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All the recent election clamor and media worship of our messianic President-elect might have obscured one of the major news stories of 2008 -- the stunning victory of US and Allied forces over the remains of Saddam loyalists and evil Al-Quaeda interlopers in Iraq. That's right -- VICTORY.

You haven't read much about Iraq because there has been little to read. Casualties have been extremely low. Terror attacks are rare. In fact, the murder rate in Chicago this summer was double the number of US casualties in Iraq. When the media loathes the US military, and when the Democrats invest all their political capital in losing our military efforts, then that kind of news is incredibly bad news, and it simply isn't reported.

"There's nothing going on. I'm with the 10th Mountain Division, and
about half of the guys I'm with haven't fired their weapons on this
tour and they've been here eight months. And the place we're at, South
Baghdad, used to be one of the worst places in Iraq. And now there's
nothing going on. I've been walking my feet off and haven't seen
anything. I've been asking Iraqis, 'do you think the violence will kick
up again,' but even the Iraqi journalists are sounding optimistic now
and they're usually dour."

Wow. Just ... wow.

Everything you need to know about the Iraq victory is here, courtesy of Zombietime.

A final prediction -- look for 2009 to be filled with compassionate, humanitarian stories about the US military presence in Iraq; how they are building roads and schools, how they are training civil engineers, how they are providing electricity and clean water, how they are loved by the people, and maybe we shouldn't completely pull out ... just yet.

But remember the time line. The war is essentially over NOW. What remains in Iraq is infrastructure building, and a final mop up of Al-Qaeda remnants and Iranian infiltrators. And not a single Democrat elected in Nov. 2008 has been sworn in. Democrats -- especially Barack Obama and his worshiping throngs -- simply cannot claim this victory.

However, if you must peg a turning point, pick November 2006. The Congressional shake-up forced the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld and the installation of a new SecDef, William Gates. And Gates was responsible for appointing General Petraeus to oversee operations in Iraq. And General Petraeus made the "surge" happen. You know, the "surge," predicted by every major partisan Democrat and every Left-wing wag to end in utter failure? If we must give the Democrats credit for something, give them credit for how shockingly, embarrassingly wrong they have been during the last four years.

So congratulations to all the US and Allied servicemen and civilian contractors who won. You did it. God bless you all.

The Senate Democrats attempted to document the "lies" told by the Bush Administration that supposedly propelled us into war in Iraq. They released their report, written solely by Democrat staffers, last week, with a press conference chaired by Sen. Jay Rockefeller. Republicans were barred from contributing anything to the report, so we can be certain that the report is "truthful," or at least very, very truthy.

The Washington Post's Fred Hiatt, who edits the WaPo editorial page, did some digging into the report, and guess what he found? Hold on to your hats, folks, because the road gets very bumpy up ahead:

Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence,
set out to provide the official foundation for what has become not only
a thriving business but, more important, an article of faith among
millions of Americans. And in releasing a committee report Thursday, he
claimed to have accomplished his mission, though he did not use the
L-word.

"In making the case for war, the administration repeatedly presented
intelligence as fact when it was unsubstantiated, contradicted or even
nonexistent," he said.

...
But dive into Rockefeller's report, in search of where exactly President Bush lied about what his intelligence agencies were telling him about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, and you may be surprised by what you find.

On weapons of mass destruction overall (a separate section of the
intelligence committee report)? "Generally substantiated by
intelligence information." Delivery vehicles such as ballistic
missiles? "Generally substantiated by available intelligence." Unmanned
aerial vehicles that could be used to deliver WMDs? "Generally
substantiated by intelligence information."

As you read through the report, you begin to think maybe you've
mistakenly picked up the minority dissent. But, no, this is the
Rockefeller indictment. So, you think, the smoking gun must appear in
the section on Bush's claims about Saddam Hussein's alleged ties to
terrorism.

But statements regarding Iraq's support for terrorist groups other than al-Qaeda
"were substantiated by intelligence information." Statements that Iraq
provided safe haven for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other terrorists with
ties to al-Qaeda "were substantiated by the intelligence assessments,"
and statements regarding Iraq's contacts with al-Qaeda "were
substantiated by intelligence information." The report is left to
complain about "implications" and statements that "left the impression"
that those contacts led to substantive Iraqi cooperation.

