The People Of The Stables

The race track is a world within a world. It can be a dangerous place, injuries and death happen all too frequently, but you can make dear friends at the track; especially, if you work on the backside where the horses are stabled. Everyone on the backside can be divided into three groups: those who are addicted to gambling, those who are in love with the equine beast and those for whom the equine is merely a means to provide a job or for a few to make a fortune.

The gamblers are lost souls to be sure and only one out of 500 or maybe a thousand ever builds an estate with winnings; most gamblers funnel the memorable wins they score right back through the betting windows, but those wins become memories enshrined as gambling mythology and the efforts to duplicate those legendary wins become mystical like the search for the Holy Grail. Thus the gambler becomes one of many lost legions of forgotten people who exist solely to keep racing alive.

The horse lovers are in a precarious position; for they know deep inside that racing is one of the hardest sports of all for the equine and that injuries happen all to frequently and death is always waiting. They often choose to ignore the obvious contradictions and spend their time caring the horses and giving them comfort during their often all too short lives. Like concubines for gladiators, they willingly give their love to these superb athletes and move on when necessary. Sadly, these most dedicated of care givers end up hollow shells within a couple of decades, they are often bitter people who are dedicated cynics and view almost all other humans as lesser beings.

Of the people for whom the horse provides an income, a group that includes me, there are those who are born under the right star and make a fortune, but even these with luck and skill must be wary, for even the greatest can stumble and end up ruined and destroyed financially. For every successful jockey, vet, trainer, horseshoer; there are at least twelve or twenty more that are standing around hoping to get that one big break that will launch their career. Most of them will never get that break and of those that do, a large percentage will let that measure of success destroy them as surely as the moth flies into the flame. The temptations are never in short supply for those who enjoy a measure of success and the giving in to temptation helps to soothe the pain from years of rejection.

A Track Character

One of my favorites from the group for whom the race track provides a job was T Red Booker. He was an old man when I met him, a Black Cajun with a bright yellow color to his eyes. We hit it off right away, I suspect it was because of his rural upbringing in the woods of Louisiana and his interest in healing remedies and cooking. He was a groom for one of my big outfits from New Orleans. We talked for hours on cures for hoof rot, puncture wounds, poultices, shivers, fever fighters and then we would talk about our favorite cooking techniques. He liked to hear about my experiments smoking bacon and hams, my recipes for moose nose, elk liver, grizzly heart, and he told me about stuffed quail wrapped in bacon, snapping turtle fries, smoked alligator, and 20 varieties of poke salad.

He wasn’t interested in gambling and he knew he was at the terminal position in his station in life, so he was above all the desperate struggling of the average race tracker. T Red was content to watch the others struggle for their goals; consequently, he was an excellent mentor for me at this stage of my life.

I once asked him if the name T Red meant anything in Cajun or Coonasse as he would say. He said that as a lad that no one could outrun him for any distance between a quarter mile and a mile. He had once raced a famous stakes horse at the Fair Grounds in New Orleans for a quarter mile, even though the jockey was running too close to him in an effort to scare him. In their language the name meant Fast Red. In his younger days, his hair was a reddish color before turning gray, the name stuck. So he had been T Red Booker ever since, one of the few men that could outrun a horse.

Booker and I were like a lot of people I’ve met in the horse world; they were just born in the wrong period of history. They were much more comfortable with horses and all things associated with an earlier time of civilization than they were with mechanical and electronic things of more recent times. We are often left with the feelings that are probably accurate, that we just don’t really fit in with modern society, thus we congregate on race tracks, ranches, and farms. We ride, drive teams, pack, and work on horses to keep a dying culture alive for a few more generations, mainly because there really isn’t anything else that holds our interest. Oh, we are a varied bunch, every shape, size, and color; usually, we are a bit rough around the edges for sophisticated types; some are educated and others have ever been to school; there are friends and there are enemies, but the best among us can size up a horse or a rider within two strides and we all respect a gifted horseman for what he can do.

For several years, I looked for T Red’s outfit to pull into Chicago or Kentucky; we always had a homecoming of sorts and a period to catch up on the news of mutual acquaintances. On one of these occasions, I was sorry to see T Red was on light duty with a terrible limp. I asked him what was wrong and he said he had an ingrown toe nail that was giving him problems.

Unexpected Trouble

The next day, I had to shoe a gelding for T Red’s outfit and T Red was going to hold the horse. I was there about 10 AM and most of the track work was over for the day until the races started after lunch. T Red brought out a comfortable folding lawn chair and sat down while holding the horse. Between the relaxed nature of the two of us the horse was very cooperative.

T Red had an old shoe on his right foot and had cut out the leather around the area of his big toe, the toe was about three times bigger than normal and looked like it was ready to explode. T Red fell asleep with legs out in front of him, so I was real careful not to step on his sore foot while clinching the front shoes.

I was working away and noticed that T Red had dropped the leather lead shank on the ground. The horse was really easy to work with, but he was still a race horse and if he took off it would be trouble for T Red, so I wrapped the leather lead shank around the arm of the lawn chair, just in case, and went back to work.

