Of course. The LLL smells blood in the water and they're gonna take every opportunity it presents to bite Dubya in the ass.

First!

No doubt about, the libby sharks smell blood.

Time for a little deep sea fishin'.

The press certainly wants to hurt Bush, but I don't think they are smart enough to see the long term danger, or maybe they just don't care.

Up is down, down is up.

[Link: www.crosswalk.com...]

Nowhere in any of these reports is the slightest hint of awareness that if the US were to pull out of Iraq now, jihadis around the world would be emboldened to launch more attacks against US interests everywhere, seeing the US as a paper tiger. Osama bin Laden said this outright—that our withdrawal from Somalia (where there was much less at stake) proved to him the US had no spine.

It's the flypaper strategy strategy that binds the terrorists in Iraq. And I agree too that if there is one thing the US MUST have learned after Iraq 1991 and Somalia 1993, it's that strength, not weakness must be shown. Otherwise - in contrast to what the moonbats think - terrorism will rise even steeper.

Reuters is still doing it in Israel, as well. Check out Backspin.

How about this? Pull back into Kurdistan, destroy the rest from the air.

a good interationalist doesnt care if we are seen as a paper tiger, infact thats thier goal. our security comes second to the world body deciding when and where force of arms is acceptable.

I know there are Democrats out there who take comfort in American deaths. Look at the Latuff cartoons, ( I know he isn't American, but) you'll see where the Josef Stalin wing of the Democrat party's head is at.

Meanwhile, did Charles take part in the Los Angeles Halloween Critical Mass bike ride to show his disgust at the Ford-Halliburton-Bechtel military-industrial-petroleum complex, that along with the Neo-Joooos Cons runs our government?

Charles,

You are absolutely right.
The media want us to fail.
They have from the beginning.
And the Democrats want us to fail.
The Administration has GOT TO state exactly these words to the American public.
That's the only way we are going to win this war at home.
And if we don't win it here, we're not going to win it abroad.

My prayers for our soldiers and for our country.

Yes, but how does the quagmire effect Kobe?

I find it very difficult to find much difference between what most Democratic presidential candidates are saying and what most of the major media are hyping. One must be mearly an extension of the other and neither seems to wish our country well.

Let's hear it for the democrat candidates. They can get into a thermonuclear catfight over the Confederate flag, but can't put forth any vision for Iraq other than American defeat.

#11 FreakyBoy:

Kobe? I'm more worried about how it's gonna effect news about Laci Peterson.

The media is on the side of the enemy. Their desire to see the US fail in Iraq is palpable. And the Democrats aren’t far behind...

Hey, what's the difference between the media and the Democrats?

Trick question.  The media are the Democrats.
 

OT:

Democrat senator Zell Miller will vote for Bush, some excerpts:

The Wall Street Journal
November 3, 2003

George Bush vs. the Naive Nine
Why this lifelong Democrat will vote Republican next November.

By ZELL MILLER

If I live and breathe, and if--as Hank Williams used to say--the creek don't rise, in 2004 this Democrat will do something I didn't do in 2000, I will vote for George W. Bush for president.

I have come to believe that George Bush is the right man in the right place at the right time. And that's a pretty big mouthful coming from a lifelong Democrat who first voted for Adlai Stevenson in 1952 and has voted for every Democratic presidential candidate the 12 cycles since then. My political history to the contrary, this was the easiest decision I think I've ever made in deciding who to support. For I believe the next five years will determine the kind of world my four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren will live in. I simply cannot entrust that crucial decision to any one of the current group of Democratic presidential candidates.

This is a president who understands the price of freedom. He understands that leaders throughout history often have had to choose between good and evil, tyranny and freedom. And the choice they make can reverberate for generations to come. This is a president who has some Churchill in him and who does not flinch when the going gets tough. This is a president who can make a decision and does not suffer from "paralysis analysis." This is a president who can look America in the eye and say on Iraq, "We're not leaving." And you know he means it.