... After all, it was not Bush, but Rockefeller, who said in October 2002:
"There has been some debate over how 'imminent' a threat Iraq poses. I
do believe Iraq poses an imminent threat. I also believe after
September 11, that question is increasingly outdated. . . . To insist
on further evidence could put some of our fellow Americans at risk. Can
we afford to take that chance? I do not think we can." (all emphasis added)

Ouch. And how embarrassing! Rarely has a partisan indictment turned out to be such an utter failure.

It should also be noted that this is only the latest in a series of investigations that have turned up no evidence whatsoever that either the Bush White House or the British deliberately falsified intelligence claims in order to make the case for removing Saddam Hussein from power. And speaking of "imminent threats," remember what Democrats had been saying about Saddam Hussein up until March 2003?

Sadly, as I have opined before, I believe that this is true. The Democrats have made their whole "Bush lied" case out of errant decisions that were made by the Bush White House five and six years ago. Yet since then, the Democrats have been wrong about virtually everything concerning Iraq and Afghanistan. When Republicans start bringing this up during the upcoming election battle, the Democrats are going to need a way to defend themselves, because Bush Derangement Syndrome has not been substantiated by any sort of rational intelligence.

WHENEVER retreat-now activists or their favored presidential
aspirant are confronted with our progress in Iraq, their stock reply
is, "Al Qaeda wasn't in Iraq in 2003."

Well, I happen to agree with Sen. Barack Obama and his supporters
on that count: At most, the terrorists had a tenuous connection with
Saddam's regime. But it's 2008, not 2003. And our next president will
take office in 2009. It's today's reality that matters.

...

So, let's bring those quit-Iraq time-travelers back to mid-2008 and
fill them in on what's happened since they were ideologically stranded
five years ago:

* After our troops reached Baghdad, al Qaeda's leaders
made a colossal strategic miscalculation and publicly declared that
Iraq was now the central front in their jihad against us. Matter of
record, in the enemy's own words.

* Some Iraqi Sunni Arabs, lamenting the national pre-eminence they'd lost, rallied to the terrorists.

* Al Qaeda in Iraq and its affiliates then embarked on a
campaign of widespread atrocities: videotaped beheadings, mass bombings
of civilians, assassinations, widespread rape (of boys and girls, as
well as of women), kidnappings and brutal efforts to dictate the
intimate details of Iraqi lives.

* Al Qaeda's savagery alienated the Sunni Arab masses in record
time. Suddenly, those American "occupiers" looked like saviors.

* By the millions, Sunni Muslims turned against al Qaeda
and turned to the US military, inflicting a catastrophic propaganda
defeat on the terrorists.

* Supported by the population, US and Iraqi forces inflicted a massive military
defeat on al Qaeda. At present, the terror organization's own Web
masters admit that al Qaeda is nearing final collapse in Iraq.

Those are facts.

If we nonetheless quit Iraq in 2009, the defeated remnants of al
Qaeda will be able to declare victory, after all. The organization will
be able to re-launch itself as the great Muslim victor over the Great
Satan. We'll have thrown away a potentially decisive triumph and
revived the fortunes of the fanatics who brought us 9/11.

And the above only detailed the defeat of al Qaeda. Far more is
happening in Iraq, all of it good: Muqtada al-Sadr and his thugs have
suffered a series of lopsided defeats; Muqtada's hiding in Iran, afraid
to return; a democratically elected government has finally taken charge
in Baghdad - and gained enormously in popularity.

Iraqis look forward to the next round of elections (to the dismay
of every Persian Gulf autocracy). Crucial legislation has been refined,
passed and implemented. Iraq's economy is booming - and its government
has begun paying its own way.

Want more good news? Iran has failed in its bid to take
control of Iraq. And our military leaders are drawing down our troop
levels according to a sensible plan, with the prospect of more troop
cuts to come.

What don't the critics like? Democracy? The defeat of al Qaeda?
Muslims turning to the US military for help? Troop cuts? The
dramatically improved human-rights situation? What's the problem here?

The answer's simple: Admitting that they've been mistaken about
Iraq guts the left's argument for political entitlement. If the
otherwise deplorable Bush administration somehow got this one right, it
means the left got another big one wrong.

