War of Wits

America’s first black President, the former Philanderer-In-Chief, Bill Clinton is at it again. He just can’t seem to stop seeking the spotlight, even when it illuminates his malfeasance in office.

Much like Ken Starr exposed the stain on that sullied blue dress.

Not content neutering entire generations of Americans into cynicism, complacency, and silence as a result of political correctness, Mr. Clinton had to foist all of his scandals, as well as his treachery upon us, and our children. To fully document the Clinton scandals, one would need to pen a monumental tome.

He took wordsmithing to all time lows, splitting hairs over the definitions of “is”, “ever”, “never”and “sex”. It was actually painful to watch.

The following 3 examples should eliminate any further confusion about the meaning of the aforementioned words:

1). The Clinton presidency is the worst pox to have ever been unleashed upon this nation (although Bush’s Presidency ranks a close second).

2). The damage Bill Clinton has done to the security of this nation is so severe, we may never recover.

3). Bill Clinton’s lies and his propensity for receiving oral sex from interns young enough to be his daughter are what led to his impeachment.

Clinton disgraced veterans all across this nation when he buried one of his minions who never served a day of active duty in Arlington National Cemetery; Hallowed ground which is nourished by the very blood this nation has shed in defense of freedom. He had to dig up the ripened corpse when we got wind of what he had done.

He systematically gutted defense and intelligence budgets, and hamstrung their ability to operate effectively for years.

On numerous occasions his administration failed to act when they had the opportunity to kill Bin Laden. The failure was the combined result of institutional myopia, persistent hand-wringing over collateral damage, and a lack of political will when it came to the prospect of killing innocents or damaging mosques -even if it meant stopping public enemy #1.

Clinton’s pathetic attempt to slip his interviewer the figurative “explosive cigar” by politicizing the war to favor Democrats blew up in his own face.

It was the most undignified performance by a President, sitting or otherwise that I have ever seen. When he squinted his eyes, wagged his finger and got in Chris Wallace’s face in that heated interview, all I could think about, and the one thing I will always remember about Bill Clinton is that famous lie: “I did not… have… sexual relations with that woman… Miss Lewinski…”

But by far, the worst transgression of Mr. Clinton’s watch, was the failure to get Bin Laden at the Sheikh Ali Camp back in 1999. In February of that month, the CIA received tip-offs that Bin Laden was spending a lot of time at the camp with visitors from the U.A.E. When intelligence was collected in advance of an impending strike, the U.A.E. link was confirmed by the presence of one of their official aircraft.

Incidentally, it was the U.A.E. that was supposed to be our trusted partner in the war on terror. Trusted enough to run our port operations, and yet here they were, in 1999, sleeping with the enemy.

Needless to say, political pressure from the Lewinski scandal, and his other “Bimbo eruptions” just a year earlier squeezed what little manhood was left out of Mr. Clinton’s family heirlooms after Hillary was through. The risk of killing an Emirate prince, even if he associated with Bin Laden, was too great., and the strike mission was aborted in the third trimester, which -as we all know- is how liberals prefer their abortions.

In order to make sense of what’s going on around you, you must use reason, logic and critical thinking. You must make your decisions, not based strictly on short-term goals, but also on long-term consequences.

When the Supreme Court rebuked the President’s detention and interrogation policies, they stated that nothing precluded the President from gaining approval for those methods through legislation. The President is finally seeking that approval, and the US Senate is -predictably- standing in his way.

To be sure, in this argument there are pros and cons to both sides. The key is to make your decision based on the totality of the evidence and not on your gut feelings like John “Maverick” McCain. McCain should remove himself from this entire detainee debate. That goes for any other Congressman or Senator who was tortured or even held in captivity. Because he was tortured, McCain’s judgment is clouded by his experience. I’d bet he would be likely to regard anything more aggressive than voluntary questioning over tea and cookies as torture.

We see the same tactic employed by attorneys in peremptory challenges to prospective jury pools and the recusal of judges and attorneys from cases where their individual judgments may get in the way of the proper execution of their duties. Why shouldn’t it apply here?

Bush’s position is that he needs a clear definition of what acceptable detention and interrogation tactics are so they can stay within the law while fighting terror. He would also like many of the current tactics to remain legal. Sounds simple enough.

The pros to this argument are that we’ll now have clear directives and hopefully a somewhat expanded playbook on how to deal with the enemy. There are some cons. First, we will be broadcasting our methods so our enemy can learn how to counter them. Second, according to Senators Warner(R-VA), McCain(R-AZ), Collins(R-ME), and Graham(R-SC), other countries will feel free to follow suit. The problem with their logic is twofold.

