Control, Inc, and is leader of Stop Handgun Violence, a Massachusetts anti-gun group that has contributed to that state's intolerant anti-gun guns.

Just as Obama's record of claiming he is in favor of the Second Amendment even as he pushes for gun ban is dishonest, so is this endorsement from a trojan horse gun control organization masquerading as a group that respects American's rights to life and liberty.

Update: SayUncle examined this group earlier this year in greater detail.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 04:05 PM | Comments (14) | Add Comment
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The movie industry has released one box-office flop after another regarding our modern wars against Islamic extremists, leading the dim and the dull in studio boardrooms and backlots to assume that Americans don't want to see or know about those conflicts.

But if the American people want to ignore those wars,then why is Michael Yon's Moment of Truth in Iraq currently #12 #10 in Amazon's sales rank? The obvious answer is that we aren't tired of content about the war, we're just tired of movies portraying our soldiers and Marines as psychopaths, murderers, or victims.

Show us a film that respects our troops, portraying their honor, their sacrifice, their dignity, and exceptional humanity under the most trying of combat conditions. Show us a film that portrays Islamic terrorists as the callous, torturing, murderous and irreligious thugs they really are. Show us that film, and I'll show you a film that generates hundreds of millions of dollars in profit and could actually contribute to winning hearts and minds around the world.

Oddly enough, that very project is waiting in the wings. A smart producer could build upon Yon's growing popularity, and his stories based upon the exploits of Deuce Four, the Stryker Brigade known as the Punishers, already made legendary in Yon's dispatches like Gates of Fire.

That might mean setting aside the community's general anti-war feelings for money, but somehow, I think they have the moral flexibility to make that happen.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:02 AM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
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MSNBC has refused to air a dishonest anti-gun ad:

The cable network MSNBC has refused to air an advertisement from Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the group created by New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg,on the grounds that the ad is too "controversial."

The ad, below, features each of the three leading presidential candidates pledging to make it harder to buy guns at gun shows, and images of three mayors urging viewers to call Congress and ask that a bill closing the "gun-show loophole" be passed.

The ad is airing on CNN and Fox, and on affiliates around the country, a Bloomberg aide said.

But in an email obtained by Politico, an MSNBC account executive told the group the network wouldn't air the ad.

"just heard back from legal about your script...unfortunately, we can not accept as it is a controversial issue ad," said the email from the account executive.

New York's criminal-justice coordinator, John Feinblatt, called MSNBC's decision "amazing.'

"How could the network call something controversial that all three candidates agree about," he said. "All three cands have called for the gun-show loophole to be closed."

They can call it controversial because the "gun show loophole" is an urban legend—yes, a myth— that does not exist, even if all three candidates are willing to pander over it in their ignorance.

Commercial gun dealers have to fill out the same ATF form 4473 and conduct a NICS background check at gun shows as they do in their own shops and retail stores, a fact ignored by the candidates and Bloomberg.

Individuals selling firearms to other individuals are not required to conduct background checks regardless of their location in many states. Gun shows do not have an exemption.

Declining to run false advertising should never be controversial, even if it is pushed by a big city mayor with a history of breaking gun laws himself.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 06:37 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Been to Wal-Mart lately?

If you do go to "Wally World," walk back towards the sporting goods section the next time you visit, and see if there is a gun section. They are slowing disappearing in some stores, and those that that remain stock "bread and butter" firearms, mostly bolt-action centerfire rifles, .22 rifles of various actions and 20-gauge and 12-gauge shotguns of single-shot, pump, and semi-auto varieties. There isn't much there to get a shooting enthusiast excited, or much in stock that would likely be described as the kind of firearm a felon would prefer.

That however, has not kept gun-grabbing mayor Mike Bloomburg from making a big deal of an agreement between his group Mayors Against Illegal Guns and the retail giant, an agreement that looks good on paper, but will have very little significant in impacting the flow of guns into criminal hands.

Why?

Criminals prefer firearms that are concealable, well-made, and of large caliber, but will settle for concealable, and handguns tend to fill that need. According to government statistics, rifles are used in just 3-percent of murders, and shotguns just 5-percent.