The Democrats' great narrative during the past five years has been that President Bush "lied" to us, and by "lied" they mean that he did not give equal weight to both the vast pool of intelligence assessments that indicated the dangers present in Iraq, and to the much smaller number of reports and that downplayed those dangers. In other words, President Bush chose to focus on the evidence that backed up the position held by the US government for a decade: Saddam Hussein was a dangerous threat to world peace. Thus he is a "liar."

Well, well, well. If ignoring contrary evidence in favor of your own narrative is "lying," then it should be clear that no one has told more "lies" about Iraq during the last five years than the Democrats.

Democrats used to harp about George H. W. Bush's abandonment of Iraq in 1991 as one of the great moral failings of his administration. Yet "bring the troops home NOW" is suddenly chic, and as The Anchoress notes, "since it is the position of the left, it must be moral and ethical, too."

Another "failure" of the Bush administration was their inability to have predicted, with prophetic accuracy, the future events that were to unfold after we toppled the Hussein regime. But as Ralph Peters further observes, "To date, not one 'mainstream media' journalist has pressed the leading
advocates of unconditional surrender to describe in detail what might
happen after we 'bring the troops home now.'"

The Democrats predicted that the so-called "surge" would be a failure even before the boots of the first additional personnel stirred up the dust in Iraq. They accused Gen. Petraeus of "betraying us" even before he spoke a single word in front of Congress, on the presumption that any revelation outside of their narrative of defeat and failure was a lie.

Well, the purpose of the surge was to provide a secure space, a time
for the political change to occur to accomplish the reconciliation.
That didn’t happen. Whatever the military success, and progress that
may have been made, the surge didn’t accomplish its goal. And some of the success of the surge is that the goodwill of the Iranians-they decided in Basra when the fighting would end, they negotiated that cessation of hostilities-the Iranians. (emphasis added)

Absolutely incredible. Just ... incredible. IRAN has contributed more to the defeat of al-Qaeda that our military? Iran -- who is giving sanctuary to Muqtada al-Sadr? Who armed and trained terrorists and smuggled them over the border into Iraq in order to increase civil unrest and distract our troops from engagements with al-Qaeda? Who has been in a state of holy war with the US since 1979? Who is currently developing nuclear weapons technology? Who, through their support of Hezbollah and Hamas, is the leading supporter of terrorism against Israel? IRAN? I've got to stop now, or else there will be lots of profanity.

There is also another big lie being perpetuated by the left, particularly anti-American groups masquerading as "anti-war" activists, which is the story that Iraq is like a bad Vietnam movie. According to this narrative, American troops are poor rednecks and ghetto trash who have no idea what they are doing or why they are there. They simply travel down every road and path, from one village to another, from one building to another, raining hell down from the sky, indiscriminately firing RPG's and tossing grenades, wildly mowing down everything that moves with machine gun fire, running down animals, beating and raping civilians, imprisoning and torturing others, and slaughtering whole villages of Iraqis for "not cooperating." Officers looked the other way and "official" reports were fabricated, while Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney received the "real" news via secret communique, licking their chops and rubbing their hands together while chuckling impishly.

The implication, of course, is that any journalist not reporting this faux-Vietnam nightmare has sold out to the evil minions of the Bush White House and is spreading their imperialist, war-mongering propaganda. Thus Abu-Graib merited press coverage and political pandering an order of magnitude greater than all our Iraqi public works projects like roads and bridges and clean water wells and sewer treatment facilities and electric power plants will ever receive. Our troops at Haditha were slandered as "murders" by elected officials even before any evidence was made public. The lies of Jesse MacBeth and Scott Thomas Beauchamp were eagerly swallowed by left-leaning publications without even the most basic fact checking.

The Democrats lied during the 2006 elections, promising to immediately force the withdrawal all US troops from Iraq if they regained control of Congress. It is still unclear what was the deciding factor among the general public in the 2006 elections, but undoubtedly "bring the troops home now" was the biggest theme pushed by the Democrats to their loyal party base. Unfortunately, it was all a big lie:

Ignoring contrary evidence in order to advance your agenda. Lying. It's what the left seems to do best, regardless of the claims they project against President Bush or the Republicans.

