What if Bush Lied?

Despite the fact that this contention is demonstrably false (if you are not wearing a tinfoil hat), let’s for a moment stipulate that the President did “hype” or even falsify intelligence so that he could obtain Congressional permission to go to war in Iraq. What significance would this stipulation have with respect to the early withdrawal of US troops from the region? Answer: NONE

The fact is that Saddam Hussein was a genocidal dictator that not only had WMDs, but actually used them in combat against Iran and also against innocent Kurds. Additionally, although there is no evidence (that is publicly known) that Saddam was personally involved in the planning or support for the 9/11 attacks, there is ample evidence of long standing connections between Saddam and UBL. Many high level contacts between AQ and Iraqi intelligence have been laboriously documented from UBL’s Sudan days to Zarqawi’s precipitous move to Iraq after having been wounded in Afghanistan during OEF. But that is neither here nor there.

The Iraq War has by any objective standard been an unmitigated success at not only preventing follow on attacks on the US Homeland, but also eliminating thousands of AQ operatives who traveled to Iraq to engage “the great satan”. The value of this last consequence cannot be understated. The rapid denial of Afghanistan as a base of operations for AQ was a necessity, but as a result thousands of AQ operatives that escaped our dragnet were dispersed throughout the region. The Iraqi battlefield has served as a magnet for these terrorists who likely would have been disposed to reconsolidate in cells throughout the world to plan and execute attacks against US interests and soft Homeland targets. By drawing them to a central location for their eventual slaughter, we have significantly culled the herd and continue to do so.

Make no mistake that AQ views Iraq as the central front in their war on civilization and have thus staked the reputation and survival of the movement on their ability to defeat the US in this arena. But they have sorely miscalculated and yet the die is cast. They HAVE to win in Iraq in order to succeed in the creation of a worldwide Islamic caliphate, and conversely the US MUST defeat AQ in Iraq if we are going to be able to halt the onslaught of murderous terrorists against us.

The US military is objectively kicking the everloving $hit out AQ in Iraq and the Iraqi political process is moving forward toward full sovereignty at an unprecedented pace. Even if we were being regularly defeated on the battlefield, it would still be in our best interest to win this fight if only to prevent the inevitable vulnerability that would follow if we were to withdraw in defeat. Back in the 60’s we could safely slink back to the States and hide behind our nukes, but these days there’s nobody to nuke and our enemies consider it a religious imperative to die in the conduct of attacks. In other words, there is no option but victory.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe that the long term strategic value of a stable and vibrant democracy in Iraq holds the promise of peace through strength while serving to defend the obvious economic benefits of preventing islamofascists from controlling a huge percentage of world oil reserves. We have already reaped rewards by scaring Libya into WMD disarmament and inspiring democracy in Lebanon and democratic inertia in Egypt and even Saudi Arabia. Not to mention a deterrent military presence to an increasingly belligerent Iran.

Contrary to the pleadings of Cindy Sheehan et al, the only way to view our combat losses in Iraq as a waste would be to cut and run before affording our soldiers the opportunity to complete the mission they have given their all for. In that vein, we now have the most lethal and battle tested military we have ever fielded which may well come in handy down the road. The synergistic effect of our unrivaled military proficiency coupled with the strategic and diplomatic effect of our victory in Iraq will serve as a powerful bargaining chip against the intransigent regimes that continue to threaten us.

I could go on, but you get the picture. Bush didn’t lie, but that is hardly a reason to withdraw even if he had. Moreover, the Democrats know this which makes their protestations all the more craven and politically motivated. The fact that a major political party and its adherents are willing to trade victory and by extension the sacrifices of our troops for political power will attest to their eternal shame. Fortunately, President Bush and our military are not about to let that happen.

Do You Remember...

The President's Thanksgiving trip to Baghdad in 2003? I was watching football with my dad when they broke in with the news of the President's clandestine visit to our warriors in a very insecure Baghdad just 2 years ago. I cried my eyes out when he emerged from behind that curtain of cammo netting watching the reaction of the soldiers assembled for what they thought was going to be another BS speech by Bremer or Sanchez. I remember seeing the Secret Service Agent from the President's Detail standing off to the side just before he came out and I thought, "No way he's in Iraq right now." But he was. Here are his remarks to the soldiers that evening:

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. I was just looking for a warm meal somewhere. (Laughter and applause.) Thank you for inviting me to dinner. (Applause.) General Sanchez, thank you, sir, for your kind invitation and your strong leadership. Ambassador Bremer, thank you for your steadfast belief in freedom and peace. I want to thank the members of the Governing Council who are here, pleased you are joining us on our nation's great holiday, it's a chance to give thanks to the Almighty for the many blessings we receive.

I'm particularly proud to be with the 1st Armored Division, the 2nd ACR, the 82nd Airborne. (Applause.) I can't think of a finer group of folks to have Thanksgiving dinner with than you all. We're proud of you. Today, Americans are gathering with their loved ones to give thanks for the many blessings in our lives. And this year we are especially thankful for the courage and the sacrifice of those who defend us, the men and women of the United States military. (Applause.)

