Is General Betray Us a Liar or Not?

Enquiring minds want to know. Back when George W. Bush charge General Petraeus with turning around the war in Iraq, Democrats of all sorts called him a liar and accused him of not doing the things he claimed.

But now, Obama's putting Petraeus in the driver's seat in Afghanistan and we're supposed to forget Hillary Clinton's language butchering accusation.

Using blunter language than any other Democrat in the last two days, Mrs. Clinton told General Petraeus that his progress report on Iraq required "a willing suspension of disbelief."

That was sooo 2007. Now, Petraeus can save Obama's a-s-s in Afghanistan. Well, maybe. But, apparently, he's the best Teh One could find to replace the last guy he said was best for the job.

History Will Thank Him

Cheney: Obama should thank George W. Bush

If [the administration is] going to take credit for [Iraq's success], fair enough ... but it ought to come with a healthy dose of 'Thank you, George Bush' up front and a recognition that some of their early recommendations with respect to prosecuting that war were just dead wrong," Cheney told ABC News' Jonathan Karl.

Wasn't the U.S. Supposed to Get All the Oil?

Someone should have told the Iraqis.

Those who claim that the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 to get control of the country's giant oil reserves will be left scratching their heads by the results of last weekend's auction of Iraqi oil contracts: Not a single U.S. company secured a deal in the auction of contracts that will shape the Iraqi oil industry for the next couple of decades. Two of the most lucrative of the multi-billion-dollar oil contracts went to two countries which bitterly opposed the U.S. invasion — Russia and China — while even Total Oil of France, which led the charge to deny international approval for the war at the U.N. Security Council in 2003, won a bigger stake than the Americans in the most recent auction. "[The distribution of oil contracts] certainly answers the theory that the war was for the benefit of big U.S. oil interests," says Alex Munton, Middle East oil analyst for the energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie, whose clients include major U.S. companies. "That has not been demonstrated by what has happened this week."

Sorry for using military in Iraq but there was no choice: Bush

Gotta love this:

Justifying his decision on Iraq, former US President George W Bush today said dislodging of the "brutal dictator" Saddam Hussain was a necessity after 9/11 attacks but regretted that military had to be used to do so as there was no other "choice"...

Describing Hussain as a "brutal dictator" who posed a danger to the US, he said it had become more important for America to remove him after the 9/11 attacks.

Removal of Hussain was important as it was "felt" that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction and the then President was not allowing IAEA inspectors in, Bush said while addressing the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit here.

"My hope was to disarm Saddam peacefully... I am sorry we had to use military but there was no choice," the former US President said.

Explaining the necessity of using force, he noted that the UN Security Council had passed 17 resolutions calling for disarming of Hussain but the Iraqi ruler was not cooperative.

As Orrin Judd notes, the problem is that George W. Bush was the only world leader who took the U.N. seriously when it passed resolutions.

Throwing Shoes

President Bush ducks two shoes thrown by a hero of the Left because throwing shoes at someone is an insult like one would hurl at Saddam Hussein.

Except this guy wouldn't have been brave enough to do that to Saddam Hussein.

Funny how these people are so brave once they aren't in fear of the torture interrogation rooms.

Trying to Elect Obama?

The headline from this post at The Raw Story says it all: McCain adviser on Iraqi PM's Obama endorsement: 'We're f**ked'

Senator John McCain ridiculed Senator Obama's timetable for Iraq withdrawal as a tactic aimed only at getting votes.

For the Iraqi Prime minister, it apparently worked.

The clear endorsement of Senator Barack Obama by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki Saturday morning came as a strong blow to the McCain campaign.

It doesn't matter that others have said 16 months is too little time to withdraw troops. Or that Obama was calling for troop withdrawals when such would have been retreat. And the Left doesn't care that withdrawing once Iraq has stabilized makes more sense than withdrawing a year ago when Al Qaeda could claim victory.

