This vainglorious administration is so self-absorbed that it refuses to keep secrets if it can in any way benefit politically from them regardless of the cost. Obama is so bent on preening he seems not to have any concern at all for those who actually make the sacrifices. First Joe Biden outs SEAL Team 6 as those who participated in the Bin Laden raid and then Leon Panetta outed the doctor who helped provide intelligence for the raid. That was catastrophic for the doctor.

First he and his wife were fired for engaging in a “fake” vaccination program.

In a notification issued in this regard, the health department said that Afridi’s services were terminated under the Efficiency and Disciplinary (E and D) Rules for being involved in anti-state activities, the Express Tribune reports.

Earlier, 15 lady health workers who were part of the alleged fake vaccination campaign, were were also sacked from their jobs.

It was reported earlier this month that Dr Afridi was dismissed from his post, along with four LHVs.

Earlier, Dr. Shakeel’s wife, Imrana Ghafoor was also removed from her post. She was the principal of the Government Girls Degree College in Darra Adam Khel.

Now he has been jailed for 33 years for treason:

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A Pakistani surgeon recruited by the CIA to help find Osama bin Laden was on Wednesday sentenced to 33 years in prison for treason, officials said.

Shakil Afridi, who was sacked as a government doctor two months ago, was found guilty under the tribal justice system of Khyber district, part of Pakistan’s semi-autonomous tribal belt.

In addition to his jail sentence, he was fined 320,000 rupees ($3,500). The doctor had worked for years as a surgeon in lawless Khyber, part of the Taliban and al-Qaeda infested tribal belt.

Afridi was not present in the court and not given a chance to defend himself, officials said. Under the tribal system, he would not have had access to a lawyer.

“He has been sentenced for 33 years on treason charges and has been moved to Peshawar central jail after the verdict was announced by the local court,” said Mohammad Siddiq, spokesman for the administrative head of Khyber.

In January, U.S. Defence Secretary Leon Panetta confirmed Afridi had worked for U.S. intelligence by collecting DNA to verify bin Laden’s presence and expressed concern about Pakistan’s treatment of him.

He was arrested shortly after U.S. troops killed the al-Qaeda leader on May 2, 2011 and in October a Pakistani commission recommended that he be tried for treason.

Golly, given this event who wouldn’t want to want to come to the aid of America? The left has not had word of complaint- not about this nor about the unprecedented access to classified material offered to filmmakers in the process of Obama idolatry.

Contrast that to the phony kerfuffle over Valerie Plame and the scorn wrongly heaped upon George Bush.

Do you recall a time, a few years back, when the media wouldn’t shut up about a supposed outing of an agent? Yup, the left and the media were pissed.

I bet you could just imagine the firestorm of coverage that would result if instead of a former Secretary of State leaking a name it was our President….right?

Guess not:

Just a week ago the establishment media was aflutter with news that a CIA double-agent had thwarted a new type of underwear bomb attack targeting U.S. flights in a plot devised by al-Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula.

But as the week progressed, a developing bombshell story got buried under President Obama’s gay marriage announcement. Not only is the supposed CIA asset not a CIA asset at all, but the entire operation was exposed prematurely and the double-agent’s life was immediately threatened by an intelligence leak that very well may have come out of the White House for political gain.

As the story broke, the establishment media was more than happy to attribute the intelligence coup to the CIA and the Obama administration, describing the mole as a “CIA informant.”

It turns out that wasn’t true. The double-agent hadn’t been recruited and placed by the CIA, but by British intelligence, who also managed the operation. In fact, the Americans had only recently been made aware of the joint British-Saudi effort.

The leaks about the operation from the American side have infuriated British intelligence officials, who had hoped to continue the operation. The leaks not only scuttled the mission but put the life of the asset in jeopardy. Even CIA officials, joining their MI5 and MI6 counterparts, were describing the leaks as “despicable,” attributing them to the Obama administration.

As the stillborn investigation into the leaks continues (stillborn, because if the leaks are in fact traced to the White House, there will be no repercussions), the zeal with which the establishment media trumpeted the supposed CIA coup won’t likely be surpassed by the more important story of how the Obama administration attempted to score political points at the expense of one of the most important intelligence operations since 9/11.

Wait, for “political gain?”

Wasn’t the left and the media very upset that non-spy Valerie Plame’s name was uttered by Richard Armitage for “political gain?”

Weren’t there hearings and trials and all that? Or was I just imagining that?

And here we had a Yemeni deep cover agent that we may get once in a generation:

One US official has noted that “this operation could have gone on for some time … when it was cut off by a leak”. Even once the agent turned up in Saudi Arabia, it was clear that his intelligence was helping to target a spate of crucial drone strikes within Yemen – including one that killed AQAP’s head of external operations, a man responsible for the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000.

If the group learnt of their member’s defection from the media, who knows what countermeasures they took? How did that stymie further arrests or airstrikes? AQAP’s chief bomb-maker, Ibrahim Al-Asiri, might even have escaped as a result.

After all, the agent was reportedly evacuated from Yemen two weeks before the appointed date for his attack. He might have remained quietly operational for that entire period, contacting his colleagues and passing on their location. This leak appears to have frustrated a painstaking and risky operation, of the sort that cannot come around very often.

But the Obama administration deliberately scuttled that huge undercover operation, and put the life of a British agent in jeopardy to boot. For what? To boost his re-election hopes. This wasn’t some non-spy desk jockey at the CIA. This was someone who had infiltrated al-Qaeda for god’s sake!

But the MSM and the left are ignoring it.

At least one Democrat lawmaker isn’t

Senator Diane Fienstein:

“AQAP is the number-one threat to our country. … The leak really did endanger sources and methods, and the leak, I think, really has to be prosecuted.”

Congressman Peter King:

“This was more secret than any operation I’m familiar with — even more classified than bin Laden. … That’s why I’m saying the FBI should do a full and complete investigation, because this really is criminal in the literal sense of the word to leak out this type of sensitive, classified information on really almost unparalleled penetration of the enemy.”

Congressman Mike Rogers:

“This has been a damaging leak. We shouldn’t underestimate what really happened here. When you jeopardize our foreign-service liaison partners, any of them that may or may not have been involved, or you jeopardize the conclusion of wrapping up all of the people involved, that’s dangerous to our national security.”

Paging Patrick Fitzgerald….paging Patrick Fitzgerald

Exit thought….ya think they will make a movie about this?