Of the "top ten" most commonly traced firearms in crimes (according to that same government report), seven are cheaply-made, small-caliber handguns, two are ubiquitous 9mm service pistols common among police, civilian shooters, and criminals, and just one is a long-arm of any kind.

Wal-Mart does not sell handguns, stocking only rifles and shotguns, and therefore this agreement, while somewhat interesting from the point of view of speculating why the retail giant might capitulate to Bloomberg's wishes (trying to get into the City where they haven't previously been allowed, no doubt), will have virtually no discernible impact in fighting gun crime.

This makes a nice press conference for the man who would consider running for president, but doesn't amount to anything of significance.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:35 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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I asked the rhetorical question last week: Is Barack Obama a Communist?

I posited the question because of the purposeful emptiness of Obama's stated views, his lack of a long-term record, disturbing tendencies in the little legislative record he has established, and a list of troubling personal and professional associations with radicals, cranks, criminals, and conspiracy theorists.

Little did I know at the time that Obama had already answered my question during in an exclusive fundraiser in San Francisco's Billionaire's Row. As William Kristol points out in the Times, Barack Obama cited Marxist philosophies in describing why Americans go to church and pray to God.

It isn't faith, says Obama. It is "bitterness" that drives us into the pews. We are frustrated, bigoted, and paranoid, and we arm ourselves with guns and God as a result. It is this nation of violent rubes Obama has protected himself from by cloistering himself among the urban and urbane.

It is because he holds these views of the rest of us that Obama's two-decade association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and his radical church could not be disavowed.

For Obama to disavow Wright is to disavow his own warped views of religion, the Constitution, and America. His convictions may be poisoned, but he is principled in holding to their acidity.

It is AmeriKKKa they fear and loath, a dumbed-down, never-evolving nation they've had reinforced in their minds on Sundays for 20 years. It is a country that Barack and Michelle Obama know in their hearts that they are not part of, a people that they cannot be proud of. For all the advantages this country has given them, they are blind to our better nature as a nation.

I pity the Obamas, but I thank them for finally letting us see who they really are, and what they think of the rest of us.

Update: Andrew Sullivan accuses Kristol of misrepresenting Obama:

...Kristol is deliberately distorting to paint Obama as a cynical manipulator of religious faith for political ends, rather than as a genuine Christian. He's calling him a lying, Godless communist.

Actually, Obama is neither quite a "lying, Godless communist" nor "a genuine Christian," but something of both, and neither. Obama is a 20-year congregate of Black Liberation Theology, race-defined Marxism in a Christian shell.

Ultimately, it matters little whether Obama was a Marxist before he found Trinity and Jeremiah Wright's rendition of James Cone's Black Liberation Theology, or if he became imbued with Marxism as a result of his exposure to this bastardized doctrine.

What does matter is that Obama's views, shaped by Jeremiah Wright over decades, do not represent those of the vast majority of Americans, Democrat or Republican, and that is something Sullivan would much rather ignore about his chosen candidate.

Update: Juliette Ochieng makes incisive observations about Obama's view through the prism of Black Liberation Theology at her blog baldilocks.

A taste:

In Obama's mind, the religion clung to by the "average poor white Pennsylvanian" is BLT's demonic "white" Church. The "white" Church is the tool of oppression for all—including poor whites—and should be shaken off just like other social maladies. Just like anti-immigration (sic) and racism. One will note that, in the defense of the earlier remarks, Obama still does not say anything objectively positive about the religion adhered to by the average rural white Pennsylvanian. What he actually says is that government should answer their prayers.

Meanwhile, Hugh Hewitt notes that while Obama has indeed had an extraordinary life, there are reasons he cannot relate to, and does not understand, the average American.

Final Update (4/15): A very interesting catch from Professor Bainbridge (h/t Insty). If this is correct, Senator Joe Lieberman, who has worked with Obama for three years, isn't sure if he is a Marxist:

I know him now for a little more than three years since he came into the Senate and he's obviously very smart and heÂ’s a good guy. I will tell ya that during this campaign, I've learned some things about him, about the kind of environment from which he came ideologically. And I wouldn'tÂ… I'd hesitate to say he's a Marxist, but he's got some positions that are far to the left of me and I think mainstream America.

