Victory Institute Action Alert

January 9, 2009

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In September, Navy SEALs captured Ahmed Hashim Abed – a most-wanted al Qaeda leader – during a nighttime raid. Abed is the suspected mastermind of a 2004 ambush that brutally murdered four Blackwater security contractors – including a former SEAL – in Fallujah, Iraq. The contractors were burned, mutilated, and suspended from a bridge. According to the terrorist himself and conflicting statements from another sailor, these SEALs might have hit Abed in the stomach.

The objective of Operation Neptune’s Fury is to exonerate the SEALs, who should be honored as heroes, not tried as criminals.

The charged SEALs are:

• SO2 Matthew McCabe, 24, of Perrysburg, Ohio
• SO1 Julio Huertas, 28, of Blue Island, Ill.
• SO2 Jonathon Keefe, 25, of Yorktown, Va.

All are from SEAL Team Ten in Little Creek, Va.

The Navy has just over 2,000 SEALs, and it takes years of training to become one. These men are some of the most elite warriors in the world. They accomplished their mission, yet could face discharge because the man responsible for the Fallujah ambush could have received a fat lip?

"How long before America’s front-line troops begin to wonder if the country really has their backs?" asked Lt. Col. Ralph Peters in a New York Post op-ed.

Unfortunately, they already are. As a SEAL officer told me in an interview, "SEALs are tired of having to watch their back – not only from the enemy – but also from our own leadership." These warriors clearly need our help. This is a battle that they cannot win.
Take Action!
Let the SEALs know that the United States does have their backs. Admiral Eric Olson is the Commanding Officer of Special Operations Command; he is a SEAL himself and has the authority to stop the trials. Politely inform him that the charges against the SEALs must be dropped. These elite warriors have went above and beyond the call of duty when it comes to securing our freedom, and deserve to be treated as heroes rather than tried as criminals.

Remember, what you communicate could either help or hurt these men’s careers.

1. Call Admiral Eric Olson at               (813) 826.5100         (813) 826.5100
2. Or Fax (813) 825.5109
3. Or Email: olsone@socom.mil
4. Then Forward this to as many people as possible

Sign up to receive Victory Institute Action Alerts here.

Donate to the SEALs’ Legal Defense Fund

I encourage all of you who can do this to express your opinion and your support for these men in honor of the sacrifices they make in the name of our safety and protection.  In my opinion, these men are heroes and Abed is lucky to still draw breath.  His fate has been far more kind than the fate of the men that he captured, tortured, murdered and then hung their desecrated bodies on display for the entire world to see.  Enough is enough.

Once again we see the intolerance, violence and hatred of the left. There have been many leftists that I have disagreed with, vehemently at times. However, I can recall not one single incident where I actually wish physical harm to come to one, especially not publicly or to such a vicious level at to completely demean the subject.

Here is your tolerant left. Here are your champions of women’s rights. No. The sarcasm fails me. They are nothing of the sort.

Today, Playboy Magazine published a list a list called So Right, It’s Wrong. This is a list of the top ten conservative women that they would like to hate f*ck. You heard me right. I did not coin that term, it was used many, many times in the vile article posted on the Playboy website. That is until the cowards pulled the article due to the outrage it caused. If you want to view some of the postings, I found a website that captured screen shots of the insulting article before the spineless scum at Playboy pulled it. You can view the comments on these professional women and the abhorrent languages used to describe how they would like to have violent sex with them, on RedState (Caution: Content Possibly NSFW).

What I find so infuriating about situations such as this is that when it is a leftist showing their complete intolerance of, hatred of and violence towards others it is somehow acceptable. There has been no mainstream media condemnation of this vile assault against these women. None on the left have come forward to condemn the actions of these petulant children for their assault on these women. Just as when that complete waste of skin Perez Hilton assaulted Carrie Prejean because she gave an honest opinion that he did not share, the left can call these women horrible names and suggest vile actions against them and it seems acceptable.

However, we are not to criticize a judicial nominee based on her racist comments or horrible record from the bench, when the Democrats schemed to prevent Miguel Estrada from being nominated to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals based solely on the fact that he was Hispanic, ignoring that he was one of the most well respected trail lawyers and was supremely qualified.

We are told to be nice and not criticize President Obama’s dishonest, appeasing, apologetic speech where he panders to those who would just as well see us dead, when the left spent the last several years calling multiple members of the Bush administration everything from murders to Hitler himself.

