Iraq

Change-In the wrong direction

Published by Papa Giorgio

This disturbing report comes from Gateway Pundit and shows just how radical the Left is in this country. The popular Left, to be clear.

We’re starting to see a pattern here…

  1. When the Iraqi people were being slaughtered in the street Obama said genocide was preferable to continued US presence in the region.
  2. When the Iranian freedom protesters were being shot at from rooftops, he turned his back on them.
  3. When the Honduran people rose against their socialist tyrant, he supported the tyrant.

And, now we learn that the Obama Administration has allowed American companies to do billions of dollars of business with evil anti-democratic regimes – including the Iranians who are supplying terrorists with bombs to kill US soldiers.

The New York Times reported:

Despite sanctions and trade embargoes, over the past decade the United States government has allowed American companies to do billions of dollars in business with Iran and other countries blacklisted as state sponsors of terrorism, an examination by The New York Times has found.

In an interview, the Obama administration’s point man on sanctions, Stuart A. Levey, said that focusing on the exceptions “misses the forest for the trees.”

Tanks To Afghanistan

Published by Papa Giorgio

Defense Tech had this recent post about some military action:

While Abrams were used extensively in Iraq, the Afghan fight has often seen troops using lighter, nimbler vehicles capable of scrambling along the mountainous country’s notoriously primitive roads — more like paths — or using helicopters to travel quickly and bypass the danger from IEDs.

Now, as the Marines push harder into enemy territory, they’ll bring serious ground firepower with them:

The officials said Friday this is a first for the U.S. in the 9-year-old war, though Canadians and Danish troops have already used the huge, heavily armored combat vehicles in Afghanistan.

Officials say the tanks will help Marines keep insurgents away from key population areas and help troops move into insurgent safe havens. Officials say the tanks can bring extra protection and added firepower and help troops observe key routes where militants place roadside bombs.

This seems like yet another indication of how the fight is getting tougher and more intense over there.

…(read more)…

Here is some Iraq footage:

Too Funny! Harry Reid is a dope

Published by Papa Giorgio

HotAir has a story, and its title is “Reid accuses Angle of lying about ‘War is lost’ statement.” HotAir goes on to say,

He’s not shy about it, either, as Aurelius discovers on Reid’s Twitter and Facebook accounts, as well as Reid’s “fact check” website.  Too bad Harry Reid hasn’t got a clue about YouTube.  While he claims that Angle referenced a remark made on March 3, 2007 about having to reach a political solution to the war in Iraq and not just a military solution, he seems to have missed the video that clearly shows Reid claiming that the war is, well …

Petraeus v. Democrats Blowhards

Published by Papa Giorgio

The following is with much thanks to Abu Wabu, to which there is much more there to read… but this is the bottom line:

More from WABU:

With all the commentary that will follow from the MSM about the splendor of Obama’s decision, let’s remember all the baseless, despicable scorn, lies, character assassination and slanders Obama and his fellow Senate Democrats heaped on General Petraeus during the hearings on the Surge, a plan they all said wouldn’t work and for which they called him a liar for even suggesting it would.

Rather than burnishing Barack Hussein Obama’s presidential cred – he has none – all this whole affair has done, at this point, is prove once again what a bunch of lying sacks of shit the Democrats were in their attacks on Petraeaus and the military at the outset of the final surge and rescue of Iraq. Obama, Durbin, Reid, Biden, Clinton, Kennedy, Dodd, Kerry, Feinstein, Boxer, Pelosi, Levin, Schumer, Frank, all of them, from top to bottom. It had failed before it had even begun, they said; the war was lost, and only a lying Bush military lackey like Petraeus would try to suggest otherwise. And today it is proven once and for all that it was all politics, for nothing but their own benefit, regardless of the cost to the country, its military and its image around the world, all of which they were prepared to sacrifice on the altar of political power.

[….]

Remember, for Obama, even the prospect of genocide in Iraq was not enough to merit taking down Saddam, and he proudly declared in the Surge hearings that he never supported the rescue of Iraq.

So Obama has never had any use for a genuine national hero like General Petraeus. Until now.

WIKI notes:

  • The MoveOn.org ad controversy began when the U.S. anti-war liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org published a full-page ad in The New York Times on September 10, 2007, accusing General David H. Petraeus of “cooking the books for the White House”. The ad also labeled him “General Betray Us”. The organization created the ad in response to Petraeus’ Report to Congress on the Situation in Iraq. MoveOn hosted pages on its website about the ad and their reasons behind it from 2007 to June 23, 2010. On June 23, 2010, after President Obama nominated General Petraeus to be the new top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan (taking over the position from retiring General Stanley McChrystal), MoveOn erased these webpages and any reference to them from its website.

Victor Davis Hanson via NATIONAL REVIEW:

  • It is one of the ironies of our present warped climate that Petraeus will face far less criticism from the media and politicians than during 2007–8 (there will be no more “General Betray Us” ads or “suspension of disbelief” ridicule), because his success this time will reflect well on Obama rather than George Bush. It is a further irony that Obama is surging with Petraeus despite not long ago declaring that such a strategy and such a commander were failures in Iraq. And it is an even further irony that he is now rightly calling for “common purpose” when — again not long ago, at a critical juncture in Iraq — Obama himself, for partisan purposes on the campaign trail, had no interest in the common purpose of military success in Iraq.

And George Will via NEW YORK POST:

…Less than three months after the Times excoriated the court for weakening issue-ad restrictions, the paper made a huge and patently illegal contribution to MoveOn’s issue-advocacy ad. The American Conservative Union filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, noting that the purchaser of the ad, MoveOn Political Action, is a registered multicandidate political committee regulated by the mare’s nest of federal laws and rules the multiplication of which has so gladdened the Times.

The Times, a media corporation that is a fountain of detailed editorial instructions about how the rest of the world should conduct its business, seems confused about how it conducts its own. The Times now says the appropriate rate for MoveOn’s full-page ad should have been $142,000, a far cry from the $65,000 the group paid. So the discount of $77,000 constitutes a large soft-money contribution to a federally regulated political committee. The Times’ horror of such contributions was expressed in its enthusiasm for McCain-Feingold.

FEC regulations state: “The provision of any goods or services without charge or at a charge that is less than the usual and normal charge for such goods or services is a contribution.” Individuals are limited to contributing $5,000 in a calendar year; corporations such as the Times can make no contributions.

MoveOn is going to send the Times a check for $77,000. The Times has apologized, which is sweet, but normally the FEC doesn’t accept apologies in lieu of fines. And often FEC fines are levied after intrusive investigations into motives and intentions. Will there be such an investigation of the Times? The FEC is not lenient when dealing with individuals who, less lawyered-up than The New York Times Co., fall afoul of regulations much more recondite than the bright line the Times ignored.

Bob Bauer, a Democratic lawyer specializing in laws regulating political speech, notes – not approvingly – that the Times supposedly has a policy of rejecting ads involving “personal attack” speech. But the Times accepted MoveOn’s ad accusing a soldier of betraying his country. According to the Times’ public editor, a Times official said the ad was “a comment on a public official’s management of his office.”….

IRAQ HEARINGS: Sen. Clinton Questions Gen. Petraeus