Bainbridge himself seems to believe that Obama is a modern socialist instead of a Marxist. I'd argue that for all practical purposes as far as American voters are concerned, that is a distinction without much of a difference.

Final, Final Update (4/15): It may well be noted that Barack H. Obama Sr (candidate Obama's father) stated that there was very little difference between African Socialism and Soviet-style communism, so perhaps he would agree with me about identifying his son's politics, even though he was in favor of communism, and I am not.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:01 PM | Comments (35) | Add Comment
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Was a busy weekend and I didn't get a chance to get into my copy of Michael Yon's Moment of Truth in Iraq beyond skimming a few pages, though I'm going to try to carve time out of my schedule to read it tonight. If it is anything like his dispatches, I'll probably devour it in one extended sitting.

It is already up to #68 on Amazon's bestseller list and Glenn Reynolds notes that is #1 in military books (and that it is excellent. He also notes that Mike has a page dedicated to help promoting the book so it gets in your local bookstores and libraries, and I'd simply note that if you really want the local library to stock it so that others might read a perspective of the war they might not get anywhere else, you can always buy multiple copies of Moment of Truth in Iraq and donate them directly to the library yourself.

As you already know by now, Mike is supported by his readers and his readers alone, so by purchasing his book, you're supporting his work.

Besides... wouldn't it send a message to Congress if we could make a book promoting the efforts of the Next Greatest Generation the #1 book in America?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:34 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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In a desperate bid to distance himself from yet another unhinged tirade from his former minister of 20 years, Barack Obama is expected to announce later today that he is, indeed, a Muslim.

Update: Abe Greenwald has a more serious look at the implosion of the freshman senator's campaign at Commentary.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 07:56 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Keep in mind that the original source on this is a rather batty Huffington Post contributor, but armed with that bit of information, let's listen to how Obama describes certain parts of fly-over country to his fellow liberal elites in San Francisco, at this event at the Getty home on Billionaire's Row chronicled by zombie.

"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them," Obama said. "And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Don't worry if you're not from Pennsylvania though, folks. I'm sure he feels this way about you, wherever you live.

John McCain and Hillary Clinton aren't missing out of the action, as you may well imagine.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 05:22 PM | Comments (14) | Add Comment
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My friend Iraq War combat journalist Michael Yon just published his newest book, Moment of Truth in Iraq: How a New 'Greatest Generation' of American Soldiers is Turning Defeat and Disaster into Victory and Hope.

He sent me a copy, which was waiting for me when I got home last night. I'm going to try to carve some time out in my schedule to read it at some point this weekend or early next week and read it so I can give you a review.

Mike has spent more time embedded with soldiers in Iraq than any other journalist period, and therefore has a very good idea of what is actually happening in Iraq, something that rational people should consider when they read this article from him in today's Wall Street Journal.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:58 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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It is reprehensible that we are this deep into a U.S. presidential election run and this question is on the table, but that is what can happen when political parties and the media anoint a candidate based upon rhetoric and marketability instead of vetting him for substance.

A blog called The Obama Report has passed along an Accuracy in Media account that cites Communist Party USA member Frank Marshall Davis as Barack Obama's mentor:

In his books, Obama admits attending "socialist conferences" and coming into contact with Marxist literature. But he ridicules the charge of being a "hard-core academic Marxist," which was made by his colorful and outspoken 2004 U.S. Senate opponent, Republican Alan Keyes.

However, through Frank Marshall Davis, Obama had an admitted relationship with someone who was publicly identified as a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). The record shows that Obama was in Hawaii from 1971-1979, where, at some point in time, he developed a close relationship, almost like a son, with Davis, listening to his "poetry" and getting advice on his career path. But Obama, in his book, Dreams From My Father, refers to him repeatedly as just "Frank."

