New Hampshire Soldier in Iraq Shares His Ongoing Story Part 5
Here is the next part of Jonathan Sistare’s story. He is a New Hampshire soldier station in Iraq, and he has been writing for the New Hampshire Union Leader when he can. I just think it is an interesting read to hear from a soldier first hand.
Here is Part 1, Part 2. Part 3, and Part 4
In this installment he talks about the end of his tour, and training the soldiers that are coming in to replace him. He has mixed feelings, he wants to come home yet he knows what he is doing is good and he feels bad for the Iraqi generals who will now have to build relationships and trust with new American soldiers.
He speaks about Iraq’s government making slow progress and also of some of the successes.
It is an interesting first hand account.
Another Democrat Admits We Need to Stay in Iraq
U.S. Rep. Brian Baird has taken a trip to Iraq and sees progress in the surge. He voted against the war and still believes the war was wrong, but he now sees the surge is working. He now believes we need to stay until the job is complete.
U.S. Rep. Brian Baird said Thursday that his recent trip to Iraq convinced him the military needs more time in the region, and that a hasty pullout would cause chaos that helps Iran and harms U.S. security.
We have a responsibility to the Iraqi people and a strategic interest in making this work.”
This man has made five trips to the middle east, I can respect him for that. It is too easy for most of these politicians to proclaim the war lost while sitting over here staunchly opposed (Harry Reid) of the war without learning the facts.
Baird said he would not say this if he didn’t believe two things:
• “One, I think we’re making real progress.”
• “Secondly, I think the consequences of pulling back precipitously would be potentially catastrophic for the Iraqi people themselves, to whom we have a tremendous responsibility … and in the long run chaotic for the region as a whole and for our own security.”
Isn’t it funny how most of the politicians who travel to Iraq come back with a different outlook on the situation? Once they see the good that America is doing over there they cannot in good conscience rip our troops when they return.
It appears to me that some Democrats have realized that their rhetoric has gone to far for mainstream America. They are moving back towards sanity on this issue to try to slowly win back the mainstream as if they never left, even if it means losing the far left. They know the far left will never vote Republican so they can now abandon them while pretending they never left the mainstream.
You can read the article here.
18 Ways to be a Good Liberal
This is actually a re-post of a post I made back when I first started this blog. Not too many people saw it back then, so I thought I would post it now.
This is from an e-mail i received:
18 WAYS TO BE A GOOD LIBERAL
1. You have to be against capital punishment, but support abortion on demand.
2. You have to believe that businesses create oppression and governments create prosperity.
3. You have to believe that guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens are more of a threat than U.S. nuclear weapons technology in the hands of Iran or Chinese and North Korean communists.
4. You have to believe that there was no art before federal funding.
5. You have to believe that global temperatures are less affected by cyclical changes in the earth’s climate and more affected by soccer moms driving SUV’s.
6. You have to believe that gender roles are artificial, but being homosexual is natural.
7. You have to believe that the AIDS virus is spread by a lack of federal funding.
8. You have to believe that the same teacher who can’t teach 4th– graders how to read is somehow qualified to teach those same kids about sex.
9. You have to believe that hunters don’t care about nature, but PETA activists do.
10. You have to believe that self-esteem is more important than actually doing something to earn it.
11. You have to believe that Mel Gibson spent $25 million of his own money to make “The Passion of the Christ” for financial gain only.
12. You have to believe the NRA is bad because it supports certain parts of the Constitution, while the ACLU is good because it supports certain parts of the Constitution.
13. You have to believe that taxes are too low, but ATM fees are too high.
14. You have to believe that Margaret Sanger and Gloria Steinem are more important to American history than Thomas Jefferson, Gen. Robert E. Lee, and Thomas Edison.
15. You have to believe that standardized tests are racist, but racial quotas and set-asides are not.
16. You have to believe that the only reason socialism hasn’t worked anywhere it’s been tried is because the right people haven’t been in charge.
17. You have to believe that homosexual parades displaying drag queens and transvestites should be constitutionally protect ed, and manger scenes at Christmas should be illegal.
18. You have to believe that this message is a part of a vast, right-wing conspiracy.
GOD BLESS AMERICA
Oops, can’t do that either!
Padilla Guilty Verdict Being Called a Tainted Victory for Bush
You can read here the first article I have seen that has to start to downplay the guilty verdict of Jose Padilla.
But critics and law experts called Thursday’s verdict a messy win for the government, in which it was able to avoid answering for its long detention and interrogation of Padilla without the legal rights normally granted U.S. citizens, and, his lawyers said, for torturing him.
Many people quoted in this article begrudgingly admit that the Padilla quilty verdict was a victory for the president, then they go on to diminish the verdict.
Here are some quotes:
“The verdict is important because it provides cover. It validates the government’s tactics in a way that the jury may not have necessarily meant to,” said American University law professor Stephen Vladeck. “Padilla has had his day in court, but only with respect to the charges, and not to his treatment and not the lawfulness of his detention for 3-1/2 years in a Navy brig,” Vladeck said.
