We Lost

Time to pack up and go home. It's now official: the U.S. military has lost the war in Iraq. Says who? Why, Harry Reid of course. I'm sure this doesn't embolden our enemies at all.

What's that phrase again? "Aid and comfort"...

Update: Watching a History Channel special called Shootout again tonight about the Tet Offensive in Vietnam in 1968 reminds me that wars are not always won by men or guns, but public opinion and the media. For a democratically elected representative to claim we have "lost" is indeed an attempt, whether conscious or not, to cause us to loose the war. Is such a statement patriotic or treasonous?

Update again: Joe Lieberman responds:

This week witnessed horrific terrorist attacks by Islamist extremists in Iraq, killing hundreds of innocent civilians and leading Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to declare that the war is 'lost.'

With all due respect, I strongly disagree. Senator Reid's statement is not based on military facts on the ground in Iraq and does not advance our cause there.

Reid, against his better judgments, falls into a pit of cognitive dissonance:

"In an effort to shift attention from this Administration's failed polities – and I say that in the plural – the President and his allies have repeatedly questioned whether I and my fellow Democrats support our troops," the majority leader told fellow senators. "No one wants us to succeed in Iraq more than the Democrats. We've proven that time and time again since this war started more than four years ago. We take a back seat to no one in supporting our troops, and we will never abandon our troops in a time of war."

No one wants us to succeed more than the Democrats. Except that we already lost. Oh, and we support the troops.

Is there something wrong with this man?

Rosie O'Donnell: idiot, "truther"

Rosie O'Donnell has been an embarrassment to human beings for quite awhile, but her recent antics on The View, as a desperate attempt to get ratings for the show, have trumped any of her past insane remarks.

Let's not forget her mockery of Chinese people, her concerns about the mastermind of 9/11 being "tortured", and her belief that "radical Christianity" is just as dangerous as radical Islam. Now we've moved into the purview of complete nonsense - it turns out that Rosie is a truther.

For those of you who don't know what "truthers" are, they are insane individuals among us that believe the terrorists attacks of 9/11 were a government (a.k.a George W. Bush) orchestrated conspiracy to instill fear, make war, etc. Not only do truthers insult the memories of those who died on 9/11, but they exist in a world where facts and reality are irrelevant. Rosie, on her blog this week, claims that the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 on 9/11 was a government plot. Yes, she apparently was serious.

The best and easiest way to annihilate 9/11 conspiracy theories is to read Popular Mechanics, or simply to watch the History Channel. This particular show describes why WTC7 collapsed on 9/11 hours after the twin towers did. Not only was the building on fire for over 7 hours, it was built as a cantilever over an electricity substation and diesel fuel tanks. After burning for hours, the cantilever structure gave way and the building collapsed. No controlled demolition; no conspiracy; no "truth" that is missing.

The other problem with truthers is that facts and reality are, again, not really important. What's important is that the government is out to get you.

Which brings to light the question that if the government had orchestrated the largest conspiracy of all time, why do they allow people to point it out?

Communism?

I was watching the History Channel tonight and saw Engineering Disasters 18. In it, they described how the Chinese government-controlled coal mines have over 6,000 fatal accidents a year. That means that almost 16 Chinese miners die every day in Chinese mines.

In a case when over 200 miners were killed, the Chinese government payed out only $2 million in restitutions to the families. The Chinese government has decided, because it is cheaper to pay damages to the families of thousands of dead miners rather than make the mines safer, that safety isn't monetarily necessary.

Is this communism? Annihilating the masses to make more money?

Apparently.

The rejection of the press

As I have mentioned numerous times, why is it that the only way to ever really know what has been happening in Iraq is by watching the History Channel?

Recently the History Channel has been promoting and creating a number of shows, in addition to Shootout that describe specific military engagements of the Iraqi war.

It's not enough that the old media sits and hides in the Green Zone in Baghdad, but they actually refuse to do any investigation whatsoever into the triumphs of the American military in Iraq. I know that it's not news unless American soldiers die, but is it too much for the global media to report what is really going on?