I bring a message on behalf of America: we thank you for your service, we're proud of you, and America stands solidly behind you. (Applause.) Together, you and I have taken an oath to defend our country. You're honoring that oath. The United States military is doing a fantastic job. (Applause.) You are defeating the terrorists here in Iraq, so that we don't have to face them in our own country. You're defeating Saddam's henchmen, so that the people of Iraq can live in peace and freedom.

By helping the Iraqi people become free, you're helping change a troubled and violent part of the world. By helping to build a peaceful and democratic country in the heart of the Middle East, you are defending the American people from danger and we are grateful. (Applause.)

You're engaged in a difficult mission. Those who attack our coalition forces and kill innocent Iraqis are testing our will. They hope we will run. We did not charge hundreds of miles into the heart of Iraq, pay a bitter cost in casualties, defeat a brutal dictator and liberate 25 million people only to retreat before a band of thugs and assassins. (Applause.)

We will prevail. We will win because our cause is just. We will win because we will stay on the offensive. And we will win because you're part of the finest military ever assembled. (Applause.) And we will prevail because the Iraqis want their freedom. (Applause.)

Every day you see firsthand the commitment to sacrifice that the Iraqi people are making to secure their own freedom. I have a message for the Iraqi people: you have an opportunity to seize the moment and rebuild your great country, based on human dignity and freedom. The regime of Saddam Hussein is gone forever. (Applause.)

The United States and our coalition will help you, help you build a peaceful country so that your children can have a bright future. We'll help you find and bring to justice the people who terrorized you for years and are still killing innocent Iraqis. We will stay until the job is done. (Applause.) I'm confident we will succeed, because you, the Iraqi people, will show the world that you're not only courageous, but that you can govern yourself wisely and justly.

On this Thanksgiving, our nation remembers the men and women of our military, your friends and comrades who paid the ultimate price for our security and freedom. We ask for God's blessings on their families, their loved ones and their friends, and we pray for your safety and your strength, as you continue to defend America and to spread freedom.

Each one of you has answered a great call, participating in an historic moment in world history. You live by a code of honor, of service to your nation, with the safety and the security of your fellow citizens. Our military is full of the finest people on the face of the earth. I'm proud to be your Commander-in-Chief. I bring greetings from America. May God bless you all. (Applause.)

END

My sentiments exactly...then and now.

UPDATE: Holly Aho links to a CSM story about the Marines fighting in Anbar Province who are so busy slaying insurgents that they almost forgot that Thanksgiving was coming. Man, what a life! Those guys are spending the whole deployment kicking doors and sending tangos to allah in hell. Kinda makes a broken old frogman jealous, you know? Enjoy your hot chow today fellas.

I am still alive

Got back this afternoon after having not seen the blog since Thursday. I guess you people don't need me to get yourselves to talking and commenting. I noticed some, "Where are you?" comments in conjunction with a demo weekend so I figured I didn't want to pull a Chachi and make it seem like I went tits up on the demo range. Alas, as Reservists we were once again stifled by the Navy and had no demo to blow up, but plenty of ammunition to shoot. We had some great training in and refreshed some skills and especially tactics that are quite perishable if not used with some frequency. We have tons of pictures, but Naval Special Warfare policy is basically no pictures of anything unless they are released officially, so sorry.

We do have Direct TV out there in the boonies, in fact we have a state of the art compound out there in the nether regions of the desert. The whole Murtha issue was a very hot topic at times (usually mealtime when we were watching TV) and the vote in the House was also closely watched and vociferously discussed. This is somewhat of a departure from my recollections of my frog brothers in the past. Granted Reservists are somewhat more inclined to be politically aware than our active duty (deploying) counterparts, but there is an unmistakable attitude in the SEALs I spent the weekend with. As far as they are concerned, the Democrats are no better than our enemies in Iraq and actually more dangerous. The guys are very aware that this is a seminal moment for all of us veterans where we can either choose to be victorious or choose to be cowardly as a nation.

None of us wants to see the mission sacrificed for the political gain of the Democratic party which is exactly how my compatriots view their actions and words. None of us want to lose a war that we have already won. And none of us want to see our military returned to an era where it was OK to spit on veterans and call them baby killers. One SEAL told me about a corpsman who supported the Navy Parachute Team (Leapfrogs) and accompanied the Team to San Francisco where they jumped into the Giant's baseball stadium last season. This corpsman (who is not a SEAL) said that the Team was treated very poorly by the fans and the residents of SF and the term "baby killer" was in frequent use.

Don't think America's warriors are not watching the hystrionics in Congress. They understand that, as usual, they will bear the brunt of the burden for the decisions made by that body one way or another.

I'm Going to Go Blow Some Stuff Up

Leaving on Thursday to go out to our super secret SEAL training facility in the California desert to literally blow some tax dollars for the weekend. I expect to be shooting, and using all of my creativity in inventing new and exciting demolition charges to explode. I just hope we have some interesting stuff out on the demo range to go to work on like old cars, forklifts, or a greyhound bus or something. I will try to remember to take some pix (unclass of course) to show some before and after. If we have some flex linear shaped charges I will try to blow some designs into steel. If not, I will simply overload some stuff and turn it into very small particles. Either way, I will be having a good time. I have to admit, Froggy's favorite thing to do in the Teams is to blow stuff up and set it on fire so I am looking forward to this weekend. See ya.