Personally, I don't see how the McCain camp can come out with any positive spin on these events. Perhaps Al-Maliki thinks an Obama presidency, while disasterous for us, would be a good thing for him.

Right Wing Nut House has a nice post on what geniuses the Democrats are.

Al-Maliki Approves Obama's Retreat Plan?

Well, sorta. Read this Hot Air post for the analysis.

Saddam Hussein Harbored Terrorists? Say It Ain't So!

Last week, I discussed the New York Times article about the Senate Intelligence Committee's "report" on pre-war intelligence.

At the time, I only focused on the misreading of the report by Jesse Taylor at Pandagon, where he claimed the report proved he was "so fucking right." I sent through a few comments trying to point out to the pinheads at Pandagon that the report didn't exactly say what they were saying it did. Oh, sure, the story tried to minimize the partisanship of the report and that there were many people of all political persuasions who considered Saddam Hussein to be enough of a threat that getting rid of him was a good idea. Amusingly, however, MikeEss stepped in it when he said:

Let me guess: You still believe the crap about Hussein secretly supporting al Qaeda, right? Well I guess you and Richard “Big Dick” Cheney can’t be wrong...despite having no evidence in your favor...

After being accused of not having read the story by Jesse Taylor, it's rather amusing that MikeEss obviously didn't read the report:

Statements that Iraq provided safe haven for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other al Qaeda-related terrorist members were substantiated by the intelligence assessments.

Intelligence assessments noted Zarqawi's presence in Iraq and his ability to travel and operate within the country. The intelligence community generally believed that Iraqi intelligence must have known about, and therefore at least tolerated, Zarqawi's presence in the country...

Postwar information supports prewar assessments and statements that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was in Baghdad and that al Qaeda was present in northern Iraq.

Moonbats hate admitting that Saddam Hussein allowed al Qaida free and easy movement within Iraq. That's why they'll lie if it suits them. Or not read.

Partisan Reports and Misreading Them

Interesting reading this and then this.

The former is a New York Times article on the highly partisan (all Democrats approved, only 2 Republicans approved) Senate report which--no surprise here--endorses the Democrat talking points on the war in Iraq.

The 170-page report accuses Mr. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other top officials of repeatedly overstating the Iraqi threat in the emotional aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. Its findings were endorsed by all eight committee Democrats and two Republicans, Senators Olympia Snowe of Maine and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska.

FYI: Snowe has a 28% Conservative Union rating for 2007; Hagel has a 79%. Just sayin'.

The second story is by the intellegentsia at Pandagon, who must not have read the rest of the NYT piece where it stated:

The report on the prewar statements about Iraq found that on some key issues — most notably Iraq’s purported nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs — the public statements from Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and other senior officials were generally “substantiated” by the best estimates at the time from American intelligence agencies. But the report found that the administration officials’ statements usually did not reflect the intelligences agencies’ uncertainties about the evidence or disputes among them.

Maybe all these brilliant writers never took debate, but usually, when one is making an argument, one emphasizes facts that help your argument and downplay points that don't help it. Using the NYT system, when running for re-election in 1996, Bill Clinton should have spent as much time discussing, say, his Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, failure of his attempted takeover of the health care industry, and scandals involving the White House travel office and misuse of FBI files as his accomplishments as president.

Side note: notice the NYT's use of quotation marks around "substantiated," a technique used by supposedly "objective" journalists to inject their opinions into news stories. If I use quotation marks around "reporters," it questions whether they are "reporters," right?

The Pandagon post badly mangles the NYT story, using it as a jumping off point to complain that instead of invading Iraq and taking out Saddam Hussein--a ruthless dictator who had tried to have a U.S. president assassinated--we should have taken out Robert Mugabe--a ruthless dictator who hasn't tried to have a U.S. president assassinated. Or rather, the poster says he doesn't want us to take out Mugabe...or something.

This isn’t to say that a military invasion of Zimbabwe should have been tossed on the pile - exactly the opposite. But it is to say that the gross abuse of the world’s trust might have been ameliorated, ever so slightly, had Bush actually attempted to obscure the massive fuckup he was about to embark on by engaging other spots around the world where the direct intervention of an American president with what was, at that time, large-scale support and sympathy could have truly done some good.

