Obama's Impeccable Judgement

Barack Hussein Obama argued that his lack of experience was a non-issue in his run for the presidency because he possessed such a superior judgment. Well, once again, he has provided us with an opportunity to evaluate his judgment.

Joe Biden has the special distinction of having an unbroken streak of errors when it comes to Iraq. So, let's put him in charge of running our relations with Iraq.

CNN Pronounces BS Upon Joe Biden

So Joe Biden's a liar. That's just Joe being Joe.

But, of course, the media focus is on Sarah Palin's clothes. Not anything important like the Democrats' plans for, "more than $4 trillion in new spending, have a big tax increase, and defund our military — while certain to face international challenges where “it’s not gonna be apparent that we’re right.”"

McCain Reacts To Obama's Illegal Diplomatic Meddling

Earlier it was reported that Barack Hussein Obama had interfered with diplomatic negotiations between the United States and Iraq to serve his own political ambitions.

After waiting all day, the McCain Campaign finally reacted.

At this point, it is not yet clear what official American negotiations Senator Obama tried to undermine with Iraqi leaders, but the possibility of such actions is unprecedented. It should be concerning to all that he reportedly urged that the democratically-elected Iraqi government listen to him rather than the US administration in power. If news reports are accurate, this is an egregious act of political interference by a presidential candidate seeking political advantage overseas. Senator Obama needs to reveal what he said to Iraq's Foreign Minister during their closed door meeting. The charge that he sought to delay the withdrawal of Americans from Iraq raises serious questions about Senator Obama's judgment and it demands an explanation.

A Grim Milestone For The New York Times

The left's last hope for US failure in Iraq has become as irrelevant in that country as Jesse Jackson in this one.

The militia that was once the biggest defender of poor Shiites in Iraq, the Mahdi Army, has been profoundly weakened in a number of neighborhoods across Baghdad, in an important, if tentative, milestone for stability in Iraq.

It is a remarkable change from years past, when the militia, led by the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr, controlled a broad swath of Baghdad, including local governments and police forces. But its use of extortion and violence began alienating much of the Shiite population to the point that many quietly supported American military sweeps against the group.

Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki struck another blow this spring, when he led a military operation against it in Baghdad and in several southern cities.

It has come to this. Not even the New York Times can deny the truth anymore.

And here's a line that Obama could learn from, if he were capable of admitting that there is anything he doesn't already know.

The changes are not irreversible. The security gains are in the hands of unseasoned Iraqi soldiers at checkpoints spread throughout Baghdad’s neighborhoods. And local government officials have barely begun to take hold of service distribution networks, potentially leaving a window for the militia to reassert itself.

The militia’s roots are still in the ground, Abu Amjad said, and “given any chance, they will grow again.”

Associated Press: We Won!

I wonder if it took so long for the AP to report this because they were waiting for Jamil Hussein to break the news to them.

The United States is now winning the war that two years ago seemed lost.

Limited, sometimes sharp fighting and periodic terrorist bombings in Iraq are likely to continue, possibly for years. But the Iraqi government and the U.S. now are able to shift focus from mainly combat to mainly building the fragile beginnings of peace — a transition that many found almost unthinkable as recently as one year ago.

Despite the occasional bursts of violence, Iraq has reached the point where the insurgents, who once controlled whole cities, no longer have the clout to threaten the viability of the central government.

That does not mean the war has ended or that U.S. troops have no role in Iraq. It means the combat phase finally is ending, years past the time when President Bush optimistically declared it had. The new phase focuses on training the Iraqi army and police, restraining the flow of illicit weaponry from Iran, supporting closer links between Baghdad and local governments, pushing the integration of former insurgents into legitimate government jobs and assisting in rebuilding the economy.

They certainly had no difficulty rushing false stories about finding 20 beheaded bodies or Sunnis being burned alive within view of approving Iraqi soldiers.

News Not Fit To Print

Considering how much opinion finds its way onto the front page, perhaps a little room should be made for news on the opinion page. There have been a number of interesting stories in these last few weeks that have not seen the prominence they deserve. In fact some have been totally ignored.