A Blast From The Past...This Is How The Left Viewed Bush Then

As I wrote about in an earlier post, the hypocrisy of the left in regards to Obama’s policy of allowing assassinations of United States citizens is quite telling.

Take for example this speech given by our Attorney General in 2004:

With all due respect to President Reagan, the problem is not government. The problem is with those who run the government. In the struggle against terrorism, these people have made a mockery of the rule of law…

And yet a disturbing pattern has emerged. Lawyers for this administration have attempted to sanction the wholesale roundup and extended detention of Middle Eastern men on routine immigration violations, and the indefinite detention of American citizens with minimal judicial supervision, and without access to legal counsel.

Now I understand that we live in difficult times, and that we face an extraordinary, unprecedented threat. We cannot be naive in how we expect to conduct this struggle. This is not a time for the liberal community to see our enemy for anything other than what they are: murderers bent on the destruction of our way of life, which is superior to that which they seek to impose. We must be aggressive in the conduct of the war, and in the interrogation of prisoners taken in that war. But this Administration’s view, that the President’s authority as Commander-in-Chief can almost always overcome what it views as burdensome laws, restrictive International treaties, and tired old customs is extremely dangerous.

Our history is replete with scandals and miscues that are tied to the unrestricted exercise of Executive Branch power, in peace and in war. We must employ techniques in the current struggle that are consistent with the spirit of our founding documents, and that will also stand the test of time. We must feel comfortable, fifty years from now, looking back at our actions in a way that we do not when we examine for instance, the detention of American citizens during World War II.

Now let me be clear. This is not to equate American al-Qaeda sympathizers with law abiding Japanese-American citizens. But citizenship must mean something. The guarantees that come with it must be respected.

The war on terrorism can be won and our tradition of respect for civil liberties can be respected. The tension that this administration sees existing between the two simply is not correct.

That was then, this is now:

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. asserted on Monday that it is lawful for the government to kill American citizens if officials deem them to be operational leaders of Al Qaeda who are planning attacks on the United States and if capturing them alive is not feasible.

“Given the nature of how terrorists act and where they tend to hide, it may not always be feasible to capture a United States citizen terrorist who presents an imminent threat of violent attack,” Mr. Holder said in a speech at Northwestern University’s law school. “In that case, our government has the clear authority to defend the United States with lethal force.”

…While Mr. Holder is not the first administration official to address the targeted killing of citizens — the Pentagon’s general counsel, Jeh Johnson, did so last month at Yale Law School, for example — it was notable for the nation’s top law enforcement official to declare that it is constitutional for the government to kill citizens without any judicial review under certain circumstances. Mr. Holder’s remarks about the targeted killing of United States citizens were a centerpiece of a speech describing legal principles behind the Obama administration’s counterterrorism policies.

“Some have argued that the president is required to get permission from a federal court before taking action against a United States citizen who is a senior operational leader of Al Qaeda or associated forces,” Mr. Holder said. “This is simply not accurate. ‘Due process’ and ‘judicial process’ are not one and the same, particularly when it comes to national security. The Constitution guarantees due process, not judicial process.”

I agree wholeheartedly with Bush’s practice of fighting this war on terror and I agree wholeheartedly with Obama’s new policy.

But the hypocrisy is mindboggling.

I never thought I would link to Glenn Greenwald but he is especially pissed at the hypocrisy from his side of the aisle:

(1) The willingness of Democrats to embrace and defend this power is especially reprehensible because of how completely, glaringly and obviously at odds it is with everything they loudly claimed to believe during the Bush years. Recall two of the most significant “scandals” of the Bush War on Terror: his asserted power merely to eavesdrop on anddetain accused Terrorists without judicial review of any kind. Remember all that? Progressives endlessly accused Bush of Assaulting Our Values and “shredding the Constitution” simply because Bush officials wanted to listen in on and detain suspected Terrorists — not kill them, just eavesdrop on and detain them — without first going to a court and proving they did anything wrong. Yet here is a Democratic administration asserting not merely the right to surveil or detain citizens without charges or judicial review, but to kill themwithout any of that: a far more extreme, permanent and irreversible act. Yet, with somerighteous exceptions, the silence is deafening, or worse.

How can anyone who vocally decried Bush’s mere eavesdropping and detention powers without judicial review possibly justify Obama’s executions without judicial review? How can the former (far more mild powers) have been such an assault on Everything We Stand For while the latter is a tolerable and acceptable assertion of war powers? If Barack Obama has the right to order accused Terrorists executed by the CIA because We’re At War, then surely George Bush had the right to order accused Terrorists eavesdropped on and detained on the same ground.

That the same Party and political faction that endlessly shrieked about Bush’s eavesdropping and detention programs now tolerate Obama’s execution program is one of the most extreme and craven acts of dishonesty we’ve seen in quite some time.

He goes on write and link to my post, saying “By stark contrast, right-wing leaders, pundits and bloggers are being commendably consistent”

Yup. We have.

I agreed with the policy then and do now.

And I completely agree with Glenn when he writes that the hypocrisy of the left is “the most extreme and craven acts of dishonesty we’ve seen in quite some time.”

Obama in 2006:

The bottom line is this: Current procedures under the CSRT are such that a perfectly innocent individual could be held and could not rebut the Government’s case and has no way of proving his innocence.

I would like somebody in this Chamber, somebody in this Government, to tell me why this is necessary. I do not want to hear that this is a new world and we face a new kind of enemy. I know that. I know that every time I think about my two little girls and worry for their safety–when I wonder if I really can tuck them in at night and know that they are safe from harm. I have as big of a stake as anybody on the other side of the aisle and anybody in this administration in capturing terrorists and incapacitating them. I would gladly take up arms myself against any terrorist threat to make sure my family is protected.

But as a parent, I can also imagine the terror I would feel if one of my family members were rounded up in the middle of the night and sent to Guantanamo without even getting one chance to ask why they were being held and being able to prove their innocence.

This is not just an entirely fictional scenario, by the way. We have already had reports by the CIA and various generals over the last few years saying that many of the detainees at Guantanamo should not have been there.

But it’s ok to assassinate that person without judicial review now eh?

Where’s the terror for your family members now?

H Y P O C R I S Y

In a sign that the left’s hypocrisy may not be going over so well is this editorial from the NYT’s today:

Perhaps most disturbing, Mr. Holder utterly rejected any judicial supervision of a targeted killing.

We have said that a decision to kill an American citizen should have judicial review, perhaps by a special court like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which authorizes eavesdropping on Americans’ communications.