We are said to be the sexist, racists, intolerant, ignorant rednecks, clinging to our guns and religion, but when you look for intolerance and hate, you only need to look to the left to find abundant examples. I will not stand for this hypocritical double standard bullshit any longer. Every single one of the people responsible for this article should be immediately terminated from Playboy. That means authors, producers, editors, researchers, etc. Everyone needs to be gone for this abomination against these women. I mean if Don Imus gets canned for a nappy headed ho comment, then these guys have to hit the pavement and hit it now.

No longer will I stand for the racist, sexist, hateful, bigot claims of the left. I dare anyone to bring that argument to me. I will bury anyone who does in multiple examples of bigotry and hypocrisy from the left. I am done with this hateful bullshit. I will stand for it no longer.

There has been an awful lot of discussion surrounding the torture subject again since the Obama administration has floated the idea of criminal investigations into the harsh interrogation methods used by the CIA to extract information from al-Qaida operatives. The Obama administration has received both harsh criticism and demands for further investigation after the releasing the CIA memos detailing the interrogation methods used by the CIA and the decision making process surrounding them. I believe this is a reckless step aimed at political gain and poses a great risk to our nation on many fronts.

To begin this discussion, one must first decide what exactly torture is and what remains a harsh interrogation method that does not cross this line. This is a question over which much debate has raged throughout the last few years. While some clearly see water boarding as torture, others disagree and find the practice perfectly acceptable when used in high level, critical interrogations where other methods have failed. Many would also argue that these interrogation methods are ineffective and do not produce reliable results. However, it appears that the evidence in hand on that point tends to demonstrate otherwise.

This is a difficult question to answer, as Americans have always fought against regimes that torture and abuse people. Therefore to even consider such measures must place great strain on our core beliefs. Herein lies a question faced by many of our great leaders in the past, to what lengths can we go to protect this nation without destroying what this nation stands for? When President Lincoln was faced with the dissolution of the Union, he suspended the basic rights guaranteed under by Constitution under the Bill of Rights and marched a standing army against American citizens to preserve that Union. When President Truman faced the decision to invade Japan at the cost of millions upon millions of American and Japanese lives, or to drop tremendously devastating weapons of mass destruction on civilian population centers in an attempt to force a Japanese surrender, he chose the lesser of two evils and the lower cost of life. When President Bush was faced with another impending terrorist attack on this nation, he authorized what methods he thought legal and justified to extract the information from our enemies that allowed us to prevent these attacks. For none of these men were these decisions light, but they were easy ones to make. They did what they must to protect this nation in dire times of need. They chose the only path they could to save this nation or the lives of her citizens.

For me this question is simple. I for one do not consider water boarding to be torture, nor do I consider many of the other methods detailed in the memos that were foolishly released by the Obama administration to be above the uncrossable line. When dealing with a ruthless enemy who will slowly cut the head off of an innocent American contractor while filming it for propaganda purposes, I find it perfectly acceptable that we would pour water over his head until he decides to talk. When dealing with a people who believe it acceptable to murder their own children in ‘honor killings’ because they have not behaved in some particular way, I find no problem sticking them in a room with an insects that they fear. When dealing with a people that strap bombs on to women and children, teach that it is acceptable to beat your wives and kill indiscriminately innocent people who will not yield to their way of life, I do not see a problem with slamming them up against a wall and threatening to beat the information out of them.

Someone asked me a very simple question one day in an attempt to define what I saw as torture. If your children had been kidnapped and the man sitting before you had the information that would save their lives, to what lengths would you go to obtain that information? Where ever you chose to stop or whatever you decided you could not do, was your definition of torture. After contemplating the question for some time, I realized that it is not that difficult of a question for me to answer. This may make me a horrible person in some people’s eyes, but I could think of very little that I would not do to save the life of just one of my children, not mention all of them. If the person still possessed the ability to draw breath once they gave me what I needed, they should consider themselves very fortunate indeed. I would gladly water board him and his entire family to save my children and I would sleep well at night knowing I had done so. I would stop at nothing to protect my children. How could I think less of a nation that did likewise to protect her citizens?

Someone once argued with me that I would be sacrificing my morality by taking such actions, even in the defense of my children. I disagree. I feel that it would be a moral imperative to do anything and everything possible to save my children. Failing to do so would be the ultimate moral failure. These people have sworn to kill as many innocent Americans as the possibly can by any means that they can. We are at war with an enemy that knows no rules and respects no boundaries. Our citizens and soldiers are offered no quarter and are brutally murdered and hung in public as examples of their barbarism. How there are people in this country who have a problem with pouring water on these people to scare them into releasing information that will thwart their horrific plans is far beyond me. Failing to do so, to me, seems the ultimate failure of a nation and its moral obligation to protect its people.