This sounds, to me, like, "After 9/11, when the world was united in sympathy with us, we should have used that in some completely unrelated corner of the world where people were not, in fact, trying to kill us."

I'm not sure that I buy the logic of squandering the post-9/11 good will on the perennial problems in Africa, particularly since--using good liberal logic--there was no causal link between African totalitarian dictators and Islamic extremists flying airplanes into American buildings. Even if you buy the argument that Saddam Hussein wasn't involved in 9/11 (the causal link), he was most certainly problematic for the U.S. with regards to Middle Eastern stability and support for American enemies. But then, the post didn't seem to be long on logic in the first place.

About That War We're Losing...

Deaths in Iraq Plunge in May.

U.S. military deaths plunged in May to the lowest monthly level in more than four years and civilian casualties were down sharply, too, as Iraqi forces assumed the lead in offensives in three cities and a truce with Shiite extremists took hold.

Speaking of Echo Chambers

The AP had a story yesterday on a "nonprofit" (read: George Soros-backed) organization which produced a "study" (read: propaganda and smear attack) supposedly showing that the Bush administration lied hundreds of times about the Iraq war.

As Captain Ed points out, there's nothing new in this "study," and it includes some famously debunked (yes, TT, debunked) allegations such as the "16 words" brouhaha.

Let's boil this down. An organization funded by known political activists puts up a website with shopworn quotes taken mostly out of context and misrepresented -- and this somehow qualifies as news?

Must be a slow news day.

As Jules Crittenden writes,

More to the point, do these august wanktanks have nothing better to do? Somebody tell them it’s over. Saddam Hussein will never have (any more) WMD or (any more) meaningful ties with al-Qaeda.

I suspect the point isn't to bring up anything new (how could they?) but to try to tie President Bush to the Republican presidential candidates by bringing up these tired old allegations which still have a hypnotic effect on the moonbats. Just wait for Hillary and Obama to discuss it.

Smearing Soldiers

Yesterday, I read this Iowa Liberal post and asked the question, "How many thousands of veterans are there?" The typical firestorm of name-calling and invectives followed, including Jeromy Brown sneering, "Don’t you wish Sharon would just make her point?"

In fact, Jeromy did get the point without me having to say anything more than ask the one question (I love when liberals go mad because you ask them a common sense question). The post essentially mocked any conservative questioning the methodology involved in a story suggesting our soldiers, like in the movies, come back from war to rape, pillage, and kill here at home. Alas, as my question implied, the truth isn't nearly as grim as liberals would have us believe.

Fortunately, I didn't need to go do the legwork to debunk the New York Times article myself. Col. Ralph Peters did it for me.

The Times did get one basic fact right: Returning vets committed or are charged with 121 murders in the United States since our current wars began.

Had the Times' "journalists" and editors bothered to put those figures in context - which they carefully avoided doing - they would've found that the murder rate that leaves them so aghast means that our vets are five times less likely to commit a murder than their demographic peers...

A very conservative estimate of how many different service members have passed through Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait since 2003 is 350,000 (and no, that's not double-counting those with repeated tours of duty).

Now consider the Justice Department's numbers for murders committed by all Americans aged 18 to 34 - the key group for our men and women in uniform. To match the homicide rate of their peers, our troops would've had to come home and commit about 150 murders a year, for a total of 700 to 750 murders between 2003 and the end of 2007.

In other words, the Times unwittingly makes the case that military service reduces the likelihood of a young man or woman committing a murder by 80 percent.

Now, of course, the snarky post at Iowa Liberal wasn't really about the 121 murders committed by veterans. Rather, it was pitying our servicemen and women for having to go fight in nasty wars. As one commenter said,

Sharon, if just ONE veteran has these issues, isn’t that enough, considering what we’ve asked them to sacrifice? Or is it simply collateral damage, acceptable because of the big picture?