Mr. Holder said that could slow a strike on a terrorist. But the FISA court works with great speed and rarely rejects a warrant request, partly because the executive branch knows the rules and does not present frivolous or badly argued cases. In Mr. Awlaki’s case, the administration had long been complaining about him and tracking him. It made an earlier attempt to kill him.

Mr. Holder said such operations require high levels of secrecy. That is obvious, but the FISA court operates in secret, and at least Americans are assured that some legal authority not beholden to a particular president or political party is reviewing such operations.

Mr. Holder argued in his speech that judicial process and due process guaranteed by the Constitution “are not one and the same.” This is a straw man. The judiciary has the power to say what the Constitution means and make sure the elected branches apply it properly. The executive acting in secret as the police, prosecutor, jury, judge and executioner is the antithesis of due process.

While the NYT’s editorial pages maybe coming around to their hypocrisy, we do not hear the wailing and the crying from the rest of our media, the rest of the Democrat party, the rest of the liberals.

H Y P O C R I S Y

And I’m not talking about Dick Cheney…

…Well, okay I sorta am. But he’s not the one I deem to be spinning lies.

The Plames are once again outting themselves as a couple of partisan spinsters (or flatout liars) and they have the release of former VP Darth Cheney’s new autobiography to thank for bringing the two back into the spotlight of liberal celebritihood:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This interview was from the end of last month. Nothing quite like a Lawrence O’Donnell interview of a pair of anti-Bush heroes.

Anyone care to defend anything these three had to say?

Darth Cheney has been making the rounds. Here are a few more of his recent appearances:

Dateline:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

More NBC stuff, with Matt Lauer:

Click here to view the embedded video.

In the Lauer interview, in response to his hypothetical regarding an American captive in Iran, one thing I wish Cheney had made note of is that KSM & Co. are non-uniformed combatants not eligible for POW status & protections under Geneva. Did KSM abide by the rules of civilized warfare as set out by the Geneva Conventions when he masterminded the killing of 3,000 innocent civilians on 9/11?

Did Pakistan ever lodge a protest regarding our treatment of KSM? Nope. The Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence just handed him over to us. Would he have fared better under Pakistan’s humane interrogation practices? *Snicker*

KSM was not tortured. The lives lost and those affected by the loss on 9/11 are the true victims of torture.

The cackling hens at The View were surprising subdued and respectful.

Here’s one from Laura Ingraham:

Click here to view the embedded video.

I am still reading Cheney’s book. I am also in the middle of Ali Soufan’s book and Glenn Carle’s.

The Bourguiba Mausoleum of Tunisia

Tunisia’s former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali found a safe haven in Saudi Arabia on Friday, he was prevented from landing in Paris by President Sarkozy, while Tunisia has devolved into near chaos. Ben Ali, the 74 year old president, took power after a bloodless coup in ’87 as a Social Democrat. In an all too typical scenario of Marxist leaders, he established an authoritarian police state: while the country was mired in poverty, he and the Elites established a system of government based on nepotism and corruption, while living in opulent luxury.

Last month, a 26 year old college graduate, who could not find work and was selling fruits and vegetables without a permit had his produce impounded, in despair over his inability to support his family, he doused himself with gasoline and struck a match as a measure of protest. The social networks of twitter and Facebook were used to generate public anger and disgust over the events and causes of the self-immolation and the man’s feelings of hopelessness, thus they served as an impetus for revolution.

There were Wikileaks cables describing the corruption and graft of the Ben Ali Presidency and speculation that they contributed to the unrest that deposed the former government: the Obama Administration was quick to deny that their allegations of corruption concerning the Marxist government exposed in the Wikileaks cables precipitated the revolution in Tunisia, the administration was adamant in maintaining that the people of Tunisia were well aware of the corruption within the government.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Sunday that Tunisians were well aware of the graft, nepotism and lavish lifestyles led by ex-President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and his family long before the WikiLeaks website published the diplomatic cables.

The Obama regime has been quick to absolve itself of any blame for all unpleasant incidents; consequently, their claims of being innocent of any unpleasantries have become rhetorical and thus they have lost meaning in this age of state sponsored propaganda. That is a sad result of automatic absolution of guilt by leadership: the public no longer listens and routinely regards all such proclamations as suspect, even if they are truthful in nature. There remains the nagging question of why would it matter to the Obama Administration that the Wikileaks cables had a part in starting the revolution, why the vehement denial? To whom do they proclaim their innocence?

In Tunis, Tunisia, authorities are struggling to end the violence. Fire fights have broken out around the capital and around the former president’s palace on the shore of the Mediterranean and the headquarters of the primary opposition party. Looting, arson, and violence has been the result of a vacuum of leadership and control since Ben Ali left the country on Friday as factions struggle to gain control. The violence seems to be between Tunisians who are emboldened by the abdication of Ben Ali and by loyalists who aren’t anxious to give up their prestige and perks they enjoyed under the totalitarian police state of Ben Ali.

Neighboring countries are now feeling a loss of confidence in the markets as people sell their commercial paper, while wondering if the political turmoil of Tunisia will spread into other dictatorships in the Middle East.

Commercial International Bank Egypt SAE, the country’s biggest publicly traded lender, closed at the lowest level in more than a month. EFG-Hermes Holding SAE, Egypt’s biggest publicly traded investment bank, declined 2.4 percent. The EGX30 Index lost 1 percent, the biggest drop since Nov. 30, to 7,082.09 at the 2:30 p.m. close in Cairo. Tunisia’s benchmark Tunindex tumbled 13 percent last week as increasing violence lead to the toppling of the country’s leader on Jan. 14.

The Tunisian protests may embolden demonstrators who have recently taken to the streets in other North African and Middle Eastern countries, including Egypt, Morocco and Jordan, all of which have experienced demonstrations about economic conditions, said Marina Ottaway, director of the Middle East program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

“People are selling because they think the same might happen here” given unemployment and inflationary pressure, Alia Khalil, senior equity trader at Cairo-based Pharos Holding for Financial Investments, said by telephone.

Egypt’s Unemployment Is Similar To America’s

Former European Commission President Romano Prodi said Egypt may be vulnerable to an uprising similar to Tunisia as “the fragility of the political situation makes it extremely vulnerable to youth unemployment and the increase in the price of bread,” according to an editorial in il Messaggero.