Amnesty International said “President Bush should not take (the verdict) as permission to continue to hold Americans outside the law at his whim.”
“It’s kind of a dirty victory because of the way the case came about, but still it’s a victory nonetheless,” said Jeffrey Addicott, director of the Center for Terrorism Law at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, Texas.
“A lot of resources were wasted … by the attempt to expand executive power,”
Above is just another example of how any Bush victory has to be cut down. Why is this just a victory for Bush anyway? I think it is a victory for America when you lock up a terrorist for life, not just for Bush.
The media and the Democrats were hoping beyond hope that Padilla would be found not guilty. They wanted to de-legitimize the whole process of holding enemy combatants. A not guilty verdict would have been great fodder, an aphrodisiac, to the anti-war, anti-Bush crowd. Denied that verdict they so hoped for, they turn to the next best strategy, dirtying the verdict that was rendered.
The part of this that bothers me the most, I think, is the fact that they are trying to portray Bush as expanding his executive power by holding enemy combatants during a time of war. These people either have no idea of history or chose not to remeber it, so I will either remind them or educate them now.
From factmonster.com:
On February 19, 1942, soon after the beginning of World War II, Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. The evacuation order commenced the round-up of 120,000 Americans of Japanese heritage to one of 10 internment camps—officially called “relocation centers”—in California, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, and Arkansas.
More than 2/3 of the Japanese who were interned in the spring of 1942 were citizens of the United States.
Two important legal cases were brought against the United States concerning the internment. The landmark cases were Hirabayashi v. United States (1943), and Korematsu v. United States (1944). The defendants argued their fifth amendment rights were violated by the U.S. government because of their ancestry. In both cases, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the U.S. government.
In 1944, two and a half years after signing Executive Order 9066, fourth-term President Franklin D. Roosevelt rescinded the order. The last internment camp was closed by the end of 1945.
Franklin D Roosevelt, a Democrat mind you, rounded up every single Japanese CITIZEN in the United States and locked them up for over two years. No charges, no enemy combatants, just CITIZENS. In a time of war he made the judgement that in order to protect the American people he had to intern every single Japanese national living in the United States. The decision was upheld by the supreme court twice.
Now you may judge whether you believe this decision was justified or not, but that is what he did. So to sit there and call George W Bush a dictator or a Nazi, or any other of the terms the far left throws out there, is either foolish, ignorant, negligent, or simply uncaring of the past history of war.
According to this story, the Democrats are already questioning General Petraeus’ report and he hasn’t even reported yet. Any good news for America in the war on terror translates to bad news for the Democrats, who have based all of their future successes on the United States failing in Iraq. This is why they must question the report before there is a report. They need to sow the seed of doubt and hope it grows into the fruit of failure in the minds of the American people.
Democrats are questioning the truthfulness of an upcoming report from Gen. David Petraeus on the progress of President Bush’s troop-surge strategy in Iraq.
“For a long time the Administration has hidden behind the name of General David Petraeus, saying the September report will be his. We all knew this would be the President’s report,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a news release on Thursday.
In other words, the speaker is telling us that the man that congress approved of to run the war is nothing but a mouthpiece to the president. Congress knew General Petraeus supported the surge, they voted for him knowing he supported the surge, then they bitched about the surge. This can only lead you to believe that the Democrats supported the surge. But why? Did they covertly support the surge by approving the general because secretly they hoped it failed, ringing the death knell for George W Bush? That is the only conclusion I can come up with.
Now that the surge appears to be working, instead of admitting they may have been wrong about the surge, the surge they effectively voted for by confirming Petraeus, they would rather try to destroy and take down the general.
Anti-war Democrats who have been pressing for a U.S. troop withdrawal for months are not expected to change their minds, although a positive assessment from Gen. Petraeus might undermine their position for a quick troop withdrawal.
That is exactly why they must work to discredit this American hero whose policies may be turning the war to our favor. The anti-war far left will never admit that we may actually win the war, so they must try to devalue anything General Petraeus says by saying he is just parroting the president’s talking points.
“When we start drawing down our forces in Iraq, it will be because our military commanders say the conditions on the ground are right, not because pollsters say it will be good politics,” President Bush said in July. “The [troop surge] strategy I announced in January is designed to seize the initiative and create those conditions.”
And the Democrats can have none of that.
Barack Obama to cut Down on Debates
Frustrated with the volume of interest group forums and non-party sponsored debates, Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign manager has put his foot down: Obama won’t attend any more debates that aren’t sanctioned by the Democratic National Committee, and he won’t accept any more invitations to speak at candidate forums.