The media has not only rejected their coverage of the war, they have literally refused to cover the positives. Is it any surprise that we no longer watch them?

The Democrats are all fired up!

Look out! When the truth is exposed, the Democrats get angry! Here is an email from Tom McMahon, executive director of the DNC. He is all ticked off about an ABC documentary on the Path to 9/11. Why, you may ask? Because it tells the truth - the and truth makes the democrats (and especially Bill Clinton) look bad.

Aside from the usual angry diatribes (e.g. "right-wing conservative writers", "GOP playbook of using terrorism to scare Americans", "slanderous, irresponsible fraud", etc.) Mr. McMahon is ticked about only a few specifics from this documentary:

Richard Clarke -- the counterterrorism czar for the Clinton administration, now himself a consultant to ABC News -- describes a key scene in "The Path to 9/11" as "180 degrees from what happened." In the scene, a CIA field agent places a phone call to get the go ahead to kill Osama Bin Laden, then in his sights, only to have a senior Clinton administration official refuse and hang up the phone. Sandy Berger, President Clinton's National Security Advisor, called the same scene "a total fabrication. It did not happen." And Roger Cressey, a top Bush and Clinton counterterrorism official, said it was "something straight out of Disney and fantasyland. It's factually wrong. And that's shameful."

Strange - because about four years ago I saw a special on the History Channel on the CIA's famed "Bin Laden unit" which was tasked during the Clinton administration to hunt down and kill Bin Laden. Not only did this actually happen - it happened twice. The CIA, with the help of Afghan locals, hunted Bin Laden down twice, and twice - when the call went to the White House - the order was rescinded. This is not fantasy, people - this is absolute fact. One wonders why Tom only gets fired up when ABC airs the truth of counterterrorism under Clinton, and not the History Channel?

And yes, if you were wondering, this fact is reported by the 9/11 Commission Report. And it is only slightly more shameful than George W. Bush's lack of any action whatsoever after the bombing of the USS Cole.

The Democrats don't like it when their nasty secrets are drug out into the fresh air - but it makes this aspect of this special no less true. Is the documentary a political stunt? No - but Tom's attempt to fire up the "masses" is. It's too bad the truth isn't on his side...

Revisionist History Success

It's frightening to me about how successful revisionist history can be. Through "historical" movies and other popular culture sources, people in this world can be let to believe almost anything. From the homicidal dictator of Iran denying the holocaust, to Oliver Stone's creation of the JFK assassination, these historical revisionist are becoming more and more successful in swaying peoples beliefs on topics whose validity are unquestionable. Dwight Eisenhower himself demanded that troops, journalists, and German citizens witness the horror of concentration camps in Nazi Germany, lest anyone disbelieve they ever existed.

This report by the Times shows that Muslims worldwide don't believe that Islamic extremists were to blame for 9/11. Over 50% of Muslims in Western European countries don't believe that Arab terrorists had anything to do with 9/11. Not only is this frightening, it signals the broad distrust among Muslims of the American government, and evidence of a worldwide propaganda machine that is reaching these Muslims and stopping them from seeing the truth.

Oh, I've seen and read a whole bunch of 9/11 conspiracy websites and I've even seen Loose Change. None of these have any real evidence to the contrary to prove 9/11 was anything other than what we have always known it to be: an attack on freedom by Islamic fundamentalist jihadists.

The success of these revisions of history is something we should all fight against, and their success is our failure if we do not speak up.

Also, if anyone would like to toss out some 9/11 conspiracy theories I would love to destroy them. Most of them are so flimsy it's pretty easy to point out their ridiculousness. Watching the History Channel can help, too.

Global Warming Strangeness

Every time there is a report or news story released about "global warming" it appears as front page news with fear-inspiring headlines like: Study Says Earth's Temp at 400-Year High.

Reading through the article, you can see that the National Academy of Sciences was chartered to do this study to see about trends in Earth surface temperatures. I would encourage you to go the the National Academy of Sciences webpage after you read the story, because the article makes a number of mistakes.