Unemployment in Egypt stands at 8.9 percent according to the Cairo-based Central Agency for Mobilization and Public Statistics. The government says it needs to maintain a growth rate of about 7 percent to create enough jobs for the 750,000 people who enter the workforce every year. Egypt’s central bank said last week core inflation, the benchmark it uses to make interest rate decisions, increased to 9.65 percent in December from 8.93 in the previous month.

No other Arab leaders have been forced out of power by public pressure since 1985, when public unrest led to a coup that unseated President Gaafar al-Nimeri.

Ben Ali’s 23 year reign has been noted for corruption and graft that has recently been characterized by even more of his wife’s and her family’sgreed:

The French government suspects that former Tunisian president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and his family may have fled the country with 1.5 tons of gold, French daily Le Monde reported Monday.

According to the French secret service, Leila Trabelsi, the wife of the ex-president, went to the Central Bank of Tunisia to fetch the gold bars, the paper reported.

The governor of the bank is reported to have refused to give them to her, so Trabelsi rang her husband who first also refused to help, before giving in, according to Le Monde.

“It seems that the wife of Ben Ali left with some gold, 1.5 tons or 45 million euros worth,” a French politician told the paper.

In one of the iconic ironies of Marxist and totalitarian forms of Social Democratic governments, rulers must gauge how much corruption the public will endure for the Elites to live in opulent luxury at the expense of the workers in their Utopian dream state of eternal poverty. Now many of these Arab leaders are wondering if perhaps they have taken too much from the people in order to live as Elites.

Men who are willing to self-immolate are stepping forward to sacrifice themselves in protest of governments that offer few freedoms and little opportunity:

A Mauritanian man set himself on fire, the third self-immolation attempt apparently influenced by a man in Tunisia.

Local journalists say 43-year-old Yacoub Ould Dahoud said he was unhappy with the government. Witnesses say he drove to a government building in the capital and torched himself in his car.

Foreign ministry official Adbou Ould Sidi says police rushed him to the hospital.

The attempt follows similar incidents, including one in Algeria. Also Monday, an Egyptian man set himself on fire in an apparent protest.

The utter desperation of men who are willing to set themselves on fire will possibly be enough to set more than one government on fire in the Middle East. There is no doubt that many Arabs are dissatisfied with living in poverty, in order to enable their elites to live in splendor, there is a real possibility that more totalitarian governments may fall in the Middle East; unfortunately, the Islamic fundamentalists will be waiting in the shadows to offer their own form of Marxist dystopia to the unsuspecting innocent who has only known despotism.

Normally, revolution with the goal of a free society and government is to celebrated, but the Islamo Fascist is well funded and organized throughout the Middle East and with our own president increasing our dependence on foreign oil with the closing of vast oil fields, oil fields that could allow us to be independent of foreign oil, the possibility of Islamo Fascists gaining control of oil resources and causing havoc in our supplies and the world market in general is an ominous possibility.

The idea of forcing America to be a Green Society before the technology is available is a pipe dream of an idealist who is ignoring the fact that we are an oil based society and that relying on energy technologies that don’t yet exist, at the expense of cutting off our own oil supplies is a template for the destruction of this country. Technologies develop at their own rate, not because a bureaucrat determines that we need them at a specific time. Alternative energy will develop, it is inevitable, a natural result of free market enterprise.

Ben Ali was successful in keeping the Islamo Fascists under control with his totalitarian police state and that may be his only real accomplishment for 23 years in office. Now we and the rest of the world are wondering whether the emerging Democratic Revolution, a result of 23 years as a police state, will produce new fundamentalist dictators. The previous revolutions to establish democratic governments produced Islamo Fascists in Tehran and Algiers, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and Islamo Fascist-wannabes running Turkey.

And while the Islamic world is watching these events unfold with a degree of trepidation, we must have faith that our president has read of solutions on the teleprompter between golf games, so that we are ready to meet these new and important challenges that are like a fuse on the powder keg that is the Middle East.

During Thanksgiving weekend I went to see the movie REDS with Bruce Willis. Awesome movie and I highly recommend it. But during the trailers they showed the movie FAIR GAME with Sean Penn, supposedly based on the Plame/Wilson affair. I groaned when I saw it.

It appears my groan was warranted. Here is the WaPo: (h/t Dan Riehl)

In fact, “Fair Game,” based on books by Mr. Wilson and his wife, is full of distortions – not to mention outright inventions. To start with the most sensational: The movie portrays Ms. Plame as having cultivated a group of Iraqi scientists and arranged for them to leave the country, and it suggests that once her cover was blown, the operation was aborted and the scientists were abandoned. This is simply false. In reality, as The Post’s Walter Pincus and Richard Leiby reported, Ms. Plame did not work directly on the program, and it was not shut down because of her identification.

The movie portrays Mr. Wilson as a whistle-blower who debunked a Bush administration claim that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from the African country of Niger. In fact, an investigation by the Senate intelligence committee found that Mr. Wilson’s reporting did not affect the intelligence community’s view on the matter, and an official British investigation found that President George W. Bush’s statement in a State of the Union address that Britain believed that Iraq had sought uranium in Niger was well-founded.

“Fair Game” also resells the couple’s story that Ms. Plame’s exposure was the result of a White House conspiracy. A lengthy and wasteful investigation by a special prosecutor found no such conspiracy – but it did confirm that the prime source of a newspaper column identifying Ms. Plame was a State Department official, not a White House political operative.

And as is usual with these liberal vanity pieces the numbers don’t look so hot. It cost 22 million to make and since opening one month ago it has taken in 7.3 million domestically and another 5 million worldwide. Receipts continue to fall, down 32% this weekend. This movie will be lucky to get its money back.

Hollywood has a very skewed idea of what the public wants to see when it comes to movies like this. They’ve sunk mega money into anti-war, anti-Bush movies because they believe the movie going public MUST think like they do in their insulated left leaning world. Rendition, Redacted, In the Valley of Elah, Green Zone….all money losers.

But they still insist on making these kind of POS movies.

Hollywood has a habit of making movies about historical events without regard for the truth; “Fair Game” is just one more example. But the film’s reception illustrates a more troubling trend of political debates in Washington in which established facts are willfully ignored.

Sean Penn paints the Bush administration as power-mad schemers and the Wilsons as some kind of courageous patriots. Yeah, would call that facts willfully ignored and a revision of history.