In the short month since President Obama has been inaugurated he has made good on his promise to deliver change to this nation. We have seen a massive increase in Federal spending from the pork laden $820 billion stimulus package to the Omnibus appropriations bill filled with over 8,500 earmark projects. Earlier this week the President hosted a fiscal responsibility convention where political leaders from across this nation gathered to discuss our soaring deficit and struggling economy. At the conclusion of this summit, President Barack Obama stood before the nation and simply lied to our faces. He promised that the Federal government would operate on a pay-as-you-go program and ensured us that he would not spend any money that we did not actually have. He promised to cut non-essential programs in favor of those critical to the success of this nation, not raise taxes on any families making less than $250,000 annually and ensure that Washington did not leave a massive debt that would crush our future generations. Apparently, it was all a lie.Yesterday, Obama released his new fiscal budget to Congress totaling nearly $3.5 trillion dollars in a direct contradiction to his words just days earlier. Considering the $700 billion dollars already allocated to financial bailouts, the $820 billion dollars in the federal stimulus package, the $420 billion dollars in the Omnibus appropriations bill and not the $3.5 trillion dollars in the new Federal budget, within his first month in office, President Barack Obama has spent over $5.4 trillion dollars with promises of more to come. Our nation and our economy will be crushed under this massive debt. This is more money that any country has ever spent in such a short time in the history of this planet. This is the change we were looking for?

To show a fine example of more undesirable change, allow me to explain the new decision handed down by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. Since 1991 it has not been permissible for the media to photograph fallen soldiers returning home from a war zone. President George H.W. Bush prohibited this practice in 1991 during Desert Storm as a means of protecting those who have made the ultimate sacrifice for their nation from being politicized in the media. Acknowledging the dishonor that this nation did unto its servicemen in past wars by using them and their sacrifice as political tools to seed dissent, President Bush (41) decided that he would no longer allow the media to photograph fallen soldiers returning to military bases in this nation. Yesterday, Secretary Gates decided that the media’s desire to plaster images of dead soldiers on television, websites and periodicals across this nation in an attempt to discredit this war should be allowed. I will give him the credit for providing the stipulation that the families must give permission for this to occur, but I can just imagine what will come of this. The first time a media outlet convinces a family to allow them to photograph their fallen loved one so that they might honor their service and sacrifice and then turns around an politicizes the soldiers death as a means to further a political agenda, Gates’ resignation should be demanded.

The media claims that Americans have been sheltered from the real cost of war by not allowing them to photograph our returning dead. Bullshit. We know the cost of war. We know the sacrifice made by those that the media dismisses as murderers before a fair trial. We know the price paid by the returning dead and wounded. I know personally. I have a dear friend who fought willingly for his country and fell in battle to a sniper round. Luckily the brilliance of military surgeons saved his life in Baghdad, but he will never be the same. The round stuck him in one temple and exited the other doing serious brain damage along the way. By the skill of those surgeons and the grace of God he managed to live, but his life is forever changed due to his injury. We know the cost.

If the media were not completely biased and had shown willingness to report fairly about this conflict, this might be a different story. All we ever hear from Iraq and Afghanistan is negative. None of the good is ever reported. I still have friends serving there. I hear from them how the children run to them when they see them on the street and how civilians invite them into their homes to thank them for what they have done for their country. We hear of Marines who killed innocent civilians, but we do not hear of the ones that placed themselves in extraordinary danger to avoid civilian casualties. We hear of soldiers who violated their rules of engagement, but never of those who lost their lives because those rules so restricted them from defending themselves as they needed to.

