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From: LindyBill9/15/2007 9:30:21 AM
   of 789868
 
On The National Mall
OP FOR BLOG
By Lt Col P

I took a nice long run yesterday down on the Mall, the first really since I got back from Benning. Having seen the coverage of this vile act at the Vietnam Memorial, I wanted to go and take a look at The Wall myself.

I saw the section in question fenced off with cones, and as I came up a worker was breaking down a steam cleaning apparatus. There was another worker there, a lady I took to be in charge so I asked her how it was going. She said that it was going well, and in fact when I looked closely at the panels I couldn't see any lingering stain or damage. I thanked her for taking the time to right a wrong, and went on my way.

Also out in force were folks from the Gathering of Eagles. Nowhere to be seen were any hippies. Probably smart of them not to show. Because I was wearing my USMC/Airborne t-shirt, I got hoo-rahs! and airbornes! in equal measure. I was pleased to return both.

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From: LindyBill9/15/2007 9:36:20 AM
   of 789868
 
Excellent essay the Democrats' deep-seated belief in appeasement, pacifism, and globalism. He says:

The Democrats don't conceal their globalist ideas, but their appeasement and pacifism are positions they can only hint at.

Defeat at Any Price
Why Petraeus's testimony was a nightmare for the Democrats.
by David Gelernter
David Gelernter is a national fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a contributing editor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD, and the author most recently of Americanism: The Fourth Great Western Religion.
09/24/2007, Volume 013, Issue 02

To prepare for General David Petraeus's long-awaited testimony on Iraq to Congress last week, the liberal pressure group MoveOn.org wrote itself into the history books with an anti-Petraeus ad so repulsive it ranked with Lyndon Johnson's infamous 1964 TV spot in the campaign against Barry Goldwater: A little girl picking flowers dissolved into a mushroom cloud, and then the screen went black. (Evidently by voting for Goldwater, you expressed your support for nuclear holocaust.) But gleeful Republicans who are certain that MoveOn has finally tipped its hand and shown America what the left is all about should remember that Johnson won that election, in a landslide. Because MoveOn headlined its ugly ad with an ugly rhyme ("General Betray Us"), it will stick in the public mind. But it is just possible that the public will invite MoveOn to take their ad and ShoveIt.

Democrats at the hearings themselves found it impossible to look this capable, thoughtful, distinguished man in the face and endorse the MoveOn ad. But don't get them wrong: Leading Dems had dumped on Petraeus often in the past, and were dumping furiously in preparation for the hearings. Petraeus is guilty of "carefully manipulating the statistics," Senator Dick Durbin announced; in fact the general has "made a number of statements over the years that have not proven to be factual" (in strict contradistinction to Majority Leader Harry Reid), said Majority Leader Harry Reid. Barbara Boxer and Joe Biden plunged their knives in also.

The Democrats were scared for a reason. They worried that Petraeus would impress the country as dispassionate and serious--which he did. He called Bush's troop surge no unqualified success, said that much work remains--but that Iraq has turned a corner; has achieved tangible, important results in its fight against terrorism and inter-sect violence since the surge began. It was a Democratic nightmare.

America's ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, had the harder job of reporting on political progress. He said, too, that much work remained; Iraq's political health is bad in some ways, improving in others. But one fact towers above the rest like the ghost of the World Trade Center: If we stay put until the patient is stable, we face a tough job; if we panic and run, we face catastrophe.

Again this message was bad news for leading Democrats. But their reaction was just what it should've been, given that President Bush is the enemy--and, like the man said, politics ain't beanbag. Surely it's only natural for leading Democrats in Congress and the presidential campaign, and their vicious lap dogs on the web, to hope for the president's policies to fail.

Americans are so accustomed (or inured) to this attitude that they rarely step back and ask, What the hell is going on here?

The issue isn't tactics--doesn't concern the draw-down that the administration has forecast and General Petraeus has now discussed, or how this draw-down should work, or how specific such talk ought to be. The issue is deeper. It's time for Americans to ask some big questions. Do leading Democrats want America to win this war? Have they ever?

Of course not--and not because they are traitors. To leading Democrats such as Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, Al Gore and John Edwards, America would be better off if she lost. And this has been true from the start.