This one:

Not this one:

Congressman Joe Wilson (R-SC) appears to be a decent and honorable man. Part of his background includes military service (with four sons currently serving). The truth czar’s impassioned outburst during President Obama’s healthcare speech may seem out of step with his character and his military discipline, but he vented/channeled what many frustrated Americans were shouting into their tv sets, while provoking a million-mob strong march to turn out in D.C.: You LIE.

Not only is former ambassador Joe Wilson a liar; but the current president of the United States is one, too.

Congressman Wilson broke decorum and the rules of civility with his outburst (not like Democrats didn’t do this during Bush’s speech). But he manned up and offered his apology (accepted by President Obama) while not backing down from the facts of the matter. If Democrats wish to press for a forced apology (not happening) for nothing more than political humiliation, then lets bring to the floor Charlie Rangel and his ethical transgress. Where was the disapproval resolution for Democrats who booed President Bush? Did Harry Reid ever pay through the nose for his comment about President Bush as a “loser” and a “liar“? Did the Pelosi vs. CIA embarrassment ever get resolved? Apparently not, since she’s still House Speaker.

Joe Wilson’s charge may have been improper, but it achieved positive results. (He could use your support).

What is most remarkable about President Obama’s speech last Wednesday (and again, since), was just how divisive it was; and how un-evolved from previous speeches. What bizarro world is it that talking heads live in when they ooh and aah the partisan campaign speech that was anything but presidential?

Status quo? Who’s advocating for that?

Republicans haven’t been offering alternative bills and solutions? Lies, spin, strawman, and more lies and spin.

Last Friday, September 11th, Investors Business Daily put out a brilliant piece as part of their Government-Run Healthcare: A Prescription For Failure series. Here, they dismantle piece by piece, some of the misinformation and spin in President Obama’s healthcare speech:

Speaking Of Misinformation

By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, September 11, 2009 4:20 PM PT

Reform: Millions of Americans finally got to hear the Democrats’ pitch on health care reform, made by their top salesman. But they heard nothing new — just a lot of discredited myths recycled as the truth.

For the record, we support improving our health care system. As is, it has too many rules, too much government spending and too few market forces to keep costs low and quality high.

We spend north of $2 trillion every year on health care — 17% of our GDP, the most of any wealthy nation. If that sounds like a lot, remember this: An estimated 47% of that already is spent by the government. And government’s share will grow even without “reform.”

Look closely at the plans so far to emerge from Congress. What the Democrats have proposed, in essence, is a government takeover of nearly one-fifth of our nation’s economy. When brought up in Congress, this idea has been rejected repeatedly. Yet, somehow, the idea never dies.

That’s why the president’s speech Wednesday night was a big disappointment.

Rather than a breakthrough that would remove government’s stranglehold on a once-healthy market and move us toward true reform, we heard a lot of old bromides and myths — things we just can’t let go uncorrected. Too much is at stake.

So following are 15 of the biggest misconceptions — and there are many more, we assure you — that we found in the speech:

• “The uninsured . . . live every day just one accident or illness away from bankruptcy. These are not primarily people on welfare.”

Actually, of the 46 million people the census estimates don’t have insurance, some 20 million have incomes above average and could afford to buy it, according to a study by former Congressional Budget Office Director June O’Neill.

Of the remaining 26 million uninsured, an estimated 13.7 million are poor. They are eligible for Medicaid — the state health care programs for the poor. But many, too, are illegals — about 8 million.

Though they’re eligible, research from the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association suggests as many as 14 million uninsured Americans qualify for public coverage, but don’t enroll. And as many as 6 million are enrolled, but don’t report it to the government, according to the National Center for Policy Analysis.

That leaves about 5 million people with no care.

By the way, according to the Census Bureau, America now has 37 million people in poverty. But Medicaid enrollment covers 55 million people — at a cost of $350 billion a year.

Based on this, no one should be without care. Which leads us to wonder: Is nationalizing our health care system really necessary to take care of people who already have care available to them?

• “Many other Americans . . . are still denied insurance due to previous illnesses or conditions that insurance companies decide are too risky or expensive to cover.”

This statement betrays a profound ignorance of what insurance is. If you can buy insurance after you’ve gotten sick, it’s not really insurance, is it? And why have insurance at all? It’s an incentive to simply wait until you get sick, then make someone else pay for it.

To see how absurd this is, let’s take the same concept to auto insurance. Why not let people buy insurance after they get in an accident? One reason, of course, is it leads to fiscal and personal recklessness.

• “There are now more than 30 million American citizens who cannot get coverage . . . every day, 14,000 Americans lose their coverage.”

As noted above, the bulk of the 30-plus million uninsured actually can get coverage — and in many cases, qualify for existing government programs. But how about 14,000 Americans losing their coverage each day? A little math shows this is just a scare statistic.

Multiply it out, and it comes to 5.1 million people losing coverage in a year. Sound scary? Consider that, according to the census, 46.3 million Americans don’t currently have insurance — 600,000 more than last year. That means that, along with 14,000 Americans losing their coverage each day, another 12,400 Americans are signing up for it — even in the middle of a brutal recession.

Those who lose insurance do so usually because they’ve lost a job. Most are without insurance for a couple of months or so. The best way to boost the number of insured — and one that “costs” nothing — is to cut taxes, ease regulations and slash government spending. Those policies are all proven job creators.

• “We spend one-and-a-half times more per person on health care than any other country, but we aren’t any healthier for it.”

This is a non sequitur. We spend one and a half times more per person, true. But because our health care here is better. That’s right — better. True, our life expectancy of 78.1 years — which is up sharply from just a decade ago — ranks us 30th in the world in longevity. But look a little closer at the data.

The U.S. homicide rate is two to three times higher than in other industrial nations. And we drive a lot more than others, so our auto fatality rate of 14.24 deaths per 100,000 people is higher than in Germany (6.19), France (7.4) or Canada (9.25). Add to this, we eat far more than other countries on average, contributing to higher levels of heart disease, stroke, diabetes and cancer.

When all those factors are figured in, according to a recent study by Robert Ohsfeldt of Texas A&M and John Schneider of the University of Iowa, Americans actually live longer than people in other countries — thanks mainly to our excellent health care.

In case anyone missed it, Charles Krauthammer’s excellent piece regarding the myth of prevention as “cost effective”.

• Rising health care premiums are “why American businesses that compete internationally — like our automakers — are at a huge disadvantage.”

Well, right and wrong. Soaring health care premiums are a problem for some. But who’s to blame for this? Government health care programs, which make up 47% of all health care spending, are the biggest drivers of rising insurance premiums.