The truth is, these types of commenters (including one who claims to be a health care professional and evidently sees some horrifically large percentage of veterans and their families living with hellish levels of violence) don't display any actual respect for active duty military personnel. Rather than supporting the mission that these volunteer military personnel signed up for, they want to "bring the troops home," which isn't really because the troops want this but because they are liberals who oppose the war. In other words, this is just one more political argument to be debated.

Like the original New York Times article, the post (and its comments) has little substance and certainly none of the "compassion" liberals claim to embrace.

Fabricated Stories from Iraq? It's Not Our Fault Our Reporters Are Unreliable!

That's the gist of Franklin Foer's explanation of the Scott Beauchamp affair.

Protein Wisdom has a nice analysis.

It's Fun Watching Liberals in a Snit

Echidne of the Snakes got her panties in a wad (yes, Echidne, that word choice was intentional. Now go make a whole post on how misogynist it is) because I pointed out that the way she gives thanks on Thanksgiving is by giving a "thoughtful" (some would say "puckered") view of life which included blasting multiple groups with which she disagrees. So exemplifies liberal "thanksgiving."

Judging from her comments, what bothered her most was that I had the audacity to criticize her at my own blog. The horror! It's not like that sort of thing doesn't happen all the time when lefty blogs have a bone to pick with me. But revealingly, she was most upset that I said I wouldn't tolerate "twisting my arguments" in my comments. Now, in classic style, challenging her arguments is twisting them.

On a recent thread, one concerning how badly women are faring in Iraq, she stated,

I was opposed to the Iraq invasion for many reasons, and especially for the reasons of avoiding unnecessary blood-letting(.)

My response was

So, the blood-letting under Saddam Hussein was necessary?

According to Echidne this was "twisting her argument." As I tried to explain, there was no twisting involved; we had a ruthless dictator who gassed his own people, invaded his neighbors, supported terrorists (by paying their families), and attempted to have the POTUS assassinated as head of state in Iraq. If there were ever "unnecessary blood-letting," I would say that qualified and that, by comparison, the pain of war was more understandable (if not "necessary").

Echidne has gone on to set up a few strawman arguments to support the contention that I was "twisting" her argument as opposed to challenging her assumption, but the point is the same. What is "unnecessary blood-letting" and who decides? Must one make a list of "World's Most Ruthless Dictators" and cross each off the list in order before one can consider action anywhere?

What I mainly noticed was that Echidne avoided my original question: was the blood-letting under Saddam necessary?

Archbishop: U.S. "Worst" Imperialist

Sometimes, you want to tell the clergy--politely--to spend its time dealing with some of its more pressing problems as opposed to pontificating on things it obviously doesn't understand and cannot control.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has said that the United States wields its power in a way that is worse than Britain during its imperial heyday.

Really? Worse than the way Britain treated its American colonies, for example? Worse than the abuses which led directly to our third amendment or the Boston Tea Party?

Oh, the Archbishop wasn't talking about the way the British treated us. He was talking about India.

He contrasted it unfavourably with how the British Empire governed India. “It is one thing to take over a territory and then pour energy and resources into administering it and normalising it. Rightly or wrongly, that’s what the British Empire did — in India, for example.

“It is another thing to go in on the assumption that a quick burst of violent action will somehow clear the decks and that you can move on and other people will put it back together — Iraq, for example.”

Oddly enough, I don't recall President Bush ever suggesting that we would use "a quick burst of violent action" and then "move on." I hardly think the trillions we've spent in rebuilding Iraqi infrastructure can be accurately characterized as "moving on" and letting "other people" put the country back together again.

Oddly enough, if the Archbishop had spent his time dealing with the impending split in his own church, he might not stand accused of waiting for "other people" to put it back together again.

Struggling to Find Bad News

Since things have been going better in Iraq, it's getting harder and harder for the MSM and moonbats on blogs to find bad news to harangue about. Pandagon tries to point out the horrific desertion rates of this war...the worst since 1980!