Here is my prediction for 2009. If Democrats win the White House and retain control of Congress, look for good news to begin flooding out of Iraq. Look for the New York Times and other liberal flagships to begin running "we can't leave yet" editorials, pointing out all the positive changes that are happening in Iraq and once again recycling the argument that it would be unconscionable for the US to leave Iraq when her people are the most vulnerable to outside terrorist threats. Look for the press to credit the Democrats solely with every post-2006 Iraq success, including the troop surge. Look for the troop surge to magically begin working some time around December 2008. Look for US civilian contractors, who are doing most of the security and public works projects in Iraq, to be defended and praised for their hard work. Look for everything to be sunny again once right-thinking, enlightened, caring politicians are put in charge of things.

And so the lying cycle begins all over again. Just remember, you read it here first.

In Chapter 11 of his book Faith Works, social activist and evangelical leader Jim Wallis writes,

The U.S. government is telling us that we have entered a new "war against terrorism," one that may last for years or even decades ... The United States has decided upon a unilateral military strategy to counter terrorism and, indeed, to go on the offensive.

When did Wallis write this? In 1999; his book was published in 2000. There's more:

More strikes against U.S. citizens will cause public clamor for counterstrikes, and with more U.S. counterstrikes, the hunger for retaliation from the aggrieved parties will increase. When casualties on both sides grow, the perpetrators of the violence will both be accused of terrorism. And the prospect of the introduction of weapons of mass destruction is too terrible to contemplate. But we must.

Together, we must confront the new hazards of chemical
and biological weapons and the outlaw states, terrorists, and organized
criminals seeking to acquire them. Saddam Hussein has spent the better part of this decade and much of his nation's wealth not on providing for the Iraqi people but on developing nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them.
The United Nations weapons inspectors have done a truly remarkable job
finding and destroying more of Iraq's arsenal than was destroyed during
the entire Gulf war. Now Saddam Hussein wants to stop them from
completing their mission.

The perceived threats from radical Islamic terrorism and Saddam Hussein's rogue behavior were a well-established part of U.S. government policy-making well before 9/11. The "War on Terror" had been discussed for years before President Bush officially coined the term. And connections between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda were well-known long before he uttered the infamous "sixteen words" in the 2003 State of the Union speech.

I repeatedly point this stuff out because the "reality-based community" seems to be in continual need of reality checks.

It would be tempting, if time permitted, to go through Wallis' Chapter Eleven in its entirety. Instead, only a few brief comments about the chapter will have to suffice. It is an interesting collection of philosophies, prophecies, and opinions about the role of Christianity in international peacemaking. Wallis devotes quite a bit of the chapter specifically to the subject of terrorism, correctly observing that:

Because much of todays terrorism is more "theological" than ideological, it poses the real danger of the perceived confrontation between the "Christian West" and "Islamic Fundamentalism." There is profound misunderstanding between Christians and Muslims, which underlines the potential for conflict, even though the mainstream of each religion does not want it.

But Wallis also makes this rather strange observation:

It used to be that, in war, civilians were protected and soldiers died. Now that has been reversed. Today, nations protect their military forces and sacrifice the enemy's civilian populations ... when planes fly high enough to avoid being shot down, there is less accuracy in bombing and more civilian loss of life.

Now here's where Wallis' writing gets interesting. He is writing this long before 9/11 and even longer before Iraq. But look at the points he makes:

A War on Terror has been planned for years by the U.S. government

All parties involved in such a war will be accused of terrorism

"Mainstream" Islam is not connected to radical Muslim groups

There will be wide-scale careless slaughter of civilians

How many times have we heard these same themes from the political left as they sought to damage President Bush over the issue of the Iraq war? Americans are the new terrorists. The torture chambers of Abu Graib are open again, only under new management. Unilateral. Unilateral. Unilateral. We have wrongfully declared a war on Islam. 200,000 civilians are killed every year in Iraq. "War on Terror' is a phony bumper-sticker slogan. We must be tolerant. We must not profile. We need to open a dialog. And isn't Wallis' statement about bombing eerily reminiscent of remarks that Sen. Jay Rockefeller made earlier this month about Sen. John McCain:

“McCain was a fighter pilot, who dropped laser-guided missiles from 35,000 feet. He was long gone when they hit. What happened when they [the missiles] get to the ground? He
doesn’t know. You have to care about the lives of people. McCain never
gets into those issues.”