First; we’re fighting a stateless enemy, and second; they’re already sawing off heads, booby-trapping corpses and generally not respecting any laws whatsoever.

McCain himself acknowledges that al Qaeda will torture US troops regardless of what laws we adopt, but still insists we must “take the moral high ground” - that we can’t “lower our standards because others do.” Truth be told, we could actually lower our standards quite a bit and still be on higher moral ground than those who saw off the heads of bound captives or hide behind and target innocents.

Second, if we do not escalate our response to at least one level of force higher than the terrorists, how do you expect to win? Remember, we’re talking about people who have no compunction about incinerating whole cities, sawing off heads, shooting nuns or blowing up babies. If your enemy sucker-punches you, you have to kick him in the groin. If he pulls out a knife, you have to pull out your gun, it’s that simple. Anything less, and you’re going to lose.

Looking at all sides of this issue, our leadership seems divided among two schools of thought. Modernize our laws to account for a 21st century, stateless enemy who respects no borders, laws or treaties so we can deal with them more effectively; or take the moral high ground and lose the fight altogether.

Either way, we face tough choices. But why not err on the side of strength, as opposed to weakness?

The Americans who fought and won World War II undoubtedly were the Greatest Generation. I am still awed by their heroism and perpetually in debt from the blood they shed. Many of these men suffered through the horrors of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression as children and then had to confront the evils of Nazism as young men. They rose enthusiastically to meet the challenge. This generation gave rise to such legendary figures as General George S. Patton, General Douglas MacArthur and the most decorated American combat hero ever, Audie Murphy.

It also gave rise to bloody, decisive battles such as Normandy, Iwo Jima, Midway and the Battle of the Bulge. These men were made of steel. They were as tough as nails.

Fast-forward 6 decades later. The sons and grandsons of the Greatest Generation who came of age in the heady days between wars are now leading us in the fight against global terrorism.

President Bush clearly articulated that we face Islamic Fascists. He consistently compares the war against terror to World War II and himself to then-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, which begs the question: Why aren’t we fighting this war like all of the others? And with the question, lies the answer: He’s clearly no FDR.

No, Roosevelt led with conviction, urgency and a clear sense of purpose. Bush’s tepid response to a 3 year pattern of escalation leaves me with the impression that he is fighting because he dug himself into a big hole and that’s the only way out.

In World War II, it wasn’t just young men who gave their all. It was women and children. It was W.A.C.s, W.A.S.P.s and Rosie the Riveter. Kids collected scrap rubber and aluminum for recycling into aircraft parts. There were War Bonds and Civil Air Patrols. The whole nation joined the fight, convinced they’d be speaking German or Japanese if we didn’t defeat Nazi tyranny or Japanese Imperialism.

Now we have The Cindy Sheehan Traveling Circus and Dick Durbin equating the interrogation techniques of US troops to those of Nazi Germany and the Khmer Rouge. We have John Murtha calling Marines “cold-blooded” murderers and the President of the United States calling citizens who patrol the border during wartime “vigilantes.”

Timothy Leary, LSD and Give Peace a Chance have done more damage to this country than anything in it’s entire existence. When the Baby Boomers who answered their country’s call in the jungles of Southeast Asia finally did come home, they were spat upon and called all sorts of vile things by their peers. Ironically, there are now yearly reunions in Canada for those who were “brave” enough to refuse orders and flee north.

We now have a Supreme Court and US Senate that believe we should give terrorists the same legal rights that you and I enjoy, yet remaining silent while the Marine Corps denies the most basic legal rights of discovery to seven Marines and a Navy Corpsman accused of murder based on hearsay.

A cult of destruction has publicly vowed to attack us until we drop to our knees, at which point they further vow to convert us, or it’s off with our heads. But our leadership is so paralyzed by political correctness, they can’t even agree on how to treat the enemy when we do catch them on the battlefield.

Rather than confronting this threat with the bold, decisive actions that won the wars of the past, we invite our enemy to New York City and allow him to deliver an anti-American screed to the UN General Assembly.

The end result of this collective “bum trip” is that our enemy is emboldened, the list of our enemies grows, our response to global terrorism is more muted than ever and the international criticism of our response is harsher than ever.  While the current generation is whistling past the graveyard, the Greatest Generation is turning over in their graves and my generation is left wondering how we’re going to pick up the shattered pieces of this nation and reassemble it once the Baby Boomers are gone.