I have another friend, a Marine. This is a good man, good father and fiercely dedicated soldier. He flies an F/A-18 Hornet for the Corps and I personally know he has taken innocent lives in this conflict. Were the incident left unto the media, my friend would be labeled as a murderer, a horrible example of American aggression, but he is so far from that it is not the least bit humorous. What was his crime? What drove him to kill several innocent civilians? The answer is very simple: bad intelligence. What he thought was a legitimate, approved target containing high level al-Qaeda leaders, was not. Was it his fault that the wrong vehicles were in the wrong place and the wrong time? Was it the analyst fault or the soldiers that collected the intelligence that they were sure was solid? Was it the commander’s fault who issued the strike order? Was it the fault of the ground crews that loaded his weapons or the tanker crew that topped him off on his ingress to his target? No. None of them deserve the blame as this was not an intentional attack on civilians. This was an unfortunate mistake; something that happens quite often in war. This does not make my friend or anyone else involved some horrible person who disregarded human life. It makes them all soldiers doing the best to serve their country with honor and integrity. Things such as these unfortunately occur in war, but left to the wiles of the media my friend, this good faithful soldier, would have been made out to be a murder instead of the hero that he is. They would not have cared about all the close air support missions he flew covering other soldiers and Marines that were pinned down. They would not have cared that at times he took out targets using only the cannon on his fighter to avoid collateral damage when he carried a full payload of much more destructive weapons that would have kept him out of harm’s way. They would not have cared that this incident tore him up emotionally; leaving him unable to fly combat missions for weeks until he stopped blaming himself for those innocent deaths and realized that it was part of war. They would not have cared that this strong, seasoned jarhead called his wife crying the day that it happened and was unable to even tell her why. To the media, he would just be a murder. We know the cost of war and we know where the intent of the media lies.

Now these people have the ability to photograph our fallen dead as they are returned in honor to an ungrateful nation and a mourning family. This is the change we can believe in? Well, this is the change that we got.

In other news today:

Iraq Casualties Reach All Time Low

Iraq casualties dropped to twelve in the month of July, the lowest since the resumption of hostilities with Iraq in early 2003. This follows the continuing trend of decreasing violence and increased Iraqi control of the region. This news follows reports of most senior al-Qaeda officials fleeing Iraq and taking refuge in the poorly controlled regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan and Iraqi officials talking of dates for complete Iraqi control of the country.

Does this sound like a war that we are losing? I think not.

John Edwards Admits to Being a Liar

For months during his presidential campaign John Edwards paraded himself and his family around the campaign trail and allowed America to believe that he was a dedicated family man totally committed to his critically ill wife and children. He repetitively denied his involvement with a member of his campaign and continued to lie and preach morality to the American people, even receiving a Father of the Year award from the American Diabetes Association in New York in 2007.

Now we see exactly what kind of husband and father Edwards has been. After accusations of the affair recently resurfaced, Edwards was caught slinking into the hotel of Rielle Hunter and photographed by the paparazzi. He ended up hiding in the hotel bathroom and waiting for security to escort him out of the media shark pit that awaited him. Pictures finally surfaced in the National Enquirer of Edwards holding the six-month-old baby Frances Quinn Hunter, daughter of the above mentioned Rielle Hunter, pressure mounted from all sides for Edwards to answer the charges.

Today Edwards finally admitted to his deceit. He is denying that the child is his, but fully admits to the drawn out affair with this woman. Now allegations of what she was paid for her limited contributions to his campaign raise question about her being paid off to stay silent about the affair. While Edwards denies these charges, some tough questions await answering in the future of this former Democrat star.

Nice. They should repeal the Father of the Year award and give it to someone deserving of the title.

I think he will win quite a few of these. First, what does John McCain think about placing the importance of politics over that of us being victorious against those who mean us harm?

“I had the courage and the judgment to say that I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war. It seems to me that Sen. Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign,” – John McCain

What does Obama think about winning a war versus playing politics with the lives of our troops? See for your self:

This man is a moron. He has no clue how to lead this nation and will cost the lives of countless American service men and women through his arrogance, inexperience and blatant stupidity. This video illustrates his dishonesty, his deceit and his willingness to placate to the political demands of the moment and not the reality of the challenges we face.

If this nation votes to place this man in charge of the well being of our Armed Services, we will be doing them the greatest injustice in the history of this nation.

I have been busy as all get out today. We finally got our website up and there has been a ton of work to do after the initial launch. However, there are a couple of articles of attention this weekend that I would like to highlight today.

Sony Caught Pirating Software:

Sony has always been one of the biggest supporters of the RIAA and their which hunts that have dragged soccer moms and college students into court for downloading their favorite song to play on their own personal MP3 player. Sony has repeatedly bemoaned the damage that piracy does to the industry and has gone so far as to illegally infect the personal computer systems of its customers with a root-kit virus to ensure no one copied their material illegally.