The Democrat party is made up off many different caucuses and special interests, ie the black caucus, Mexican caucus, and so on. It will be interesting to see which of these special interests he doesn’t deem important enough to attend their debate or forum. The Democrats have been pandering to all of these special interests by holding debates directly for them, such as the first ever gay debate, now Obama has had enough. I agree with Obama on this. Although probably not for the reason he is doing it. The Democrat party has been splitting the Americans in their party into different groups for years, with all their seperate caucuses. The party that is supposed to be all inclusive is actually a party that divides Americans into groups by race, color, creed, sex, and sexual orientation. This seems to be a racist practice to me. It is time for Americans to be Americans, not African-Americans, Mexican-Americans, Transgendered-America and such. I call for the Democrats to stop their racist behavior and treat all Americans the same. Be the uniters you claim to be and stop trying to drive a wedge between Americans.
Unfortunately for Obama this makes him look like a coward, afraid to debate for fear of failure and has to hurt him in the long run. Perhaps his recent mis-steps on foreign policy issues has him sitting in a corner and licking his wounds. He is afraid of exposing any more of his inexperience so he will lay low and only attend events he is totally comfortable with.
Read the rest of the article here.
A Confident Mike Huckabee Visits New Hampshire
A second place showing in the Iowa straw poll seems to have revitalized Mike Huckabee and his campaign as he visited New Hampshire this week. Granted two of the top tier candidates weren’t at the straw poll, or I should say one as I no longer consider John McCain a top tier candidate, but that hasn’t stopped Mike Huckabee from touting his surprising finish.
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, fresh from a surprising second-place finish in the Iowa Straw Poll last week, arrived in the lead-off primary state yesterday seeking to build on the momentum.
His flair for the expectations game has some likely Republican voters giving him another look.
He does seem to have gathered some momentum in New Hampshire as a result of the straw poll, although I have not seen a recent New Hampshire poll to see if he has received any kind of bump.
“To have that exposure is important to me,” said Jim Untiet, an undecided voter from Goffstown. “I’m interested in his views.”
Larry Gagne, a semi-retiree from Manchester, said he would vote for the fiscal conservative who is the most pro-life and pro-gun candidate.
“This guy’s at the top of my list,” he said.
Huckabee seems very positive that his campaign is turning a corner and he is a viable candidate.
Huckabee acted like a man at a homecoming during his first campaign stop in Manchester, the first of three days in New Hampshire. He rifled through his priorities and cracked jokes, including poking fun at another former governor of Arkansas, Democrat Bill Clinton, who claimed the Comeback Kid mantle in 1992 after finishing second in the New Hampshire Primary.
As about 150 people ate the last of their pasta and meatballs, Huckabee called on them to join his “movement,” what he is calling his campaign after the result in Iowa.
“It was simply euphoric for all of us,” he said of the result compared with his campaign’s low budget. “We didn’t have gold roots, we had grass roots.”
“The whole dynamic has changed,” he said.
He may be right, I don’t think conservative voters in New Hampshire are totally thrilled with the top tier candidates. However I think a deciding factor when voters go to the booths will be electability, and I believe they will vote for the candidate they believe has the best chance to beat Hillary and not the candidate that necessarily reflects their opinions.
You can read the whole article here.
New Hampshire Woman Fends off Home Intruder with Cardboard Tube
This isn’t usually the kind of topic that I post about, but when I read this story I couldn’t help myself.
A man breaks into a 61 year old woman’s house in Chester and begins to raid her jewelry box. Sharon Neville, who is upstairs sewing, hears the noise and runs downstairs with a rather unique weapon of self-defense.
she beat him up with a hard cardboard tube that had materials wrapped around it and chased him out of her house.
Not only that but she got his plate number and police were able to catch him a short time later.
Good for her! Let’s just hope that in today’s day and age the woman isn’t prosecuted for excessive force or assault with a deadly weapon or anything stupid like that. You never know.
A New Hampshire woman from Derry recently took a cheap-shot at Rudy Guiliani.
Answering questions at a town-hall meeting, Giuliani was asked why he should expect loyalty from GOP voters when his children aren’t backing him.
To which Guiliani responded:
“I love my family very, very much and will do anything for them. There are complexities in every family in America,” Giuliani said calmly and quietly. “The best thing I can say is kind of, ‘leave my family alone, just like I’ll leave your family alone.’ “
While Rudy’s personal situation, I believe, will end up playing a major role in his run for president, I have one question. Why is it that only Republicans are asked this sort of question? I would love for someone to ask Senator Clinton ” Senator, why should I be loyal to you if your husband isn’t?” Can you image the fallout from that question? She would accuse the right of planting this person there. She would blame the vast right wing conspiracy. It would be fun.
Read the rest here.
A storage company in New York has been using an unusual ad campaign to promote their business. Here is an example of a billboard they are using to advertise their business:
That’s right, they are using their advertising to also promote a pro-choice agenda. While I suppose it is their business and they should feel free to say what they want on their property, I do have a problem with this. And it may not be the problem you would think. Read more…
