Cozying To Iran

Iranian meddling in the battle between Iraq's government and terrorist al-Sadr in Basra is a blow to the Allies in Iraq and also brings to mind those who want to talk with the Ayatollahs, never mind the untrustworthiness of the Iranians.

UPDATE: Check this look at the Sadr uprising in Basra by Bill Roggio.

McCain's Climate Blind Spot

Though superior in most aspects to the Democrats, by no means is John McCain without serious policy flaws, notably with regard to the global warming fraud.

Blockhead Barack vs. LTC McCain

If Barack Obama does pull off the Democratic nomination, we will be able to see how marked a contrast there is with John McCain. In Obama we have attempted sabotage of America's effort toward victory and contradiction and buck-passing extraordinaire, while in McCain we have some serious discussion of serious issues that is closer to the Bush Doctrine than flabby MSM critiques think it is.

Palestinian Wrongs

The "right of return" is the latest tactic used by the collaborators with "Palestinians" to justify attacking Israel. Except the actual right of return belongs to Jews, not Arabs, and certainly not to a group with no racial or cultural or any difference from Jordanian Arabs and whose refugee status is entirely the result of Arab refusal to resettle combined with their use as human title deeds flimsily justifying war against the West.

Obama's Antisemitism Continued

Barack Obama's antisemitism - predictably underplayed by the MSM - has been an issue for awhile. Now his top military advisor - who has a credibility issue already in that he's worked with Howard Dean and John Kerry, antiamericans like Obama - is shown to be an antisemite himself.

It helps illustrate a point Victor Hanson makes about Obama's speech - Barack aimed his speech toward the political elite in all its obtuseness and in the process insulted the intelligence of everyone else. The antisemitism of Obama and his campaign is just part and parcel of the obtuseness of the political elite.

Response To Iraq's Monday AM Quarterbacks

A good response to Monday morning quarterbacking five years after the liberation of Iraq is presented. It notes the critiques of writer and former Army officer Ralph Peters, whom I respect greatly as one of the best analysts of the Iraq situation. The piece isn't exactly hard on Peters' own Monday morning quartebacking on the fifth anniversary of the war's start, but I felt Peters, in his own take on the anniversary, missed a mark on why the war wasn't wrapped up as quickly as some think it could have been.

Peters took on Donald Rumsfeld and "yes-man" generals, yet seemed to miss the strategy of housing American forces in base camps for a prolonged period before David Petraeus in effect got forces out of base camps and back into the countrysde in 2007. This old base camp strategy was one of the less effctive strategies in the Vietnam war and its reemergence in Iraq seemed to reflect something Rumsfeld and others were fighting - the Army's notorious history of bureaucratic inflexibility.

Likewise Peters seemed to miss an underappreciated lesson of Vietnam - namely that overreliance on overwhelming numbers was a substitute for imaginative thinking on how to win. Creighton Abrams took dwindling American forces and used them far more imaginatively that William Westmoreland, and coupled with redoubled efforts to properly train ARVN, this took advantage of Westy's genuine successes - for his overreliance on numbers and for his surprising neglect of training of ARVN, Westmoreand's approach did succeed in bleeding the enemy enormously - to make South Vietnam almost a nation at peace by 1971.

For awhile this was the same approch being used in Iraq; that it got sidetracked is puzzling, and that it took Petraeus to kick it back into gear sees to reflect more on the bureaucracy of the Army than to weaknesses in Donald Rumsfeld's leadership. Not that Rumsfeld is blameless, just that some greater balance in analysis might have been in order.

There is also the fact of the enormity of the task at hand as well as the enemy. I highly doubt that anyone had any real illusions that terrorists would disappear and cede Iraq to the West. That there were failings, and major ones, that made the conflict more difficlt should not be denied, but it would seem that the determination of the enemy, and the sheer size of the task of transforming Iraq from a launching point for internatinal war into a democracy, were at least as much at fault as anything on our side. Inded, that Iraq has progressed as far as it has toward being a viable democracy indicates the US has been far more successful at the mission than the Monday AM QBs seem to think.

Analyzing the war in Iraq will go on for many, many years, and people like Ralph Peters as well as those ofering diferent legitimate views are important to such analysis.

The Saddam Papers

More and more is being learned from Iraqi Intelligence Service documents about how much Saddam Hussein sanctioned Islamo-Arab terrorism. This entry examines his Taliban connection while here we look at what Saddam's people knew about Iranian support of Al Qaida and we also look at an Iraqi Intelligence Service source on Al Qaida. Also noteworthy is the absurd word games being played to obscure Iraq's alliance with/takeover of Al Qaida.

Obama: The Meltdown Continues

Barack Obama gave a speech in Philly in the wake of his church's exposure as a racial jihadist rally. His speech was about racial healing but made the same mistake of refusing to hold non-whites responsible for racial animosity that has been made for generations (and is nicely illustrated in the display of racial self-pity and buck-passing seen here).. It also illustrated Obama's evasiveness about his church, and for good reason - his church didn't just talk the talk of antiamerican race-mongering, it aided and abetted a Puerto Rican terrorist and his gang.

And for good measure you can throw in Obama contradicting himself about his pastor's bigotry, to go with his general brainless babble, and did anyone else notice him throwing a lot of people other than himself under the bus in his speech?

Obama-bin Laden, indeed.

Recession - Yes And No

Economic news is considered bad right now, but the actual evidence of such is mixed with some indicators being better than expected.