It now appears that Sony BMG has been caught with its hands in the software bin. According to the article posted on TechDirt and confirmed by sources such as The Inquirer and SlashDot, the Business Software Association (BSA) raided Sony’s offices to discover that as much as 47% of the software at their office was illegally in use. I find this revelation ironic and absolutely hilarious. As the TechDirt article notes, Sony has been pushing Congress to increase penalties for copyright violations. Will they step up to the plate and pay the increased fines? I bet not.

Stop-Loss:

If they had wanted to actually Stop-Loss they apparently should have Stopped-Production of this propaganda filled shot at our military and this administration. Stop-Loss is based off of the story of a decorated war hero returning home from Iraq who is then recalled by the Army for additional service.

The term Stop-Loss comes from the ability of the Armed Services to invoke an involuntary extension of a service member’s enlistment contract in order to retain them beyond the normal end term of service or the ceasing of a permanent change of station move for a member still in military service. It is not immediately clear whether or not this soldier is actually Stop-Lossed or not. If he is recalled to active service while still under his initial contract then it is definitely not a Stop-Loss issue. If his contract is extended beyond its initial eight years, then he was Stop-Lossed. All military personnel sign an initial commitment of eight years, regardless of the length of their active service. Recalling a soldier to service under his initial contract is in no way a Stop-Loss issue. It is something the soldier agreed to when they signed up for service. An actual Stop-Loss case is rare in the military. Most people confuse recalls to active duty of soldiers still under contract as the same thing as being Stop-Lossed.

Aside from the accuracy that has been brought about by this film, the horror that it clearly illustrates is in the box office sales. Its opening night only brought $1.6 million in and the entire weekend saw a dismal $4.5 million. Not to mention that it is not getting favorable reviews by even liberal movie critics.

How Hollywood continuously fails to understand that people do not want to see these hate filled anti-war protests force fed to them at the box office is beyond me.

You know it has been over a week since I wrote anything on this site or really visited many of my normal haunts. I have sat down multiple times to address the issue of the day, but have not managed to actually post anything at all. Amongst all the bits and pieces of half written articles there has been many a good idea over the past few days. So I am going to post a quick synopsis of some of the more interesting topics I was going to write about, but never got the time to finish.

The Missile Shot Heard Round the World:

I was pleased to see that the United State successfully shot down a failing satellite with and SM-3 Anti-ballistic Missile System. The spectacular direct impact hit was caught on camera and showed the missile impact turning the satellite into a rapidly expanding cloud of debris and gas. It appears that Russia and China were particularly displeased to see the accuracy at which American ingenuity can eliminate objects in low earth orbit, which means we can easily intercept ballistic missile trajectories. It also appears that some on the left are so desperate for attention that they have already formulated conspiracy theories ranging from extreme to ludicrous. Some claim that this Administration ordered the satellite shot down because they were using it to spy on American citizens, while others are claiming that it was just a stunt to anger Russia and China with our obvious aggression. Finally some are even claiming that it never happened at all and once again we have been duped by special effects and subterfuge. I am amazed at the level of moonbattery.

We Must Fight al-Qaeda in Iraq, Whenever They Get There:

In other news, it appears that Obama has forgotten certain details in his campaign and is making statements showing what an idiot he can be. When asked by a reporter what would happen if we leave Iraq too soon and al-Qaeda re-emerges and declares victory over the United States, he commented that if al-Qaeda emerges in Iraq then we will have to deal with that, apparently forgetting, until he was reminded by Republican front runner John McCain that al-Qaeda is in Iraq going by the obviously clandestine name of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Obama was quick to point out that the reason they are in Iraq is because we were there first. While a sometimes disputed, yet possibly valid point, it fails to address the fact that it makes no sense to say that if they are there we must deal with them there, and then want to pull our troops out of Iraq while they are in the process of dealing with them there… Uhm, what?