This is also a president who understands that tax cuts are not just something that all taxpayers deserve, but also the best way to curb government spending. It is the best kind of tax reform. If the money never reaches the table, Congress can't gobble it up.

I have just described George W. Bush.

Believe me, I looked hard at the other choices. And what I saw was that the Democratic candidates who want to be president in the worst way are running for office in the worst way. Look closely, there's not much difference among them. I can't say there's "not a dime's worth of difference" because there's actually billions of dollars' worth of difference among them. Some want to raise our taxes a trillion, while the others want to raise our taxes by several hundred billion. But, make no mistake, they all want to raise our taxes. They also, to varying degrees, want us to quit and get out of Iraq. They don't want us to stay the course in this fight between tyranny and freedom. This is our best chance to change the course of history in the Middle East. So I cannot vote for a candidate who wants us to cut and run with our shirttails at half-mast.

I find it hard to believe, but these naive nine have managed to combine the worst feature of the McGovern campaign--the president is a liar and we must have peace at any cost--with the worst feature of the Mondale campaign--watch your wallet, we're going to raise your taxes. George McGovern carried one state in 1972. Walter Mondale carried one state in 1984. Not exactly role models when it comes to how to get elected or, for that matter, how to run a country.

So, as I have said, my choice for president was an easy decision. And my own party's candidates made it even easier.

[Link: www.opinionjournal.com...]

I don't think the media is on the side of the enemy. The media just wants to capture more eyeballs. And if there's a cardinal rule for the media industry, it's that there's no news like bad news.

On a more positive light, the search for intelligent life amongst the leadership of the Democratic Party is being recognized as a quagmire of epic proportion by more and more people posessing at least two neurons and a functioning synapse.

Maybe the NYT should use the following title and subtitle:

News Analysis: As Casualties in Iraq Mount, Will Resolve Falter?
And will the constant emphasis on negative news in Iraq contribute to that result?

The higher the bodycount, the more gleeful they get. The mediacrats are dancing on these men's graves.

Of course, trying to put the casualties in to any kind of context will open you up to charges of being a neo-con, a warmonger, disrespectful of those killed, or just plain evil.

The fact is that we're quite proficient at war, better than anyone else on the planet. This doesn't make us invincible even though our overwhelming superiority on the battlefield gives that impression. Our troops die. In few numbers, doing more tasks, than their brethren did just a generation ago.

The attack on the chopper was one successful attack against chopper sorties that have been occurring on a daily basis (dozens, if not hundreds per day), thousands since May 1. That's pretty remarkable and suggests that the numbers of terrorists operating with the kinds of weapons that make it dangerous to fly is quite low.

It is not as though there were dozens of choppers hit, with hundreds of casualties over the weekend. It was one, with 16 killed and 20 other wounded. Each soldier's life is precious, but a general commanding those forces, and the President of the US must look at the far-reaching ramifications of these actions and not just dwell on the loss of life. The President and his staff must watch for the safety and security of 270+ million US citizens. The price of that safety and security is high, and that security and safety is maintained and preserved in blood and tears of those soldiers in Iraq, who are doing battle with the jihadists and terrorists seeking our destruction.

I don't mean to piss in people's Cheerios but we are in a war, a war which the Bush administration claimed was winding down (ie. the stupid carrier stunt). Casualties are mounting, attacks are on the rise, and the administration's macho rhetoric (Bring 'em on!) is beginning to ring hollow with the American public. Don't blame the media for the hole this administration finds itself in, they dug it themselves. Personally, I don't see any real reason to support the Bush administration. They continue to insist on Israeli "restraint" in their dealings with the Palestinian Authority, which is tantamount to abetting genocide. They continue to turn a blind eye to Saudi and Pakistani support for Islamic terrorism, which puts the lives of American servicemen and women at risk in both Iraq and Afghanistan. They have dispensed with any pretense of fiscal conservatism or limited government. Other than the fact that the Democratic candidates (aside from the fading Joe Lieberman) are a pathetic lot, I wouldn't see any reason to vote for Bush in 2004. My two cents.