I couldn’t help myself, I kept looking at that infected big toe; suddenly, just as I was finishing the hind shoes, I had a brilliant idea to help T Red. I lifted one of the horses front legs and brought it out in front of him with his knee locked straight. I aimed the hoof and brand new aluminum shoe with its steel toe grab right over that ingrown toe nail that needed to come off of that toe. I lifted the foot up and down several times to be sure of my aim and let it go. The steel toe grab was right on target with a couple of hundred pounds of force as it landed on the base of that toe nail. Immediately the corruption exploded out of that toe and T Red woke up emitting a loud roar that scared the horse back without picking up his hoof and that ripped the ingrown toe nail from the hoof and the toe was really draining well at this point.

There was one problem, I had forgotten that I had wrapped the lead shank around the chair arm earlier. The horse pulled back until the lead shank tightened, which was about the length of a millisecond and when he felt the weight of T Red in the chair he spun around to the right until he was behind T Red; who was making the situation worse by screaming blood curdling screams while reaching for his foot and then throwing his hands in the air. All of this strange behavior by T Red had the poor horse confused and he took off at a dead run. Thankfully, this made T Red quit screaming and he looked at me with this blank expression as the horse gained speed with the lawn chair and T Red bouncing along beside him. It was amazing how long the chair stayed in the upright position, because that horse was gaining speed with every stride, but when the chair started to tip over backwards, the lead shank came undone and the horse lost his curious load.

No one really understood how the accident happened and I didn’t want to tell them about T Red falling asleep on the job, so everyone figured it was just one of those race track accidents that are bound to happen now and then. T Red’s big toe healed up in a few days and felt better almost immediately. He received a few bumps and bruises when his lawn chair flipped on him, but all things considered, he did pretty well.

There is a lesson to learned from T Red’s complacency. We have a new treaty and we assume that everything will be perfect now; unfortunately, we tend to drift off into slumber while enjoying the security of a treaty that assures us that we will have peace in our time; unfortunately, there are often little irritants that tend to get out of control while we assume that it is safe enough to go to sleep; suddenly, we are bouncing along backwards in a lawn chair at forty miles an hour awaiting the inevitable crash.

Now that Chaves has purchased missiles from Iran, we can ill-afford to lean back in our lawn chair and how long will it be before the little weirdo from North Korea can purchase the long range missiles he needs to pinpoint Hawaii or the West Coast? A treaty with Russia is the least of our worries, it’s the strange little guys who want to make their mark in history that are the real problems and we have very little in the way of plans to prevent them from dropping the race shoe on our big toe.

Iranian legislators on Sunday decided to not allow a visit from Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.), according to Iranian media.

“Members of the Iranian parliament’s Foreign Relations Committee (a subcommittee of the parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission) voiced opposition to the request after studying the issue,” Hassan Ebrahimi, head of the committee, told the semi-official Fars News Agency.

If this doesn’t mean diplomacy w Iran has failed…I dunno what could.

Well, it’s gone. 2009 is finally freaking GONE

The year started with my wife outta work, no family income (I just get beer money for my books), two sick kids, the neighbor’s trampoline had just taken flight into the back of our car-almost totaling it.

The year continued…

Obama took office. He and Dems gave a trillion dollars in “stimulus” money to their organized labor donors who paid 80% of their campaign money (according to the Federal Election Commission website) with the idea that if the kickback wasn’t given right away unemployment would rise above 8%.

Then unemployment reached almost 11% (almost 25% in some states…states that probably won’t be blue again in the fall-not w 1:4 voters outta work!).
The war in Iraq continues under the Bush plan, and Obama-who had pledged for 2yrs to focus on Afghanistan-took 10 months to decide on what to do.

Also in Afghanistan, our own Flopping Aces writer, Chris Galloway returned from his tour there in April, but on June 30th his months of being unable to adjust, his frustrations w Obama and the left’s ignorance of the war on terror among other challenges drove him to take his own life. God bless you Chris! You’re missed more than you know.

My wife did find a job, but 3 more of my friends lost their jobs (2 of em far left, unabashed moonbat Obama lovers).

Last night, my wife and I did the usual. We looked back on the year, we complained about some things, and we thanked God for others (a trip to Disneyworld with our kids that was the greatest vacation in our lives!). We talked about making resolutions, and decided on a list of things we wanna try and do instead. As we waited up for the ball to drop on TV, I got a facebook message that a friend of mine’s mom had just died. 2009 was going out like bitch.

I dunno what 2010 will bring. I know the deadline for Iran to give up its nuclear program has come and gone, and that Obama “strongly objected” to the tyrannical oppression of the Iranian people. I know that even if the current plan in Iraq works, 50-70,000 American combat troops will just be re-named “security forces” in October. I know that there’s no plan for fighting terrorists in Afghanistan other than to make soldiers read Miranda rights if they choose to capture a suicide bomber (should Marines get badges now, or will those grunts just toss em on the ground w a firm, “Badges!? We don’t need no stinking badges!”?). I know that even TIME Magazine reported that there is no military option for Yemen. I know from a friend just back from the region that Somalia is a war zone w Americans fully involved and the world ignoring it (but Obama did get a peace prize). I know that Israel is not gonna wait forever re: Iran, that Russia’s making offensive weapons again for the first time in 20yrs, and I know that if I look around the web or TV I can still find some leftwinger nutroots moonbat moron blaming Bush for something-anything-even though Obama’s been President for a year now.