Punishing Success the Obama Way:

Also, Obama has decided he will put an end to CEO’s of huge companies making in ten minutes what it takes a fry cook at McDonalds to make in an entire year. It apparently makes no difference that the CEOs may have spent years gaining the knowledge and experience to put themselves in charge of making multi-million dollar decisions for entire companies that affect the lives and fortunes of tens of thousands of people. He apparently does not care that these CEO’s are delivering immense profit to their companies and investors by providing goods an services that millions may use and stimulating the economy by providing goods, services and jobs while maintain profitability and growing their industries. What if these CEO’s started these multi-million or billion dollar companies from their garages twenty-five years ago and have spent all their adult lives growing and expanding the capabilities of their creation? While a fry cook has to make sure that he removes the fries from the grease when the buzzer sounds so that the fries are not overcooked. What right does Barack Obama have to determine who is worth of great wealth of reward over anyone else? What give Barack Obama the right to say that he will stop CEO’s from making in ten minutes what a basic laborer makes in a year? It is not of the government’s business to limit the success of anyone because someone else is less successful. That, my friends, is socialism and it counter to everything that this nation stands for. I an not rich by any means, but I am more successful than a basic laborer and my wife is more successful than I am if you base things solely on income. Where will this end? Will we be penalized because we have taken advantage of education, experience and perseverance to provide a better life for our family? What if I were to invent something that everyone wanted and by next year I can make in a day what it takes me a year to make now? Am I then to have it all taken from me by a man who thinks he has a right to limit my success? No, I think not.

Remember, this is coming from a man who lives in a $1.6 million mansion. Hmmm.

Global Cooling:

It is official now. According to all the official monitoring stations and much anecdotal evidence, this past year has been one of the coolest on record in many years. Record snowfalls have been recorded in areas world wide and temperature averaged have been some of the coolest in more than fifty years. North America has seen more snow this year than any year within the last fifty. China has recorded its coldest temperatures in over one hundred years and Baghdad has received its first snow in all recorded history. According to an article by DailyTech this past year has wiped out over a century of warming trends with cold weather across the entire planet. It now appears that record snow falls are drastically increasing the polar ice packs thickness and reversing some of lost mass that the last few warmer years have caused. Is this a fluke or is this a trend? Should we fear the coming Ice Age now or should we realize that our climate is way too complicated for us to understand and predict even a small percentage of its behavior? As it stands right now, the planet has warmed less than 0.10 C in the last hundred years, not much of a warming trend to me.

My point with all of this is that predications by global warming alarmist were for the hottest year on record in 2007. Even with environmental consciousness at elevated levels the planet’s carbon emissions increased by about 12% last year, thanks in a great deal to countries like China and India’s booming economic growth. This would have given weight to the predictions for increased manmade warming, however we have been faced with cold snaps, ice storms, record snow falls and the lowest recorded averaged for anywhere between a half and a full century in many places. We know so little about how our environment actually works, jumping to conclusions and predictions and closing the discussion about anything involving our climate is ridiculous. We simply do not understand.

I have been visiting some new sites lately and I still find myself shocked at the utter stupidity that has infested this nation and has been promoted by the left. I am still taken aback by the absence of intellectual integrity and willful ignorance that abounds in some circles is simply amazing.

Let’s look at what some of the left believes. I will attempt to take an analytical approach to two subjects today and I will approach more through subsequent posts.

1. The actions taken in Iraq constitute an illegal war.

This statement has many variations ranging from accusing political leaders of being terrorists and murderers to claims that the sole reason we are there is for oil. You may also recognize the famous moonbat cry of, “Bush lied. Soldiers died!” Despite all the evidence to the contrary, these people cling to the idea that this entire war was orchestrated by the executive branch to give President Bush a reason to invade Iraq.

For starters, let’s examine the legality of the actions. We invaded Iraq during the Gulf War under a United Nations mandate to liberate Kuwait. At the end of hostilities with Iraq, we entered into a cease-fire agreement with Iraq conditional on many things. Among the conditions of the cease-fire were the cessation of Iraq’s WMD programs and the cooperation of the Iraqi government with UN inspectors. For over twelve years and multiple UN resolutions, Iraq failed to uphold its end of the cease-fire agreement. Inspectors were denied access to facilities and eventually expelled from Iraq entirely. American forces came under direct attack from the Iraqi military on multiple occasions during the cease-fire. These actions became so severe as to prompt action from former President Clinton at times including direct military strikes on Iraqi facilities which were known to contain WMD materials.

The question of legality is moot. The United States had ample legal reasons for which it could have resumed hostilities with Iraq under the conditions of the cease-fire agreement. Not only this, but the fact that prominent leaders of both parties in our government were stating the seriousness of the threat that Iraq posed to us and urging the President to take action to put a stop to Iraq’s WMD programs, is so conveniently forgotten by the left whenever this argument comes up.