Rockefeller Files

Powerline provides the transcript to Senator Jay Rockefeller’s appearance on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace which further demonstrates the absurd contention by Senate Democrats that “they didn’t have the same intelligence as the President.” I find Rockefeller’s excuse particularly weak considering the fact that he is the Co-Chairman of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee whose job it is to oversee all intelligence analysis and operations conducted by the United States. After all, this man is in the unique position of being one of four people in Congress that can make one phone call to any intelligence agency in the nation and compel them to come before his Committee to testify under oath in closed session on literally any subject imaginable. So his latest charge against the President is that he and the rest of Congress did not see the Presidential Daily Briefs and therefore did not see the same intelligence used by the White House to justify the Iraq War. The assumption being that somehow there were these blatant dissentions in the PDBs that the President suppressed. Of course the Robb-Silberman Report which was commissioned by the President as a bi-partisan effort to determine why the Intelligence Community failed to accurately assess the WMD capabilities of Iraq, North Korea, Iran and other outlaw regimes did have full access to the PDBs.

“After a thorough review, the Commission found no indication that the Intelligence Community distorted the evidence regarding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. What the intelligence professionals told you about Saddam Hussein's programs was what they believed. They were simply wrong.”

This is on page one of the report which I’m sure Senator Rockefeller has run across at some point. The report goes on for 600 more pages or so outlining in detail how and why the Intelligence Community dropped the ball as opposed to pulling a “slam dunk”. Or perhaps the President browbeat the CIA into producing White House talking points in the PDB, but then again that doesn't jibe with how we have learned that the PDB is produced. I seem to remember Democrats on the 9/11 Commission going on and on about PDBs and how one of them in August of 2001 stated that,

“We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a [deleted] service in 1998 saying that Bin Ladin wanted to hijack a U.S. aircraft to gain the release of "Blind Shaykh" Umar 'Abd al-Rahman and other U.S.-held extremists.”

This sentence in the August 6, 2001 PDB was used the to bludgeon the President for having not interpreted it as a direct threat to the WTC and Pentagon and essentially sitting on his hands while some obvious threat to the US Homeland was ignored. This charge was made famously and repeatedly by Richard Ben-Veniste during his questioning (scroll down) of Condolezza Rice during the hearings. In the transcript it is made clear that the President requested information about UBL and AQ operations in the US, and that a CIA employee “self generated” the document. Which is what would be expected. The POTUS asks the CIA Director, “What do you know about XYZ?” The CIA Director goes to the people in the Agency that are focused on XYZ and says, “The POTUS wants your assessment of this situation. Have it ready for the PDB on Monday.” So everybody works through the weekend to knock this document out, and they know the President specifically asked for it and they obviously do their best to paint an accurate picture of the goings on with XYZ. So during the run up to the Iraq War chances are that no stone was left unturned by the CIA with respect to Iraq’s WMD programs. This is fully substantiated in the Robb-Silberman Report which is extremely unfortunate, but not intentional.

Frankly, the President said repeatedly during the campaign of 2004 that knowing what he now knows (that there were no WMD found) he would still have invaded Iraq because of the terrorist connections, the human rights violations, and the real possibility that sanctions would be soon lifted allowing for Saddam to reinstate his very effective WMD programs of the past openly. I seem to remember Kerry at the Grand Canyon being asked that very question,

GRAND CANYON, Ariz. (Reuters) - Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry said on Monday he would have voted for the congressional resolution authorizing force against Iraq even if he had known then no weapons of mass destruction would be found. Taking up a challenge from President Bush, whom he will face in the Nov. 2 election, the Massachusetts senator said: "I'll answer it directly. Yes, I would have voted for the authority. I believe it is the right authority for a president to have but I would have used that authority effectively."

So basically the President has been on the record for over a year saying that he would have ousted Saddam even if he knew that there weren’t any WMDs and Kerry would have given him the authority to do it. It just goes to show that this entire issue is a farce, a pack of lies, and frankly irrelevant because knowing what we knew before the 2004 election, we re-elected the President!

Liberals Are Unpatriotic

Oh yeah, you read that correctly. All you liberals out there that would rather score political points against the President and Vice President than win this war hate your country. Willfully LYING about how the US came to be in Iraq is not dissent; it is sabotage of our national security. Dissenting IN GOOD FAITH is patriotic. All Americans are duty bound to speak up against the actions of our countrymen when we feel they are acting in error. But repeating lies every day to get back at the President that beat you doesn't make them true; it makes you a traitor to this country and disloyal to the troops who are on this day protecting you.

If by legitimate dissent liberals could have convinced the American people and by extension their elected representatives that they were correct by substantially refuting Saddam’s possession and prior use of WMDs, his connections to terrorism including Al Qaeda, and his genocidal behavior toward his own Shia population, then we would not have gone to war. Liberals were not able to achieve this because Saddam was an evil dictator who actively and openly supported terrorism and had verifiably massacred hundreds of thousands of innocent people many by using chemical weapons. Those facts are not in dispute and never have been.