More than anything, I know that 2009 changed me. Chris’ death effects me harder than any other that I’ve known in Iraq or Afghanistan. I know that what pissed him off politically and militarily pisses me off too. I know that the trip I took w my wife and kids to Disneyworld in December changed me somehow. I no longer care as much about trying to warn people on the left of threats. I no longer care to debate them about the validity of the war in Iraq, about the need for the war in Afghanistan, or the (4) 911 Commission report causes that drove Al Queda to start killing Americans in 1992 (3:4 of which were blowback from America’s war on Iraq).

I care more about my family now. I care more about my friends. I don’t live in a leftist nest like San Fran, LA, NYC, DC, or Boston, and since I live between the burbs and farm country in Ohio…I don’t think the war whose name must not be spoken is gonna effect me as much as it will those who cannot dare to speak its name. I will not be attacked. Al Queda’s not gonna waste operatives in the Akron area as much as they gonna aim for someplace where the leftnuts are all gathered-like NYC and DC on 911.

So, when the next attack comes, and it will, it’s gonna be aimed at those who continue to try and pretend there is no war, there is no threat, and if we’re just nice to everyone around the world (except Republicans who they wish would die ala Rush Limbaugh), then everything will be fine. I’ve tried for years to explain documented threats and ties, and now those people need to learn on their own. How? Well, Clinton’s Counterterrorism Czar, Richard Clarke, was asked by the 911 Commission back in 2004, and he told them there’s only 1 thing that gets Americans to recognize the threat: “more body bags.”

Maybe the same is true with the economy. Maybe the leftnuts who lose their jobs and can’t find another will start to ask why they can’t? Maybe they’ll start to see that repealing the Bush tax cuts (or letting them expire) is not a good idea ’cause it raises the tax on those same people who do the hiring? Maybe they’ll see that they can’t find a job because small business owners had their taxes increased, and they have less to spend on new hires? Maybe they’ll see that forcing businesses to spend more on healthcare means less money for hiring them? Maybe the nutroots people who are outta work will say, “Gosh, I like taxing people who make $250,000 a year, but…now those people are spending their money on these new taxes instead of spending it on hiring me? With 1:4 people in the blue state of Michigan looking for work…it could happen.

2009 was a good year and a bad year. Obama gave himself a B+ for having accomplished nothing. Since, by the Bush standard, he is responsible for everything then 2009 gets a B+. If you agree, then great. If you don’t, then you must be some sort of right winger teabagger conservative wackjob (at least by MSNBC, Huffpo, and NYT standards).

In the end, I’m optimistic about 2010. Why-with so much potential horror looming?! I’m optimistic because like no other time in our recent history…there is no place for the left to hide. No conspiracy theories, no blaming Bush, not denial or deliberate ignoring of wars, nothing can hide them from the cold dark realities of the world, from the broken promises of their leaders, from their own cowardly refusal to open their minds to the scary scary thought that if something wasn’t Bush’s fault or the Repubs’ fault, then what caused it?

What caused the recession?
Why are so many out of work?
Why are Dems supporting the indefinite war in Iraq now?
Why did Al Queda start killing Americans?
What if Bush’s anti-charisma wasn’t to blame for “the world hating us?”

So many more cold questions that they didn’t even dare to ask before, but this year…this year they cannot even escape the answers.

Welcome Dems, welcome to reality

“The most shattering conclusion is that, if this was an effort that began in 2007, it could be a casus belli. If Iran is working on weapons, it means there is no diplomatic solution.”

Mohamed ElBaradei caps his contentious and ultimately failed 12-year stint as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency today, having spent many years enabling Iran’s nuclear bids only to condemn them in his final days in office. Mr. ElBaradei combined his rebuke of Iran with his familiar calls for more negotiation, but we’ll take his belated realism about Iran as his tacit admission that Dick Cheney and John Bolton have been right all along. Let’s hope the education of the Obama Administration doesn’t take as long.

As if to underscore the point, yesterday the Iranian government ordered up 10 additional uranium enrichment plants on the scale of its already operational facility in Natanz, which has a planned capacity of 54,000 centrifuges. That could mean an eventual total of more than 500,000 centrifuges, or enough to enrich about 160 bombs worth of uranium each year. Whether it can ever do that is an open question, but it does give a sense of the scale of the regime’s ambitions.

The decision is also a reminder of how unchastened Iran has been by President Obama’s revelation in September that Iran had been building a secret 3,000 centrifuge facility near the city of Qom.

SO, if diplomacy has failed, and has no reasonable chance (hell, there’s NO chance) of stopping the Iranian nuke problem…what’s next? The answer is simple: Israel attacks Iran or the US attacks Iran, and Obama lacks the political courage to even think about the latter option.

As the current UK Inquisition continues today (with misleading conclusions), I found this from BBC News, regarding the 2006 assessment:

In September 2006 the US Senate Intelligence Committee published one of the definitive public accounts of the intelligence used to justify the Iraq war.