The reason is apparent: Davis was a known communist who belonged to a party subservient to the Soviet Union. In fact, the 1951 report of the Commission on Subversive Activities to the Legislature of the Territory of Hawaii identified him as a CPUSA member. What's more, anti-communist congressional committees, including the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), accused Davis of involvement in several communist-front organizations.

Ace notes:

Barack Obama has been swimming in a sea of left radicalism all his life, from his communist dad to his firebrand America-hating preacher to his terrorist buddy Bill Ayers.

Barack Obama is very vague about his actual politics and few have bothered asking.

So I'm asking: What are Barack Obama's politics?

Is Obama "merely" another radical leftist like another one of his mentors, Saul Alinsky?

Is he a Marxist, as would befit his continued 20-year association with a church founded on the Marxism underlying Black Liberation Theology?

Is he a socialist revolutionary with Maoist tendencies that wants to wage war against the United States like his close friend, fellow Woods Fund board member, and domestic terrorist William Ayers?

Is he a communist, like his mentor Davis, his father, his ethic-cleansing, Islamist-coddling cousin, and even his own wife Michelle Obama, who insisted just yesterday the thought that, "someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more."

At this point we simply do not know where along the radical leftist continum Barack Obama's thoughts reside, because no one has ever pressed him on his beliefs or his meager record.

For the media, it might be nice to know these things before Obama sews up the Democratic nomination.

Update: Captain Ed has related thoughts on the underlying philosophy of "statism" that plagues both remaining Democratic contenders.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:07 AM | Comments (84) | Add Comment
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For reasons rational people will never fathom, lefty bloggers and blog readers are filled with glee over, well, this:

There was once a blog called Joe Biden Is Thugged Out. (I swear this is true.) Biden just proved why. He asked Ryan Crocker, who used to be ambassador to Pakistan, whether it would be better for U.S. interests to go after Al Qaeda on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border or Al Qaeda in Iraq.

Crocker, in an impossible political position -- give the correct answer and humiliate the Bush administration; give the administration's answer and look like a fool -- dodged as much as he could. Then Biden forced him down. Crocker: "I would therefore pick Al Qaeda on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border."

Biden "forced him down" how, exactly?

Clearly Ackerman, the flickering bulbs at Think Progress and other gloating liberals didn't actually hear how Crocker responded.

Let's go to the videotape:

BIDEN: Mr. Ambassador, is Al Qaeda a greater threat to US interests in Iraq, or in the Afghan-Pakistan border region?

CROCKER: Mr. Chairman, al Qaeda is a strategic threat to the United States wherever it is--

BIDEN: Where is most of it? If you could take it out, you had a choice, the Lord Almighty came down and sat in the middle of the table there, and said, 'Mr. Ambassador, you can eliminate every al Qaeda source in Afghanistan and Pakistan, or every al Qaeda personnel in Iraq, which would you pick?'

CROCKER: Well, given the progress that has been made against al Qaeda in Iraq, the significant decrease in its capabilities, the fact that it is solidly on the defensive and not in a position as far--

BIDEN: Which would you pick?

CROCKER: I would therefore pick Al Qaeda in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border area.

So despite the cleverly truncated quote at Think Progress (seriously, when are lefty bloggers going to tire of being set up and used as fools by these shills?) and Ackerman's own deceptive forgetfulness, what Crocker actually told Biden is that our military had severely damaged the operational capabilities of al Qaeda in Iraq (by 75-percent in the last year alone, according to the Iraqi Interior Ministry) and knocked it into a defensive posture where it is far less of a threat.

How much less of a threat?

According to StrategyPage.com, Osama bin Laden admitted defeat in Iraq on Oct 22, 2007, a sentiment that Marine Colonel Richard Simcock shared contemporaneously as it related to al Qaeda's former strongholds in al Anbar in specific. Battered, tattered, and lethally-harassed by coalition soldiers at night and former Sunni Iraqi allies during the day, al Qaeda's morale in Iraq is crushed, along with most of it's capabilities.

Thanks to Iraqi and coalition efforts, Al Qaeda in Iraq is beaten, fragmented, and on the verge of a final collapse, according to the terror organization itself. With this enemy almost defeated, it is only common sense that Crocker would select the remaining al Qaeda hiding along the Afghan-Pakistani border as being the greater threat.