Nowhere in the Pandagon story does it mention actual desertion rates. It talks about the abandonment rates during the Vietnam War era as being the worst in history at about 5 percent. According to the Pentagon, about 1,500,000 soldiers went AWOL during Vietnam. "Official estimates of the actual number of service members who went AWOL or deserted run between 500,000 (Pentagon) and 550,000 (officials in the Ford Administration)."

So, what are the numbers Pandagon uses as "proof" that soldiers hate this war?

According to the Army, about nine in every 1,000 soldiers deserted in fiscal year 2007, which ended Sept. 30, compared to nearly seven per 1,000 a year earlier. Overall, 4,698 soldiers deserted this year, compared to 3,301 last year.

I'm not a math person, but isn't 1,500,000 a much greater number of deserters (and it doesn't include all the ways a person can desert the army) than 7,999? And even if you add in the totals from the Navy (1,129 for 2007), the Air Force (56--yes, 56), and the Marines (744 for 2004), it doesn't come anywhere close to 1.5 million.

I guess it's hard to make the case that soldiers hate the war when, whell, the statistics don't even back you up.

Cross-posted at Common Sense Political Thought.

NIckNews Is Brainwashing Your Kids

Army Wife Toddler Mom has the scoop on the Nick News show designed to teach your children how to protest and spit on your values.

The show, hosted by Linda Ellerbee, contained four segments, each about children displaying that great liberal art of protesting.

In one segment, the children protest a standardized test required for high school graduation. "I can pass the test," says one girl earnestly, "but many others can't. It's not fair they can't graduate." I'm surprised no one pointed out to her that if students can't pass tests focusing on basic skills, they probably shouldn't be getting a diploma anyway. Unless, of course, the diploma isn't worth the paper its written on.

The third segment is about a boy protesting elephants in circuses. He complains vociferously about the abuse elephants face while being trained to stand on their hind legs, lift their trunks, etc. "If more people knew how the elephants were treated, they wouldn't want to support the circus," he said, looking into the camera with big doe eyes. Um, no. They might request more humane treatment of the elephants, but most people love looking at elephants at the zoo and the circus. That's why they pay to see them.

The most shocking segments, though, are the second and fourth in the show. In the second segment, a boy from Berkeley (where else?) is part of The World Can't Wait, a communist group from the old school, which talks about violent overthrow of the "bourgeois state." The boy dresses up in standard protester garb--orange jumpsuit with black hood--then proceeds to lecture adults on how American soldiers are "torturing people" and that we should "impeach Bush." If I saw this pint-sized protester, I'd tell him he'd be better off reading some history (he could start with Paul Tibbets) to understand what actual torture is and why he's being a brat to spout off about impeaching the president.

The fourth segment was about an Atlanta girl who created an anti-America website, complete with video of maimed or dead children with Jesus Loves Me playing in the background. "I like to go on the web and find images of children to put on my site," she said blithely. I kept waiting for the "reporter" to ask her if she knew what "propaganda" meant, as in "our enemies love to use children as human shields and propaganda."

Fortunately, this show airs at a time my children wouldn't be watching it, but it doesn't make me happy about Nickelodeon, a staple of children's entertainment. My question for Nickelodeon is this: aren't there any children protesting for conservative causes? It might seem a bit more balanced if you bothered having segments that showed students, say, protesting teachers bashing our soldiers, along with the anti-circus segment. Just sayin'.

The Real G.I. Joe

This column by Vin Suprynowicz should make everyone stop and think about what the left has done to distort American courage and bravery.

Hollywood now proposes that in a new live-action movie based on the G.I. Joe toy line, Joe's -- well, "G.I." -- identity needs to be replaced by membership in an "international force based in Brussels." The IGN Entertainment news site reports Paramount is considering replacing our "real American hero" with "Action Man," member of an "international operations team."

Paramount will simply turn Joe's name into an acronym.