Liberals now claim that the White House essentially “cherry picked” intelligence favorable to the case for war and ignored data that argued against it. As “evidence” of that contention, Democratic Senator Carl Levin presented a declassified DIA report of a debrief of captured AQ terrorist Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi who told interrogators that Iraq was training AQ members in making bombs, poisons, and gases. This report was used by the President in a speech in Cincinnati given in October of 2002 to bolster his case that Iraq was a threat to the United States. The DIA report from February 2002 stated that al-Libi “was intentionally misleading the debriefers’’ in making claims about Iraqi support for Al Qaeda’s work with illicit weapons. Furthermore, al-Libi fully recanted his statements regarding Iraq and AQ in January of 2004 prompting the CIA to completely negate any information received by him. It is on this statement that the liberal Democrats are making their case against the President for deliberately ignoring contravening information. Sounds bad, huh? Well, unfortunately for you lying scumbags who are trying to turn Iraq into another demoralizing defeat for the US, the Director of the CIA, Clinton appointee, and Medal of Freedom recipient George Tenet stated in OPEN SESSION of the Senate Intelligence Committee that,

“[Iraq] has also provided training in poisons and gases to two al Qaeda associates. One of these associates characterized the relationship he forged with Iraqi officials as successful…” on FEBRUARY 11, 2003!

This took me, a knuckle dragging enlisted frogman, all of 30 seconds to find on Google, so I know Carl Levin’s staff saw it.

The National Intelligence Estimate is the amalgamation of the intel gathered by all branches of US Intelligence Community to include reports from allied intelligence services. It collates vast amounts of data into a consensus view of the given threat situation weighing divergent opinions according to their reliability at the time. A famous element of the 2002 NIE was the opinion of the State Department’s Intelligence and Research (INR) that aluminum tubes known to be in Iraq’s possession were not intended for use in gas centrifuges to enrich uranium as the CIA believed. That and Joe Wilson’s excellent adventure to Niger ought to nail the coffin shut on Iraq, uranium, and their illegal nuclear program right? Wrong. It seems that we just found 1.77 METRIC TONS of enriched uranium and “1,000 ‘highly radioactive sources’ were also removed” in Iraq but I had to link to a BBC report because the American media isn’t interested. So there’s a famous dissenting view that turned out to be DEAD WRONG.

You tell me who’s cherry picking. The State Department concluded that Saddam had no nuclear program and were rebuffed by the preponderance of evidence to the contrary in the 2002 NIE. So Levin and Senate liberals pick out a minority report by the DIA and essentially charge the President with what could be considered treason for having concealed it from the Congress. The fact that the Director of the CIA was still publicly using that information two months before the onset of hostilities in Iraq means that the preponderance of the evidence concluded that Iraq was in fact training AQ in bombs, poisons, and gases.

The Senate Intelligence Committee report from July 2004 categorically dismissed any claims that the White House had “manipulated” intelligence data in any way to build support for the Iraq War by suppressing dissenting views of Saddam’s WMD capabilities. The Committee found NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER that intelligence officials were coerced into withholding intelligence exonerating Saddam Hussein from Congress. The fact is that very few Senators or Congressmen even bothered to have the CIA brief them on exactly what was known about Saddam’s WMD programs. It seems that 12 UN Resolutions, a Clinton bombing campaign in 1998, and the fact that Saddam failed to cooperate with weapons inspectors all the way up until the war began was enough for many prominent liberal Senators to make dozens of Senate floor speeches advocating the invasion of Iraq.

Senator Jay Rockefeller, the Co-Chairman of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee said the following on October 10, 2002 on the floor of the US Senate,

“There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years. We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction.”

and

“I do believe that Iraq poses an imminent threat, but I also believe that after September 11, that question is increasingly outdated. It is in the nature of these weapons, and the way they are targeted against civilian populations, that documented capability and demonstrated intent may be the only warning we get. To insist on further evidence could put some of our fellow Americans at risk. Can we afford to take that chance? We cannot!”

President Bush never even said that Iraq posed an “imminent threat”. Hillary, Kennedy, Kerry and dozens of other liberals made similar statements in the run up to the war, but Senator Rockefeller is the one man who cannot make any excuses for having not received the most comprehensive intelligence reports. In fact, he probably spent more time with the intelligence an analysts preparing these reports than the President since his only job in Congress was to act as the ranking minority member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Many of my readers might remember Senator Rockefeller’s memo from November 2003 detailing the Democrat’s strategy for manipulating intelligence through disingenuous investigations targeting the President during his re-election campaign. Rockefeller stated that Democrats should,

“Prepare to launch an independent investigation when it becomes clear we have exhausted the opportunity to usefully collaborate with the majority. We can pull the trigger on an independent investigation of the administration's use of intelligence at any time. But we can only do so once.”

That trigger was pulled prior to the 2004 Election and the weapon misfired, so now the liberals have reloaded and are pulling it again.