The article claims that average Earth surface temperatures have risen 1 degree over the past century. This is untrue, as the report clearly states the true temperature increase amount - .6 degrees.

The article then claims that while natural forces have influenced climate in the past, they "were much less pronounced than the warming due to greenhouse gas." Actually, the report says:

...but it is currently estimated that the temperature variations caused by these forcings were much less pronounced than the warming due to greenhouse gas forcing since the mid 19th century. · Climate model simulations indicate that solar and volcanic forcings together could have produced periods of relative warmth and cold during the preindustrial portion of the last 1,000 years.

In fact, 1991's eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines lowered global temperatures up to .73 degrees - more than the total temperature increase over the entire century!

Ok, let's get back to the point. The article claims that this year is the warmest in the past 400 years. The report also clearly describes what climatologists call the "little ice age" (it's on the History Channel a lot) that started about 400 years ago and is just ending now. So it is obvious that global temperatures are at a 400 year high - because they just came off of a 400 year (natural) slump!

The report goes on the estimate that this year is the warmest in 1,000 or even 2,000 years. This information would be of note, except that the Earth is roughly 4.5 billion years old.

If we use the warmest year in 400 number, that means that scientists are predicting global climate patterns using roughly .0000088% of the worlds climate history. If you assume that this year is the warmest in 2,000 years, then that percentage drops to .000044%.

People also claim, as the report does, that the industrialization starting in the 1850's is when carbon dioxide levels began to rise on the Earth, which rules out the whole previous 4.5 billion years. This would be a valid point, but as I've said before, climatologists use the year 1850 to begin their predictions because we have no measured global climate information from before then. Any idiot can find out that the Industrial Revolution started in the 1790's - not the 1850's.

Not to mention that the current theory of man-caused global warming completely ignores hundreds of past ice ages and warm spells over Earth's history, and claims that .000044% of the Earth's climatological history that has a .6 degree average temperature increase proves that humans are destroying the Earth.

Did you get that?

Update: Uh oh... It seems that it might be a bit to convenient for this study to have reached the conclusion it did. The lead researcher of the study, a Michael E. Mann, has been researching global warming for years based on tree ring and ice core evidence. It seems that this paper, headed by him, conveniently proves all of his former theories about global warming, theories whose research and methodology (which Dr. Mann never released) have been highly criticized. And who says there's no bias in science...?

The Real Iraq War

Why is it that I have repeatedly gotten more and better information about the war in Iraq from the History Channel?

An old special that I just saw today was called Iraq: Insurgency and Counterinsurgency. This special began with a concise and truthful overview of the war in Iraq from beginning to now (a more universal and more critical overview than I have ever seen). The basis of the special was that the US military's initial strategy failed, and the new strategy of training Iraqi security forces has been implemented and is largely successful. Due to this truthful nature, the special was largely positive of our progress in Iraq and pointed to the successful transition of security to the Iraqis themselves.

Why is it that these stories are not reported? Do the hotels in the Green Zone in Baghdad not allow reporters from CNN to see the great successes of the Iraqi military? Why, oh why, do I have to watch the History Channel to get any kind of a clue about how the war is going?

The DU and Revisionist History

A writer at the Democratic Underground tossed up this piece the other day claiming that we should not be comparing Iraq to post-WWII Japan or Germany, and that attempts by this administration to do so can be considered "revisionist history."

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld went even farther at the convention. He told the audience, “Nazi regime remnants…plotted sabotage of factories, power plants, rail lines. They blew up police stations and government buildings. Does this sound familiar?” The only problem with these comparisons is that they’re false. The Congressional Research Service (CRS), which acts as the nonpartisan public policy research office of Congress, notes in a new report comparing the occupation of Iraq with that of Germany and Japan, “Iraq faces an insurgency that deliberately sabotages the economy and reconstruction efforts, whereas there were no resistance movements in either Germany or Japan.”