To rephrase the question: Why did Harry Reid announce months ago that the war was lost when it wasn't, and everyone knew it wasn't? The wish is father to the deed. He was envisioning the world of his dreams.

The Democrats' embrace of defeat is inspired by no base desire to see Americans killed or American resources wasted. But let's be honest about it, and invite the Democrats to be honest too.

Appeasement, pacifism, globalism: Those are the Big Three principles of the Democratic left. Each one has been defended by serious people; all are philosophically plausible, or at least arguable. But they are unpopular (especially the first two) with the U.S. public, and so the Democrats rarely make their views plain. We must infer their ideas from their (usually) guarded public statements.

Globalism and Euro-envy are explicit, sometimes, in Democratic pronouncements--about the sanctity of the United Nations, the importance of global conferences and "multilateralism" (except in cases like North Korea, where the president already is moving multilaterally), the superiority of the Canadian or German health care system, and so forth. The Democrats are not unpatriotic, but their patriotism is directed at a large abstract entity called The International Community or even (aping Bronze Age paganism) the Earth, not at America. Benjamin Disraeli anticipated this worldview long ago when he called Liberals the "Philosophical" and Conservatives the "National" party. Liberals are loyal to philosophical abstractions--and seek harmony with the French and Germans. Conservatives are loyal to their own nation, and seek harmony with its Founders and heroes and guiding principles.

The Democrats don't conceal their globalist ideas, but their appeasement and pacifism are positions they can only hint at.

So Democratic senator Dick Durbin had the effrontery to plead with the nation to pray for our Iraq wounded and please not to forget them--as if Republicans need Dick Durbin to remind them to honor our troops. When Democrats dwell on alleged analogies between Iraq and Vietnam, the message is clear. "Bring our troops home," says Harry Reid, and adds the incantation "responsibly"--which magically protects him from all charges of irresponsibility. ("Abolish the Constitution and sink the Navy--responsibly!") When MoveOn held a candlelight vigil over the summer to support Senate Democrats, the symbolism was plain. We light candles to remember the dead.

But if we only remember the dead and not the cause for which they died, we dishonor and make nonsense of the noblest of all sacrifices. And we mock a president who asked that "from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain." That is the issue when Americans die in combat. Do we finish the mission and invest their deaths with meaning? Or do we shrug them off, inscribe their names on some sepulchral black wall in a ditch, and walk away?

Of course if our mission in Iraq were wrong or foolish or impossible, we would be right to abandon it. But recall that Americans have fought and died in Iraq to destroy a tyranny that was underwriting terrorism, threatening the peace of its region and the world--and torturing its own people to death. Americans died to put Iraq in the hands of a government that would terrorize neither its own people nor any other nor the world at large. Their mission was noble and right.

It is incomprehensible that the administration so rarely discusses the moral side of our achievement in Iraq. No doubt it's still impossible, in today's world, to launch a major war and depose a government merely for the sake of humanity, merely to rescue a people that is being torn apart and eaten alive by its rulers, merely on principle--although it is fair to wonder, 60-odd years after the Shoah, when it will be possible. But Americanism has long held that when we are forced to fight for our interests, we ought to fight for our principles too.

It's proving a harder fight than we anticipated. We've made serious mistakes along the way. Both statements apply to most American wars. The difference today is that some leading Americans would prefer defeat to victory.

Compare today's war in Iraq with the American fight to clear the Japanese out of Guadalcanal, from September 1942 through early February '43. Obviously that was a vastly shorter stretch than our time in Iraq--but losses in the South Pacific were incomparably greater. Imagine Harry Reid's reaction to news like this: During our first landings, four Allied heavy cruisers (three American) were sunk and a fifth chased away in a battle lasting 32 minutes; nearly 1,300 Americans died. (Multicultural enthusiasts who teach our children that white men are the bane of the earth should explain why Guadalcanal's native Melanesians "were uniformly hostile to the Japanese," according to Samuel Eliot Morison, "and friendly to the Allies.")