Its 400-page report, three years in the making, laid bare the justifications for the invasion – and found little or no evidence to back a raft of claims made by the US intelligence community concerning Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction [WMD].

Read Scott and Mark‘s posts.

Also note pg 145, on the Additional Minority Views of Senators Bond, Hatch, Lott, and Chambliss:

for the past two years, rather than pursue our oversight role and ensure that some of the key findings and recommendations of these reports and others were enacted, this Committee ‘s usefulness as an oversight body and as a key element in our national security apparatus has been consumed by a rear-view mirror investigation for political ends.

~~~

(U) Simply stated, this second series of reports is designed to point fingers in Washington and at the Administration. The conclusions in the reports were crafted with more partisan bias than we have witnessed in a long time in Congress. The “Phase II” investigation has turned the Senate Intelligence Committee, a committee initially designed to be the most bipartisan committee in the Senate, into a political playground stripped of its bipartisan power, and this fact has not gone unnoticed in the Intelligence Community.

No mention of the (highly partisan) 2008 Final Phase II Reports in the article?

Scott wrote up the definitive key points of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Phase II investigation report on pre-war Iraq Intel

Other op-ed writers weeks after the initial media coverage of the Final Phase ii Report, also asserted that within the Report, Bush claims were “generally substantiated by the intell at the time”.

The BBC piece also mentions

Eighteen months before the Senate report, the Silberman-Robb commission – set up by President Bush in early 2004 – had reported in no uncertain terms that US intelligence had been “dead wrong” in judging that Iraq had been developing WMD before the invasion.

But fail to mention about how the commission report also exonerated the charge that intelligence was manipulated to persuade public opinion.

“It really doesn’t matter how President Obama divides the Afghan baby, how he splits the difference between McChrystal and Biden. Because the war has been lost,” Thompson said on his radio show today. “I say this because of one sad and simple fact. The president does not have the will and determination to do what’s necessary to win it. His heart’s not in it, and never has been. The Taliban knows it. Al Qaeda knows it. Our allies know it. And the American people know it.

He’s probably right

This war is a new kind of war. It is different from all other wars of the past, not only in its methods and weapons but also in its geography. It is warfare in terms of every continent, every island, every sea, every air-lane in the world.

That is the reason why I have asked you to take out and spread before you (the) a map of the whole earth, and to follow with me in the references which I shall make to the world-encircling battle lines of this war. Many questions will, I fear, remain unanswered tonight, but I know you will realize that I cannot cover everything in any one short report to the people. The broad oceans which have been heralded in the past as our protection from attack have become endless battlefields on which we are constantly being challenged by our enemies.

This week President Obama is in Asia. Next week he will be in Europe. He will actually order his plane-not to land, but to fly AROUND his troops in Afghanistan, his troops in the Persian Gulf, his troops in Iraq, and around Iran where he could land and give diplomacy one last serious chance before Israel attacks and casts the Arab world into war (from the Mediterranean Sea to the Bay of Bengal). Nope, Obama will fly around all those places-literally dodging his responsibility as a wartime commander and as a peace-seeking statesman. When did Presidents lose their courage? Maybe he needs to read up on his Democratic Party idol. I found it interesting.

MY FELLOW AMERICANS:
Washington’s Birthday is a most appropriate occasion for us to talk with each other about things as they are today and things as we know they shall be in the future. For eight years, General Washington and his Continental Army were faced continually with formidable odds and recurring defeats. Supplies and equipment were lacking. In a sense, every winter was a Valley Forge. Throughout the thirteen states there existed fifth columnists — and selfish men, jealous men, fearful men, who proclaimed that Washington’s cause was hopeless, and that he should ask for a negotiated peace.

Washington’s conduct in those hard times has provided the model for all Americans ever since — a model of moral stamina. He held to his course, as it had been charted in the Declaration of Independence. He and the brave men who served with him knew that no man’s life or fortune was secure without freedom and free institutions.

The present great struggle has taught us increasingly that freedom of person and security of property anywhere in the world depend upon the security of the rights and obligations of liberty and justice everywhere in the world.

This war is a new kind of war. It is different from all other wars of the past, not only in its methods and weapons but also in its geography. It is warfare in terms of every continent, every island, every sea, every air-lane in the world.

That is the reason why I have asked you to take out and spread before you (the) a map of the whole earth, and to follow with me in the references which I shall make to the world-encircling battle lines of this war. Many questions will, I fear, remain unanswered tonight, but I know you will realize that I cannot cover everything in any one short report to the people. The broad oceans which have been heralded in the past as our protection from attack have become endless battlefields on which we are constantly being challenged by our enemies.

We must all understand and face the hard fact that our job now is to fight at distances which extend all the way around the globe.

We fight at these vast distances because that is where our enemies are. Until our flow of supplies gives us clear superiority we must keep on striking our enemies wherever and whenever we can meet them, even if, for a while, we have to yield ground. Actually, though, we are taking a heavy toll of the enemy every day that goes by.

We must fight at these vast distances to protect our supply lines and our lines of communication with our allies — protect these lines from the enemies who are bending every ounce of their strength, striving against time, to cut them. The object of the Nazis and the Japanese is to of course separate the United States, Britain, China and Russia, and to isolate them one from another, so that each will be surrounded and cut off from sources of supplies and reinforcements. It is the old familiar Axis policy of “divide and conquer.”