I guess Ackerman can pretend that Crocker's quite logical response--to advocate the targeting the terrorists that are still alive, instead of those we have already dispatched--is humiliating to the Bush administration, but outside his insular nutroots community, in a land where common sense prevails and truncated quotes are not swallowed at face value time and again, Crocker got the better of this exchange by merely pointing out that we've run out of al Qaeda in Iraq to kill.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:44 PM | Comments (19) | Add Comment
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Yes, that his roughly what Barack Obama asserted during a fundraiser in San Francisco, according to the Huffington Post:

Last night at a fundraiser in San Francisco, Barack Obama took a question on what he's looking for in a running mate. "I would like somebody who knows about a bunch of stuff that I'm not as expert on," he said, and then he was off and running. "I think a lot of people assume that might be some sort of military thing to make me look more Commander-in-Chief-like. Ironically, this is an area--foreign policy is the area where I am probably most confident that I know more and understand the world better than Senator Clinton or Senator McCain."

"It's ironic because this is supposedly the place where experience is most needed to be Commander-in-Chief. Experience in Washington is not knowledge of the world. This I know. When Senator Clinton brags 'I've met leaders from eighty countries'--I know what those trips are like! I've been on them. You go from the airport to the embassy. There's a group of children who do native dance. You meet with the CIA station chief and the embassy and they give you a briefing. You go take a tour of a plant that [with] the assistance of USAID has started something. And then--you go."

"You do that in eighty countries--you don't know those eighty countries. So when I speak about having lived in Indonesia for four years, having family that is impoverished in small villages in Africa--knowing the leaders is not important--what I know is the people. . . ."

Barack Obama lived in Indonesia from 1967 to 1971. Born in 1961, he's admitting that he brings to the table the foreign policy experience of a 6-10 year old... is that really the depth of experience that he thinks American voters want in a leader? If so, my experiences playing with G.I. Joe when I was that age qualify me to be Secretary of Defense.

As for Obama's family in "small villages in Africa" I'm not sure he wants Americans to focus very much on them.

Supporters of Barack Obama's cousin Raila Odinga were behind an ethnic cleansing campaign that killed more than 600 in Kenya in January of this year, and part of that included burning men, women, and children alive in a church. Odinga had also promised to institute harsh Sharia courts throughout the country and ban the teaching of Christianity if elected... change Kenyan Islamists can believe in.

As for the experience of his presidential opponents, Obama may have a point about fellow Democratic contender Hillary Clinton having little experience beyond exclusively political trips, but Obama's foreign experiences pale in comparison to those of John McCain, a man born in Panama who moved around the Pacific and the United States as a child as he followed his father's U.S.Navy career. He also built up an impressive travel resume on his own, some of which Obama might have heard about.

In 1982 while running for office in Arizona, McCain delivered a line on his residency in various parts of the world to an opponent that Obama may well want to remember when attempting to play up his own meager life experiences, foreign policy or otherwise:

"Listen, pal. I spent 22 years in the Navy. My grandfather was in the Navy. We in the military service tend to move a lot. We have to live in all parts of the country, all parts of the world. I wish I could have had the luxury, like you, of growing up and living and spending my entire life in a nice place like the first district of Arizona, but I was doing other things. As a matter of fact, when I think about it now, the place I lived longest in my life was Hanoi."

McCain, of course, has gone on to develop a bit more foreign policy experience since then as a representative to the House and later as a four-term Senator.

Obama? He may have watched Sesame Street in Indonesia while his Kenyan relatives learned communism in East Germany.

Not quite the same thing.

Update: Fellow N.C.-blogger Sister Toldjah has closely-related thoughts.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:59 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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It becomes increasingly more amusing to watch the "impartial" international news media attempt to spin away unmistakable signs of progress in Iraq. The latest example of this sad phenomena is Reuters' account of Muqtada al Sadr's threat to end a ceasefire:

Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr threatened on Tuesday to end a truce he imposed on his militia last year, raising the prospect of worsening violence just as top U.S. officials prepare to testify on Iraq in Washington.