For example, you probably heard that several hostages were rescued from the so-called Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC) guerillas in Columbia. These cocaine smuggling terrorists have made life miserable for Columbians for years. You might also have read someplace that the FARC has suffered a number of other devastating defeats recently.

But, unless you read the Wall Street Journal, you probably have not heard that a laptop computer was recently captured and that it contained a wealth of information about the FARC and its allies. Along with revelations about FARC’s alliances with Venezuela and Ecuador, we learned that the Democratic Party was conducting back channel negotiations with the FARC.

More recent information has come to light that Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco, where else?) had a direct hand in these negotiations and had personally designated Representative James McGovern (D-Massachusetts) to represent her to the terrorists. Among the issues discussed was the recently negotiated Columbia Free Trade Agreement. The terrorists are against it. Nancy Pelosi exercised unprecedented powers to stall the treaty in the House. Coincidence?

If you doubt the authenticity of the intelligence, it should be noted that Columbia allowed Europe’s Interpol to examine the hard drive and Interpol concluded that the evidence was authentic and that the hard drive had not been tampered with.

A few years ago, the front pages were covered with the Valerie Plame affair. Valerie Plame was a CIA desk jockey who’s “cover” was blown after her husband, the execrable Joe Wilson had written a New York Times Op-Ed piece in which he claimed to have disproven President Bush’s claim that Iraq had sought to purchase high grade uranium ore from Niger. The mainstream press dutifully repeated Joe Wilson’s accusation that Karl Rove had exposed his wife and ruined her career.

Well, it turned out that Joe Wilson’s Op-Ed was directly contradicted by the report that Joe Wilson had submitted to the Bush Administration. The Iraqi trade minister had indeed visited Niger to promote trade between the two countries. And considering that uranium ore is Niger’s only export, the Niger government interpreted the visit as an attempt to purchase the raw materials for a nuclear bomb.

This is old, if not widely reported news. Even less widely reported was the recent revelation that Valerie Plame shares her husband’s reverence for the truth. When asked why the Bush Administration would have hired a flaming lefty like Wilson for such an assignment, the answer given was that, he had been recommended by his wife. She vehemently denied that publicly and under oath. A recently declassified document shows that indeed, Joe Wilson was hired after his wife’s recommendation.

You’d think that the truth would deserve as much prominence in the mainstream news as the original lies received. You’d think. But you’d be wrong.

Early last month, the New York Times briefly noted that a major military operation was getting underway in Iraq. In fact, what was happening was an Iraqi-led operation to snuff out the last remaining organized remnants of Al Qaida in Iraq. An estimated 12,000 terrorists had been surrounded and ever since their number was being ground down. The final pocket of about a thousand was essentially wiped out. Iraqi president Maliki declared the war essentially over. I didn’t learn this from reading American newspapers or watching American television news. I learned it reading the Times of London online edition.

At last check, the US had only suffered one combat death this month.
So, how did the mainstream media go about putting a negative spin on this grim milestone? They noted that combat deaths in Afghanistan had surpassed Iraqi combat deaths.

I think that I am far more likely to read about Britney Spears being seen again in public sans underwear than good news from Iraq.

Finally, the latest underreported story was the revelation that the United States has spirited 550 tons of purified uranium ore out of Iraq. Now, what would 550 tons of uranium ore be doing in Iraq? As everyone surely knows, Saddam Hussein had no plans to develop nuclear weapons. And so, he would have had no use for uranium. Surely, somebody simply misplaced it. It was probably Niger.

Obama: For it, Against it, For it, Against it........

Hotair notes that Obama has now spun past every point on the compass on multiple issues. There's something there for everyone.

And I have no doubt that Keith Olbermann has been right there with him every step of the way.

How Long Will Obama Continue To Deny Success?

If even the Washington Post gets it, will the New York Times be next? The Times has managed to concede that the economy is a lot better than they had hoped for.