There are those who still think, however, in terms of the days of sailing-ships. They advise us to pull our warships and our planes and our merchant ships into our own home waters and concentrate solely on last ditch defense. But let me illustrate what would happen if we followed such foolish advice.

Look at your map. Look at the vast area of China, with its millions of fighting men. Look at the vast area of Russia, with its powerful armies and proven military might. Look at the (British Isles) Islands of Britain, Australia, New Zealand, the Dutch Indies, India, the Near East and the Continent of Africa, with their (re) sources of raw materials — their resources of raw materials, and of peoples determined to resist Axis domination. Look too at North America, Central America and South America. It is obvious what would happen if all of these great reservoirs of power were cut off from each other either by enemy action or by self-imposed isolation:

(1.) First, in such a case, we could no longer send aid of any kind to China — to the brave people who, for nearly five years, have withstood Japanese assault, destroyed hundreds of thousands of Japanese soldiers and vast quantities of Japanese war munitions. It is essential that we help China in her magnificent defense and in her inevitable counteroffensive -for that is one important element in the ultimate defeat of Japan.

(2.) Secondly, if we lost communication with the southwest Pacific, all of that area, including Australia and New Zealand and the Dutch Indies, would fall under Japanese domination. Japan in such a case could (then) release great numbers of ships and men to launch attacks on a large scale against the coasts of the Western Hemisphere — South America and Central America, and North America — including Alaska. At the same time, she could immediately extend her conquests (to) in the other direction toward India, (and) through the Indian Ocean, to Africa, (and) to the Near East and try to join forces with Germany and Italy.

(3.) Third, if we were to stop sending munitions to the British and the Russians in the Mediterranean area, (and) in the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, (areas) we would be helping the Nazis to overrun Turkey, and Syria, and Iraq, and Persia — that is now called Iran — Egypt and the Suez Canal, the whole coast of North Africa itself and with that inevitably the whole coast of West Africa — putting Germany within easy striking distance of South America — fifteen hundred miles away.

(4.) Fourth, if by such a fatuous policy, we ceased to protect the North Atlantic supply line to Britain and to Russia, we would help to cripple the splendid counter-offensive by Russia against the Nazis, and we would help to deprive Britain of essential food supplies and munitions.

Those Americans who believed that we could live under the illusion of isolationism wanted the American eagle to imitate the tactics of the ostrich. Now, many of those same people, afraid that we may be sticking our necks out, want our national bird to be turned into a turtle. But we prefer to retain the eagle as it is — flying high and striking hard.

I know (that) I speak for the mass of the American people when I say that we reject the turtle policy and will continue increasingly the policy of carrying the war to the enemy in distant lands and distant waters — as far away as possible from our own home grounds.

There are four main lines of communication now being travelled by our ships: the North Atlantic, the South Atlantic, the Indian Ocean and the South Pacific. These routes are not one-way streets, for the ships (which) that carry our troops and munitions out-bound bring back essential raw materials which we require for our own use.

The maintenance of these vital lines is a very tough job. It is a job which requires tremendous daring, tremendous resourcefulness, and, above all, tremendous production of planes and tanks and guns and also of the ships to carry them. And I speak again for the American people when I say that we can and will do that job.

The defense of the world-wide lines of communication demands — compel relatively safe use by us of the sea and of the air along the various routes; and this, in turn, depends upon control by the United Nations of (the) many strategic bases along those routes.

Control of the air involves the simultaneous use of two types of planes — first, the long-range heavy bomber; and, second, the light bombers, the dive bombers, the torpedo planes, (and) the short-range pursuit planes, all of which are essential to (the) cooperate with and protect(ion) (of) the bases and (of) the bombers themselves.

Heavy bombers can fly under their own power from here to the southwest Pacific, either way, but the smaller planes cannot. Therefore, these lighter planes have to be packed in crates and sent on board cargo ships. Look at your map again; and you will see that the route is long — and at many places perilous — either across the South Atlantic all the way (a)round South Africa and the Cape of Good Hope, or from California to the East Indies direct. A vessel can make a round trip by either route in about four months, or only three round trips in a whole year.

In spite of the length, (and) in spite of the difficulties of this transportation, I can tell you that in two and a half months we already have a large number of bombers and pursuit planes, manned by American pilots and crews, which are now in daily contact with the enemy in the Southwest Pacific. And thousands of American troops are today in that area engaged in operations not only in the air but on the ground as well.

In this battle area, Japan has had an obvious initial advantage. For she could fly even her short-range planes to the points of attack by using many stepping stones open to — her bases in a multitude of Pacific islands and also bases on the China coast, Indo-China coast, and in Thailand and Malaya (coasts). Japanese troop transports could go south from Japan and from China through the narrow China Sea, which can be protected by Japanese planes throughout its whole length.

I ask you to look at your maps again, particularly at that portion of the Pacific Ocean lying west of Hawaii. Before this war even started, the Philippine Islands were already surrounded on three sides by Japanese power. On the west, the China side, the Japanese were in possession of the coast of China and the coast of Indo-China which had been yielded to them by the Vichy French. On the North are the islands of Japan themselves, reaching down almost to northern Luzon. On the east, are the Mandated Islands — which Japan had occupied exclusively, and had fortified in absolute violation of her written word.