At the start of the Guadalcanal fighting, 1,600 American Marines and GIs died on the ground in a single month. Morison writes that "mid-October marked the nadir of misery" for Americans on that rank and lethal island. But one of the most notorious episodes of the war was still to come: In November the Japanese sank the U.S. cruiser Juneau. Six hundred men drowned; another 100 clung to the wreckage--of whom 90 were eaten by sharks or went mad in the open sea without food, water, or shelter and then drowned alongside their crewmates. The 690 deaths in this one crew included the famous five Sullivan brothers.

By the start of February nearly all Japanese troops on the island had been killed, but the rest fought desperately and brutally, as they had from the start; every Japanese soldier was (in effect) a suicide bomber who preferred death to surrender. Guadalcanal was secured at last on February 9.

You might argue that World War II has nothing to do with Iraq; after all, the Japanese started the fight by attacking our fleet at Pearl Harbor. But even the Japanese never succeeded in slaughtering civilians on the U.S. mainland. And those who think that our war in Iraq has nothing to do with the 9/11 murderers, or their friends whose ultimate target is America, are living in Fantasyland.

People like to write nowadays about the courage and resolution of our troops in World War II--praise that is richly deserved. But the facts suggest that our men on the front lines in Iraq today are just as brave and resolute as our World War II troops. ("Men" meaning "males"; Army regulation AR 600-13 of 1994, confirmed by the Department of Defense, bars women from combat in ground warfare--although women can, of course, be exposed to danger and capture in staff and support jobs, to our national disgrace. Then again, why worry? Doubtless no enemy so religious, so very pious that he is willing to slaughter soldiers and civilians at random in exchange for a generous allotment of virgins in heaven, could possibly contemplate molesting a captive American female.) Victory in World War II required brave soldiers--and civilians who backed them up with a different sort of bravery, vastly easier to achieve but just as crucial in its way. It's not our soldiers (Lord knows) who have turned coward in this war; it's we who have turned defeatist. We civilians--or at any rate the Democratic leaders among us.

If you believe in appeasement, defeat in Iraq would show that we were wrong to stop talking and start fighting. If you believe in pacifism, defeat would demonstrate that war is futile even if your motives are good. If you believe in globalism, defeat would suggest that we should have acted strictly in concert with world opinion. In short, if you do believe in appeasement, pacifism, globalism (and many leading Democrats do), your wish for defeat is no evil or traitorous urge. It is merely logical.

It also, of course, contradicts traditional Americanism right down to the ground. Americanism is the set of beliefs that has always held this country together in its large embrace. Americanism calls for liberty, equality, and democracy for all mankind. And it urges this nation to promote the American Creed wherever and whenever it can--to be the shining city on a hill, the "last, best hope of earth." Ultimately, Americanism is derived from the Bible. The Bible itself has been a grand unifying force in American society, uniting Christians of many creeds from Eastern Orthodox to Unitarian, and Jews, and Bible-respecting deists like Thomas Jefferson--and many others who respect and honor the Bible whatever their own religious beliefs.

Pacifist globalism is radically at odds with Americanism. Where did this new creed come from, and where is it headed?

It was imported from Europe, where it originated during and after World War I. It hibernated in America until Vietnam--America's very own First World War, according to the left: a futile bloodbath. Reagan and, later, the Gulf war sent this European creed into hibernation once again. But Iraq is the left's chance to convert large numbers of Americans from Americanism to Euro-style pacifist globalism. If the balance should tip--if a majority or even a large minority of Americans should abandon Americanism--that would be a cultural watershed.

And it would mark the start of America's decline just as surely as World War I and its consequences marked the start of Europe's.

How did pacifist globalism, grossly unpopular in the Western world before the First World War, rise to a dominant position in contemporary Europe--and then come to threaten Americanism on our own shores?

World War I barely exists in American memory. When Americans think about it at all, they are apt to picture a violently buffoonish comic opera with men dying by the million. Which is partly true: On the western front, where Germany grappled with the Allies (led by France, Britain, and later America), the war was indeed fought with murderous irresponsibility on both sides. The nearly incomprehensible destruction (60,000 British casualties at the Somme--on the first day) has obscured the fact that Britain entered this war for almost exactly the same reason she entered World War II. Germany had smashed, splintered, and slaughtered her way into a small neighboring state that Britain had promised to protect: Belgium in World War I, Poland in World War II.