Is Jim Wallis some kind of amazing clairvoyant? Hardly. He is simply a man who clearly articulates the concerns held by most of the political left in America. And this worldview shapes the narrative by which the political left interprets historical events. It is more of a self-fulfilling prophecy than an uncanny ability to foresee the future. The left knows that there will be massive civilian deaths, so they find a way to "prove" it, even though the proof is highly questionable at best. The left knows that U.S. troops will commit atrocities on a regular basis and with stunning indifference, so they exploit every tale of woe told by prisoners and disgruntled military personnel, often without checking basic facts first. Moral equivalence between al-Qaeda and U.S. military personnel has become an article of faith -- the military takes innocent young men and turns them into psychopathic killers; military personnel on active combat duty shoot and maim animals and civilians just for fun; the military is the biggest contributer to mental illness and homelessness. You know the drill.

I believe these things need to be questioned because it is not honest for the left to continually insist that they are universally true, because -- even though there are scattered examples of these things occurring -- most of these claims are not universally supported by hard evidence. Regardless of whether you believe that U.S. military intervention in Iraq was warranted, the vast majority of battle reports indicated that the U.S. military takes the cost of civilian life very seriously. And even though civilians are lost in battle, this is primarily the responsibility of terrorists who use civilians as human shields, deliberately drawing fire on them during combat. Incident report after incident report shows that U.S. commanders will call off aerial attacks, ambushes, patrols, and other strike and support missions if civilians are known to be in proximity. U.S. Marines have battled terrorists door to door in places like Fallujah, where a large aerial strike could have wiped out square blocks of the city with no loss of life for U.S. personnel. And so on.

I don't want to come down too hard on Jim Wallis, because he is a good man and he makes some good suggestions in this chapter of his book. Wallis eagerly encouraged American citizens to begin interacting with citizens in Muslim nations. He also encouraged American Christian clergymen to reach out to Muslim leaders and attempt to create solidarity based on common goals and beliefs. Wallis hoped that these actions would prevent a large-scale terror attack from occurring. Unfortunately he was wrong, and many of his dire predictions have come true. In today's post-9/11 world, we are past the point of circumventing such a defining terror attack and its resulting counterstrikes, but we still desperately need to forge alliances between citizens of the United States and Muslim nations, especially in at-risk areas such as Iran and northern Africa. Already citizens of Iran are protesting the policies of their nation en masse. They do not want a repeat of the costly and demoralizing Iraq-Iran war two decades ago. And the U.S. is sending billions of dollars in food and other aid to Africa, where it is needed most. President Bush wants to build stable, democratic nations in Africa, thereby avoiding the kinds of problems plaguing the Middle East and spurring interest in radical Islam. It's good to see that we are doing something right in Africa, even though it gets scant attention from our blood and scandal-obsessed press.

Don't get me wrong here. I abhor warfare and I regret that the U.S. made the decision to get involved militarily in Iraq. But the tired cliches and boilerplate predictions of the left, and their dogged attempts at fulfilling their own prophecies of doom, do not help to end the violence. No, really, they don't. They make proponents of the war entrench themselves and defend their positions even more fervently (witness President George W. Bush), and they give ammunition to opposing forces, who excitedly propagate tales of Americans calling their own troops savages and terrorists. And they make it more difficult to objectively study trends that may be pointing to real problems, such as the sobering truth that a disproportionately high percentage of America's homeless population are veterans.

I'm not going to let the Religious Right off the hook either, because their pedal-to-the-metal rush to declare the War on Terror as "God's war" and their unwavering support for George W. Bush as "God's President" were both stupid and un-Biblical. A pox on both their houses.

I suppose what this boils down to is that I really don't like being told -- either by the Left or the Right -- that certain people are inherently evil, or that a certain kind of evil will unavoidably occur. It's not prophecy or social action. It is simply blowing one's horn. And I really wish that religious leaders would stop doing it.

A few weeks ago, Rush Limbaugh mentioned that in the wake of the Clinton Campaign staff shakeups and the revelations about the dire financial straits of the campaign, a news reporter allegedly asked Hillary, "Are your unpaid staff, your interns, getting health care coverage?" Rush said that Hillary ducked the question. I can't source the quote, but other bloggers wrote about it as well.