HERE'S BEEN a relative lull in news coverage and debate about Iraq in recent weeks -- which is odd, because May could turn out to have been one of the most important months of the war. While Washington's attention has been fixed elsewhere, military analysts have watched with astonishment as the Iraqi government and army have gained control for the first time of the port city of Basra and the sprawling Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, routing the Shiite militias that have ruled them for years and sending key militants scurrying to Iran. At the same time, Iraqi and U.S. forces have pushed forward with a long-promised offensive in Mosul, the last urban refuge of al-Qaeda. So many of its leaders have now been captured or killed that U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, renowned for his cautious assessments, said that the terrorists have "never been closer to defeat than they are now."

I find it odd when a mainstream media outlet like the Washington Post considers it odd that there has been a lull in news coverage of Iraq. I mean, doesn't the Washington Post control its own content? If the Post wanted news from Iraq on its pages, then why doesn't it just publish it?

Of course, it could just be that the MSM doesn't want to report good news from Iraq until after the election.

"I hope the Americans stay here for a long, long time"

I think that a lot more Iraqis feel this way than John Murtha, Barack Obama, Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi would ever admit.

"Al-Qaeda are the worst criminals on earth," he said standing before large posters of his slain relatives displayed among others killed by Al-Qaeda at a memorial set up at the local community centre.

"I hope they never come back. We now just want to farm in peace. I hope the Americans stay here for a long, long time," he said.

And,

"When Al-Qaeda was here it was impossible to farm," said the jolly-faced farmer from under an orange cap while taking time out from his labours to visit his cousin's newly-reopened grocery store on a dusty rural road.

"They cut the power so we couldn't pump water," said Wadi. "We couldn't buy fuel. They would shoot at anyone they saw in the fields. They kidnapped and murdered many people. They destroyed life here."

The last crops he planted -- in 2005 -- withered and died because he couldn't irrigate them after Al-Qaeda arrived in force.

In the next two years he and his family of seven managed to survive only thanks to their dairy herd and by stealthily smuggling milk off to markets in Baghdad under the noses of the jihadists.

"Unlike most of the other people in Arab Jubur, we were never attacked by Al-Qaeda. We kept a very low profile," said Wadi, a giant of a man whose profile is anything but low. "We all survived, God be praised."

Not as fortunate was Mohammed Ali Jassim al-Juburi, 54, a former sergeant in the army of ousted dictator Saddam Hussein who returned to his farmlands in Arab Jubur after losing his post in the aftermath of the US invasion in 2003.

Two of his brothers were killed by Al-Qaeda jihadists in a drive-by shooting while his son was among 12 youths killed in an ambush in December.

"After they killed them they dragged their bodies behind vehicles through the streets, proclaiming them to be spies," said Juburi. "My son's body was mutilated."

Seal The Deal In Iraq - With Another Surge

Michael Yon argues that if the US Senate would like to bring the troops home sooner, they ought to support a troop surge reinforcement.

The Iraqi central government is unsatisfactory at best. But the grass-roots political progress of the past year has been extraordinary – and is directly measurable in the drop in casualties.

This leads us to the most out-of-date aspect of the Senate debate: the argument about the pace of troop withdrawals. Precisely because we have made so much political progress in the past year, rather than talking about force reduction, Congress should be figuring ways and means to increase troop levels. For all our successes, we still do not have enough troops. This makes the fight longer and more lethal for the troops who are fighting. To give one example, I just returned this week from Nineveh province, where I have spent probably eight months between 2005 to 2008, and it is clear that we remain stretched very thin from the Syrian border and through Mosul. Vast swaths of Nineveh are patrolled mostly by occasional overflights.

We know now that we can pull off a successful counterinsurgency in Iraq. We know that we are working with an increasingly willing citizenry. But counterinsurgency, like community policing, requires lots of boots on the ground. You can't do it from inside a jet or a tank.

Over the past 15 months, we have proved that we can win this war. We stand now at the moment of truth. Victory – and a democracy in the Arab world – is within our grasp. But it could yet slip away if our leaders remain transfixed by the war we almost lost, rather than focusing on the war we are winning today.