The cause was right, but the casualties were so enormous, they turned European thinking back on itself (like bending a steel beam in two, or making a U-turn in an aircraft carrier)--and it's no wonder. Pacifist globalism was a natural response to unspeakable war casualties, just as disabling mental illness was a natural response to awful childhood trauma in the Freudian worldview that once dominated Western thinking.

Pacifist globalism has nearly always been popular with intellectuals. But in 1920s and '30s Britain, it suddenly became the creed of the nation--and of Conservative prime ministers with large majorities in the House of Commons: of Stanley Baldwin (said by a colleague to be "for peace at any price") and Neville Chamberlain, his chosen successor. "Many and varied were the suggestions made" on behalf of pacifism, wrote Malcolm Muggeridge; "many and varied the enterprises launched, great the expenditure of energy and passion, enormous the area of paper covered, heartfelt the vows taken, undeniably sincere the words spoken." (Muggeridge notes that "postcards were dispatched to addresses chosen at random from German directories, stating that the writers of them were resolved in all circumstances to practice non-resistance, surprise being expressed that these communications were duly delivered.") Globalism expressed itself, meanwhile, in earnest dedication to the League of Nations--an institution that proved itself even more useless than the United Nations. An impressive feat.

Pacifist globalism was so popular it lost World War II for the tragically underprepared French and nearly lost it for the British. The British pulled themselves together and made a heroic stand, but the French will never live down (least of all in their own minds) the humiliation of being overrun by German armor in a matter of weeks; of choosing not even to defend their beloved capital city. Poland put up a stiffer fight than France in the Second World War.

America proved immune to pacifist globalism, until Vietnam. The Vietnam war was nothing like World War I, despite the implicit analogies that emerged later. At first it was run badly, but when General Creighton Abrams replaced William Westmoreland as supreme American commander in May 1968, our strategy changed dramatically. With Abrams in charge the war "was being won on the ground," wrote the historian Lewis Sorley, "even as it was being lost at the peace table and in the U.S. Congress." Americans continued to support the war effort nearly until the end. The 1972 presidential election was a referendum on Vietnam; "Come home, America!" preached the antiwar Democrat George McGovern--and lost to Richard Nixon in a landslide. Of all U.S. population segments, 18- to 24-year-old men--who were subject to the draft and manned the front lines--were consistently the war's strongest supporters. "It was not the American people which lost its stomach," wrote the British historian Paul Johnson, "it was the American leadership."

But intellectuals succeeded in squeezing Vietnam into the dreaded iron maiden of World War I. They succeeded in smearing it, in other words, as a futile, pointless massacre. The results were inevitable. In the 1970s, Americanism was in danger for the first time since the Civil War. Americans, who had always seen the distinction between just and unjust wars, were in peril of contracting the moral blindness called pacifism--and of laying in stocks of the ever-popular snake oil called globalism.

Ronald Reagan turned things around. He brought Americanism back; he repeated what John Winthrop had written in 1630 about America, the shining city on a hill. Americanism had weathered its greatest crisis since 1861. Or so it seemed.

But Iraq has made everything fresh and new for the Democratic leadership. If it can paint Iraq as another Vietnam and relive its great triumphs of the 1970s, the damage done to the American psyche might be permanent. Americans might stop believing in liberty, equality, and democracy for all mankind and retreat to the revised European version: liberty, equality, and democracy (of a sort)--for us. Instead of believing Lincoln's words--"with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in"--Americans might become self-satisfied and complacent pseudo-Europeans. Hollow men. Without Americanism, America joins the European robot republics that have no spiritual life and don't even miss it.

But it's also possible that the Democratic leadership's wish for American defeat in Iraq will make it clear to this nation (to conservatives and liberals) that today's Democratic party is no longer a responsible party of government--at least at the national level where America's security, vision, and honor are at stake.

