The Military

My friend John Feehery touched on this earlier today, but MoveOn.org just astounds me with their shrill rhetoric and inflammatory nonsense. In case you haven’t seen it (and please don’t do them the favor), MoveOn took out an ad in The New York Times this morning in advance of Gen. David Petraeus’s testimony before the House of Representatives today.  Read more...

The capitulation of the national Democratic Party to the far left continues. You may recall that the bloggers launched a campaign early this year to have national Democrats “repudiate” their support for the Iraq war and “apologize” for their votes to oust Saddam Hussein.

One by one, the candidates capitulated. John Edwards surrendered without a fight. So did Chris Dodd. Barack Obama trumpeted the fact that he NEVER supported ousting Saddam. Hillary Clinton put up a fight, but in the end, joined the “Surrender Now” chorus of the other candidates. Read more...

The New York Times today has an interesting poll on its front page and an outrageous advertisement on A25.

On the front page, the poll says that the American people most trust U.S. military commanders to successfully resolve the war in Iraq. Sixty-eight percent trust the military, 21 percent trust the Congress, 5 percent trust the president. Not much faith in our political leaders for a successful resolution to a problem that most observers say has to be solved by a political process.

On page A25, MoveOn.org calls Gen. David Petraeus by a sophomoric name, General Betray Us, as a way of showing its immature, over-emotional and dangerous perspective on the war. Read more...

First, let us cut through the propaganda, lies, disinformation, media misrepresentations and political cowardice that may well be leading Democrats, John Warner Republicans and so-called moderates to another shameless surrender to George W. Bush that will extend the catastrophe and tragedy of the Iraq war.

Here is a short list of those who believe that President Bush and Gen. David Petraeus are dead flat wrong in their obsession to continue the long-term escalation of the Iraq war:

1. The Joint Chiefs of Staff.

2. Admiral Fallon, head of Central Command, Gen. Petraeus's boss. Read more...

God help the skeptic. We are vilified as troublemakers whose suspicions about our institutions are unpatriotic and subversive. We should show some respect, dammit.

Like respect for our military leaders. The ones, for instance, who managed to lose track of some nuclear armed missiles, only to find they were attached to bombers flying over the United States. There were enough "to destroy several cities," and the mistake, which we've always been assured "can't happen," did happen. No one knows why.  Read more...

While they are more or less public and direct, here are some of those who now oppose a continuation of the Iraq escalation and favor a reduction of American troops in Iraq starting this year and continuing into next year:

• Gen. Peter Pace and a strong majority of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with Pace now quoted as believing we should withdraw about half our troops during 2008.


• GOP Sens. John Warner (Va.) and Richard Lugar (Ind.), with Warner now wanting to withdraw 5,000 troops by Christmas.


• A majority of high-level officials throughout the military and intelligence communities.


• Secretary of Defense Bob Gates.

Read more...

Quick. Let's review the choices. What can be done to prevent our all-volunteer armed forces from being "stretched and stressed" beyond the breaking point?  Read more...

Last week, America honored the 62nd anniversary of V-J Day. While I celebrated the anniversary from Alaska, one of the battlegrounds of that terrible war, I received an e-mail from a friend of mine who is on active military duty. He informed me that a regular part of his commute to the military base where he works is being greeted at the main gate by protesters. Waving rainbow flags, banging on drums, and chanting, their message invariably demands immediate troop withdrawal from Iraq, an end to the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, and a seeming passionate desire for the U.S. Air Force to fund its bomber acquisitions solely through the use of bake sales. Last week, the protesters rolled out a new message: The U.S. should be condemned for dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Read more...

Listening in to the president’s news conference this morning, I couldn’t help but wonder what the highly educated members of the White House Press Corps propose we do with the terrorists currently being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. To recap, the Guantanamo Bay facility in Cuba houses terrorists and enemy combatants who have been captured on the battlefield in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Despite the fact that these prisoners are given prayer rugs to practice their faith, three square meals a day and treatment better than the American soldiers who are guarding them, a mantra persists in the media that we should close Guantanamo. Mind you, not one allegation of torture has been proven and captured terrorists have admitted that they are trained to allege torture at the hands of their American “captors.”   Read more...

In this video, Armstrong Williams discusses the Pat Tillman investigation, and how he thinks the public should not sensationalize the death of a soldier.