I guess I'm a new type of fascist

According to Rumsfeld anyone that doesn't agree with the administration's policies on Iraq is a fascist.

"Rumsfeld portrayed the administration's critics as suffering from moral and intellectual confusion about what threatens the nation's security and accused them of lacking the courage to fight back."

What an asshole. At this point that they are still trying to make the case that Iraq is part of the war on terror shows just how stupid they think the general population is. It's amusing that he references the Nazi's. I have no doubt if Rumsfeld was living in Germany during WWII he would have been one of Hitler's most vocal supporters.

A Heartbeat Away From The Presidency

This Op-Ed piece by Robert Kuttner in today's Boston Globe sums up my thoughts I have had about the presidency for a couple of years now. For those of you unfamiliar with Robert Kuttner, this link provides a little background on him. I do not always agree with what he has to say, but he is an extremely intelligent man either way and I could not agree any more with what he has offered in today's column.

It's Hard to Look Back with Blinders On

"The very concept of destroying Hezbollah or dismantling it is based on a faulty belief that it is somehow external to the fiber of Lebanon. It is not." This sums up the folly of the West's entire Middle East strategy nicely, doesn't it?

As we all know, a dangerous precedent was set over fifty years ago with the Korean War. Our country turned its back on its beloved Constitution to wage a war in the name of "security." Since then we have committed countless troops and trillions of dollars to unconstitutional causes, including myriad conflicts in the Middle East.

When will this end? We must get back on the right path. Israel has a different constitution than we do, obviously, and I won't claim to know anything about it, but if this were a United States issue what we should have done was officially declare war on Lebanon because they are the legitimate government that is inextricably tied to a terrorist organization.

This is also what we should have done in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Taliban was an official government, so we had every right to declare war, yet we didn't. We circumvented the Constitution in the name of expediency. Saddam was obviously the official ruler of Iraq, so we should have declared war against Iraq if our nation was seriously in danger (of course, we know now that it wasn't).

This issue is one where I am proudly conservative. We can't keep pushing the limits of how we declare war. There is a specific method expressly detailed in our Constitution that we haven't followed since WWII. Every "military action" since "the big one" has technically been unconstitutional. We've become so ambivalent towards wiping our butts with the Constitution that we are currently waging a war against an abstract idea! Seriously, this has gone waaaaaay to far.

The reason why groups like Hezbollah get strong footholds in the Middle East is because they offer very real services that common folks would otherwise go without. They bring a modicum of order to madness. If we truly want to compete with that we have to be more orderly and offer more hope than they do. How can we possibly expect ordinary people in the throws of chaos to embrace our ideals if we can't even live by them?

What about the soldiers?

The latest "most dangerous jobs" list is out. There is one glaring omission... working as an American in Iraq. Statistically it is much more likely to lead to death than any of these professions at an annual rate of 300-500 per 100,000. The rate of injury after which a soldier cannot return to combat is 1200 to 2000 per 100,000. It is a tough job protecting freedom.










Source: www.cnn.com

Not the Golden Gate, terrorists pick the Mackinac

After each new terror alert there are inevitably stories of over-zealous law enforcement agents arresting Muslim men for living their lives. Does the Tuscola county district attorney seriously think that men with a thousand cell phones and some photos of a bridge were going to commit a terrorist act? Where are the explosives? What's the motive? Do they hate freedom? Since buying cell phones and having photos isn't illegal what crime can they possibly be charged with? No offense to the people of Michigan but I've never heard of the Mackinac Bridge. I don't think it's going to be high on Al Qaeda's hit list...

The revenge of the terror alerts

Is anyone else skeptical that 1 month prior to 9/11, and more importantly 3 months prior to an election, Michael Chertoff and Alberto Gonzalez are all over the television telling us to be afraid? I never realized the terror alert system is selective. It's red for flights from the UK, orange for flights in the US and yellow for everything else. I feel so much safer now. As long as terrorists strike with laptops filled with liquid explosives or cups of Dunkin Donuts coffee, we will all live happily ever after. Not sure what we will do once terrorists start swallowing explosives, ban passengers I guess. Meanwhile we still aren't doing enough to scan checked baggage.

Instead of fighting terrorists from nations like Saudi Arabia we are now seeing home-grown groups begin to form. They have little if any affiliation to Al Qaeda but they appear just as determined to kill as many people as possible. Perhaps the US and UK governments should analyze their foreign policies and determine whether they can take a more preventative not reactive approach to fighting terrorism. The British should know that repressive foreign policy can be problematic (the IRA).

Meanwhile where is that place we are fighting and defending freedom? Starts with an I, I think.

Unbelievable

This reads like a feel good story until you get to:

"He carried the boy to the lifeguard stand but witnesses said on-duty lifeguards refused to give the boy CPR without a mouthpiece to protect themselves. That's when several beachgoers who were CPR-certified stepped forward."

White lifeguards and a black child. Makes you wonder...