One of the primary ways we are aiding and abetting our own destruction is by allowing our news media to freely broadcast enemy propaganda, whether intentionally or unintentionally.

In commemoration of the 5th anniversary of the September 11th attacks, Osama Bin Laden –through his sophisticated network of donkeys and bicycle messengers– delivered a previously unreleased video to who else? Al Jazeera Television.

While showing the video of the 9/11 hijackers hard at work training to slit the throats of the flight attendants in what would be the opening shots of the terror war, we were treated to what cable news explained was part of “…an intense propaganda push” by the terrorist network.

Pop Quiz: What’s wrong with this picture?

For starters, the fact that this garbage was covered at all.

If someone openly admits that a video they are showing you is a “propaganda push”, then by airing this piece they “pushed propaganda”, did they not?

Every time there is a new vow to kill us wherever we are, some media hound slobbers all over themself in their zeal to be the first to dig it up and bring it to you, straight from the back yard of your enemy. “DOWN, BOY! STOP THAT!!”

The second problem I have with the coverage is what was not covered to show it.

The country was reflecting on where we were five years after the September 11th attacks. We had memorials and tributes and speeches and expressions of patriotism that day and the news media allowed that to be interrupted by Osama Bin Laden so he could rub the attacks in our faces while they were fresh in everyone’s mind and aired his vows to do it again.

Do you understand yet? That is exactly what the terrorists wanted. And the media played right into their hands. This is -once again- an asymmetrical war and that was an asymmetrical attack. And cable news was but one of the delivery mechanisms.

But it’s not just the actions of the liberal media who are doing damage. So are the very words of the Administration.

Whenever they make statements such as “Mission Accomplished”, “Bring it on”, “The last gasp of Ba’athist dead-enders” and “I sensed something change”, you know you’d better put on the hip boots, because it’s gonna hit the fan. Whenever our leaders talk like this, those words are inevitably met with a bloody response to prove them wrong. Now that mid-term elections are on the horizon, politics is front and center with Bush’s proclamations that we’re facing “Islamic Fascists”, and that were fighting a war “for civilization”.

If you analyze those two statements carefully they sum up my beef with this administration’s whole approach to fighting this war. There are two possibilities. True or false. Of those possibilities, if the answer is false, there are also two possibilities, intentionally or unintentionally false.  If intentionally false, you are being deliberately misled for political reasons. If unintentionally false, then the Administration is at the very least, also guilty of playing politics. And if you believe Bush was correct about the gravity of the situation? We’re in even more serious trouble. It took drastic measures to defeat Japanese Imperialism, Nazism and Fascism. Measures like Hiroshima, Nagasaki, The Dresden firebombing, Normandy, Operation Market Garden and countless others.

As a final thought, your enemy views this as a battle of the purity of Islam vs. the filth of the West. Bush’s “Battle for civilization” remark was meant to energize his supporters and convince his skeptics of the worthiness of our cause. But the biggest impact it will have is to convince our enemy that this truly is a war against Islam - a holy war.

In Boot Camp, I once got hit on an inspection for leaving a “Commie tag” in my Dungarees.

I had to get on my hands and knees in front of the company and blow that thing the 50 or so yards from one end of the barracks to the other, chanting “Get out of my life, Commie Tag!”

For three hours straight.

I’m sure there are millions of veterans out there with similar stories of “reconditioning.” The point of these exercises is to teach the recruit that if he doesn’t follow orders, in training he gets punished, but in combat, he dies.

Right now, there are 8 US Marines who are fighting for their very lives. And numerous others could be soon as well.

Not on the battlefield,or behind enemy lines, but in their cells at the Camp Pendleton Brig. Because they followed their orders to the letter.

If we don’t do something, many of them could be executed.

In one case that occurred in Hamdaniya, Iraq in April 2006, 7 Marines and a Navy Corpsman are accused of dragging a disabled Iraqi out of his home, executing him and planting a shovel in his hands to cover it up because they were upset they couldn’t locate the actual target of their raid. They are being held in virtual solitary confinement, while the Marine Corps tries to get one of them to turn on the others by threatening them with death. There is no evidence other than the word of the enemy.

In another that occurred in Haditha Iraq earlier in November 2005, Frank Wuterich and his entire squad are accused of “executing” two dozen unarmed civilians in cold blood after an IED killed a fellow Marine. The NIS completed the Haditha investigation on August 1st, 2006, but handed the case off to an Article 32 hearing, which will then determine if there is enough evidence to even go to trial.