Possibly "New Democrats" à la Tony Blair will rally round such lonely voices as Joe Lieberman's--but remember that New Labour fought its way out of the political womb and all the way to Number 10 only because of the Tories' ongoing nervous breakdown. More likely, America's political spectrum a decade or more in the future will be defined by two parties both born of today's GOP after a natural and painless mitosis. There's at least as much distance between a Rudy Giuliani and a Mike Huckabee as there ever was between JFK and Nixon, or even Adlai Stevenson and Dwight Eisenhower. Americans traditionally like their two opposing parties to differ on domestic affairs but agree on basic foreign policy--not because things are nicer that way; rather because foreign-policy arguments are good for our enemies, bad for our friends, and hugely dangerous to ourselves--especially in an age when swarms of maniac, murderous jihadists blacken the Middle East like toxic locusts.

Listen to what the Democrats are really saying. Consider what they actually want. And pray God they never get it.

© Copyright 2007, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.

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To: LindyBill who wrote (219758)9/15/2007 9:51:41 AM
From: Big Black Swan
   of 789868
 
Maybe so. I personally am a longtime GW skeptic although I must say I'm becoming less sure of my position.

That aside, it's interesting the the northwest passage is opening up. A historic change. That will change the political dynamic of the Arctic. For one, Russia will be knocking on the northern doorstep. That interests me more than the debate about GW itself.

And hey - what is this about Fox pushing GW? I didn't know that.

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To: LindyBill who wrote (219769)9/15/2007 9:53:25 AM
From: MrLucky
   of 789868
 
This article will make one proud, sad and pee-owed, all at the same time.

AT WAR

Our New National Divide
America's soldiers are committed to the war. But they're not going to lie about its progress.

BY OWEN WEST
Wednesday, September 12, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

Last month I was running the Central Park loop when a runner wearing a U.S. Marine Corps shirt approached. I alerted the two boys in the jog stroller and my eldest, who met this world with a father in Iraq, shouted, "Semper fi!"

The man saw the emblem on my visor and said, "You hear about Doug Zembiec?" If most Americans have six degrees of separation, Marines have no more than two. I nodded and stopped my watch. But all he managed to say was, "That one hurt." Then he plunged down the hill toward 72nd Street, cutting his own path against the flow.

I tried to make sense of it. Not the encounter but the sheer madness of the surroundings. Runners were chattering about school applications and subprime predictions. Yet most of them told pollsters that Iraq was the single largest anxiety in their lives. Like the majority of the nation, they were exhausted by a war in which they had no role. And they wanted out.



It was 65 degrees in August in Manhattan, about 65 degrees cooler than the temperature in Doug Zembiec's helmet as he approached a Baghdad target house in 90 pounds of equipment. He and his team wanted to be remembered for how they lived and how they helped others live. Inside was a group that cared only how it died.
A Marine company commander during the battle for Fallujah in 2004, Maj. Douglas A. Zembiec was famously profiled by the Los Angeles Times's Tony Perry as an "unapologetic warrior" who was ferocious while fighting al Qaeda in Iraq from house-to-house. "One of the most noble things you can do is kill the enemy," he said, expressing what many soldiers feel but lack the courage to trumpet for fear of being castigated outside the combat zone, as was Marine Gen. James Mattis when he expressed a similar sentiment.

Here in the United States, the vast moral chasm that so clearly separates the combatants in Iraq is too rarely discussed. Disillusion with the entire effort has obscured and in some cases mutated the truth that small numbers of evil men tilt entire populations. Many Americans, including prominent senators, cringe when they hear about warriors like Zembiec going door-to-door, notwithstanding the fact that most Iraqis in the neighborhood greet them as deus ex machina.

Nearly six years into the war on terror--which is being fought by less than 30% of the military and less than one-half of 1% of the nation--and the stark irony of America in modern war has emerged. Our professional warriors who take the most risk believe the nation must commit to a long-term fight that includes Iraq in some form. Overall support for the endeavor wanes with distance.

This divergence isn't new. Those who have battled the enemy up close have always been more heavily invested in the cause. What's different is that in past wars, the nation was tied to its soldiers and had a familial barometer. Today most Americans have never met a Gold Star family, let alone shaken the hand of a fallen soldier. The military community is increasingly insulated even as the burden of global war swells. Within it there are those who drift in and out of the fight according to orders. But there is also a group that is distinctive--those who join the military to hunt the enemy for a living, and for the rest of us. Doug Zembiec was such a man.