The show biz newspaper Variety reports: "G.I. Joe is now a Brussels-based outfit that stands for Global Integrated Joint Operating Entity, an international co-ed force of operatives who use hi-tech equipment to battle Cobra, an evil organization headed by a double-crossing Scottish arms dealer."

I remember when my brother got a G.I. Joe for Christmas one year. It was at the height of the Vietnam War, hardly a terrific time for the American soldier. But as the son of a patriot, my brother knew that his "toy" was more than just that. And he was right.

Suprynowicz tells us the story of the real G.I. Joe.

On Nov. 15, 2003, an 85-year-old retired Marine Corps colonel died of congestive heart failure at his home in La Quinta, Calif., southeast of Palm Springs. He was a combat veteran of World War II. His name was Mitchell Paige.

It's hard today to envision -- or, for the dwindling few, to remember -- what the world looked like on Oct. 25, 1942 -- 65 years ago.

The U.S. Navy was not the most powerful fighting force in the Pacific. Not by a long shot. So the Navy basically dumped a few thousand lonely American Marines on the beach at Guadalcanal and high-tailed it out of there...

On Guadalcanal, the Marines struggled to complete an airfield that could threaten the Japanese route to Australia. Admiral Yamamoto knew how dangerous that was. Before long, relentless Japanese counterattacks had driven the supporting U.S. Navy from inshore waters. The Marines were on their own.

As Platoon Sgt. Mitchell Paige and his 33 riflemen set about carefully emplacing their four water-cooled .30-caliber Brownings on that hillside, 65 years ago this week -- manning their section of the thin khaki line that was expected to defend Henderson Field against the assault of the night of Oct. 25, 1942 -- it's unlikely anyone thought they were about to provide the definitive answer to that most desperate of questions: How many able-bodied U.S. Marines does it take to hold a hill against 2,000 armed and motivated attackers?

But by the time the night was over, "The 29th (Japanese) Infantry Regiment has lost 553 killed or missing and 479 wounded among its 2,554 men," historian Lippman reports. "The 16th (Japanese) Regiment's losses are uncounted, but the 164th's burial parties handled 975 Japanese bodies. ... The American estimate of 2,200 Japanese dead is probably too low."

You've already figured out where the Japanese focused their attack, haven't you? Among the 90 American dead and seriously wounded that night were all the men in Mitchell Paige's platoon. Every one. As the night of endless attacks wore on, Paige moved up and down his line, pulling his dead and wounded comrades back into their foxholes and firing a few bursts from each of the four Brownings in turn, convincing the Japanese forces down the hill that the positions were still manned.

The citation for Paige's Medal of Honor picks up the tale: "When the enemy broke through the line directly in front of his position, P/Sgt. Paige, commanding a machine gun section with fearless determination, continued to direct the fire of his gunners until all his men were either killed or wounded. Alone, against the deadly hail of Japanese shells, he fought with his gun and when it was destroyed, took over another, moving from gun to gun, never ceasing his withering fire."

In the end, Sgt. Paige picked up the last of the 40-pound, belt-fed Brownings and did something for which the weapon was never designed. Sgt. Paige walked down the hill toward the place where he could hear the last Japanese survivors rallying to move around his flank, the belt-fed gun cradled under his arm, firing as he went.

Coming up at dawn, battalion executive officer Major Odell M. Conoley was the first to discover how many able-bodied United States Marines it takes to hold a hill against two regiments of motivated, combat-hardened infantrymen who have never known defeat.

On a hill where the bodies were piled like cordwood, Mitchell Paige alone sat upright behind his 30-caliber Browning, waiting to see what the dawn would bring.

The hill had held, because on the hill remained the minimum number of able-bodied United States Marines necessary to hold the position.

And that's where the unstoppable wave of Japanese conquest finally crested, broke, and began to recede. On an unnamed jungle ridge on an insignificant island no one ever heard of, called Guadalcanal.

When the Hasbro Toy Co. called some years back, asking permission to put the retired colonel's face on some kid's doll, Mitchell Paige thought they must be joking.