Glenn Reynolds had something important on Instapundit yesterday about the reconstruction after WWII and how it was viewed in the United States.

Life Magazine did a piece about the WWII reconstruction in 1946 I believe. The headline read "We are failing to....". This is all that was important because the emphasis on 'We' was important. The Iraq reconstruction is something that all Americans should be behind. Calling it "Bush's War" or "the US's problem" is a terrible way to look at conflict in the world. The belligerence of our own elected leaders in the United States by voting against reconstruction costs because "I don't want to give any money to Halliburton"(* cough * John Edwards) fails to grasp the reality of reconstruction.

I saw some comments from President Clinton about the views expressed by the 9 talking heads. He said that he would be behind the recontruction probably more than the President is requesting. Views prior to the war are a separate debate from reconstruction as well as an exit strategy. What Americans are getting is a complete waste of time when candidates like Sharpton reply to the question "what is your exit strategy for Iraq?" by answering "My exit strategy is to have never gone into Iraq in the first place.".

Lieberman and Gephardt are the only two democrats even worth reading into and Gephardt has a domestic plan to send the nation back into depression so we're only left with a single candidate and he happens to be Jewish. Thus the racist Democratic party will splinter into two factions that would support Lieberman because he is the nominee and the only will oppose him just because he is Jewish.

#22 Dirk:

Yes, we are at war and the President said in May that it was the end of major combat operations - a major mistake IMO. He took the pressure off the terrorists and the folks in the Sunni Triangle just at the time the death blow needed to be delivered.

Why was this done? Political expediency. Pure and simple. Instead of doing the job right, they went for the politically expedient way. This is the same political expediency that is driving the Democrats.

Also, as you well note, we're still in a war, so taking casualties isn't exactly uncommon. What needs to be asked is why we're not taking more offensive measures in the Sunni triangle, going after arms caches throughout Iraq, and clamping down on the borders.

Supporting George Bush is a very important thing to do at this point in history. He is a brave leader. How can anyone give up on him simply because he has made some mistakes? No one is perfect. And what is the alternative? Lieberman? What a joke. Have some milk toast with those cheerios.

#17 Bob

Incompetent as they sometimes may appear, the media really is capable of capturing eyeballs and siding with the enemy. (Read Bob Bartley in today's Opinion Journal.)

The enemy is within and without.

The WOT must be a failure since no Globular Clusters have been found in Iraq.

#24 lawhawk:

and the President said in May that it was the end of major combat operations - a major mistake IMO

Except that he was right; it was the end of major combat operations. The capital had fallen, all large-scale military resistance was gone, the possiblity of some big tank battle with a Republican Guard division was zero. Whether as a matter of expediency he should have said it (and done the carrier landing and all that) is another question; but he was correct, imho.

That said, I don't know what the answer is to the ongoing terrorist campaign within Iraq, other than to perservere. The idea that this is a deliberate "flypaper" strategy has always seemed a little odd to me--would anyone actually plan to do it this way? And note that this would imply that we should NOT clamp down on the borders, weirdly enough, because we'd want to jihadis to come in.

One need not be a partisan of one political party or another to notice that the administration never thought through what it was going into.

I recall Bush's State of the Union Address about having to "liberate the brave Iraqi people from Saddam".

Try to imagine Churchill and Roosevelt saying they had to "liberate the brave German people from Hitler".

I recall too the high administration officials pre-war estimates of 12 to 18 months to convert Iraq to a peaceful constitutional democracy. That was a simply absurd expectation.

Did they bother to take a serious look at Iraq during the 80 years since the British invented it?

The NYTimes Magazine yesterday had a long "it's a quagmire!" article which begs to be fisked line by line. I didn't attempt that (yet) but it was a great opportunity to post all my links to positive Iraq stories.