I relate all of these facts to say one thing. While the garden variety liberal moonbat hanging on every word coming out of Cindy Sheehan’s piehole may not know that these charges of manipulation intelligence are false, liberals in the Senate are knowingly LYING TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE every day. They are lying to gain an electoral advantage at the expense of the War on Terror and our troops. Paris is burning, Jordan, Britain, Spain, Turkey, Bali, Indonesia have been recently bombed, and the Aussies just rolled up a massive plot by AQ. The stakes in the War on Terror could not be higher and yet the Democrats shamelessly lie every day so that they can destroy the President of the United States. That is UNPATRIOTIC, and those who engage in this scheme are traitors of the lowest form. If you are a liberal reading this post and you followed all of those links and read that material, you now know. If you persist in this campaign of lies, you are UNPATRIOTIC, a TRAITOR, and SCUMBAG as well.

I Dare You

Via LGF

Ernesto Cienfuegos of Aztlan, a group of Mexicans that believe California and much of the southwestern US still belongs to Mexico, has written an article that essentially threatens a French like insurrection carried out by Mexicans in the US. He believes that Los Angeles will be the focal point of this uprising and that it will spread across the nation much in the same way muslim discontent has metasticized throughout France. My response to that nonsense can best be summed up by the actor Clint Eastwood in his role as Dirty Harry, "Go ahead. Make my day."

I wouldn't stand by while Ernesto lit my truck on fire offering more welfare benefits, illegal alien tuition breaks, and Driver's Licenses. I can tell you that.

Happy Birthday Teufelhunden

Just don't forget it is Navy Corpsmen that keep you all in business!

Down to the Wire

OK folks, allow me to direct your attention to the left column paypal button supporting VALOUR-IT Team NAVY. Our goal is $21,000 by Veteran's Day (which is November 11) and we are about $4000 short. The entire fundraising drive is attempting to raise $84,000 for a very worthy cause (Voice activated laptops at military hospitals so that wounded warriors can communicate with their families). If the milblogosphere cannot come up with $84k in two weeks then that is a pretty sad state of affairs.

I WOULD BE VERY SURPRISED IF READERS OF THIS BLOG COULD NOT FIND $20 TO SEND IN TO HELP OUR BROTHERS WHO IN MANY CASES GAVE A LIMB IN OUR COUNTRY'S SERVICE AND DEFENSE. I AM NOT GOING TO BEG YOU TO DONATE BECAUSE I SHOULDN'T HAVE TO.

LET YOUR CONSCIENCE BE YOUR GUIDE.

UPDATE: The Frogosphere has made me very proud. I want to thank each and every one of you for your contributions, but if you haven't given yet I would encourage to do so. While the NAVY Team may have reached its goal of $21,000, the slackers in the Air Force haven't even broken $10k. The idea is to raise $84,ooo so let's take up some zoomie slack!

HOOYAH FROGOSPHERE!

FROGGY OUT

Bloodbath in California

The entire slate went down in flames last night. I thought for a minute there we might be able to put California back on track and maybe start trending to the right. Not anymore. This state is solidly blue and it will stay that way. At least the GOP can use California as a science experiment for failed liberal policies and example of what not to do. I'm not leaving, but I'm not happy either.

Welcome to the Suck

That is the catch phrase for the completely absurd movie, “Jarhead”. Well, if you went to see that movie, then you undoubtedly experienced the “Suck” for what seemed like an eternity. They might also have named it, “Cliché: The Movie” because it was basically the Gulf War edition of “Platoon” recycling tired military urban legends and patently false anecdotes. On Hugh Hewitt’s radio show yesterday he asked me to review the film and about an hour later, a friend and former Marine officer invited me to go.

The “story” of Anthony Swofford’s war service in the Marine Corps during the first Gulf War, it is a first person account of what it is like to be a $hitbird in the Corps. While it is always very easy for veterans to nitpick war films to death for every minute technical discrepancy that conflicts with the reality of military service, this film’s errors were so glaring and ridiculous that only patchouli stinking anti-war activists would be gullible enough to believe them.

Some of the more egregious and stupid scenes include:

During a training exercise where the Marines were crawling through mud beneath barbed wire, the Staff Sergeant running the evolution used live machine gun ammunition to fire over the heads of the trainees. A trainee becomes rattled and suddenly jumps up and takes a 7.62mm round in the head. The Staff Sergeant then walks over and yells at the now dead Marine for having been shot, and remains in command of the platoon. Impossible

During the Gulf War there are horribly burned Iraqis? strewn throughout the desert. Many of these burnt corpses are positioned in a manner to suggest that they were civilians bombed in large groups. During a patrol, a member of Swofford’s platoon is caught somehow playing or otherwise fiddling with a stinking, burnt corpse. Absurd

Swofford and his spotter (they are a sniper team) are assigned by their CO to shoot two enemy officers in an air traffic control tower at a military airfield in their sector. The two get in position for the shot and obtain permission to engage the targets only to be interrupted by a Marine Major barging into their hide unannounced. The Major informs the pair that their sniper shot is canceled and that he will be calling for an airstrike on the target instead. In response, the spotter (not the shooter) who is a Corporal has what amounts to a mental breakdown over the issue that they were not going to have the chance to shoot an Iraqi officer from 900m. The Corporal physically assaults the Major in the process of begging him to allow them to shoot the officers prior to the airstrike. Ridiculous

Upon completion of the “sniper mission” the pair become separated from their unit and are left wandering the desert at night. They eventually happen upon their unit engaging in a half naked drunken beach party complete with bonfires, loud music, and loaded weapons to celebrate the end of the War. Swofford remarks to his partner that he hadn’t fired his weapon during the entire conflict and fires into the air. This is followed by the entire unit firing full auto into the sky like the mourners at a Palestinian funeral. Unthinkable.

