Month: January 2005

More Things that Make You Go “Hmmmm”

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Hat tip UPDATE: Constant Reader Opus also pointed to this item. 😉 Constant reader GT points to this Kevin Drum post that made my one eyebrow rise. From September 3, 1967: U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror by Peter Grose, Special to the New York Times WASHINGTON, Sept. 3– … Read more

On Iraq and other things.

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Juan Cole’s column on the recent election in Iraq is wrong about nearly everything — but it does make one good point.  This election would not have occurred without the support an insistence of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani.  Had Sistani not brought marchers into the street in January of last year, there likely would not … Read more

Can We Fire Kofi Annan Now?

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The possible reasons for Kofi Annan’s stonewalling the oil-for-food investigation have come into clearer focus.  It wasn’t just to obstruct Kofi’s own negligent oversight, it was perhaps to protect his own son’s involvement in this massive scandal.  From the London Times: The son of the United Nations secretary-general has admitted he was involved in negotiations … Read more

This may actually work.

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On Friday, I praised President Bush for sticking to his guns and keeping to a firm election timetable for Iraq.  It was a difficult thing to do, but it was the right thing to do.  Today, we see the fruits of his steadfastness:  A vote that, by initial accounts, was a spectacular success. The greatest … Read more

Tipping Points and Presumptions

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For the most part, I have defended the practice of denying prisoner-of-war status to detainees at Guantanamo Bay, and I still stand by it. What I can’t tolerate, however, is the mistreatment of those detainees. The stated policy is that, while these men do not merit POW classification under the Geneva Conventions, they would be … Read more

Another Gasbag Disaster

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Brookings Institution, April 5th, 2004

Iraq is Ted Kennedy’s Vietnam, warmed over for 2005. Stuck in the decade-long quagmire of minority status in the US Senate, Kennedy’s "solutions" will offer more years of backbenching for Democrats. His ideas for Iraq today are the same as they were for Vietnam thirty two years ago: Cut and run. In June 1973, he voted to cut off all funding to the South Vietnamese government, practically ensuring a communist takeover by the North Vietnamese, the ramifications of which were the killing fields of Cambodia and a bruised and shaken USA for years to come. Kennedy’s answer then is not too different from his answer today, which is to abandon our mission in Iraq and send our troops home, denying our soldiers the chance to see those objectives to fruition.

Building on his January 12th speech, which urged Democrats to be more liberal, not to mention the Mayflower Gasbag Disaster of 2004, Senator Kennedy is continuing the Jurassic politics of a bygone era. Last Thursday, he was at it again:

In the name of a misguided cause, we continued the war too long. We failed to comprehend the events around us. We did not understand that our very presence was creating new enemies and defeating the very goals we set out to achieve. We cannot allow that history to repeat itself in Iraq.

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Thrice-annual Brain Dump.

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I actually typed this in this morning, but the laptop ate my post.  That probably sounds a lot more interesting and fun than it actually was, though.  So, attempting to recreate: I was using my new laptop in the kitchen this morning while doing some planning with the new PDA, and musing how although one … Read more