When he first returned from Iraq, Zembiec relinquished command to his friend Maj. Ray Mendoza. Though they came from different backgrounds, like all of our warrior elite they shared an overwhelming martial calling. Doug was an all-American wrestler at Navy. Ray was the top heavyweight wrestler at Ohio State and an Olympic alternate. Their Marines used to joke that if the pair ever fought it would be like the movie "Clash of the Titans."

A year later, on Nov. 14, 2005, Mendoza was leading his company in an attack near the Syrian border when he was struck down. He was the only man killed in his company. I received an email from a lieutenant in his battalion that read, "It was leadership from the front but it's crushing."

Zembiec, who had returned to Iraq for another tour of duty, wrote to Mendoza's two young children. The note was upbeat, blunt and unapologetic. "Your father reminds us there are men willing to fight for people that they don't even know," he wrote. "Even now, as I write this letter in Iraq, I will honor him on the field of battle by slaying as many of our enemies as possible, and fight until our mission is accomplished."

Men who carry rifles for a living do not seek reward outside the guild. The most cherished gift an infantryman receives is a nod from his peers. When Zembiec, "The Lion of Fallujah," fell this May 11 while commanding a raid on insurgent forces in Baghdad, the loss was symbolic of all those men whom the rest of us aspired to be in combat: fearless guardians of our fellow soldiers and our nation. It's not surprising then that more than 1,000 mourners--generals and enlisted men alike--attended Doug's memorial service in Annapolis, Md. And when Defense Secretary Robert Gates spoke of his courage at the Marine Corps Association annual dinner in Arlington, Va., he fought back tears.



It has become commonplace to assert that the nation's most precious resource is our children. God knows the debt the nation owes the three little ones Doug and Ray left behind, and the hundreds of other shattered families. But during wartime our greatest asset may be our guardians. We should take solace that while we are off to a terrible start in the long war, having allowed the Iraqi battlefield to embitter and weaken the country, our nation produced men like Mendoza and Zembiec. And right now somewhere some other American walks their tracks.
The public recognizes this blessing. In July's Gallup Poll on America's most trusted institutions, the military ranked highest with a 69% confidence rating. Congress ranked last (below HMOs), with a 14% confidence rating.

So it was surprising to see that, according to an August CNN poll, 68% of Americans said Gen. David Petraeus's congressional testimony on Iraq this week would not sway their personal view one way or the other. Worse, 53% of Americans do not trust him to report what's really going on in Iraq, according to a USA Today/Gallup Poll published Monday.

This wrenching inconsistency indicates a deeper problem than a fickle public or an inherent distrust in hierarchy. The poisonous partisan climate in Washington has seeped beyond the Beltway and is now harming the public's trust in the institution that will continue to sacrifice most in the coming years. Extremists from both political parties have used Iraq as a zero-sum emotional battle for votes instead of putting the battlefield in proper context.

The evidence of this is the blatant absence of common ground. First, the Republicans declared the enemy in Iraq defeated before we started fighting, later employing invective to attack rational critics of the order of battle. Then Democrats declared the war lost just as we employed a new strategy. Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, has been especially careless, declaring defeat last spring, labeling the new strategy and the surge in troops a "failure" before it began, slandering an elite warrior in Marine Gen. Peter Pace, and continuously undercutting Gen. Petraeus--most recently dismissing his forthcoming testimony as "Bush's report."

Monday's MoveOn.org advertisement, which depicted Gen. Petraeus as a traitor, has been dismissed by Sen. Reid as an inconsequential distraction. But according to the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan research group, the ad reflects the growing distrust of a Democratic Party that may be taking cues from its leadership. Last month 76% of Republicans expressed confidence in the military to give an "accurate picture of the war," while only 36% of Democrats did.

This explains the collective skepticism surrounding Gen. Petraeus's comments but does not excuse it. For while the country can thrive as a politically divided nation, its ability to defend itself diminishes alongside faith in the fidelity of the military. The unbalanced portrayal of the conduct of our soldiers has done damage enough. To impugn our warriors' motives as political is thoroughly corrosive and hurts all Americans.