Sadr urged his Mehdi Army to "continue your jihad and resistance" against U.S. forces, although he did not spell out if this was an explicit call for attacks on American soldiers.

His warning came a day after Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki threatened to bar Sadr's movement from political life if the anti-American cleric did not disband his militia.

Despite the more than 7-month-old ceasefire, Sadr's followers have clashed with Iraqi troops and U.S. forces in the south of the country and Baghdad in the past two weeks in the country's worst violence since the first half of 2007.

al Sadr's Madhi Army suffered hundreds of KIAs—some estimate place as a high as 1%-2% of his entire militia—in operations across southern Iraq in recent weeks. The failure of the militia and the success of Iraqi forces has encouraged top Sunni, Shia and Kurdish members of the Iraqi government to form a unified front that has demanded that al Sadr disband the Madhi Army, or run the risk of having his party being disbarred from Iraqi politics.

Sadr's threat to end the truce is the most desperate political option available to him, and one of the few options he has left. His power has been drawn largely from the threat of withdrawing the ceasefire, but if that ceasefire is withdrawn, al Sadr has few more cards to play, and the resulting combat would likely mirror last recent combat on a much larger scale, perhaps resulting in far more physical destruction to his forces.

Sadr did not win in Basra, and runs the risk of having his militia destroyed if he decides to send it into combat again against an Iraqi Army that is far more competent than al Sadr's militiamen.

Muqtada al Sadr's relevance in Iraq will be determined by the choices he makes in coming days. The only real real question is how much his relevance will be diminished.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:07 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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As has sadly become commonplace, Amanda at Think Progress missed another story today, even though this one slapped her right between the eyes.

Her post, McCain's Speech On Progress In Iraq Interrupted By News Of Mortars Hitting The Green Zone, notes that MSNBC interrupted a John McCain speech about progress being made in the Iraq War with the breaking news story that four mortar shells hit Baghdad's Green Zone, an unremarkable development as Sadrists and insurgents have used mortars for harassment and interdiction (H&I) fires frequently throughout the war, usually to little effect.

There were no known casualties at the time the story was reported, and there was no known targets of importance hit. What Amanda did not grasp is the utter lack of a legitimate reason for MSNBC producers to break into McCain's speech, other than to try to undermine his message.

MSNBC needs to justify this "breaking news" event by proving that they have broken into other live events on their network to cover minor Green Zone mortar attacks during the campaign season.

Somehow, I doubt they can.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:42 PM | Comments (15) | Add Comment
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He would, of course, be right:

Addressing the Veterans of Foreign Wars, McCain criticized Obama and Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and insisted that last year's U.S. troop buildup in Iraq brought a glimmer of "something approaching normal" there, despite a recent outbreak of heavy fighting and a U.S. death toll that has surpassed 4,000.

"I do not believe that anyone should make promises as a candidate for president that they cannot keep if elected," McCain told the crowd.

"To promise a withdrawal of our forces from Iraq, regardless of the calamitous consequences to the Iraqi people, our most vital interests, and the future of the Middle East, is the height of irresponsibility," he said. "It is a failure of leadership."

The Democratic position on Iraq is one of diligent ignorance and the studied avoidance of reality.

National Democrats, including both Democratic presidential hopefuls, long ago invested their individual political futures and that of their political party in the gamble that the Iraq War would be a defeat, and they then positioned themselves politically to take advance of the expected loss.

They did so with reckless disregard, and did precisely what they'd accused Republicans of doing: they "went to war" without an exit strategy of any kind at all.

Now that the war has turned for the better, al Qaeda has all but admitted defeat, and Sadr's Iranian-controlled militia is on the verge of being dissolved under a united front of Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish leaders, Democrats have no choice but to continue to advocate for defeat. They continue to do everything in their power to salvage a loss, from trying to influence the media as Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid have repeatedly done, to promising a defeat by calendar dates as Barack Obama has done time and again in campaign stops.