For example, Medicare forces doctors and hospitals to give patients 20% to 30% discounts on their care and drugs. Sounds great. But who pays for the “discount”? Private insurers, that’s who. And they pass it on to businesses. This is yet another case of government causing a problem, then blaming the victim.

Even so, in some industries health care premiums are an enormous problem and competitive liability. This is certainly true of the auto and steel industries. But they have no one to blame but themselves.

They gave gold-plated benefit packages to their unions during the fat times, and now that times are lean, want us — taxpayers — to make good on their extravagant promises.

This is why so many big businesses support nationalized health care. It bails them out of their own bad decisions — and by those imposed by government. Just last week a congressional oversight panel announced that taxpayers were unlikely to recoup much of the $81 billion they spent to bail out GM and Chrysler. That’s another indirect health care tax your children and grandchildren will have to pay.

• “Finally, our health care system is placing an unsustainable burden on taxpayers. . . . If we do nothing to slow these skyrocketing costs, we will eventually be spending more on Medicare and Medicaid than every other government program combined.”

Are we supposed to believe that adding more government will bring down government costs?

Medicare is already spending more than it is taking in through payroll taxes. Medicare trustees expect the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund part of the program to be insolvent by 2019. From now through 2017, it will need $342 billion of taxpayers’ money in order to keep paying hospital insurance benefits alone. Over the next 50 years or so, Medicare’s shortfall is expected to hit $37 trillion — an almost unbelievable deficit nearly three times our current GDP.

If Medicare has done one thing, it’s proved that government programs always cost more than their original projections. Citing the runaway costs of Medicare is an argument against, not for, further government intervention.

• “On the right, there are those who argue that we should end the employer-based system and leave individuals to buy health insurance on their own. . . . I believe it makes more sense to build on what works and fix what doesn’t, rather than try to build an entirely new system from scratch.”

Discouraging employer-based coverage and encouraging individuals to buy their own insurance would help. But only if lawmakers make two real reforms, neither requiring a “new system from scratch.”

First, Washington must give tax credits for premiums paid on individual policies. That would make them more affordable for more people. Second, Washington has to make it easier for Americans to have health savings accounts. HSAs hold costs down because account holders self-ration treatment. They also give people more control over their health care.

• “Nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have.”

Shawn Tully, Fortune editor at large, dug into the legislation and found that for “Americans in large corporations, ‘keeping your own plan’ has a strict deadline. In five years, like it or not, you’ll get dumped into the exchange,” a government program in which heavily regulated private companies sell insurance policies.

Workers who buy their own insurance or begin coverage through small businesses will also be forced into the exchange if their plans change in any way, because it’s then considered a new plan. Since plans generally change policies every year, Tully says, “it’s likely that millions of employees will lose their plans in 12 months.”

According to a July study by the Lewin Group and the Heritage Foundation, health reform could cause as many as 88 million Americans to lose their private, employer-based coverage.

• “If you lose your job or change your job, you will be able to get coverage. If you strike out on your own and start a small business, you will be able to get coverage. We will do this by creating a new insurance exchange.”

The president says this is “a marketplace where individuals and small businesses will be able to shop for health insurance at competitive prices.” But it won’t be a real marketplace. Participating insurers will be saddled with a host of mandates. Those that don’t like the regulations will be left out. There’ll be little room for competition.

The Cato Institute’s Michael Tanner has said that “in practice, at least as demonstrated in Massachusetts,” an exchange “can quickly devolve into a regulatory body.”

• “Some of people’s concerns have grown out of bogus claims . . . The best example is . . . that we plan to set up panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens. . . . It is a lie, plain and simple.”

As far as we know, there is no provision for a death panel buried in the 1,018-page bill. But we do know how Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the administration’s health care czar, feels about treating those who need the most help.

“When the worse-off can benefit only slightly while better-off people could benefit greatly, allocating (treatment) to the better-off is often justifiable.”

So the federal government won’t be actively killing the old and the sick. It will just let them die by denying them the care that will supposedly be available to every American.

• “There are those who also claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false — the reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.”

Tough words are one thing, enforcement is another. As IBD’s Sean Higgins reported last week: “Some independent analysis indicates — contrary to Obama’s claim — that the House health bill could result in coverage being extended to illegal immigrants.”

It starts with the mandate for everyone to buy insurance, including illegals. Their choices will be presumably through the “exchange,” and they won’t be eligible for subsidies to buy. But the non-partisan Congressional Research Service warns there’s no verification mechanism. An amendment by GOP Rep. Dean Heller of Nevada, to use electronic immigration records to verify eligibility for subsidies, was shot down by Democrats.

Enforcement woes are nothing new. The U.K.’s nationalized system treats as many as a million illegal immigrants a year because eligibility verification at the point of service is nearly impossible. It’s now giving up the ghost of trying because illegals have won the right to be treated at taxpayer expense as a “human right.” That’s brought new waves of “health tourism” as word spreads.

Cabinet officials, such as Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, support union demands to give amnesty to 12 million illegals. If so, they will get public health care. And hospitals that continue to treat illegals through emergency rooms, are reimbursed through Medicaid.

• “My health care proposal has also been attacked by some who oppose reform as a ‘government takeover’ of the entire health care system . . . Unfortunately, in 34 states, 75% of the insurance market is controlled by five or fewer companies. . . Without competition, the price of insurance goes up and the quality goes down.”

Obama is right about limited numbers of insurers in states. They’re the last ones able to survive the layers of bureaucratic mandates and regulations without going bankrupt.

The fastest way to create choice for consumers isn’t by adding a government option, but by breaking down trade barriers across state lines. By letting citizens buy insurance from any state, a truly competitive market can develop, with choices in coverage, service and price. It would be far better if each American could buy health insurance from any of the nation’s 1,300 insurers, not just a handful in their own states.

• “Despite all this, some . . . argue that these private (insurance) companies can’t fairly compete with the government. And they’d be right if taxpayers were subsidizing this public option. But they won’t be. . . . (The public option) would . . . keep pressure on private insurers to keep their policies affordable and treat their customers better . . .”

When the government acts as both producer and regulator of its own and everyone else’s products, the playing field is tilted because there’s a basic conflict of interest. It’s also a recipe for cronyism and corruption. Witness Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

We looked at the after-tax margins of some big health insurers over the last 12 months. Here’s what we found: Among HMOs, Humana, 3.1%. Cigna, 4%. Wellpoint, 5%. United Health Group, 4.4%. Broader health insurers, like Unum (8.6% after-tax margin) and AFLAC (12.3%), do a bit better.