There are 10 more audaciously false and stupid scenes that lack any authenticity or originality. I never read the book, so I don’t know who to blame, the author or the director so I’ll go ahead and blame both. Swofford is a crybaby and a whiner who somehow thinks that he is special and uniquely qualified to judge his fellow Marines. Do Marines (or SEALs for that matter) masturbate without ceasing on deployment? Yes, but they don’t engage in homoerotic sexual simulations and naked revelries. This movie wasn’t so much a slander as it was a farce.

The only reason I went to see it was to review it for Hugh, and as far as I’m concerned, he owes me a link and the $8.50 for the ticket!

DO NOT SEE THIS FILM

Sorry

Discontent

While I freely acknowledge the fact that there is a significant segment of the US population (maybe 25-30%) that is strongly opposed to our involvement in Iraq and wish to see our troops withdrawn en masse immediately, these people are hardcore Bush haters and will never be happy until the US morphs into France (sans riots). The remainder of the uneasiness with the war in Iraq doesn’t consist of ascent to the concept that the war was a mistake or a waste of blood and treasure, it is more a feeling of resignation that the US is unwilling or politically unable to act decisively on the battlefield and in the intelligence arena. Now much of this sentiment is a result of the MSM either failing to accurately report the state of combat operations or uncovering and relentlessly promoting US embarrassments or failures.

Discontent would be more accurately described as demoralization. There have been so many events in this war that have lead to this sentiment, and it is this feeling that is present in the American electorate that the enemy, the Democrats, and the MSM are seeking to exploit. Take for instance the issue of the Abu Ghraib or even Gitmo detainee ‘scandals’. Much in the same way that the people of France are now certainly embarrassed at the spectacle their once proud nation has become, the unseemly pictures of Lyndie Englund humiliating detainees brought a deep feeling of shame over us all. That said, I do believe that most Americans want to believe that the CIA has our most dangerous enemy terrorists holed up in secret prisons and subject to rough but effective interrogation. It’s just that we don’t necessarily want to know all the details of it. That is why leaking this story to Dana Priest of Wapo is such an insidious act of treachery by the CIA/MSM/Democrat axis. Leaving aside the incalculable damage to our national security done by the CIA bureaucrat who leaked this very damaging information, bringing to light this sort of information is a premeditated attempt at a slow motion coup d'état by anti-Bush elements of the intelligence community. It will open the US up to a new round of international denunciations and hand wringing by liberal Senators in DC.

The White House and the Congressional GOP leadership have been lying down and accepting this death by a thousand cuts strategy by its enemies at home, while effectively prosecuting the war against the terrorists abroad hoping that victory itself will bring its own vindication. At this point, I do not believe that the Dems or the MSM have the capacity to recognize victory let alone the willingness to acknowledge it. That is why this effort by Senate and House GOP leaders is long overdue and desperately needed. The GOP and the President do not and will never have any control over the actions of the Democrats or the MSM, but they can damn sure bring the CIA and the State Department to heel-and they must. The CIA in particular has factions within it that have gone rogue and must be crushed and rooted out. As I said before, there are a great many witches casting spells and stirring the pot over at Langley and it is time for a good old fashioned witch hunt.

The President’s approval numbers are suffering for the exact same reason as the war, because Republicans feel demoralized in the face of attacks from liberals and the media. These coming investigations of CIA leaks by the Bicameral Intelligence Committees need to be conducted not only as a matter of national security, but equally as a political strategy. Put the Democrats and the MSM in the position of defending leaks of real classified information (not some peon’s name) that affects national security. Mocking the moonbat libs is not enough anymore; they need to be confronted directly. We need to be decisively on the offense on the battlefield, in the interrogation chamber, and politically at home. Anything less would be a grave disservice to our servicemembers who are fighting hard every day. The best way to shut up a liberal is to punch him right in the nose; it’s time to knuckle up.

California Proposition Roundup

OK, I slacked on doing this one at a time so let’s get it over with. Vote Yes on 73 74 75 76 & 77

Prop 73 Parental notifications that minors are going to have an abortion. Contains a judicial waiver and does NOT require parental PERMISSION only NOTIFICATION. I would vote for permission if it was available, but it’s not, so don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

YES ON PROP 73

Prop 74 Teacher tenure will change current tenure rules so that teachers will have a 5 year probationary period instead of only two. We have a lot of turds teaching our kids in this state, and this proposition will help us to flush them. If you are a good teacher or married to one, you don’t have anything to worry about. If you are a slacker, maybe five years of keeping your act together will turn you into a dedicated teacher, or maybe you won’t bother trying to get a teaching job. Either way,

YES ON PROP 74

Prop 75 Paycheck Protection for union members that don’t want their lefty union bosses to spend their union dues on electing more liberals to the CA legislature (if that is possible). Cut the knees out from under big labor, and make them accountable to their members.