General Petraeus' COIN doctrine, the "surge," the Sawha "Awakening" movement, and even Prime Minister al- Maliki's poorly-planned raids into southern Iraq against Iranian-controlled militias have tilted the conflict strongly against al Qaeda and Iran. Democratic politicians find themselves in the unenviable position of having to lie to potential voters and their fellow travelers alike to retain votes and relevance, sharing a delusion that things have not gotten better in Iraq.

To give up the delusion of a static unchanging conflict, an endless stalemate that can only be changed by our loss, is to lose a key element of their community-based reality.

Both Democratic Presidential contenders Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton continue to pay lip service to the virulent and vocal fringe that are convinced that the war was irrevocably lost before the battle was joined. They make promises that no responsible military or foreign policy strategist in either party or on the international stage will support, promising defeat, championing genocide, cheerleading for disaster to garner votes... without any intention of actually following through and letting such a disaster happen on their watch.

Clinton and Obama recognize the passive-aggressive bloodlust of the "progressive" fringe of their party, radicals that do not mind thousands of Iraqis being killing in a genocide, or seeing the Middle East sucked into a violent conventional regional war or nuclear arms race if they can only blame the blood-stained streets on Republicans.

Obama and Hillary follow their supporter's fickle whims. They will pander to the torches—and—pitchforks base, but as their own strategists have made clear, they will not honor the calls for genocide by apathy. They'll lie to them with a smile on their faces, and then enact the exact same policies that McCain has the political courage to vocalize publicly.

McCain rightly criticizes his opponent's positions as failures of leadership. Neither Hillary nor Obama have ever led anything of consequence before.

It is too much to expect them to display leadership now.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:30 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Via the headlines at Hot Air comes a breathtaking Joe Klein entry at the TIME blog Swampland:

Pete Wehner, former chief White House propagandist for the Iraq war, has taken me to task for claiming that liberalism is more optimistic and therefore inherently more patriotic than conservatism. That takes some nerve. He would compare my statement to the constant drumbeat of right-wingnutters questioning the patriotism of those who do not support the Bush Administration's foreign policy foolishness. But I didn't do that at all. I didn't question the patriotism of conservatives: I simply argued that it is more patriotic to be optimistic about the chance that our collective will--that is, the best work of government--will succeed, rather than that it will fail or impinge on freedom.

In others words, it is more patriotic to be in favor of civil rights legislation than to oppose it...to be in favor of social security and medicare than to oppose them...and to hope that the better angels of our legislators--acting in concert, in compromise--will produce a universal health insurance system and an alternative energy plan that we can all be proud of.

Klein can on occasion be astute, but his grasp of the affect of government on the human element is achingly weak from someone who writes about the subject for a living. Government is never comprised of merely the best intentions or has the best work in mind. It is at best a necessary evil, and is often done with the accrual and consolidation of power the goal of lawmakers, their campaign idealism either false from the outset, or leached out of them over time as they succumb to the seductions of power.

Someone posted this Youtube video to a comment thread of one of my Pajamas Media articles several weeks ago.

I do not care for the the purposeful misspelling of Obama's name at the end, but the "ISM" cartoon that comprises the bulk of the video neatly diagnoses Klein's disease.

Government always impinges on freedom. It is government's inherent nature, and for Klein not to understand it's congenital condition is sad to behold.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:30 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) has referred to a "two-bit security guard" in the Green Zone in Baghdad who would not let him into the gym without having the proper ID.

What a jerk.

His political opponent Lance Sigmon is capitalizing on the statement, as he should, but I think those who are claiming that McHenry belittled a soldier are probably not accurate, or are at least jumping the gun.

The Green Zone certainly has American personnel, but many are Iraqis or foreign security personnel.

Somehow, I don't think the liberals at Think Progress who have built a reputation lately of getting the facts wrong would care nearly as much if McHenry had uttered his comments to a security guard contracted through Blackwater, even though they face many of the same risks.

Update: Yep, Amanda at Think Progress screwed up again. The guard in question was not a soldier, but instead was what liberals like to refer to as a "hired killer," or as the rest of us call them, a security contractor.

Amanda either needs a break, a new fact-checker, or a new career.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:59 PM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
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