The point is, these are not outrageous profits. And the health care industry’s $13 billion in 2008 profits pale in comparison to the $65 billion in annual fraud in Medicare alone.

• “I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits — either now or in the future. Period. And to prove that I’m serious, there will be a provision in this plan that requires us to come forward with more spending cuts if the savings we promised don’t materialize.”

From the folks who brought us a $10 trillion deficit over the next decade, that’s hard to swallow. The White House has assured us the public option would be funded by premiums. So, it’s hard to know what he means by savings or spending cuts.

Although Medicare and Medicaid, are slated for $313 billion in cuts, the government has yet to eliminate the $65 billion or so that goes to waste and fraud. They don’t need health reform to do that, they can do it now.

• “The only thing this plan would eliminate is the hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud as well as unwarranted subsidies in Medicare that go to insurance companies — subsidies that do everything to pad their profits and nothing to improve your care.”

Speaking of waste and fraud, as we said, why can’t it be done today instead of waiting for some health care reform bill to pass? The president proposes $313 billion in Medicaid and Medicare cuts, saying $110 billion would come from reducing scheduled increases in Medicare payments.

“That would encourage health care providers to increase productivity,” White House budget director Peter Orszag told reporters. $110 billion would come from ending payments to hospitals to treat uninsured patients. But much of that comes from treating illegals, who aren’t supposed to be eligible for the public option.

Another $75 billion would come from “better pricing of Medicare drugs,” Orszag said.

What he doesn’t get is that some $10 billion of Medicare funding goes to dubious expenditures like hospitals padding bills because they are paid too little and must make up lost revenue in volume.

Cutting payments more means more padding, as the Mayo Clinic has warned. That means rationing. The Democrats’ plan may not be explicitly mean to ration, but not paying a fair and market-determined price for services will ensure less of it for patients.

President Obama began his speech by noting it’s “been nearly a century since Theodore Roosevelt first called for health reform” and that “nearly every president and Congress, whether Democrat or Republican, has attempted to meet this challenge in some way.”

“A bill for comprehensive care reform was first introduced by John Dingell Sr. in 1943,” he also pointed out. “Sixty-five years later, his son (Rep. John Dingell, Michigan Democrat now in his 28th term) continues to introduce that same bill at the beginning of each session.”

Could it be, we wonder, that the reason why health reform of the kind the Dingells and Democrats have been pushing for 100 years has gone nowhere is that Americans want nothing to do with it? What is it about “No!” that they don’t understand?

Does he see his own image reflected back at him from his telemprompter:

“But we’ve also seen in these last months is the same partisan spectacle that only hardens the disdain many Americans have towards their own government. Instead of honest debate, we’ve seen scare tactics. Some have dug into unyielding ideological camps that offer no hope of compromise. Too many have used this as an opportunity to score short-term political points, even if it robs the country of our opportunity to solve a long-term challenged. And out of this blizzard of charges and counter-charges, confusion has reigned.”

-President Barack Obama, “Remarks to a Joint Session of Congress on Health Care,” U.S. Capitol, Washington, D.C., September 9, 2009

That seriously could have been written at the president.

Usually these are characterized as mostly civilians. This time it’s almost all Taliban (perhaps gathered to discuss peace in the SWAT territory?).

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Feb. 16 (UPI) — At least 31 people died Monday in a remote area of Pakistan in what seems to be a U.S. missile strike, a witness and a Pakistani government official said.

The attack by the pilotless aircraft occurred near Parachinar, a town near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in the semi-autonomous Kurram tribal region, The New York Times (NYSE:NYT) reported Monday. A government official said those killed were all thought to be Taliban militants.

The official and a resident both said U.S. drone aircraft were seen in the area before the strike near the village of Sur Pul. The target was a camp used by Taliban militants, the government official said.

The missile attacks by CIA-operated drones have been aimed at foreign al-Qaida and Taliban militants who hide in Pakistan. Pakistani authorities have criticized the strikes, sharing their complaints with Richard Holbrooke, U.S. President Barack Obama’s representative to Pakistan and Afghanistan, who is on a “listening tour” in the region.

The latest attack came a day after government officials and Taliban militants seemed close to reaching an agreement to end violence in Swat, also in northern Pakistan, the Times said. Militants there declared a 10-day cease-fire and the government indicated it was ready to accept the introduction of Islamic law.

related:
Democrat Senator outs an entire covert base and operation, but no outcry for indictment from the people who called for Karl Rove’s head after DepSecState Armitage outed a quasi-Beltway-spy

The entire article by Lance Fairchok at American Thinker is spot-on excellent, and exactly what I was looking for as an answer to this, which surprisingly seemed to get little media traction. However, I’d like to cite the following passage as a lead-in for a different, if not unrelated topic:

Webster defines propaganda as the “spreading of ideas or information to further or damage a cause,” it is also “ideas or allegations spread for such purpose.” The popular connotation of the word is false information, or information used to deceive or mislead. The left uses the word as a negative label for information that does not conform to their view, a tool to demean and discredit, regardless of truth. Their purpose is to dominate what the public sees with their messages and to eliminate contradictory information.

In information warfare, this is called shaping the battle space.

Throughout this war, the military has been inundated with negative press. Damaging leaks were rampant, coming from the Democrats in the Senate and the House, from the CIA and the State Department, even from inside the Pentagon. Every setback was exaggerated in an unrelenting information campaign to shape public perception.

Disinformation from our enemies was accepted without critical analysis by much of the media. Papers worldwide splashed every unsubstantiated negative story they could find. Enemy agents posing as stringers were feeding false stories about American atrocities. Terror attacks were timed for the 24-hour news-cycle. The broadcast media’s mantra for Iraq was “if it bleeds it leads” writ large.

The enemy knew it, and used it.

This relentless media assault frustrated and confounded the military, for whom the lessons of press malfeasance in Vietnam still rankle. How can you prosecute a war against a vicious enemy when your every action may be portrayed as criminal? How can you show success when failure is all Americans are allowed to see and hear? How do you get your message out when the press ignores or alters it? How can you tell the ground truth if no one is there to listen?