The islands that lie between Hawaii and the Philippines — these islands, hundreds of them, appear only as small dots on most maps, but do not appear at all. But they cover a large strategic area. Guam lies in the middle of them — a lone outpost which we have never fortified.

Under the Washington Treaty of 1921 we had solemnly agreed not to add to the fortification of the Philippines (Islands). We had no safe naval bases there, so we could not use the islands for extensive naval operations.

Immediately after this war started, the Japanese forces moved down on either side of the Philippines to numerous points south of them — thereby completely encircling the (Islands) Philippines from north, and south, and east and west.

It is that complete encirclement, with control of the air by Japanese land-based aircraft, which has prevented us from sending substantial reinforcements of men and material to the gallant defenders of the Philippines. For forty years it has always been our strategy — a strategy born of necessity — that in the event of a full-scale attack on the Islands by Japan, we should fight a delaying action, attempting to retire slowly into Bataan Peninsula and Corregidor.

We knew that the war as a whole would have to be fought and won by a process of attrition against Japan itself. We knew all along that, with our greater resources, we could ultimately out-build Japan and ultimately overwhelm her on sea, and on land and in the air. We knew that, to obtain our objective, many varieties of operations would be necessary in areas other than the Philippines.

Now nothing that has occurred in the past two months has caused us to revise this basic strategy of necessity — except that the defense put up by General MacArthur has magnificently exceeded the previous estimates of endurance, and he and his men are gaining eternal glory therefore.

MacArthur’s army of Filipinos and Americans, and the forces of the United Nations in China, in Burma and the Netherlands East Indies, are all together fulfilling the same essential task. They are making Japan pay an increasingly terrible price for her ambitious attempts to seize control of the whole (Atlantic) Asiatic world. Every Japanese transport sunk off Java is one less transport that they can use to carry reinforcements to their army opposing General MacArthur in Luzon.

It has been said that Japanese gains in the Philippines were made possible only by the success of their surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. I tell you that this is not so.

Even if the attack had not been made your map will show that it would have been a hopeless operation for us to send the Fleet to the Philippines through thousands of miles of ocean, while all those island bases were under the sole control of the Japanese.

The consequences of the attack on Pearl Harbor — serious as they were — have been wildly exaggerated in other ways. And these exaggerations come originally from Axis propagandists; but they have been repeated, I regret to say, by Americans in and out of public life.

You and I have the utmost contempt for Americans who, since Pearl Harbor, have whispered or announced “off the record” that there was no longer any Pacific Fleet — that the Fleet was all sunk or destroyed on December 7th — that more than (1,000) a thousand of our planes were destroyed on the ground. They have suggested slyly that the Government has withheld the truth about casualties — that eleven or twelve thousand men were killed at Pearl Harbor instead of the figures as officially announced. They have even served the enemy propagandists by spreading the incredible story that ship-loads of bodies of our honored American dead were about to arrive in New York harbor to be put into a common grave.

Almost every Axis broadcast — Berlin, Rome, Tokyo — directly quotes Americans who, by speech or in the press, make damnable misstatements such as these.

The American people realize that in many cases details of military operations cannot be disclosed until we are absolutely certain that the announcement will not give to the enemy military information which he does not already possess.

Your Government has unmistakable confidence in your ability to hear the worst, without flinching or losing heart. You must, in turn, have complete confidence that your Government is keeping nothing from you except information that will help the enemy in his attempt to destroy us. In a democracy there is always a solemn pact of truth between government and the people, but there must also always be a full use of discretion, and that word “discretion” applies to the critics of government as well.

This is war. The American people want to know, and will be told, the general trend of how the war is going. But they do not wish to help the enemy any more than our fighting forces do, and they will pay little attention to the rumor-mongers and the poison peddlers in our midst.

To pass from the realm of rumor and poison to the field of facts: the number of our officers and men killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor on December seventh was 2,340, and the number wounded was 940. Of all of the combatant ships based on Pearl Harbor — battleships, heavy cruisers, light cruisers, aircraft carriers, destroyers and submarines — only three (were) are permanently put out of commission.

Very many of the ships of the Pacific Fleet were not even in Pearl Harbor. Some of those that were there were hit very slightly, and others that were damaged have either rejoined the Fleet by now or are still undergoing repairs. And when those repairs are completed, the ships will be more efficient fighting machines than they were before.

The report that we lost more than a thousand (air)planes at Pearl Harbor is as baseless as the other weird rumors. The Japanese do not know just how many planes they destroyed that day, and I am not going to tell them. But I can say that to date — and including Pearl Harbor — we have destroyed considerably more Japanese planes than they have destroyed of ours.

We have most certainly suffered losses — from Hitler’s U-Boats in the Atlantic as well as from the Japanese in the Pacific — and we shall suffer more of them before the turn of the tide. But, speaking for the United States of America, let me say once and for all to the people of the world: We Americans have been compelled to yield ground, but we will regain it. We and the other United Nations are committed to the destruction of the militarism of Japan and Germany. We are daily increasing our strength. Soon, we and not our enemies, will have the offensive; we, not they, will win the final battles; and we, not they, will make the final peace.