Obama Running Amok

Barack Obama is having a rough go of it in the wake of widely publicized tape by his quasi-jihadist pastor and his own disingenuous response to it. That his jihadist pastor's verbal fatwas aren't all that different from some hatemongering of his own in 1995 is in keeping with the fraudulence that permeates the whole mythos he uses to justify his campaign for President. It's also in keeping with his belligerent naivete on international security matters.

Pentagon Report On Iraq And Al Qaida

The MSM was quick to jump on a leak of a lengthy Pentagon report on Saddam Hussein's involvement with international terrorism by citing a supposed lack of a link between Hussein and Al Qaida. But once again the MSM got it wrong thanks to trusting what Laurie Mylroie noted in a correspondance was "a hostile leak." The actual report, linked here and discussed in depth here, cites Saddam-era documents to show what objective observors knew for over thirty years - that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was one of the largest sanction states for Pan-Arab and Islamic terrorism ever seen.

Oil And Iraq Stocks

A couple of interesting pieces are presented here - one traces Iraq's stock exchange and also we get a look at what is inflating oil prices.

Obama's Slow Erosion

It's becoming a more and more difficult run for Barack Obama, as late primary losses follow more direct challenges to the substance of his campaign, and a striking level of dissention within his advisory group has developed to go with his own evolving confusion on important matters such as Iraq.

Then you have his idiocy about NAFTA, which damages his credibility all the more. The erosion of Obama-mania should be interesting.

Obama As Traitor?

If you thought Barack Obama's fraudulent campaigning was bad, a genuinely distrubing connection between Obama and international brigand/terror-puppeteer Saddam Hussein is emerging.

Blockhead Barack Continued

Barack Obama remains a blockhead. First there is the IRS mess he's facing and also questions he isn't answering. He thus continues to make justifying his candidacy harder and harder.

Obama's Military (And General) Credibility Gap

Barack Obama continues to show his credibility gap in realworld issues with his story alleging ammunition shortages for American forces in Afghanistan because of diversion of resources to Iraq. His story was questioned by John Warner and has fallen apart as the US captain sourced by Obama contradicted Obama's account, with better context fleshing out the whole thing. Obama thus continues to spend campaign money and also fundamental credibility.

Postscript - It's not just his military credibility gap that drives Obama - his antisemitism is seeping out more and more after his recent Cleveland speech. His diplomatic efforts are also bearing farce with his embarassment over NAFTA.

Then throw in his incredibly incendiary and bogus assertion about Arab-Americans being arrested and one has to question every ounce of this person's being.

Pakistan Crosses The River

Remember the general sense of doom about Pakistan after Benazir Bhutto's assassination? There appears to be hope for that nation, after all.

Daytona 500 Postscript

Mike Mulhern is the best writer in the NASCAR world right now, and provides a solid postscript to the 2008 Daytona 500. To add to what the sport has learned from this race -


*** Dodge is deeper competitively than they get credit for, or than Stuttgart has generally realized. We talk about Kyle Busch's brilliant drives; Bobby Labonte, despite never having much drafting help, made some superb moves as well and finished 11th. The bitterly disappointing quality of his finish is illustrated by how hard he raced and yet finished dead last among the Dodges. George Gillett's teams were quiet all week and superb at the end. Reed Sorenson had no help from his Ganassi teammates yet had a terrific week. That Dodge got all its teams into the top-11 at Daytona is a circumstance Stuttgart managed to screw up when they took away Lou Patane's authority in 2001 and let their teams devolve away from the One Team concept into little fiefdoms not working together as they should have been from Jump Street. Stuttgart needs to get its teams working together because they have an opportunity from this Daytona finish.


*** For all the attention paid to Toyota, their effort was almost a one-team show. Bill Davis Racing had some good effort from Dave Blaney but that disintegrated at the end. Dieter Mateschitz got just one of his cars into the 500 and Brian Vickers overcame a lot to finish 12th. Michael Waltrip is clueless and it showed with another mediocre effort by his cars. Only Joe Gibbs among Toyota cars (as opposed to Trucks where Toyota had no real competition all week) did anything all week.


*** The high number of lead changes (42 among 16 drivers), due mostly to a flurry of late yellows, helped mask that the COT did poorly in competition, with suspension failures, tire failures, mediocre drafting ability, and a total lack of enthusiasm among drivers or anyone else. Now the grossly worn quality of Daytona's pavement has something to do with it as well, but that the Sportsman Series, running the "old" bodystyle with roof wicker and big rear spoiler, had virtually the same quality of racing with a bolt-on aero package as the Winston Cup cars shows the folly of the whole COT concept.


*** Hendrick Motorsports' poor 500 effort was not a good sign for their experiment with Dale Earnhardt Jr. Junior's performance level and that of the Hendrick fleet fell off dramatically after the 150s and the plate tracks remain Junior's best tracks. One has to wonder if Junior truly will be as good a fit in the Hendrick fleet as advertised.


*** His former team, DEI, gave plenty of ammo to critics of Teresa Earnhardt's commitment to winning and/or basic competence as a team owner with their mediocre week.


*** Ford looks doomed to a poor season in 2008.


So the grind of the season begins for real at Fontana, and it will be interesting to see how NASCAR spins the expected mediocre fan turnout as well as how the COT performs here, with no confidence to be had in the machine's abilities for the racing.

Boilerplate Obama

Two pieces illustrate the vacuousness of the Obamas. First is this look at Barack Obama's non-blueprint for "change" while the bizarre class jealousy of his wife Michelle is examined here.

It's Not A Gas Gas Gas

Remember biofuels? It's now clear they're worth forgetting, as they're failing at everything promised about them.