Here's my favorite part:

Iraqis came to respect American soldiers as warriors who would protect them from terror gangs. But Iraqis also discovered that these great warriors are even happier helping rebuild a clinic, school or a neighborhood. They learned that the American soldier is not only the most dangerous enemy in the world, but one of the best friends a neighborhood can have.

And whose heart would not be warmed by this.

The change goes far beyond the statistical decline in casualties or incidents of violence. A young Iraqi translator, wounded in battle and fearing death, asked an American commander to bury his heart in America. Iraqi special forces units took to the streets to track down terrorists who killed American soldiers. The U.S. military is the most respected institution in Iraq, and many Iraqi boys dream of becoming American soldiers. Yes, young Iraqi boys know about "GoArmy.com."

Well, I guess that I can answer my own question there. Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Jay Rockefeller would not find that heartwarming. Barack Obama probably belongs on that list as well

"We will embarrass all of those who have rushed to write our obituary"

Iraq's national identity is alive and growing.

Iraq, freed from a ruthless dictatorship, has chosen plurality, democracy and federalism as a system of government. It is struggling to implement them against a formidable set of internal and external challenges. The leaders of the new Iraq must further demonstrate resolve to defend their choices and rise above parochial interests.

Having intervened and committed itself so deeply, the U.S. is debating the level and cost of its engagement. I submit that it cannot afford to lose this fight to its enemies. The destinies of the U.S. and Iraq have become intertwined and their national interests very closely linked.

It seems that only the Democrats and Al Qaida are eager for an unconditional US failure in Iraq.

Barack's Madrid Precedent: Unconditional Surrender To Terrorism

"[W]hat kind of soldier likes it when his own politicians deal him a defeat?"

It may well be that Barack's surrender pledge is as authentic as his promise to abrogate on NAFTA.

Obama may be spinning us -- you know, old-time campaign talk from the man promising change? Yes, his key foreign policy adviser Samantha Power has resigned (she called Hillary "a monster"), but before Power quit she suggested to the BBC's Stephen Sackur on March 6 that Obama's retreat pledge was iffy. "You can't make a commitment in March 2008 about what circumstances will be like in January of 2009," Power said. "He will, of course, not rely on some plan that he's crafted as a presidential candidate or a U.S. senator."

It appears Obama is pandering to left-wing voters steeped in defeatism, and if elected president, come January 2009, he may suddenly discover the Iraq Precedent is a damn sight better than any other option.

Obama's "Evolving" Position on Iraq

From today's Boston Globe.

In July of 2004, the day after his speech at the Democratic convention catapulted him into the national spotlight, Barack Obama told a group of reporters in Boston that the United States had an "absolute obligation" to remain in Iraq long enough to make it a success.

"The failure of the Iraqi state would be a disaster," he said at a lunch sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor, according to an audiotape of the session. "It would dishonor the 900-plus men and women who have already died. . . . It would be a betrayal of the promise that we made to the Iraqi people, and it would be hugely destabilizing from a national security perspective."

So, Obama was "right all along?"

Well, he can be forgiven. He wasn't a "new kind of politician" then and Code Pink didn't own the party yet.

The News From Iraq Is Good, But......

The New York Times editorial page admits that there's good news coming out of Iraq. But, refuses to believe it.

Good news is rare in Iraq. But after months of bitter feuding, Iraq’s Parliament has finally approved a budget, outlined the scope of provincial powers, set an Oct. 1 date for provincial elections and voted a general amnesty for detainees.

All these steps are essential for national conciliation. As always in Iraq, it is best to read the fine print. Final details of the legislation aren’t known. The country’s three-member presidency council must still sign off. And then the laws have to be implemented.

The real truth is not that "good news is rare in Iraq." What's rare is that good news is reported in the New York Times.

Hillary's Willing Suspension Of Disbelief

Hillary's Bizarro World.

** February 3, 2008- Hillary Clinton: "Debaathification is tied up in their parliament because there is such a reaction to it by so many of the Shiite factions."

** February 3, 2008- The Baath Law (the debaathification law) in Iraq went into effect today.

And, she can control her husband too.