If this had been say, illegal immigrants charged with killing a family in a bad drug hit, the mainstream media would have been on both of these stories like white on rice. Their silence is deafening. The only time they say anything in regards to these 2 cases is to pounce on something negative and incriminating.

Many “anonymous sources” have already chummed the feeding frenzy by declaring that the investigative findings seem to support the murder allegations. There has been no due process. No gag orders, no exhumations, nor autopsies. No ballistics, no nothing in either of these cases. Zero, zip, nada.

These US Marines have fewer due process rights than terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

John “Cold-Blooded” Murtha (D-PA) has already publicly stated on several occasions that the Haditha Marines overreacted and killed unarmed civilians in cold blood.

While he is trampling on the Constitutional rights of a US Marine who was so good at his job he was actually promoted to Staff Sergeant, Murtha is hiding behind arguable constitutional protections that are supposed to exist when Congressmen are in chambers debating matters of public policy, not appeasing their antiwar constituents with inflammatory rhetoric.

Learn the truth. Write your representative and Senator. Demand the immediate release of all of these men, along with the immediate resignation and incarceration of John Murtha for his misuse of Congressional authority to score cheap political points.

NOTES: Donate to the fund to help all of these Marines here. If you do decide to get involved to try and help the ones who are presently confined, write them a letter and let them know there are people out there listening. They really need your support. They can be reached at the following address:

SGT. Lawrence G. Hutchins III

CPL Marshall L. Magincalda

CPL Trent Thomas

LCPL Tyler A. Jackson

LCPL Robert B. Pennington

LCPL Jerry A. Shumate Jr

HN3 Melson J. Bacos

PFC John J. Jodka III

Liberals do nothing but criticize. They have no solutions, only empty rhetoric that they think will help catapault one of them to the presidency. Take Delaware Senator Joe Biden.

In a speech for the National Press Club, he put forth the following 4 part campaign strategy to keep America safer:

1). He would implement the recommendations of the 9/11 commission. He would accomplish this by “taking back” tax cuts for people who make over a million dollars a year. He would then place this money in a dedicated Homeland Security Trust Fund to be used to increase security.

First, The Bush Administration is attempting to implement many of those proposals, already. Unfortunately due to the two-party system, no matter which party rents the White House, they’ll have to fight the other to try and implement any of the recommendations in the commission’s report.

Secondly, the federal government took the “trust” out of “Trust Fund” long ago. The Social Security Trust Fund was supposed be be dedicated for the nation’s retirees and was their money, but the government has systematically pilfered it into insolvency for 30 years.

Thirdly, with liberals, it’s always OK to shrink the wealth of millionaires, but never the size or budget of the government behemoth.

2). He would take the focus off of preemptive military strikes and instead prevent potential threats to the US.

Presumably, by choosing prevention over preemption, one can assume that you wouldn’t attack first, but would instead prevent them from attacking you by using law enforcement efforts.  Prevention would require robust measures such as tight borders, profiling, espionage, surveillance, more pressure on foreign governments to cooperate, and Americans arming themselves to prepare for the coming onsolaught - all things that liberals repeatedly prove they don’t have the stomach for.

Furthermore, imagine if you will, what would happen, if you put all of your eggs in the prevention “basket”, and you’re wrong. Americans are going to die. I’ll stick with preemption.

3). He would build a network of like-minded countries that pool resources, ideas, information and power.

Like the Bush Administration is doing with The United Kingdom, Australia, Italy, Jordan, Kuwait, the UN, NATO, the UAE and numerous others?

4). Finally, he wold develop what he refers to as “institutions of democracy”- political parties, an independent media and judiciary, and of course labor unions in the Middle East.

There is growing demand in the Muslim world for Sharia law, which is essentially, an eye for an eye.

Conversion to Christianity is punishable by death in much of the Muslim world to this day. But, according to Senator Biden, we are going to export our brand of democratic “institutions” to the entire Middle East?

Overall, this sounds an awful lot like the current President’s policy. It wouldn’t be the first time Biden “borrowed” someone else’s idea. It is widely known that when he ran for President in 1988 that he had to bow out because he plagiarized a campaign speech that was written by a British politician without giving him credit.

There is absolutely nothing new here, other than the revelation that Senator Biden would forego preemptive military strikes abroad in favor of class warfare here at home. That makes for a more divided country and a weaker, not stronger defense.