Now a little commentary. First off, things ain't what they used to be. Democrats of yore could simply tell everyone how bad things were and then hide in the shadow of FDR as they proposed big government spending programs that would surely "stimulate" the economy, just as FDR saved us from the ravages of the Great Depression. But things aren't so simple today. After repeatedly blasting President Bush over a growing budget deficit, it is difficult for Democrats to propose huge immediate spending increases with no way to "pay" for them. And after the truly lackluster performance of the Democratic congressional leadership last year, there are a lot of Democratic constituents and special interest groups who are going to be demanding quite a bit more than a "fair share" of the Congressional pork spread this year. Decisions, decisions.

Compared to previous years (e.g. 1980, 13.6% inflation, or 1982, 9.7% unemployment), our current economic situation is not so bad. Twenty five years ago we were so used to double-digit inflation,
double-digit unemployment in large cities, and 18% mortgage interest
rates, many people simply gave up and settled on the notion that things
would never be any better. But we have been used to "good news" for so long now that any change in those trends causes people to panic.

I believe that we are headed into an economic slowdown. High gasoline prices have finally impacted clothing and food prices. The price of oil has kept the cost of gasoline, diesel fuel, and other petroleum derivatives at record high levels. And the meltdown of the housing and mortgage bubble will cause banks to be very cautious (read: stingy) in their lending. All of these things will hurt us in 2008, but their effect will not come close to the misery of 25 to 30 years ago.

Obama's Farrakhan Test - Richard Cohen from The Washington Post asks tough questions about Barak Obama's pastor and spiritual mentor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ. I mentioned this uncomfortable subject in a blog post nearly a year ago.

General: Anbar Ready For Handover - "Iraq's western province of Anbar, hotbed of the Sunni Arab insurgency
for the first four years of the war, will be returned to Iraqi control
in March, a senior U.S. general said Thursday."

The radical-left anti-war group Code Pink successfully pranked the mainstream media by creating a phony "press release" attributed to the disgraced Blackwater private security firm. The phony press release announced that Blackwater was hiring a new "Public Integrity" director whose job was to "put the mercy back in 'mercinary.'" And CBS News, the AP, and the blog Politico.com all fell for it. Sheesh.

This seems to fall into a pattern of bias that has been observed for some time: press releases from left-leaning organizations (or as in this case, press releases with a heavy dose of lefty "truthiness") are gobbled up by the mainstream media with little or no fact checking or balanced response.

But the reasoning behind this editorial is so convoluted that I am at a loss even to attempt a rational understanding of it. Consider just this brief excerpt:

... Iraq, and the region around it, could be even bloodier
and more chaotic after Americans leave. There could be reprisals
against those who worked with American forces, further ethnic
cleansing, even genocide. Potentially destabilizing refugee flows could
hit Jordan and Syria. Iran and Turkey could be tempted to make power
grabs.

... But Americans must be equally honest about the fact that
keeping troops in Iraq will only make things worse.

I can only attribute such twisted reasoning to axiomatic thinking, based on one of the core principles of leftist politics: the sole sources of evil in the world are Republicans and the US military.

This principle, one of the basic axioms that defines the leftist world view, is so rudimentary and fundamental that any attempt to question it or challenge it is heresy to militant leftists, in the same way that challenging the supremacy of Allah or the Trinity would be heresy to Muslims and Christians.

Anyone who attempts to challenge this principle is an evil-doer, and all such challenges are either the epitome of ignorance, or outright lies -- crimethink, in Orwell's 1984 vernacular.

The evil of the US military can be somewhat mitigated by electing a Democrat commander in chief. Such an action does not allow the US military to kill with impunity; rather, the end result is that we just don't talk about the killing. (How often do leftists and Democrats mention civilian casualties incurred as a result of the bombs and missiles that Bill Clinton rained on Serbia?)

But as long as a Republican commands the US military, the outcome can only be raw evil, so pure and horrific that even terrorism, murder, genocide, and ethnic cleansing pale in its shadow. It is the cesspool from which all depraved human activity emerges.

Such seems to be the reasoning of the Times editorial board.

And how do we put in end to this evil? Withdraw our military, put the UN in charge, and sponsor a series of multi-lateral negotiations asking the motley crew of thugs, terrorists, assassins, religious nuts, etc. killing each other over the remains of Iraq to please try and be nice to each other. Then, and only then, will a new era dawn in Iraq.