This is pretty much the premise of this DUer's argument. The first problem with this idea is that the Congressional Research Service is anything but non-partisan. The CRS has fired off more than a few strictly partisan reports attacking the President and his administration. If the reports had been based on fact, it would be one thing - however, they were based on DNC talking points.

Further, post-WWII Germany and Japan were anything but cheery peaceful places. I hate to make points without links to back them up, but I know I'll never find the History Channel special that talks about post-war Europe (I watch the History Channel constantly - so should you!). Anyway, I saw a special that specifically described the conditions in post-war Germany and Japan, war crimes trials, etc. An interesting thing about post-war Germany in particular was the extreme severity in which we ruled the country. We had absolutely no sympathy for the Germans after the war, and although the DU article correctly asserts that no soldiers died in combat after the end of hostilities, many soldiers died at the hand of German saboteurs, accidents, and other training incidents (watch Band of Brothers if you don't believe me).

We did not allow any German citizens to own or carry any weapons whatsoever during our occupation. Any man, woman, or child found with a firearm was executed on site. The History Channel special showed footage of a US Army patrol executing about a dozen teenage Germans who were found with weapons on their person. That is the way the US Army handled post-WWII Germany. Not that that kind of conduct should be employed now in Iraq, but I feel that comparisons between the two in other ways are definitely warranted, and I think the future Iraq will prove me right.

Why is it we don't know?

I've written about it before, but I am more than annoyed at the American media and its dismal coverage of the War on Terror. Why is it that the only place you can hear any specifics about battles in Afghanistan and Iraq is years later on the History Channel?

I would tend to think that this is for a number of reasons. This first is the liberal bias in the media. Why would they report on heroic soldiers excelling under horrible conditions when the crux of the evening news spiel is that our soldiers are demoralized and angry?

The second I think is a kind of Vietnamization. Not, not that kind - a new kind. I think that the baby boomers (people my parent's age) are forever jaded by Vietnam. In these people's worlds the military is all bad and always bad. All of the work they do is evil, and every battle won is just a set up for another Vietnam-like battle lost. We live in a society where a whole generation despises the military and can't get past the war-protesting hippy days of their youth. It's an interesting phenomenon, but the fact that people think that the US military is terrorist, that they're murdering children in Iraq, and that a draft is always imminent is clear evidence of this anti-military paranoia.

Watch Shootout when it's on the History Channel. It will be your only chance to see the heroics of our soldiers in combat.

Dear Terrorist

Yesterday, the Director of National Intelligence Released in full the letter from Ayman al-Zawahiri to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq. The letter has a number of highlights - too many to list here. I encourage you to read it for youself and see what a terrorist sounds like who is losing. Also, let's not be mistaken on what the terrorist's goals are:

The first stage: Expel the Americans from Iraq.

The second stage: Establish an Islamic authority or amirate...

The third stage: Extend the jihad wave to the secular countries neighboring Iraq.

It seems as if Al Qaida's goals are quite similar to anti-war demonstrators and a fair portion of liberals. Interesting...

My answer is, firstly: Things may develop faster than we imagine. The aftermath of the collapse of American power in Vietnam-and how they ran and left their agents-is noteworthy. Because of that, we must be ready starting now, before events overtake us...

Another interesting point. I wonder why Bush is so hesitant to put down a timeline for withdrawl for Iraq? Also, how interesting is it that the terrorists are counting on Iraq becoming a new Vietnam. If you watch the news you'd be hard-pressed to not believe that has already happened.

However, despite all of this, I say to you: that we are in a battle, and that more than half of this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media.

How true. Indeed, half of the war is then being lost every day the media fails to report the good news that is happening constantly in Iraq. Do you really want to know what is going on with our soldiers? Ask one, if you can - or watch the History channel. Even FoxNews only reports on soldiers when they die.

Other parts of the letter worth noting are al-Zawahiri's pleas to stop killing shiites, and to stop beheading prisoners. Both of these actions cause popular support to be lost for their murderous cause in the eyes of fellow Muslims.

If you want a larger (and better) analysis, see here.