YES ON PROP 75

Prop 76 Spending Limits on the runaway CA legislature which is trying to turn the state into France by encouraging illegal immigration by offering more and more generous welfare benefits to people who have come into the state illegally amongst other things.

YES ON PROP 76

Prop 77 Judicial Redistricting is the last hope for a state that has been hopelessly gerrymandered into a failed liberal science experiment. How is it possible that the state recalled the Governor two years ago, but one year later NOT A SINGLE INCUMBENT LOST THEIR SEAT IN THE ENTIRE STATE?!! Because the pols got together in Sacramento in 2000 after the census and drew up districts in which they could never lose. A three judge panel would redistrict the state and the result would be voted on by the people of the state.

YES ON PROP 77

It is going to rain in SoCal tomorrow and many of your polling places will be different so look on the back of your sample ballot and mapquest the address so that you know where you are going. Liberals and casual moderate voters (liberals) don’t have the self discipline to make it to the polls on a rainy day. WE DO! GET YOUR A$$ OUT OF BED AND VOTE TOMORROW. THE FUTURE OF CALIFORNIA MAY DEPEND ON IT.

UPDATE: MY POLLING PLACE WAS CHANGED FOR THIS ELECTION TO THE DISTRICT OFFICES OF THE LOCAL HS/JHS SCHOOL DISTRICT. AS A RESULT, I FELT INTIMIDATED AND WAS THEREFORE DISENFRANCHISED BECAUSE I WENT THERE TO VOTE AGAINST THE WISHES OF THE CALIFORNIA TEACHERS ASSOC. I HAD TO ENDURE THE PENETRATING STARES OF WHAT I ASSUMED TO BE DISGRUNTLED TEACHERS, AND I WAS BARELY ABLE TO MARK THE BALLOT THROUGH MY FEAR AND DISENFRANCHISEMENT.

A Memorial to Fallen Brothers

On the grounds of the UDT/SEAL Museum is this memorial to the fallen from Operation Red Wing. Hat tip Trident 86

The Frog of Clubs?

Aaron is creating a blogger deck o' cards and he has reserved the clubs suit for milbloggers like yours truly. He is running a poll in the left hand column to determine the order of precedence and the top four get to be on a face card. So if you think Froggy should be the Ace of Clubs (or even the Queen) then vote. If not, then vote for one of the other worthy milbloggers.

Hot Nights in Paris

And I’m not talking about the Hilton progeny. I have to admit that I am feeling something of a perverse sense of glee and yet a deep sadness and foreboding at the recent developments in Franco-Muslim relations in and around the capital of France. That is tempered by the realization that although these islamist chickens are coming home to roost, the farmers are unlikely to learn any meaningful lessons from all of this egg breaking. It should hardly be surprising that when a modern western nation encourages the immigration of 6 million non-assimilationist muslims into a country with no jobs, and then offers this population welfare and free government housing that unrest was likely to ensue. When you don’t have to work or pay for your housing, you tend to have a lot of time on your hands. Time that has been spent with radical imams dispatched from Saudi Arabia and Al Qaeda recruiters from across the muslim world. This ‘civil’ unrest is one the most widely predicted outcomes to occur in a country that has been miscalculating domestic and foreign policy since its very inception.

If these riots were to happen in the US, there would certainly be a host of limp-wristed pundits and lefty pols saying things like Sylvine Thomassin the Mayor of Bondy, France,

“The young people are angry, what they are doing is to be condemned but as elected officials we can understand the reasons for their anger”.

But the difference is that the American people wouldn’t listen to them. It’s one thing for a mother to try to find out why her 2 year old was so angry that he smashed her crystal figurine on the floor, but it is quite another to afford fully grown islamists the same privilege for having set fire to a once great city. If you think that the PC rhetoric has taken hold here in America, France make us look like a verbal free fire zone.

Mr Sarkozy had earlier sparked some criticism with hardline comments saying the government would not allow "troublemakers, a bunch of hoodlums, think they can do whatever they want".

In France apparently it’s considered ‘hardline’ to call people who have rioted and burned houses and cars, shot at police, and generally turned the Paris suburbs into a mini Gaza strip ‘hoodlums’ or even ‘troublemakers’. After what has gone on to date, you would think that the French would be ready to go Tiananmen Square on their @$$.

All I can say is thank God for the Atlantic Ocean. When I was a boy growing up on our family ranch we had several sheep. One day, a pack of dogs jumped the fence and began to attack our sheep. By the time my mother and I realized what was happening, we ran out of the house to find the dogs literally feasting on our sheep as they did absolutely nothing to defend themselves or to even run away. The Spanish and now the French have lain on the ground to accept their fate as ravenous dogs tear at the fabric of their once great nations in much the same way. I never did get a chance to see Europe when I was in the Navy, and yet my wife and I have often dreamed of taking a nice long vacation there to see the abundance of cultural history that formed the basis of the United States. Somehow by the time we get the chance to go, I am not at all certain that the trip will be worth making.