This brings us to today’s New York Times piece, written by Scott Shane, which details some of the little known interrogation of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. What is shocking (and yet, why shouldn’t we be surprised?) is the disclosure outing of the name of the 9/11 Mastermind’s interrogator:

Mr. Martinez declined to be interviewed; his role was described by colleagues. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, director of the C.I.A., and a lawyer representing Mr. Martinez asked that he not be named in this article, saying that the former interrogator believed that the use of his name would invade his privacy and might jeopardize his safety. The New York Times, noting that Mr. Martinez had never worked undercover and that others involved in the campaign against Al Qaeda have been named in news articles and books, declined the request. (An editors’ note on this issue has been posted on The Times’s Web site at nytimes.com/world.)

What is it about today’s press that has impaired judgment, given aid and comfort to America’s enemies, endangered lives, prolonged the conflict, and sabotaged and undermined anti-terror programs by publishing leaks regarding such things as CIA secret prisons, NSA surveillance program, the SWIFT program? Were 32 frontpage stories on abu Ghraib published in the New York Times really warranted? Did the act itself inflame the Arab world and create more terrorists, or was it the media hype about the abuses, which did so? What about Haditha? Who has done more damage to the war effort? Soldiers on the frontlines to win hearts and minds, protesters out on the streets, politicians back in Washington, or perceptions created and driven by the media in its coverage of the war? The Bush Administration is held accountable for its failures in prosecuting the Iraq battle with zero percent casualties; but where is the media accountability?

There’s a reason for classified information and government secrets, aside from cynical conspiratorial beliefs that our government is up to no good, to remain secret from the public (and consequently, from our enemies). Is it not obvious?

From the editor’s note regarding the NYTimes defending its decision to publish KSM’s interrogator’s name:

The Central Intelligence Agency asked The New York Times not to publish the name of Deuce Martinez, an interrogator who questioned Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and other high-level Al Qaeda prisoners, saying that to identify Mr. Martinez would invade his privacy and put him at risk of retaliation from terrorists or harassment from critics of the agency.

After discussion with agency officials and a lawyer for Mr. Martinez, the newspaper declined the request, noting that Mr. Martinez had never worked under cover and that others involved in the campaign against Al Qaeda have been named in news stories and books. The editors judged that the name was necessary for the credibility and completeness of the article.

The Times’s policy is to withhold the name of a news subject only very rarely, most often in the case of victims of sexual assault or intelligence officers operating under cover.

[sarcasm]
Yes, if only he were an “undercover” operative like Valerie Plame Wilson. Then the NY Times would have kept him anonymous. [/sarcasm]

Since I opened this post by citing a passage from Michael Yon’s book I found relevant, let me bookend the post by closing with this passage from Robert Kaplan’s Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts, pg 26-27:

Dekryger showed me the book he was reading, Tarawa: The Story of a Battle by Time-Life correspondent Robert Sherrod. He said that he found the book inspiring. Leafing through it, and reading it carefully at night in the hootch, I discovered that it was like other books popular among marines and soldiers, but which the contemporary media, aside from the military correspondents, were barely aware of. No potboiler, Tarawa was just an old-fashioned sort of book, very much in the tradition of great war reporting as defined by Richard Tregaskis in Guadalcanal Diary, Bing West in The Village, and Harold Moore and Joe Galloway in We Were Soldiers Once…and Young. These books celebrated the sacrifice and heroism of American troops in World War II and Vietnam not because it had been the authors’ intention, but because it was true and happened to be all around them.

~~~

Sherrod, like other correspondents of the era, keeps using the words “we and “our” when referring to the American side, for although a journalist, he was a fellow American living among the troops. Back in Honolulu a week after the battle, he found the naïveté of the home front toward Tarawa “amazing”. The public saw the killing of so many troops in so few days as scandalous. There were rumblings in Congress about an intelligence failure, and vows that such a thing must not happen again. But as Sherrod argues, there was no easy way to win many wars (in fact, eight months later, the first day of fighting on Guam would claim nearly seven hundred marines dead, wounded, or missing). Thus, “to deprecate the Tawara victory was almost to defame the memory of the gallant men who lost their lives achieving it.” He concludes that on Tarawa, in 1943, “there was a more realistic approach to war than there was in the United States.”

Hours after Senator Clinton dropped out of the race, and the news cycle was swamped with never-ending coverage of the inevitable doing the inevitable something was released under the radar.

link

Back in 2004 the Senate Intelligence Committee began an investigation into pre-war intelligence regarding Saddam’s regime, the threat it posed, and how the intelligence was handled.  Democrats on the committee did their best to politicize the investigation and give it the appearance of a precursor to impeachment of President Bush under some sort of Bush Lied conspiracy theory.  They did this for purely political purposes despite being contrary to national interests.  Again and again the committee came out with report after report.  Each report showed that the problems with pre-war intelligence regarding Saddam’s regime was not some grand conspiracy by a President who can barely read a teleprompter, but rather the result of bad intelligence from agencies that were as on the ball in 2002 and 2003 as they were on 9/11/2001; they were out of touch, undermanned, ill-equipped, budget constrained, and bureaucratically strangled.

In October of 2006, on the eve of the midterm elections, Senate minority leader Harry Reid pulled a big political PR stunt and ordered the doors of the Senate closed to discuss the classified elements of the investigation.  Publicly, he claimed it wasn’t a stunt, but rather that the Bush Administration was holding up the committee’s report to avoid embarassment and to skew the upcoming elections.  In those elections, Democrats took over the House, the Senate, and the Committee, then…instead of releasing it, they sat on it for almost two years.  Why?  Because they didn’t want the reality to make the news: that it was Democrats who were deliberately misleading the American people about the casus belli for the invasion of Iraq: the threat of an Iraqi/Al Queda WMD attack on the United States.

Now, when everyone else was watching Hillary’s 1/2 hour speech again and again and again, on 3 cable networks and every other news outlet, the Democratic-controlled committee released the final report on pre-war intelligence about Saddam’s regime.   In that report…they finally admit that YES

Saddam’s regime was in fact harboring Al Queda groups and leaders, meeting with Al Queda groups and leaders, and more.

Thomas Joseclyn fires the first shot at sinking the “no connections” lie that the Democratic Party has deliberately created and perpetuated for their political gains at national expense.  Naysayers will point to the source as partisan, but the article cited gives plenty of quotes in proper context for one to form an unbiased opinion, and to see with clarity that the real misleading regarding the war in Iraq, hasn’t come from the Bush Administration’s 6months of pre-war rhetoric, but from the Democratic Party’s leaders and flag bearers over the past 66 months.