As per your update Charles, it should be obvious that the Viet Nam War was the proving ground for the development of the 4th Estate Fifth Column as we know it today. Todays journalism schools and their students apparently see themselves as the extreme cutting edge of the heritage of postmodern "reality" personified by Scheer, Dowd, et al.

Except that he was right; it was the end of major combat operations. The capital had fallen, all large-scale military resistance was gone, the possiblity of some big tank battle with a Republican Guard division was zero. Whether as a matter of expediency he should have said it (and done the carrier landing and all that) is another question; but he was correct, imho.

This Bush administration was exceptional in managing expectations in Afghanistan even following the dramatic fall of Kandahar and Kabul. Even today, with the embers of that conflict flaring again (thanks in no small part to the haven being provided to the Taliban by "our good friends" the Pakistanis) but at least the Bush administration was never foolish enough to make any statements like "Mission Accomplished".

and the President said in May that it was the end of major combat operations - a major mistake IMO

I guess the alternative was the press running the "never-ending war" story. Which they're doing anyway, but would be worse in terms of PR.

Though the carrier landing was a little absurd.

#33 Colt:

Though the carrier landing was a little absurd.

Why? He's the C-in-C, he's a pilot, he gets to have a little fun. I've just never seen what the problem was with the carrier landing. One could argue that the White House should have predicted how this would be spun by the media. But sheesh, if Bush based his decisions on how things would be spun by the media, we'd still be negotiating with Mullah Omar to please please please let us serve a subpoena on bin Laden.

#33 Colt

Absurd? Maybe. But Bush's package is bigger than Blair's. dB^þ.

#34 Occasional Reader

Let me clarify:

As a celebration, I didn't have a problem with it. As you say, why shouldn't he have a little fun?

It just speaks volumes that Bush has gotten away with handing the Dems a propaganda piece on a plate, and they haven't (yet) capitalised on it. It seemed politically unsound to me.

#35 Thom

LOL! The Tory leader who just got the sack is, apparently, Bush-plus.

#27 The WOT must be a failure since no Globular Clusters have been found in Iraq.

On the contrary, I'm sure they found several pieces of Saddam's sons lying around that compound :)

-Vic

Forget Vietnam. What is casting a shadow over Iraq is ALGERIA.

The French political-intellectual elite cannot see beyond this shadow. Our media and academics and left-liberals follow the French in this misperception.

The French WERE imperialists. The Algerians learned nothing about freedom during the French reign. Of course, the French had little understanding, and therefore little to teach. As recently as the last ten or twelve years Algeria sank into a war leaving maybe 120,000 dead. One hundred twenty thousand dead. What is more, Algerian immigrants have been bringing the seeds of that situation into France itself. So, of course, they have been burned, and generalize from their experience.

But the Americans are not the French. Our intentions are not France's. The analysis of the impossibility of the American cause is erroneous because what it rests upon is the failure of the French in Algeria, and not the strengths or gifts of the United States.

I'm still waiting for the Lieberman backers to respond to his public statement that he'd negotiate with Hamas, provided they promised to change their ways. If you don't know what that means and where he'd take us, well, it's too late to help you.

Anyone looking for good news about our press, media and political climate can read this.

BTW, anyone have a good round figure for how long we were fighting in Vietnam, and how many soldiers we lost. Playing the numbers game isn't my preference, but if I'm pushed into it, I'd like to have the info handy.

#39 Model4

55,000 dead, IIRC. Also, we lost a good 5,000 Hueys and several hundred Chinooks.

Model 4 #39:

BTW, anyone have a good round figure for how long we were fighting in Vietnam, and how many soldiers we lost.

Off the top of my head: 58,000 KIA is the generally accepted round figure. Combat troops were officially in- country from 1965-1972. This works out to about 22 killed per day on average, IIRC.

The fact is, if these attacks really do reflect the will of the Iraqi people, we will lose. That, or have to fight a war that's going to be extremely unsettling to most of the world.