2. We should have dialogue with those we disagree with.

This would currently include people like Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong-Il and leaders of terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah and Hamas. The inherent problem with this is that you must be able to trust those with whom you have such a dialogue or at least have a reasonable expectation that you will be taken seriously. Leaders such as Ahmadinejad cannot be reasoned with. Seriously, this is a man who has stated that his goal is the destruction of the Israeli state, has denied that the holocaust occurred or even that homosexuals exist in Iran. We have to believe there is even a remote possibility of sanity in whomever we choose to negotiate with.

We cannot negotiate with terrorist states or organizations under any circumstances and we should not encourage our allies to do so either, as we have been doing to Israel lately. Nor can we negotiate with ideological extremists or fanatical leaders. Our history has taught us that conversing with these entities is pointless and only results in granting them legitimacy and emboldening them.

Appeasement to their demands intensifies this emboldening and justifies their actions. It teaches them that we are weak and willing to sacrifice our values for peace at any cost. Ronald Reagan said it best in a campaign speech during the late seventies. If we continue to give in and appease these aggressors, the day will come when the final sacrifice is ask of us and how will we be able to respond then when we have been so weakened from within by our own self-destructive behavior? We must show strength and deal swiftly with aggression and totalitarianism.

Dialogue and appeasement failed miserably with Hitler and cost millions of live for our arrogance and ignorance. Negotiation failed to stave of the brutal attack at Pearl Harbor, even though Japan was promising peace to us even as the planes left their ships bound for Hawaii. Our complacency and naivety cost us dearly then. Even when we warned them of the destruction of their cities, they failed to yield until we had wiped two of them off the face of the earth. Talking does nothing but get more innocent people killed. Action, force and strength are the only things these people understand and respect. We cannot negotiate with this enemy, thus we are faced with only one choice in the matter: submit or destroy them.

Those are simply two issues I have noticed where liberals have absolutely no grasp of the reality in which we live. Tomorrow I will cover two more. I invite anyone to offer intellectual challenges to these two points, if that is even possible for a liberal poster to do.

I received an e-mail today that I was sure was one of those made up circulated stories that is designed to invoke emotional responses in people despite their lack of truth. Why was I so sure that this story could not have any basis in truth? Because, it claimed that just blocks from where I work in downtown Fort Worth a United States Marine was refused service at a local convenience store simply because he was in the military.

No, I thought. Not here in Fort Worth. The event apparently happened in 2004, but I could remember no media coverage of such a thing and was sure that it must have been fabricated. So, I Snoped it. What I discovered shocked the hell out of me and angered me even though it happened years ago.

Quote from the e-mail:

On December 19th, 2004, my brother Jason F. Young Lance Corporal in the United States Marines was refused service at a convenience store named One Stop Grocery and Grill at 2001 8th Ave. in downtown Fort Worth, Texas.

He was refused service because he is a Marine.

He went in to the store and asked the clerk (a man of middle eastern descent) for a can of tobacco, at which point the clerk asked him if he was in the military. (He had on a USMC shirt) After my brother replied, “yes sir” the man said nothing to him and looked at the other middle eastern man in the back of the store. Then both men proceeded to go in to the storeroom and did not come out. My brother yelled back to them a time or two and they did not respond.

Jason waited a few minutes and finally left the store.

I am very proud of the way that my brother reacted to the situation. I can honestly say if it had been me I would have cleared their counter and taken my can of tobacco. It is not fair that these people come into our country and enjoy the freedoms that my brother and so many others have fought for. They do not respect our service men and women who have died for them to be able to be here. They do not respect our country, and personally I think they need to go back to where they came from.

My main point in writing this is to get the word out about this particular store and discourage people from shopping there. If they can’t respect or even sell to the people that are responsible for the rights they have, then they don’t deserve to be in business.

Please email this to everyone you know to discourage them from shopping at this store.

This is apparently true as confirmed in this article by Snopes:

The e-mail listed above was written by Heather Dowell, the sister of Lance Cpl. Jason Young, a Marine only recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq. While in Iraq, 25-year-old Young served with an advance tactical unit with a group of Harrier jets that is supporting the 1st Marine Division in Iraq.

Behavior like this irritates the hell out of me. She was right about one thing. LCpl Young handled the event much better than I would have. I see people down here go out of their way to thank soldiers, cheer them and have even witnessed people buy dinner for servicemen whom they apparently did not even know. To think that this kind of idiocy exists in my own backyard is depressing. Heather did the right thing. We must expose this behavior and fight against it whenever we encounter it. My God bless those who serve and may he have mercy on those who do not respect and honor them, for they would receive none from me.