After that incident with the dogs, my parents decided to give our sheep away to someone else and we never had another one on our ranch.

Kick Down Some Change

For those who are Kicking Some A$$ for us all! Operation Valour IT

Hit the PayPal button and help our wounded warriors to communicate with a voice activated laptop. Do it now. Move!

UPDATE: Although the NAVY Team had been much maligned and dismissed as a contender in the Valour IT competition, we are routing the other services as of right now. We are beating the Marines and Air Force COMBINED by a $1000 and the Army is back about a grand as well. While I love to see the NAVY demonstrate its superiority over its sister services, I would rather see those donations to Valour IT increase across the board.

This link will give you the latest on the competition

The Secret Third Party

I’m not talking about the Libertarians or the Greens; I’m talking about the CIA party. Partisans in the CIA and the State Department are waging a political battle against the President of the United States while at the same time providing much of the information the President needs to make foreign policy decisions. Have you ever wondered why the White House is so shy about touting the many successes in the Global War on Terror? Me too. The reason is that many bureaucrats at Langley seem to think that they are entitled to set the direction of US foreign policy instead of Chimpy Bushitlerburton the duly elected Commander in Chief and they are not afraid to leak damaging or even false information to make that happen.

Zell Miller has a very interesting piece (h/t Sean) out in the Atlanta Journal Constitution in which he quite convincingly postulates that this entire Niger/yellowcake kerfuffle was the result of a premeditated “sting operation” conducted by Valerie Plame using her husband Joe “Politics of Truth” Wilson as an unaccountable proxy to mischaracterize the situation in Niger publicly in an effort to influence the 2004 election. Unfortunately for the Wilsons, the British Butler Report and the Senate Intelligence Phase One Report on Pre-War Intelligence strongly rebuked their efforts. But a predictably complicit media made things interesting last November and has never stopped carrying the torch for the CIA and the Wilsons. Let’s not forget that George Tenet told the President two weeks before the War that Saddam’s possession of WMD was a “slam dunk”, and yet he allowed an active employee publish a book highly critical of the President’s decisions in the GWOT anonymously in the run up to his re-election campaign.

This is exactly the kind of schizophrenic behavior that makes the White House wary of the CIA. It stands to reason then that the DOD has massively increased its intelligence collection and analysis capabilities and increased it’s reliance on SOF. I would imagine that it must be a tremendous comfort to now have John Negroponte and his staff at the National Intelligence Directorate feeding him the mother’s milk of foreign policy as well as the presence of Condi over at State. Like Zell said in his piece the CIA has set things up in such a way that, “…heads they win, and tails Bush loses.” If they don’t like the way things are going, a few very juicy leaks to beltway journos is usually enough to get the White House scrambling, and when something negative comes out about the CIA, the media dutifully lays the responsibility at the feet of the President.

Now we find ourselves one day after the Democrats in the Senate pulled their Rule 21 stunt facing the issue of “intelligence distortions leading up to the War”. Which, if I recall, was somewhat heavily debated during the re-election campaign of President Bush. My question is this: knowing what we know about the relationship between the CIA and this White House, what are the odds that the CIA would have let the Bush administration get away with “manipulating intelligence” of WMDs prior to the Iraq War? How about slim and none?

A great Nation at war is in a situation where its own main intelligence agency is proactively working to stymie the efforts of its own Commander in Chief. This is a frightening and very dangerous set of circumstances in which the CIA being the shady and amorphous organization that it is, can drop the ball, allow a terrorist attack to occur, and face little if any tangible consequences while deeply wounding their nemesis in the White House not to mention the casualties borne by American citizens who count on both of these institutions for protection. There needs to be a Witch Hunt at Langley, because there is a hell of a lot of witches running around over there. The CIA operators in the field are by and large committed to the tasks at hand; in fact, many of them are members of the US military on a leave of absence. But the decks need to be cleared amongst the middle management at Langley before these secret moonbats are able to take down the President or worse allow WMD to get through to harm the American people. We don’t need any secret political parties in this country, but we do need to know what our enemies are doing.

Warriors Are Welcomed Home

Longtime members of the Frogosphere will remember how the SEAL community lost 11 operators during Operation Red Wing in Kunar, Afghanistan in July of this year. A four SEAL recon element was compromised and engaged by a numerically superior force of an estimated 100 or so Taliban. The SR element called for assistance which was answered by two MH-47 helicopters from TF-160 carrying members of SEAL Team TEN and SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team ONE. One of those helos was downed by enemy fire as the eight SEALs aboard prepared to conduct a daylight fastrope under fire to help their embattled brothers. In addition to the 11 SEALs that fell that day, eight members of the 3/160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment perished in the helo crash.

SDV ONE welcomed home the platoon from deployment that lost five of its own. Trident86 from SDV ONE sent me this photo from the Team area acknowledging their losses and their accomplishments. Below the picture are some links to the posts relating to this incident. Many of them are from Scott King who has been indisposed, but with us in spirit.
Dark Days Ahead, Tribute to the Fallen, The Names, SEAL Memorial at the Punchbowl, Dangerous Work, The ONE, A Warrior at Rest