If you want to see the mainstream media's (flawed) analysis, see here and here.

Cindy Sheehan and the War in Iraq

With all the coverage of Cindy Sheehan in Crawford, Texas, I decided to do a bit of a news search on her and what exactly is going on. The blogs I read on the right are saying that at the least, Sheehan is a grieving mother searching for an audience with the President and at the worst, Sheehan is desperately searching for publicity and coverage, and will soon be the new nationally-known anti-war spokesman, complete with book deals and the like. The blogs I read on the left characterize Cindy as a grieving mother that is being relentlessly attacked by those on the right. Of all that I have read, I have derived these few facts:

-Cindy Sheehan's son Casey Sheehan was killed in Iraq on April 4, 2004 and from that day on Cindy has been a full-time anti-war activist.
-Cindy Sheehan supports the view that all US forces should leave Iraq immediately.
-Cindy Sheehan is requesting an audience with President Bush to inform him of her views.
-Cindy Sheehan has previously met with the President to inform him of her views.
-The President has made clear he understands her position but that US forces will not leave Iraq.

So therefore, I conclude that all that can be covered has already been covered. I also appreciate Mrs. Sheehan's stance and her desire to be heard.

The point that I have made in the past and I will make again is that I don't know how Cindy's son died. I don't know what out current military activities are right now in Iraq. I have to watch the History Channel to find out anything about current US military operations in Iraq.

To further evaluate the President's stance and our current situation in Iraq, I need more information from the media than the daily body count, which is all their are currently willing to provide.

UPDATE:

I found a few new quotes from a speech Cindy Sheehan gave in Texas that I'm afraid shed a slightly negative light on Cindy's position.

"That lying bastard, George Bush, is taking a five-week vacation in time of war"

"You get that maniac out here to talk with me in person."

"And the other thing I want him to tell me is 'just what was the noble cause Casey died for?' Was it freedom and democracy? Bullshit! He died for oil. He died to make your friends richer. He died to expand American imperialism in the Middle East. We're not freer here, thanks to your PATRIOT Act. Iraq is not free. You get America out of Iraq and Israel out of Palestine and you'll stop the terrorism," she exclaimed. "There, I used the 'I' word - imperialism," the 48 year-old mother quipped. "And now I'm going to use another 'I' word - impeachment - because we cannot have these people pardoned. They need to be tried on war crimes and go to jail."

"My son was killed in 2004. I am not paying my taxes for 2004. You killed my son, George Bush, and I don't owe you a penny...you give my son back and I'll pay my taxes. Come after me (for back taxes) and we'll put this war on trial."

Not only are you unable to find any of these quotes in any mainstream media source, these quotes shed a new light on what I would consider Cindy's true aspirations: un unabashed sense to call the President a "maniac" and a "bastard," a hate of Israel, a silly idea of a "war for oil," and a few other ridiculous anti-war and anti-Bush statements that the Left absolutely loves. However, print these quotes in a serious newspaper or news service and Cindy's claims to only be a "grieving mother" will be crushed.

Iraq

Last night I was again reminded of the US military's struggle in Iraq, and the media's insistence on ignoring it. The History Channel has a new series on called Shootout, which evidently outlines a variety of battles and other events that include some sort of weapons element. It is interesting that this special, on at 1:00 AM on the History Channel on July 20th, contained more information than I had ever received about the battle for Fallujah during the course of the past eight months (and I try to keep up on these sorts of things.)

Why has no major media outlet interviewed the Marines and other servicemen and women of their perilous few weeks killing terrorists in Fallujah? Why didn't CNN ever describe the foreign terrorists from Syria and other Middle Eastern nations that came to live in Fallujah and terrorize it's residents? Why didn't FoxNews interview the Marine officer that, after being hit multiple times by automatic weapons fire, sheltered an unconscious Marine under his command for hours with only his service pistol to protect them?

Why is it that the American media completely ignored every valiant story, every "outside the assumptions" fact, and every positive aspect of our war on terrorism, especially in Iraq?

Furthermore, why do we put up with it?