Stepping back from the froth, this week will strengthen the country if our political leaders recognize two things. First they must resist the urge to engage in what traders call "backtrading" and prevent hindsight bias from clouding future decisions. Whether or not the decision to invade Iraq was correct, whether or not our presence created al Qaeda in Iraq or attracted them or emboldened other enemies, we now face the complex task of securing America while living up to some responsibility in Iraq.
Second, they must recognize that a bipartisan course of action must be chosen in the context of a much larger war on terror. If the politicians continue pulling the country apart, this game of chicken will end badly and imperil both Iraq and the U.S. If America were hit tomorrow there would be more finger-pointing than ranks closing. That must change.

Finally, we should remember that Doug Zembiec and Ray Mendoza saw the true face of terror in Fallujah, and it cemented their resolve. Like them, Gen. Petraeus is a guardian whose lifelong calling is service to his country. He knows the enemy. He knows our limitations. And he is telling the truth.

Mr. West, a trader at Goldman Sachs and a director of the Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation, served two tours in Iraq with the Marines.

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To: LindyBill who wrote (219765)9/15/2007 9:57:13 AM
From: Big Black Swan
   of 789868
 
That's a good point, although the numbers are daunting. 10% of Paks translates to something like 15 million people, give or take. That's a lot of fanatics to track.

I've been to Pakistan. Salafi or not, it's a total friggen disaster, if you ask me. Corrupt to the core. Eventually it's going to come to a bad end. Hopefully it won't take too much of the rest of the planet down with it.

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To: LindyBill who wrote (219767)9/15/2007 9:58:12 AM
From: John Carragher
   of 789868
 
what's an atm? haven't used on of those things in ten years. it was free to those with checking account so i used the one outside the bank. then got a letter telling me first six transactions were free.
I sent them my atm card and told them more fun to go inside , get a free candy stick, tie up your cashiers, and then leave. good luck to your cost cutting on atm.

now i never use cash, i draw out enough for pocket money and emergency or big ticket item where credit card not used. Cash will last six months in my wallet or longer. Just about every place takes credit cards and even toll roads with drive through lanes where machine reads your card and charges your account. same with all bridges. Doctor offices, take credit cards, even local fast food places now take credit cards.

i wonder if taxi in nyc takes a credit card.. perhaps that is where the cash is going?

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To: Brumar89 who wrote (219743)9/15/2007 9:59:15 AM
From: Big Black Swan
   of 789868
 
LOL. Reid is such a Demo hypocrite. That's a great article, Brumar.

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To: John Carragher who wrote (219773)9/15/2007 10:49:34 AM
From: MulhollandDrive
   of 789868
 
i never use ATM's either, never paid an ATM fee in my life

just like you i use my CC for everything, take a certain amount of cash out of my account when i make deposits (and like you the cash lasts months), pay my CC in full every month

the CC companies and the banks must just love me <gg>

btw, i also refuse to use a debit card

have you seen the commercial running now with the song playing in the background "take your time"? the CC companies are trying their best to make anyone who uses cash to be total idiots who gum up the works and slow things down for the other *paying* customers

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To: LindyBill who wrote (219765)9/15/2007 11:09:59 AM
From: Big Black Swan
   of 789868
 
I misunderstood your post. Now I see you're referring to Paks incoming to USA, not absolute numbers in Pakistan.

I imagine monitoring immigrants isn't the hardest job for the FBI. As previous posted, a good number of the Arabs are Christians. They're very reliable - they've had to endure centuries of Muslim abuse. They aren't about to kill for Al Qaeda.

Meanwhile, Iranians here are extremely secular. Few of them are fans of of clerics.

And the Paks and other groups can be filtered as well, as they aren't homogeneous as you pointed out.

Our "allies" the Saudis might be the toughest to filter. Wahabis everywhere.

And I suspect the FBI's biggest headaches are the threats that can't be profiled. A converted American or European is the ultimate threat.

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To: Ish who wrote (219728)9/15/2007 11:15:58 AM
From: ManyMoose
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It used to be Take $4 a bushel now or whatever the price at harvest time. They call it "futures."

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