Conquered nations in Europe know what the yoke of the Nazis is like. And the people of Korea and of Manchuria know in their flesh the harsh despotism of Japan. All of the people of Asia know that if there is to be an honorable and decent future for any of them or any of (for) us, that future depends on victory by the United Nations over the forces of Axis enslavement.

If a just and durable peace is to be attained, or even if all of us are merely to save our own skins, there is one thought for us here at home to keep uppermost — the fulfillment of our special task of production –uninterrupted production. I stress that word “uninterrupted.”

Germany, Italy and Japan are very close to their maximum output of planes, guns, tanks and ships. The United Nations are not — especially the United States of America.

Our first job then is to build up production — uninterrupted production — so that the United Nations can maintain control of the seas and attain control of the air — not merely a slight superiority, but an overwhelming superiority.

On January 6th of this year, I set certain definite goals of production for airplanes, tanks, guns and ships. The Axis propagandists called them fantastic. Tonight, nearly two months later, and after a careful survey of progress by Donald Nelson and others charged with responsibility for our production, I can tell you that those goals will be attained.

In every part of the country, experts in production and the men and women at work in the plants are giving loyal service. With few exceptions, labor, capital and farming realize that this is no time either to make undue profits or to gain special advantages, one over the other.

We are calling for new plants and additions — additions to old plants. (and) We are calling for plant conversion to war needs. We are seeking more men and more women to run them. We are working longer hours. We are coming to realize that one extra plane or extra tank or extra gun or extra ship completed tomorrow may, in a few months, turn the tide on some distant battlefield; it may make the difference between life and death for some of our own fighting men. We know now that if we lose this war it will be generations or even centuries before our conception of democracy can live again. And we can lose this war only if use slow up our effort or if we waste our ammunition sniping at each other.

Here are three high purposes for every American:

1.

We shall not stop work for a single day. If any dispute arises we shall keep on working while the dispute is solved by mediation, or conciliation or arbitration — until the war is won.
2.

We shall not demand special gains or special privileges or special advantages for any one group or occupation.
3.

We shall give up conveniences and modify the routine of our lives if our country asks us to do so. We will do it cheerfully, remembering that the common enemy seeks to destroy every home and every freedom in every part of our land.

This generation of Americans has come to realize, with a present and personal realization, that there is something larger and more important than the life of any individual or of any individual group — something for which a man will sacrifice, and gladly sacrifice, not only his pleasures, not only his goods, not only his associations with those he loves, but his life itself. In time of crisis when the future is in the balance, we come to understand, with full recognition and devotion, what this nation is and what we owe to it.

The Axis propagandists have tried in various evil ways to destroy our determination and our morale. Failing in that, they are now trying to destroy our confidence in our own allies. They say that the British are finished — that the Russians and the Chinese are about to quit. Patriotic and sensible Americans will reject these absurdities. And instead of listening to any of this crude propaganda, they will recall some of the things that Nazis and Japanese have said and are still saying about us. Ever since this nation became the arsenal of democracy — ever since enactment of Lend-Lease — there has been one persistent theme through all Axis propaganda.

This theme has been that Americans are admittedly rich, (and) that Americans have considerable industrial power — but that Americans are soft and decadent, that they cannot and will not unite and work and fight.

From Berlin, Rome and Tokyo we have been described as a nation of weaklings — “playboys” — who would hire British soldiers, or Russian soldiers, or Chinese soldiers to do our fighting for us.

Let them repeat that now!
Let them tell that to General MacArthur and his men.
Let them tell that to the sailors who today are hitting hard in the far waters of the Pacific.
Let them tell that to the boys in the Flying Fortresses.
Let them tell that to the Marines!

The United Nations constitute an association of independent peoples of equal dignity and equal importance. The United Nations are dedicated to a common cause. We share equally and with equal zeal the anguish and the awful sacrifices of war. In the partnership of our common enterprise, we must share in a unified plan in which all of us must play our several parts, each of us being equally indispensable and dependent one on the other.

We have unified command and cooperation and comradeship.

We Americans will contribute unified production and unified acceptance of sacrifice and of effort. That means a national unity that can know no limitations of race or creed or selfish politics. The American people expect that much from themselves. And the American people will find ways and means of expressing their determination to their enemies, including the Japanese Admiral who has said that he will dictate the terms of peace here in the White Mouse.

We of the United Nations are agreed on certain broad principles in the kind of peace we seek. The Atlantic Charter applies not only to the parts of the world that border the Atlantic but to the whole world; disarmament of aggressors, self-determination of nations and peoples, and the four freedoms — freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.

The British and the Russian people have known the full fury of Nazi onslaught. There have been times when the fate of London and Moscow was in serious doubt. But there was never the slightest question that either the British or the Russians would yield. And today all the United Nations salute the superb Russian Army as it celebrates the twenty-fourth anniversary of its first assembly.