But they weren't. That's his mug, on the little Marine they call "G.I. Joe." At least, it has been up till now.

Mitchell Paige's only condition? That G.I. Joe must always remain a United States Marine.

Judging from the spate of anti-American war movies coming out right now, I can imagine the way Paige's sacrifice, honor, bravery, and dedication would be played out. He would be a murderer, a torturer, or something else. There would be a focus on civilian casualties or the suffering of Japanese families when their men were killed by our ruthless, vicious fighters. Paige's heroics would become another Haditha or something else.

Fortunately, Paige's bravery was honored by making the G.I. Joe in his image. It's a pity that there are so many Americans who live so comfortably with their smug superiority to the fighting men and women who allow them to whine incessantly about wartime inconveniences. Those people forget that during wars, maybe you shouldn't be talking to a jihadi overseas or claiming your freedoms are being taken away. Maybe, instead of focusing on the dead, they could focus on the living. But then, they wouldn't be able to bash America so much, would they?

Selective Coverage

When a soldier receives the Medal of Honor, it is a really big deal. I mean, a really big deal. Only two have been given during the war in Iraq, both posthumously, and there are only 109 living recipients.

You'd think such an award would be worthy of coverage by the "nation's newspaper", the New York Times, wouldn't you?

You'd be wrong.

The New York Times carried not a whisper of news yesterday about the bestowal of the Medal of Honor to Navy Lt. Michael Murphy of Patchogue - the first time the honor has been given for action in Afghanistan...

A Times spokeswoman said yesterday afternoon that the paper does plan to run something about the award - though she didn't say exactly what.

President Bush will present the medal to Murphy's parents at a White House ceremony Oct. 22.

This is the same newspaper which ran the General "Betray Us" ad and has no problem finding space for Frank Rich's ridiculous columns. But coverage of honors bestowed on our soldiers? I guess there's just no room for that.

It wasn't the first time the Times gave short shrift to such a story. The paper ran just one paragraph about the posthumous awarding of the Medal of Honor to Cpl. Jason Dunham, a U.S. Marine from upstate killed in Iraq in 2004. That paragraph ran in January in the middle of a story about congressional opposition to Bush's Iraq war plans.

But remember: don't question their patriotism. Well, I won't. I do question their priorities, though.

Impeach Bush? Are You Kidding Me?!

The nutroots are at it again: they are screaming for impeachment procedures against President Bush because of a not so good translation of a conversation between the President and Spanish President José María Aznar.

The transcript, it seems to me, provides a whole rack of smoking guns that could be a basis for impeaching George W. Bush. The transcript shows that Bush consciously intended to go to war without a United Nations Security Council resolution. The United Nations Charter, to which the United States is a treaty signatory (so that it has the force of American law), forbids any nation to launch an aggressive war on another country. The only two legal mechanisms for war are either that it came in response to a direct attack or that the attacker gained a UNSC authorization. The transcript shows Bush actively plotting to sidestep the UNSC if he could not, gangster-like, threaten its members into compliance.

Well, not really. Sister Toldjah has a very nice post shooting down (so to speak) Cole's arguments this time around for impeachment. She quotes Barcepundit's Jose Guardia who explains why the impeachment cry is both so sad and so lame.

For one thing, there's ample evidence in the transcript that President Bush was certain Saddam Hussein either had WMDs or was actively seeking them. This flies in the face of the BDS people who have claimed for years that BUSH LIED.

But more importantly--and not quoted by Cole--is a part of the exchange where President Bush says he doesn't want to go to war.

At one point Bush explicitly says: “I don’t want war. I know what wars are like. I know the death and destruction they bring. I am the one who has to comfort the mothers and wifes of the dead. Of course, for us [a diplomatic solution] would be the best one. Also, it would save 50 billion dollars.”

I don't expect the Impeachment Now! crowd to give up, even though they won't get what they are after. But even a botched transcript like this, fully intended to slime the President, does little but support his positions on Iraq and the decision to go to war.