Those like myself who are a bit less optimistic expect only to see America's "evil" supplanted by an endless series of "unfortunate" and "regrettable" incidents perpetrated by "freedom fighters" and desperate "militias," who will promise to do better next time as long as the US keeps their bank accounts and armories full. (One word: Fatah. Google it.)

And when the blood of innocents flows too freely, there will always be a way to blame everything on the Republicans and the US military. Funny how things seem to work out that way for the Times.

"Half the harm that is done in this world is due to
people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm -- but the harm
does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they
are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves." -- T.S.
Eliot, 1950

Everyone is buzzing about the new regulations that will be enforced by the Army that require the approval of a superior officer for emails or blog entries written by soldiers stationed in combat zones.

Most conservatives are appalled -- see Michelle Malkin's roundup of opinion. The thinking among conservatives is that such censorship will remove a key source of factual information from the battlefield and thus will prevent fact checking of reporting by the mainstream press. The censorship may also prevent soldiers in the field from expressing their displeasure with Democrat-led congressional leadership.

The Evangelical Outpost's Joe Carter (who served in the Marines) offers a different view -- such censorship is necessary in order to prevent critical information from falling into the hands of an Internet-savvy enemy.

(History buffs will recall that letters sent from the front during WWII often arrived home in the form of photocopies with critical information redacted by military sensors.)

I don't believe that the Army's new policy will shut down milblogs; milbloggers can still receive reports and photos from soldiers returning from Iraq or from official sources within the Pentagon. And we cannot be too careful with regard to al Qaeda and other terrorist outfits. They are very clever and have outwitted our intelligence time and time again.

On the other hand, it has been proved far beyond a shadow of a doubt that the mainstream media's reporting from war zones involving the US or Israel simply cannot be trusted. The oversimplified leftist worldview of the majority of reporters -- "oppressors" (US and Israel) vs. "victims" (Hamas, Hezbollah, Sunni and Shiite militias, or anyone not wearing a military uniform) -- precludes honest reporting because the suffering of the "victims" far outweighs anything good that the "oppressors" accomplish.

The military seeks to prevent US intelligence from falling into the wrong hands. Too bad they can't also keep terrorist propaganda out of our newspapers and off our television screens.

Lessons learned: Iran can kidnap uniformed British troops with no threat of British military retaliation. "Iranian waters" are anywhere Iran says they are. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad becomes a hero in the eyes of the world simply for "pardoning" the British military men and women he kidnapped. The UN will be "deeply concerned" but otherwise impotent. The US will keep its mouth shut.

In the film Schindler’s List, Amon Goth, (the notorious commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp played by Ralph Feinnes)
was struck by a remark made by Oscar Schindler at a party. Schindler
tells a drunken Goth that ‘anyone can kill. Real power comes from the
ability to forgive and pardon.’

The following morning, in what is a chilling and mesmerizing scene infilm, Amon Goth looks
into a mirror and says, ‘I pardon you,’ over and over. He repeats the
remarks over and over, with various gestures, seeking the right ‘look’
for his supposed largesse, in which he can appear grand, magnanimous and humble, all the same time.

There is very little that is different between Amon Goth and Mahmoud
Ahmadenijad and those who support them and share their ideas.

Ouch. But then SC&A goes in for the kill:

Mahmoud Ahmadenijad’s ‘pardon’ and release of those 15 British sailors
and marines is no more a gesture of Iran’s inherent ‘goodness’ than
were Adolph [sic] Hitler’s displays of affection for his dog- and it is
important that we understand that.

Also, Michelle Malkin reprinted a reader's email that highlights this Time article from last week, which indicates that Iran tried this stunt earlier. Last September, detachment of Iranian troops crossed into Iraq and attempted to apprehend a joint Iraqi/US recon patrol. But we shot back and the Iranians fled.

Like I said before, the Iranians are experts at taking hostages.

I am hopeful that the details of how the British were treated by the Iranians will be fully disclosed. Already there have been reports that some of the sailors and marines were held in solitary confinement. It is certainly very likely that they were deprived of sleep and subjected to psychological and emotional stresses designed to break down their resistance. They were illegally apprehended, accused of being spies (though they were uniformed), paraded around on TV, and forced to read "confessions," all of which are in violation of the Geneva Convention. Clearly -- according to the standards of the Left -- these prisoners were tortured. Will we hear an outcry from Amnesty International? The ACLU? Don't hold your breath.