Though their homeland was overrun, the Dutch people are still fighting stubbornly and powerfully overseas.

The great Chinese people have suffered grievous losses; Chungking has been almost wiped out of existence — yet it remains the capital of an unbeatable China.

That is the conquering spirit which prevails throughout the United Nations in this war.

The task that we Americans now face will test us to the uttermost. Never before have we been called upon for such a prodigious effort. Never before have we had so little time in which to do so much.

“These are the times that try men’s souls.”

Tom Paine wrote those words on a drumhead, by the light of a campfire. That was when Washington’s little army of ragged, rugged men was retreating across New Jersey, having tasted (nothing) naught but defeat.

And General Washington ordered that these great words written by Tom Paine be read to the men of every regiment in the Continental Army, and this was the assurance given to the first American armed forces:

“The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered, yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the sacrifice, the more glorious the triumph.”

So spoke Americans in the year 1776.
So speak Americans today!

FEBRUARY 23, 1942 AT 10:00 PM , E.W.T.

“If you listen to what the Iranians have said publicly and privately over the past week,” one senior administration official said Sunday, “it’s evident that they simply cannot bring themselves to do the deal.” The administration officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were speaking about delicate diplomatic exchanges.

Washington (CNN) — President Obama will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Monday evening after a rough stretch in U.S. efforts to settle the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The White House announced the meeting on Sunday.
…
Netanyahu is scheduled to address a conference of Jewish groups in Washington on Monday, but no meetings had been scheduled between the U.S. and Israeli leaders as of late last week, Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said Thursday.

Chuck Todd at MSNBC is reporting on Facebook that the press is not being allowed to cover the meeting, and there won’t even be a press corps rep.

Reuters

President Obama’s idea of waging “aggressive personal diplomacy“? Attacking President Bush for blustering belligerence:

But he asserted that Iran’s support for militant groups in Iraq reflected its anxiety over the Bush administration’s policies in the region, including talk of a possible American military strike on Iranian nuclear installations.

Yup. That explains Iranian aggression for the last 30 years against the United States.

Meanwhile, Israel seizes 500 tons of Iranian weapons on Wednesday:

Israel displayed on Wednesday the contents of the ship it seized off Cyprus – crates filled with rockets, missiles, mortars, anti-tank weapons and munitions – the largest such haul in the country’s history. Israel’s claim that the weapons came from Iran were bolstered by Iranian markings on the sides of the containers and what it said was a document proving the ship had set off from an Iranian port.

Israel has not publicly shown the document, however, nor offered evidence to back its assertion that the weapons were headed for Lebanon’s Hezbollah fighters.
ad_icon

“Hezbollah categorically denies it has any connection with the weapons which the Zionist enemy claims it seized,” the group said in a statement faxed to The Associated Press in Beirut on Thursday.

There was no comment from Lebanese officials.

Israeli defense officials said the arms cache would have given Hezbollah, which fought a monthlong war against the Jewish state in 2006, enough firepower to sustain a full month of fighting on the scale of that war.

However, the officials also said the weapons would not have significantly enhanced Hezbollah rockets’ ability to reach deeper into Israel, as the haul consisted of weapons already in Hezbollah’s possession.

The defense officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the military has yet to formally comment on the potential value of the shipment’s contents to militants.

Iran has never acknowledged giving weapons to Hezbollah. Proof of large-scale Iranian weapons shipments to its proxy forces on Israel’s borders could reinforce Israeli demands for tough action – possibly even a pre-emptive strike – against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Israel sees Iran as its biggest threat because of what it believes to be Tehran’s ambitions to acquire atomic weapons. Iran says its nuclear program seeks only to generate energy.

Anyone believe that?

Apparently, President Obama’s allure is losing its luster from Iranian dissidents themselves. Pro-Democracy protesters are echoing the “you’re either with us, or with the terrorists” language of President Bush:

Today, the fundamentalist government in Tehran held protests to commemorate the event, as usual burning the American flag and encouraging shouts of “Death to America.”

This time, pro-democracy protesters — many wearing the movement’s signature green — were heard to shout, “Death to dictators.”

But the demonstrators, who risked beatings, imprisonment and even death to stage their rebellion, also had a message for the White House.

Witnesses said the protesters could be heard chanting: “Obama, Obama — either you’re with them or you’re with us.”

The Obama administration has so far been reluctant to convey American support for the demonstrators, fearful it would undercut the protest movement and allow President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad (who some claim can be seen in the 1979 photo above as a young revolutionary) to brand the pro-democracy movement as the work of foreign agitators.

So the White House has so far kept its distance from the movement as the West attempts to negotiate with Iran over its nuclear facilities.

Is it too much to ask of our president that he promote peace by showing support for freedom and democracy across the globe? That he take the time out of his busy schedule to recognize historic significance and symbolism in the advancement of democracy?

Munitions seized by Israeli authorities on a ship near Cyprus, are presented in the port of the Israeli city of Ashdod, Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2009. Israeli commandos seized a ship Wednesday that defense officials said was carrying hundreds of tons of weapons from Iran bound for Lebanon’s Hezbollah guerrillas, the largest arms shipment Israel has ever commandeered.(AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov ) (Tsafrir Abayov – AP)