I believe the average Iraqi is indifferent to who's going to be ruling the place in the next five years, as Islam and tribal culture are very fatalistic. The perceived successes of these (likely) foreign fighters could be key to tipping the Iraqis over to the pro-jihdad (peaceful inner struggle*cough*) camp.

Which means we've got to go after the leaders and backers of the terrorists. No matter if they try to cloak themselves in religious piety, or are sitting in the capital city of a neighboring state. In other words, get ready for interesting times.

Ah, here (PDF) are some good stats:

5,086 of 11,827 helicopters destroyed during Vietnam war.

3219 Hueys, 132 Chinooks and 271 AH-1 Cobras.

we lost a good

Yeah. Almost brought a tear to my eye. Thanks Colt. And thank you for the info to Occasional Reader.

#5 hans ze beeman

I have read this "flypaper" theory and I must admit I agree with it except one "detail" : the flyes glued on it.
Following that theory, fundamentalists terrorists are supposed to be these flyes running all to get killed one after the other until the last one. After that, for sure we shall get a nice safe world...
Can you really believe THAT ?? I cannot. Since this f... war started I have more and more the feeling that the flyes are the coallition forces.

I heared last week that Bush pointed former baathists and strangers jihadis to be the authors of attacks and bombing. As all these actions are done without any care about the civilian lifes, it is quite reallistic.

So what could be the goal of the former baathists ? Kicking out the US led coallition to get back their power ? Forget it, they know they cannot push away such forces and anyway they have lost their power and would be throttled in pieces by the Iraqi people within days. In fact they know that the presence of US led forces who cannot let start a civilian war is by fact a PROTECTION for them. For a while , just the time necessary to have enough part of the Iraqi people fed up with the occupation. This day they won't be anymore seen as former opressors but as "patriotic heros". So why do they attack these US Forces ? simply to KEEP THES FORCES HERE, because, as you are all claiming so proudly, US will never leave under guerilla pressure.

Why would countries like Saudia, Sirya or Iran send more or less actively Jihadis desperados going to Iraq ?
First, to get rid of these guys... and for their own reason, they have all interest to see US forces GLUED in Iraq AS LONG AS POSSIBLE. The fall of Saddam was supposed to fear leaders like Hassad and the mullahs in Iran and... indeed, it works ! They are feared, they know they would not be able to oppose any US action against them. But with very little forces, they can keep US forces glued on the so called "flypaper". This buy them a precious time.

Now if Bush would only get around to firing a loaded rifle into the air from the Rose Garden. That would be truly impressive provided he was wearing a nice hat at the same time.

#44 Model4

We (that we again) have come a long way. Less than 250 dead, half a dozen M1s, half a dozen UH-60s, a few CH-46/7s, etc.

Comparing that to six months after D-Day...

Aggh, sorry to spam, but one last (hopefully) thought: The liberal 5th column (not the seventeen other patriotic liberals in the nation) may have damaged their side prematurely. I remember the "Quagnam" talk days into the freaking war. And of course we're hearing it again now. Would have been more effective had they been supportive all along, then let facts on the ground appear to influence their opinion. But they've already popped off as big as they're going to be able to, diminishing the impact of their words today and in the future, and giving the President a "nowhere to go but up" place to be.

Some thoughts on honoring the fallen.

Pierre (#45),

This day they won't be anymore seen as former opressors but as "patriotic heros". So why do they attack these US Forces ? simply to KEEP THES FORCES HERE,

Now there's some righteous Lefty Logic. Yes Pierre its a sneaky scheme by the clever ba'athists to force US troops to protect them.

Spectre of Vietnam looms over Iraq

Finally the BBC comes up with a good idea!

AC-130H Spectre gunship

Its time to rehire (at least a large part of) the Iraqi army. Put security back in the hands of the Iraqis and start making plans to hand over power to the Iraqis sooner rather than later.